I have stripped the walls of my cabin of the paintings I had hung round them, and they look desolate and like the coffin of my now past journey. A most enjoyable journey it has been, full of pleasant things to remember; full, too, I hope, of artistic profit and teaching. I have been indeed fortunate, for, as I now see more clearly than ever, in a dahabieh I could not have achieved a third of the journey, and in a passenger steamer I could not have done a stroke of work. Every study I take home I owe entirely to the viceroy's munificent kindness. _Sunday, 29th._--Left for Boulay, my destination--gave a parting sheep to the crew, distributed _largesse_, shook hands all round, and drove off to the hotel. FOOTNOTES: [41] See Chap. IV. p. 239. CHAPTER IV ROYAL ACADEMICIAN--MUSIC--ARAB HALL 1869-1878 In 1869, the year after his journeyings in Egypt, Leighton was elected a Royal Academician. The picture which he chose as his Diploma work to be deposited in the Academy on his election was the "S. Jerome," one of those few works which reflected the side of his nature about which he was profoundly reserved. Another work of which the same might be said is "Elijah in the Wilderness," painted in 1879. Leighton told a friend he had put more of himself into that picture than into any other he had ever invented. Three paintings which are among Leighton's very best appeared on the walls of the Academy in 1869--"Dædalus and Icarus," "Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon," and "Helios and Rhodos." In no work did Leighton indulge his passion for colour so successfully as in the last-named picture. He wrote to his master, Steinle, in 1860: "You will perhaps be surprised, but, in spite of my fanatic preference for colour, I promised myself to be a draughtsman before I became a colourist." Again, in a letter to a friend in 1879 he wrote: "Colour was supposed to be my _forte_ (_par parenthèse_, though I am not a colourist, albeit passionately fond of colour, I have always been, and am, a great _cuisinier_; I have tried quite innumerable methods and vehicles)." Some of Leighton's appreciators cannot help feeling jealous of this obstinate determination to struggle with those gifts for which nature had not given him the preference, many considering his artistic error to have been that of putting the screw too tightly on his preconceived determinations. Had he _sometimes_, at all events, allowed his "fanatic preference" to have free play, more of his works might have glowed with the revelry in rich colour we find on the canvas of "Helios and Rhodos." [Illustration: ST. JEROME. 1869. DIPLOMA WORK Deposited in the Academy on Lord Leighton's election as an Academician] [Illustration: "ELECTRA AT THE TOMB OF AGAMEMNON"]