LEIGHTON HOUSE 
a course of lectures there on the Italian Schools of painting; and 
have also attended in it many méetings of the Imperial Art League ; 
so that the more recent memories have partly effaced that very 
early impression. 
It was characteristic of the owner to collect round him things he 
required in the production of his classical subjects, and to contrive 
for them copies of furniture as near the originals as might be. 
I remember there was a chair with long rockers, copied, no doubt, 
from an Etruscan vase or frieze. Crossing the room quickly to 
fetch something, Leighton tripped over the projecting rocker and 
nearly fell. ‘*‘ That comes of having Greek chairs ! ’’ he exclaimed. 
From the little Venetian balcony at the East end of the great 
Studio—shown from without in my drawing, and suggestive of 
Romeo and Juliet—we get a charming view of the garden at the 
back of the house. 
Into that garden the owner presently took us. It is reached by a 
flight of steps descending from the dining-room window. 
The comprehensive title of this book has enabled me to include 
in it the “ little garden, so called,” of the great author of “ Sartor 
Resartus,’’ which played no small part in his life at Cheyne Row. 
Of the garden of Leighton House, though it is very many times 
larger than Carlyle’s, I can find less to tell the reader. It was 
much prettier in the days I have been speaking of than it is now, 
when it is rather closely built up with houses, and more or less 
overlooked, overgrown, and comparatively neglected; and 
Holland Park Lane is no longer a “‘ lane!” 
Mr. Cockerell speaks of delightful Sunday mornings in summer, 
spent in the garden, when “he sat chatting on random subjects 
with the President, who in slippers, a so-called * land and water hat,’ 
and a smock-frock, leant back in a garden chair and talked as no 
one else could. The quiet, the sun overhead, the grass under our 
feet, the green trees around us, and the house visible between them, 
form an ineffaceable picture of «esthetic contentment it is a delight 
to recall.” He “received” every Sunday morning when the weather 
was fine and warm. As mentioned already, it was a lovely 
June day when I saw the garden first—my drawing of it was 
made in autumn—but Leighton did not receive us in the free- 
and-easy costume just described. So far as I remember he wore 
a brown velvet coat, such as on after occasions I usually saw him 
319 
