I used to go to bed worn out and weary, at last sleep would come. Then I would wake up with a start, feeling some awful calamity had overtaken me, that I had written something libellous or said something scandalous, and the Court of Law was waiting to receive me. No one would intentionally write a libel any more than they would cut a friend. I would see paragraphs chasing paragraphs across the page, just as the typed letters had turned red under my gaze when my eyes gave out a few years before. I used to get horribly anxious over my proof. Things I had rattled off when well were laborious now, and the anxiety they entailed was wellnigh unendurable. It was merely a matter of health—a tonic and a rest put matters right. PART V THE SWEETS OF ADVERSITY [Illustration: MRS. ALEC TWEEDIE _After a painting by Herbert Schmalz, 1894_] CHAPTER XIII ABOUT PAINTERS It has been rather amusing to sit to various artists; they have such different ways of working. When Herbert Schmalz did my portrait (1894) he was busy upon those enormous religious canvases of his which afterwards toured round England and Australia as a one-man show, and which are so well known in reproductions. He was painting “John Oliver Hobbes” at the same time, and she and I went to the studio on alternate days. Although we were hardly alike, the names of _Craigie_ and _Tweedie_ had something of the same sound, and quite confused the little servant, who always announced me as Mrs. Craigie, and John Oliver Hobbes as Mrs. Tweedie. Those were pleasant sittings, and perhaps I went ten or twelve times for the picture. Herbert Schmalz is a careful, painstaking artist, who is prone to alter scheme or colour, and do the work all over again unless it pleases him. At that time Sir Frederick Leighton often came to the studio, which almost adjoined his own. Leighton was one of the most courtly, charming men I ever knew. Short of stature, he still had a magnificent presence, and his grey head was grand. No President of the Royal Academy ever looked finer at the top of the stairs on soirée night than this splendid draughtsman. The Academy Soirée in his day was a grand function. His personality attracted all that was best. I never liked his painting, but always loved his drawing. The portrait painted by Mr. Schmalz[6] was one day standing in my hall a year or two later, when a new servant—new servants are luxuries I do not often indulge in—asked if the picture was going away. “Yes,” I replied, “it is going to an exhibition.” “I thought pictures only went to exhibitions when they were newly painted,” she remarked. “So they do, as a rule,” I answered, “but this one is going to the Exhibition of ‘Eminent Women’ at Earl’s Court.” “Lor’!” (in her surprise she nearly dropped what she was holding). “You don’t mean to say _you_ are going there?” Mohammed could not have been a prophet in his own household.