want? I suppose you want them for a picture.' I replied, 'Yes, I do.' He said, 'I hope those I sent you for your last picture suited you?' 'Yes,' I replied, 'splendidly. It sold the other day for 1,155.' 'Good gracious! he said. You might have come up to my place, and had the whole lot in my shop for a couple of hundred.'
"I do not know if I have anything more to say about myself," continued Mr. Marks; "but anything you say about me as to my personal weaknesses must include that I am a great lover of books. I make all my own book-marks, design them myself, and I do a little poetry. Years ago I used to be a Volunteer. There is something interesting about that, perhaps. I joined the Artists in 1862, and I did not leave until I had a son in the corps. On June 7, 1879, there was an inspection at the Horse Guards, and the remarkable sight was presented, which has probably never been seen before, of an R.A. as a full private in the ranks, and his son as his rear rank man. After that I resigned.
Original study of Head of Dogberry.
(Reduced fac-simile.)
"Models? Oh, yes, I have had some strange things in models—all sorts and conditions of models. There was a model whom we used to call Cumming. He was extraordinarily slight and thin. All my costumes were too long for him; all the pairs of tights I had were a world too wide for his shrunk shanks.' I am afraid I chaffed him unmercifully about his spareness. I remember showing him once some of my children's garments, and asking him, 'Do you think that would fit you?' He used to say he had been an officer in a cavalry regiment; but this assertion, I found out afterwards, had no foundation in fact. One day, when sitting to a friend of mine, he was asked to go out and fetch some beer—not a very uncommon request among struggling artists. This he was nothing loth to do, but quickly accomplished his task, and placing the foaming pot of stout on the table, said, 'Things have come to a pretty pass when an ex-officer of the 14th Light Dragoons has to fetch his own beer. But the most unconsciously humorous and characteristic model I ever employed was one Campbell, whom I more than once painted as Dogberry. He had been a shoe-maker. Almost the first occasion he came to me he told me the following story:—
"I took home a picture to the Dook of Wellington one day, and, as I was taking it up in the hall, he comes by, and says, "Oh, you comes from Messrs. Bennett." "Yes, sir," I says. With that he passes on, and out comes at the front door a man dressed a'l in black, and comes up to me—his butler, I suppose. He says, "Do you know who you were a talking to just now?" "Yes, sir," I says, "Arthur Wellesley, better known as Dook of Wellington." "Then, why don't you say 'Your Grace' to him?" "Grace?" says I; "why should I say grace for? there's no meat here. Where's the viands? Why, I said sir to him—a common title of respect between man and man." "Well," says he, "you are a rum sort of customer, you are. What do you call the Duke?" "What do I call him?" I says; "a wholesale carcase butcher! Look at his career. He begins by going to France
