Page:Pen And Pencil Sketches - Volume I.djvu/55

clay pipe, a moderately lengthy “churchwarden.” In teaching he had no regular method or system, leaving us pretty much to our own devices. Some- times he would take palette and brushes from a student, and with a few strokes show him how to indicate a head or limb on the margin of his canvas. Or something which struck him in one of our studies supplied a text for an impromptu lecture on “surface,” “regions,” or “masses,” as we should call them, or other subject, on which he would discourse with shrewd common- sense and frequent touches of fun. He was a great stickler for cleanliness and tidiness. “ Keep your palette as clean as your breakfast- table,” he would say, — “ a much easier thing than to get your break- fast by your palette.” Under all the cynicism there was a kind and generous nature. By my absenting myself for some time, attending only the weekly sketching meetings, he thought perhaps I was more than usually hard up, and took an opportunity of slipping into my hand a paper on which he had written, “Come for nothing, as a little Christmas present.” I was painting my second picture of “Hamlet, Horatio, and Osric.” I had shown him the sketch, in which Hamlet was dressed in a long robe with hanging sleeves. He said nothing ; had the dress made, lent it to me for as long as I wanted it, and then had it placed in the costume