The Story of the House of Cassell
one morning, so early that Millais was still at breakfast, and we were shown into the studio. In a few minutes he came in with a cap on his head filling his morning pipe, as well as he could with both hands full of letters. He began in his bluff manner, after a curt good morning, with 'Look here, boys, a man wrote me from—I think it was from Manchester—and asked me what I would charge to go down to his place and paint his wife's portrait; she was an invalid and could not travel. I wrote him that I never went out of my studio to paint portraits, and anyone wanting me to paint them must come to me. He wrote back that I hadn't answered his question, what I would charge to go there and paint the portrait. Thinking to put him off by asking a huge price, I wrote back mentioning £2,000. Now look here'—and he showed us the letter, which was simply, 'Dear Sir John,—Please come.' 'And now,' said Millais, 'the Press bullies me because I paint portraits instead of subject pictures.'
"We found a beautiful pen-and-ink drawing on the walls of the staircase, which I carried off; and it ultimately made the frontispiece to the volume 'Little Songs for Me to Sing.'"
The late W. H. J. Boot, vice-president of the Royal Society of British Artists and an honoured member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, was for twenty years, beginning in 1873, a constant contributor to the publications of the House. He attributed his entire success as an artist to reading a book published by John Cassell entitled "The History of the Painters of all Nations." It came out in fortnightly and monthly parts, and gave a short biography of the world's famous artists and a reproduction of their pictures. Mr. Boot was but a child at the time, but the aspiration of the artist was in him, and these personal records gave him courage to induce his parents to let him take up the study of art as his life work. While "Picturesque Europe" and other works of the same series were being produced Mr. Boot paid several visits to the Continent to make drawings for
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