To Carlyle Mrs. Allingham had the privilege of frequent and familiar access during his last years; and when he found that he was not expected to pose to her, and that she had, as he emphatically declared, a real talent for portraiture (the only form of pictorial art in which he took any interest), he became very kind and complaisant, and she was able to make nearly a dozen portraits of him in water-colours. An early one, which he declared made him "look like an old fool," was painted in the little back garden of No. 5 Cheyne Row, which was not without shade and greenery in the summer time. There, in company with his pet cat "Tib," and a Paisley churchwarden ("no pipe good for anything," according to him, "being get-at-able in England"), he indulged in smoking, the only creature comfort that afforded him any satisfaction. In these portraits he is depicted sitting in his comfortable dressing-gown faded to a dim slaty grey, refusing to wear a gorgeous oriental garment that his admirers had presented to him. An etching of one of these drawings appeared in the _Art Journal_ for 1882. Other portraits were painted in the winter of 1878-79, in his long drawing-room with its three windows looking out into the street. Rossetti she never saw, although he had been an intimate friend of her husband's for twenty years[5] and was then living in Chelsea, for he was just entering on that unfortunate epoch preceding his death, when he was induced to cut himself adrift from all his old circle of acquaintances. The fact is regrettable, for it would have been interesting to note his opinion of a lady's work with which he must have been in full sympathy. Mr. Allingham had known Ruskin for many years. His wife's acquaintance began in interesting fashion at the Old Water-Colour Society's. She happened to be there during the Exhibition of 1877 at a time when the room was almost empty. Mr. Ruskin had been looking at her drawing of Carlyle, and introducing himself, asked her why she had painted Carlyle like a lamb, when he ought to be painted like a lion, as he was, and whether she would paint the sage as such for him? To this she had to reply that she could only paint him as she saw him, which was certainly not in leonine garb. One afternoon soon afterwards, Mr. Allingham chanced to meet Ruskin at Carlyle's, and brought him round to see her work. She was at the time engaged on the drawing of "The Clothes-Line" (Plate 11), and he objected to the scarlet of the handkerchief, and also to the woman, who he said ought to have been a rough workwoman, an opinion which Mrs. Allingham did not share with him at the time, but which she has since felt to be a correct one. He also saw another drawing with a grey sky, and asked her why she did not make her skies blue. To her reply that she thought there was often great beauty in grey skies, he growled, "The devil sends grey skies."