232 Reminiscences of 



Lawson was credited with the authorship of the rumor 

 about the loan. The position of the Prince was too 

 substantial to require any exertion upon his part to 

 find ready money when needed from the many affluent 

 capitalists existing in London who would feel highly 

 honored by being creditors of the heir-apparent. 



I met the Prince again at a presentation made to 

 Sir Walter Gilbey, representing the subscribers to a 

 fund of a thousand guineas for a testimonial subscribed 

 by a thousand admirers in England at one guinea each, 

 to which I was a subscriber. This was proposed and 

 headed by the Prince of Wales and almost immediately 

 filled, and Sir Walter elected to have for the thousand 

 guineas his half life-size portrait painted by the emi- 

 nent English artist, W. Q. Orchardson, which was duly 

 presented, and was the occasion for another dinner 

 given by Sir Walter to the Prince of Wales and some 

 thirty of the prominent subscribers, among which I 

 had the pleasure of being invited. 



My acquaintance commenced with Mr. Orchardson 

 on a salmon stream in Scotland, where we were the 

 guests of a mutual friend, and I was much charmed 

 with his piscatorial skill and his ardent devotion to 

 angling. Our acquaintance cemented into an earnest 

 friendship, and we had many pleasant rambles together. 

 I was not aware at our first meetings that he was the 

 most celebrated portrait painter in England, and dis- 

 tinguished for his Meissonier-like fidelity of detail. 

 Renewing our meetings in London, I was often a visitor 

 at his studio, but only by his special invitations, for I 

 knew too well the error of intrusion in the sacred hours 

 of labor given by painstaking and devoted artists. Mr. 

 Orchardson, although so prominent in the artistic line, 



