Strangely enough, the first time we met, Hampton, without knowing anything about previous performances, said he would like to model my head. “Oh no,” came in answer, “never again. I have done with studios and sitting on what you call a ‘throne,’ but what I look on as a chair of torture.” And so we laughed the matter off, but, after a second meeting, he wrote such a perfectly charming letter on the subject that my resolve gave way, and, let it be acknowledged at once, I have never regretted the weakness. Hampton has the finest sculptor’s studio in London. Here are casts of Lord Kelvin, Sir Henry Irving, Sir Luke Fildes, Miss Geneviève Ward, General Booth, and dozens more, besides plaster models of the colossal statue of the late Lord Salisbury, now erected on the stairs at the Foreign Office, and that of the late King Edward, to say nothing of five of Queen Victoria. We talked for about a quarter of an hour after my arrival, as he said, “just to renew my first impressions,” and then, asking me to sit in a revolving chair on that terrible dais, he went to work. In front, on a moving table, stood the _armature_, or inside skeleton-support for my future head. At the bottom was a block of wood, from which three narrow lead pipes, tied together at the top, were designed to make a support for my neck and face. It was a simple, amateurish-looking thing, but, as Mr. Hampton explained, “the lead pipe is pliable, so I can alter the pose of the head as I go on, as you will see.” I did see. On the modelling stand were great lumps of dark grey mud, or shall we call them bricks?—for they were about that size. This was the modelling clay, known as _la terre_, because it is French. It is more tenacious for working than our English clay. That is to say, it is firmer, and is darker to look at. One great block was laid on top of the pipes and squeezed till it might have been a melon; that was the beginning of my head. Half another brick went on in front, and this gradually assumed the shape of a fat banana, out of which a nose was shortly evolved, and a chin. Another block was quickly divided and dumped on each side. Out of this two ears and some neck were manipulated. Who shall say that such a performance was not fascinating? It reminded me of the dear, dirty mud-pies of my youth, of the spade-and-bucket days, and it was quite delicious to hear the “squeege” of the clay as it was flung on the armature. This took but little longer to do than to tell, for in a few minutes there was a sort of head and the beginning of a neck, though it closely resembled a block in a barber’s shop. When sufficient clay was in place, Mr. Hampton—who was talking all the time, and kept declaring he did not want me to remain still, but that the more I talked and amused him the better he should like it—really set to work. Then one saw the capacity of the man.