GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



and of the Academy the schools are an integral part ; and since the 

 interests of the students were very near his heart, some further 

 reference to them may be pardoned by the reader. When I was 

 there the butt of the Painting School was a tall, thin, old man, un- 

 kempt, and unshaven, of whom tradition said that he had been there 

 sixty years, having in his youth gained some prize that carried with 

 it a life-studentship. However exaggerated this report, he was 

 there, to my knowledge, long after I left wearing, I am told, the 

 same shabby, grey, coat, his sparse, grey locks no whiter, his grey, 

 colourless face no cleaner than he was in my day, when, as I 

 distinctly remember, he was grey from head to foot ! He always 

 contrived to be in time to secure the best view of the model, and to 

 set up his easel where he could reserve a clear space between it and 

 the window. Then, having dabbed some paint on his canvas, he 

 would run backwards to judge at a distance of the effect, glance at 

 the model, rush forward again, and implant another splash of 

 pigment on the study, which somehow, nevertheless, never advanced 

 at all ; and he always used the same old canvas over again. He 

 took no notice of anybody, and nobody interfered with his runs to 

 and fro, for everybody gave him as wide a berth as possible ; the 

 men played practical jokes upon him, and left pails of water, soap 

 and a towel near him. All this took place in the days when both 

 sexes worked together in the costume-painting school, and the 



girls showed their disapproval of Mr. P by drawing their skirts 



aside when he came near them ; but he remained superbly 

 indifferent, and superlatively dirty ! He looked eighty, though he 

 was probably a quarter of a century younger, but he seemed to us, 

 to even the kindest-hearted, an apt example of the survival of the 

 tmfittest. Nevertheless, it was round this curious specimen of 

 fossilized humanity, that the late Mr. de Morgan has kindly thrown 

 the mantle of romance, and made his dry bones live. It is impossible 

 to read " Alice for Short," without perceiving that the character 

 of Verrinder, whose devotion to his insane wife is a touching episode 

 in the story, was drawn from life, and that the original was " Old 



P ." If his history were really what de Morgan makes it, 



and had we known it, there was not a student among us but would 

 have looked kindly on the old artist. 



At that time the R.A. Studentship, now shortened to five years, 

 lasted to seven, if anyone cared to stay so long, which rarely 



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