WALTER TYNDALE
and I met again in London, and here we also renewed friendships with other students of the academy in Antwerp.
The first time I painted Walter Tyndale he posed as a courtier, in a dress of the period of George III, for a picture called Tubbing the Prince, an imitation of the Spanish School of Zamacois and Fortuny, then very much the vogue, because of the brilliancy of the technique, and the cleverness of the characterization of bygone types. This school comprised the French painter Boldini, one of the greatest adepts in the handling of a brush, either on a small or large scale, that has ever graced an atelier. One of his masterpieces is a portrait of Whistler, in the Brooklyn art gallery, by far the most characteristic likeness of that eccentric master.
It was during these sittings that Tyndale gave me that our divergencies of views upon political and social questions developed. Although we agreed upon other matters, we disagreed fundamentally upon the Irish question, the trade union, and in general the Radical movements of the day. Walter Tyndale is not a Socialist, as so many artists are, or pretend to be. There is nothing of the William Morris or Walter Crane in his constitution. He espoused the causes that the Radicals and the great Liberal statesmen were conscientiously working for, and he believed he could see in the success of Liberalism a regeneration of the people. I was not so optimistic, and I foreboded many dire calamities to the nation, through the ambitions of Labour leaders. I frankly admit that he seemed to have the charitable, the generous, and the neighbourly point of view; but I was held by certain inalienable principles which, however sternly individualist they may appear to be, always
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