Seven Men/Appendix
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
I have been wont, from my earliest years, to make drawings of my friends and acquaintances. I do not mean drawings from the life; for I have never felt that I had enough talent to justify me in asking anyone to "sit." I mean drawings from memory. I have seldom met any one whom I did not, within a few hours of parting from him, try to portray with pen or pencil.
From time to time I have destroyed great quantities of the sketches thus accumulated; but I have always preserved a residue. In writing this book of memories I searched that residue (itself vast) in the hope of finding means to sharpen my vision. The quest was long and tedious, but not all in vain.
It may be that in the foregoing pages I have failed, for lack of literary art, to make actual to the reader an image of this or that man described. I offer, therefore, a selection from old drawings that are apposite. In doing so, I must warn the reader that these are not trustworthy portraits. There is a taint of exaggeration in them all.
M. B.
ENOCH SOAMES
A page torn from a sketch-book of which I filled several pages with efforts to adumbrate Enoch Soames soon after my first meeting with that "dim" personage in '93. The face in the right-hand corner at the top is that of Professor Rothenstein as he appeared in his pre-professorial days.
HILARY MALTBY AND
STEPHEN BRAXTON
These two drawings were done in the summer of '95, and were reproduced together in The Pall Mall Budget (under the editorship of Mr. Lewis Hind). The originals were purchased by Mrs. Foster-Dugdale, in whose collection they still are, and by whose kind permission they are here reproduced.
JAMES PETHEL
From a sketch-book.
James Pethel is the central figure. "There was," as I have said, "nothing odd about him," and I had therefore little chance for a caricature. The subjects of the surrounding sketches were evidently less difficult.
I remember scribbling this page the morning after my introduction to Pethel, before going round to lunch with him. I never drew him again.
A. V. LAIDER
This drawing was done in the course of my first, not my second, convalescence at Linmouth. I know that I did several sketches of Laider in the following year, and these, I think, must have shown more of psychological insight. Unfortunately I have been unable to find any of them. This one, however, might be worse.
'SAVONAROLA' BROWN
Page from a drawing-block.
Bating exaggeration, this sketch is true enough to the appearance presented by Brown in any of the years of my acquaintance with him. But the scrawled "Act I" in one corner of it suggests that it was drawn at a time when Brown had confided to me that Act I of his play was finished. This would have been towards the end of 1901 or the beginning of 1902.
