LEIGHTON HOUSE 
That Millais felt the disabilities under which the women in my time 
laboured to be very unjust, I am sure, for he did what he could to 
mitigate the injustice. I well remember an occasion immediately 
following on my admission to the Upper Painting School, when he 
was the “ Visitor ’ for the month—and that the model he provided 
was a beautiful little boy of some eight or nine years old—graceful, 
lithe, and nearly nude. The innovation was chiefly for the benefit 
of the women students in the class. 
The pose was a kneeling one, and the child moved a good deal, and I 
recall how—on this my first attempt at painting the figure from the 
life—wrestling with the difficulties of flesh-painting in oil, and keep- 
ing the drawing correct at the same time—I made the boy’s curly 
head rather too large. When the great master came round to me, 
he detected this at once, saying sympathetically : ‘“‘ I know, it’s just 
like having a tooth out, but—it must come out,”’ and out it came! 
Millais was a wonderful personality ; he had a handsome presence, 
a genial, breezy, almost jovial manner, and a kindly smile; and he 
had a humorous way of putting things, with a touch of fun which 
was very effective. 
I never knew him very well, not nearly so well as—in the same 
relation—that of master and pupil—I came, soon after, to know 
Leighton ; but he never forgot anyone, or one’s work; he would 
come out of his way to speak of it—of that I might give instances 
pleasant to look back upon, but they would be out of place here 
In the light of that early remark of Thackeray’s, before quoted : 
“*Millais, my boy, I met in Rome a versatile young dag called 
Leighton, who will one day run you hard for the Presidency ”— 
it is curious to remember how some twenty-five years ago, Millais 
and Leighton (like Reynolds and Romney had done before them) 
‘ divided” the suffrages of the town. I think now no one will 
hesitate to say that Millais was far and away the greater painter, 
though, as I said before, he was not a greater all-round artist. 
But it seems to me that while Millais had more than a touch of 
native genius, Leighton had greater accomplishment. However, 
to enlarge upon this would only be to repeat in extenso what I 
briefly said at the beginning of the chapter, touching the great 
President’s versatility—we are still too near them both in point of 
time to judge either fairly; at present both have suffered that 
partial and temporary eclipse which I have elsewhere remarked as 
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