“Would you mind waiting here a while?” I asked. In those early days we had only the one office and no waiting-room except the stage. He waited gladly, whilst I went back to the office. Irving had by this time arrived. I told him I had seen Mr. Ford. “I hope you put it nicely to him that I can’t possibly give him sittings,” he said. “That is why I came to see if you had arrived.” “How do you mean,” he asked again. So I said: “I think you had better see him, and if you think as I do you will give him sittings!” “Oh, my dear fellow, I can’t. I am really too pressed with work.” “Well, see him any way!” I said; “I have asked him to wait on purpose.” He looked at me keenly for an instant as though I had somehow “gone back” on him. Then he smiled: “All right. I’ll see him now!” I brought Onslow Ford. When the two men met, Irving _did_ share my opinion. He did give sittings for a bronze statuette. The result was so fine that he gave quite another series of sittings for him to do the life-size marble statue of “Irving as Hamlet” now in the Library of the London Guildhall. It is a magnificent work, and will perhaps best of all his works perpetuate the memory of the great Sculptor who died all too young. Irving gave many sittings for the statue. With the experience of his first work Onslow Ford could begin with knowledge of the face so necessary in portrait art. I often went with him and it was an intense pleasure to see Onslow Ford’s fine hands at work. They seemed like living things working as though they had their own brains and initiation. I was even able to be of some little assistance. I knew Irving’s face so well from seeing it so perpetually under almost all possible phases of emotion that I could notice any error of effect if not of measurement. Often either Irving or Onslow Ford would ask me and I would give my opinion. For instance: “I think the right jowl is not right!” The sculptor examined it thoughtfully for quite a while. Then he said suddenly: “Quite right! but not in that way. I see what it is!” and he proceeded to add to the left of the forehead. After all, effect is comparative; this is one of the great principles of art! On 31st March 1906, one of the Academy view days of those not yet Royal Academicians, I went to Onslow Ford’s old studio in Acacia Road, now in possession of his son, Wolfram the painter, to see his portrait of his beautiful young wife, the daughter of George Henschel. Whilst we were talking of old days he unearthed treasures which I did not know existed: casts from life of Henry Irving’s hands.