My caricatures are frequently described as "gross" by the wife who is hurt by the pencil that points a joke at her husband's peculiarities; or she says, "Why don't you do my husband as you did So-and-so!" (referring to a decided and unsparing caricature). I have been described as unkind; or sometimes when, carried away by a fascinating subject, I have perhaps not sufficiently controlled my pencil, I have been accused of "brutality." The truth is that in working one may not intend anything personal, or for one moment imagine any one could take the result seriously; but the finished work, made with a detailed, and possibly inhuman devotion to one's own conception, strikes the beholder in a mood entirely different. Very few of those who admire a caricature realize that its satire lies, not in any personal venom, but in the artist's detached observation of life and character. In the early days of _Vanity Fair_ people viewed caricature as something entirely new, and in the light of this novelty viewed it in the right spirit; later they grew particular, and, as they frequently paid (from which I did not benefit), an entirely new type of subject came to me; it was as though a spirit of commercialism crept between me and my sitters. [Illustration: FIFTH EARL OF PORTSMOUTH, 1876.] [Illustration: MAJOR OSWALD AMES (OZZIE). 1896.] [Illustration: EARL OF LONSDALE. 1879.] A subject whom I strongly caricatured, pleased me by saying when introduced to him, "No man is worth _that_ (snapping his fingers) if he can't join in a laugh against himself." I remember going to lunch with a very rich man (for the purpose of studying him), who would insist on looking at my rough notes in spite of my protestations to the effect that they were only notes, not drawings. He became highly incensed. "I may be stoutish," he exclaimed, "but I'm not a fat, dumpish figure like that. Now wouldn't it be a good and a new idea if you were to make me different. You see my friends know me as a short, round man, it would be so funny and quite a novelty if you were to make me tall and thin. Now you think it well over--it would be quite a departure in caricature." I intimated that I thought the idea was rather far-fetched and that it was possible that his friends would prefer him as nature had made him. "If you want to please me, you must make me tall," he said. "I'll come to your studio and pay you a visit and perhaps buy some of your work--if you satisfy me in this respect." I told him I was not accustomed to be bribed in that manner and wished I had not accepted his hospitality. There are people who think they can do anything by bribery. They call at one's studio, and hint that one shall paint a portrait of them and go as far as to point out how it shall be done, and what the price shall be. Others, when one has done a mere drawing of them, imagine that they have been tremendously caricatured and complain bitterly.