Orchardson had been a veritable hero for years. He had really been an invalid since the final years of the last century, sometimes desperately ill. Often he could only do an hour’s work a day, and during that time Lady Orchardson always read aloud to him. It soothed and amused him at the same time, and volumes of memoirs and travels were his delight. His wife was always beside him, and her encouragement and criticism were of great value to his work. They were a devoted couple. Even neuritis did not stop his work. The triumph of mind over matter! There were days during those ten or twelve years when he looked as if a puff of wind would blow him away. Yet the work lost none of its brilliancy. Orchardson painted as well at seventy-five as he did forty years before. Of how many men can that be said? Pluck is a wonderful quality. How few of the people, who admired Orchardson’s marvellous picture of Lord Peel, realised the agonies the artist endured during the time he was painting that and his following canvases. It was about 1897 that he first began to fail. Some put it down to heart trouble, others to an affection of the nerves, but whatever it was he was told that nothing could be done, nothing, at least, which could really cure the malady. With the most splendid fortitude and pluck Orchardson realised the situation. He was still a man of little over sixty. He was at the zenith of his glory, thousands of pounds were paid for his pictures, and orders were far more numerous than he could accomplish; he had a large family beside him, and for years he painted on with this agonising pain, making light of the matter. How ill he looked one day when I called. He appeared so much thinner than even a month or two previously, and there seemed a depression about the merry laugh and twinkling eyes. He wore his left arm in a black silk sling, and the hands, always thin, seemed to show more blue veins, and look more delicate and nervous than usual. His hands were even more characteristic than his face. He was painting, and beside him his palette was fixed on a music stand. “A very awkward arrangement,” he laughingly said; “but the best I can do, for I can no longer hold the palette at all.” “But the stand is just the exact height, and looks all right,” I said. “Ah, my dear friend,” he replied, “a subtle difference in colour is very slight, but when you are standing back from your canvas and decide that a particular shade is wanted on a particular point of a particular nose, if you have the palette on your hand you can mix it at once, while if you have to walk back six or eight feet to the palette to prepare the paint to complete this little alteration, you may just get sufficiently off the shade to entirely alter the idea. I weigh every tone. I am not an impressionist.”