Hugh Lane's life and achievement : with some account of the Dublin galleries

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2010 with funding from

University of Toronto

http://www.archive.org/details/hughlaneslifeachOOgreg

I

1

HUGH LANE'S LIFE AND
ACHIEVEMENT

LIST OF LADY GREGORY'S BOOKS

DRAMA

SEVEN SHORT PLAYS

FOLK-HISTORY PLAYS, 2 VOLS.

NEW COMEDIES

THE IMAGE

THE GOLDEN APPLE

THE DRAGON

OUR IRISH THEATRE. A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

IRISH FOLKLORE AND LEGEND

VISIONS AND BELIEFS, 2 VOLS.
CUCHULAIN OF MUIRTHEMNE
GODS AND FIGHTING MEN
SAINTS AND WONDERS
POETS AND DREAMERS
THE KILTARTAN POETRY BOOK

HUGH LANE.

From the portrait by J. S. Sargent.

HUGH LANE'S LIFE AND
ACHIEVEMENT, WITH
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE
DUBLIN GALLERIES. BY
LADY GREGORY

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS ^^'.^'^^

(i 6 h* \ Sa

LONDON

JOHN

MURRAY,

, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. i

1921

ONTAHIO

G- the

AW right* reserved

TO ALEC MARTIN, HUGH'S FRIEND AND MINE

L'ART DE DONNER UN MUSEE

(From Le Figaro, March 20, 1908.)

"VoiLA une belle merveille de faire bonne chere
avec bien de I'argent ! C'est la chose la plus
aisee du monde . . ., mais pour agir en habile
homme, il faut parler de faire bonne chere avec
peu d'argent ! "

De meme pourrait-on dire, a I'exemple de
Valere : '* Voila une belle merveille de creer
un musee avec quelques millions. Tout le monde
y pourrait reussir . . . (et encore !...), mais
creer, sans fortune, sans appui d'aucune sorte, et
avec pour uniques armes une volonte tenace et
un passionne amour du beau, un musee complet,
riche en belles ODuvres, un musee en vie des Etats les
plus prosperes et des cites les plus orgueilleuses, puis
donner a une ville qu'on aime ce tresor rassemble
avec tant d'efforts et de soUicitude : — voila qui est
agir mieux encore qu'en habile homme."

Cette comparaison nous venait a I'esprit en
recevant le catalogue illustre de ce nouveau musee
d'art moderne de Dublin, qui vient de s'ouvrir pour
la plus grande gloire de son createur et donateur,
M. Hugh Lane.

Singulier et attrayant personnage que celui-
la, et type qui ne court pas les rues. II est fait pour

vii

viii L'ART DE DONNER UN MUSEE

tendi'c la main a travers mers et continents a
M. cle Tachudi, de qui notre correspondant,
M. Charles Bonnefon, disait I'autre jour Toeuvre
et annongait le repos momentane. Seulement, si
M. de Tschudi a cree a la Galerie nationale de
Berlin une section d'art moderne tres remarquable,
et cela avec le concours d'amis tres riches — ce
qui ne diminue pas son nierite, — Hugh Lane, lui,
a cree un musee tout entier a Dublin, sans le
secours de jDcrsonne. Comment s'y est-il pris ?
Voici ;

M. Hugh Lane a frequente assidument les
expositions parisiennes et les ventes londoniennes
chez Christie. Ce furent ses deux sources d' ali-
mentation. Avec une tres petite mise de fonds,
qui fut promptement absorbee, il achetait quelques
toiles. II en revendait la majeure partie, gardait
celles qu'il destinait a son futur musee, s'endettait
et s'enrichissait (si cela peut s'appeler ainsi),
successivement. Au fur et a mesure de ces
operations, le noyau du musee se formait. C'est
ainsi qu'un grand nombre de peintures lui passer-
ent par les mains et qu'un nombre plus restreint
d'oeuvres choisies fut garde jalousement.

On nous contait ce trait delicieux. A un
voyage a Paris, il lui restait quelques centaines
de francs ; il convoitait deux dessins de Puvis de
Chavannes qui valaient cette somme. Le mar-
chand a qui il les achete le connaissant bien et
s'interessant a lui propose de lui faire credit.
" Mais non, repond notre Lane. H me reste mon
billet de retour et deux shillings six pence ; c'est
bien assez pour m'arranger jusqu'a Londres."
Et il emporte ses dessins.

L'ART DE DONNER UN MUSEE ix

C'est ainsi que se privant de tout, n'ayant pas
de home, vivant presque comme un tramp, mais
un tramp qui remuerait sans cesse des centaines
et des centaines de mille francs, M. Hugh Lane,
Irlandais amoureux d'art, a la joie d'avoir dote
sa ville natale d'un musee d'art moderne que
maintenant lui envie Londres. Quelle victoire
pour rirlande !

Et ce n'est pas un musee de second ordre,
croyez-le bien, que possede Dublin. On y voit
entre autres une douzaine de Corots, dont une
admirable et tres importante figure de femme, et
une ravissante et rarissime Vue de Marseille ; des
aquarelles de Barye ; des dessins de Millet ; des
peintures de Theodore Rousseau, de Daumier, de
Courbet, de Monticelli, de Fantin-Latour, de Ge-
rome (Feclectisme, vous le voyez, est encore une
vertu de ce passionne) ; I'admirable Femme a la
toilette de Puvis de Chavannes ; deux Manets d'une
grande importance : le Portrait d^Eva Gonzales et
le Concert Besselievre ; des oeuvres de Rodin, de
Legros, de Monet, de Renoir. Les ecoles etran-
geres ont de tres beaux representants. Enfin, une
tres belle place est faite aux ecoles britanniques,
et une collection des celebrites irlandaises par les
meilleurs peintres irlandais contemporains com-
plete ce musee cree par un pauvre.

M. Hugh Lane a donne une belle le9on et un
bel exemple a des gens que nous nommerions bien
si nous avions le moindre espoir de leur voir suivre
cet exemple et profiter de cette le9on.

ARSENE ALEXANDRE.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VIL

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

Preface : " L'Art de donner un Musi^E " .

The Chain of Causes

Learndjo his Trade ....

Making a Fortune

The Return to Ireland ....

The Loan Exhibition and the Guildhall

The Staats Forbes Pictures and the Founding
THE Municipal Gallery

The Watts Exhibition

The National Museum

Mancini

A Site for the Municipal Gallery

The Removal of the French Pictures

The Johannesburg Gallery

The Collection for Cape Town

London Life ....

The Dublin National Gallery

The "Lusitania" .

The Codicil of Forgiveness

Meditations and Memories .

A Postscript ....

of

PAGE

vii
1

11
20
29
42

56

78

83

90

100

119

142

150

158

196

212

218

238

271

Appendix I. List of Pictures Given and Bequeathed to

the National Gallery of Ireland . . 275

„ II. Gifts and Bequests to Dublin Municipal

Art Gallery \ 278

„ III. Pictures Bequeathed to the London National

Gallery ....... 284

„ IV. Statutory Declarations 286

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Hugh Lane, from the Portrait by J. S. Sargent

Frontispiece

The Hugn Lane Presentation

The Toilet. By Puvis de Ghavannes . . . . ,

Sir E. Lutyens' Original Sketch for the Bridge Gallery Design

Portrait of a Lady with Gloves, by Rembrandt

Portrait of a Gentleman, by Strozzi

Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, by Titian

Mrs. Edward Taylor, as painted by Romney

The same portrait " improved "

A Spanish Girl, by Goya

Les Parapluies, by Renoir

Facsimile of Codicil to his Will

Portrait of Cardinal Antonio Ciocchi, by Sebastian del Piombo

FAOIMO PAGE

80

102
110
154
164
174
188
188
208
228
230
252

ziii

Hugh Lane was born November 9th, 1875.

1893. Taken into Colnaghi's Gallery in Pall Mall.

1898. Takes a room and begins dealing at 2, Pall Mall Place.

1902. Organises Exhibition of Old Masters in Dublin.

1904. Organises Exhibition of Irish Artists at the Guildhall.

1905. Exhibits Staats Forbes Collection in Dublin.

1906. Municipal Gallery in Harcourt Street opened.

Is presented with his portrait painted by Sargent *' in recognition
of his unselfish and untiring eflbrts to establish a Gallery of
Modem Art for Ireland."

1908. Organises Irish Art Gallery at Franco-British Exhibition.

1909. Knighted.

Goes to Johannesburg to organise Picture Gallery founded by
Lady Phillips.

1912. Makes collection of pictures for gallery at Cape Town founded and
presented by Mr. Michaelis.

1914. Appointed Director of the National Gallery of Ireland.

1915. Gives £10,000 to Eed Cross sale for Mr. Sargent's canvas.
Lost with the Liisitania^ aged thirty-nine.

HUGH LANE'S LIFE AND
ACHIEVEMENT

CHAPTER I

THE CHAIN OF CAUSES

When I sometimes said to Hugh that two lives
had been spoiled, been squandered, for his making,
I said it half in jest. And yet in pondering as
to where he came from, what his roots were, how
that daring imagination and amazing fulfilment
found its place in the line of a county family of
Galway, a professional family of Cork, it some-
times seems to me that I did not exaggerate,
that the sacrifice was necessary, that a clash
between opposing natures had been needed to
create such a fiery current, that the force which
enabled him to accomplish in his shortened life
so much that will endure, could have come from
no other well-head than that romantic unhappy
marriage, that ill-mated parentage.

His mother, my sister Adelaide Persse, was
among the elders of my mother's m^ny children
when I was but a child. Elizarbeth was the clever

one of the family ; Gertrude the musical, the

1

2 TRE CHAIN OF CAUSES

popular one ; Adelaide the beauty. She had
been named at lier christening after the then
Queen Dowager '' because she was such a good
woman." I don't know that our Adelaide was
in those days good out of the common, but she
was queenly as poets and painters of the Ke-
naissance have taught us to imagine queens ;
the head well carried, the oval face well moulded,
the stature sufficient : the dark, beautiful eyes
were at tragic moments indignant, but their
expression changed to happy content when she
was with children or occupied with the handiwork
or embroidery she loved. Henry James once
asked me of a girl in whose marriage we had a
common interest, " Is she a mother or a wife ?
Every woman is more of one than the other."
I think Adelaide was by nature a mother, yielding
to and loving the weakness and waywardness of
a child, rather than a wife easily yielding to the
yoke. And in those days the submission ordered
by St. Paul was a part of religion — even a wife's
control of her own money was denied by law at
the time of her marriage settlements — and this
denial had in it the seed of later trouble. With
all her kindliness she was a somewhat stern judge
of herself and those dear to her. I have some-
times meditated on the marriages possible to her,
or made by her sisters, and wondered if she could
have been satisfied in any, and I have always seen
where the struggle would have come. She had
the strength of wiU and obstinacy that one recog-
nised long after in Hugh's tenacity, in what I
have called "his hard patience." Though to the
end of her life she could not understand and even

THE MOTHER 3

resented his lavish giving outside his own family
or the recognised poor, I find it akin to an open-
handedness that never left her even in lean days,
a desire " to satisfy the hungry, to banish every
hardship, to save every sorrowful man " ; only
where she thought to satisfy with bread and
meat, he was for building a temple in Jerusalem.
She was shy and unresponsive, from a lack of
seK-confidence, in the society where she was so
much admired, and never really loved it ; and
towards the end of her twenties she turned to
religion in our sudden Evangelical way. From
that time she, who had rustled the brightest silks
over the largest crinoline, passionately wished to
work for the souls and bodies of the poor. Her
mind dwelt on ragged schools and refuges and
hospitals ; in these days she would, I think, have
become a trained nurse, but such an escape from
home barriers had not come into fashion in the
seventies, at least not in our neighbourhood.
She was for another season one of the beauties
of the Viceregal Court, and the letters read at
the breakfast table told of new fashions — I have
some memory of a puzzling '' rose and apple-
green peplum " — and of compliments paid her,
and great acquaintances. Hugh was amused one
day when driving with him in London I pointed
out the bronze heroic statue of one of his mother's
old partners. Those of us who were still within
the enclosure of the schoolroom had dreams of
our beautiful sister being led back some day from
that fairyland by some wonderful Marquis of
Carabas. It was a shock when, on her return from
that last brilliant season it was discovered rather

4 THE CHAIN OF CAUSE8

thcan confessed that she intended to marry a
divinity student of Trinity College, six years her
junior, without money or certain prospects beyond
those in the Church. I remember the day well.
It was as if there had been a death in the house.
We knew nothing of his family — quite a good old
professional one. *' Who is he ? He may be the
son of an attorney f' we whispered in horror. So
he was, but our ideas of attorneys have widened
since then ; I think we had taken them from Miss
Edgewoi*th's novels. Our old nurse, half a century
in the family, had a yet worse possibility in mind
and was heard muttering, " I don't like those sort
of names. Lane and Street and Field. They are apt
to be given to foundlings."

The family authorities would not at first hear
of the marriage, but after a while consented it
should take place at the end of three years,
during which the two lovers who had so far found
but little chance of learning anything about each
other, were not to meet or even to write more
than, I think, once in a twelvemonth. At the
end of two years the marriage took place.

I have called it a romantic one because each
of the lovers was less in love with the other than
with an illusion, an idea. The man had been
dazzled by the sight of this lovely woman made
much of and admired in a society, whether in
country houses or Dublin Castle, he was not
familiar with, and which was probably glorified
by hearsay, but in which he was confident he
could play a successful part. He was ambitious,
and if there was something of forwardness, why
should we blame the hope of advancement ?

THE FATHER 5

Yet it was this self-confidence, this certainty of
his own power to please, to gain his way, that I
remember looking on with much disfavour in
common with my family, even after I had been
freed by my own happy marriage from many
family traditions. But I know now that this
very quality, this assurance, was needed in Hugh's
making to balance his mother's shyness and
sensitive pride. Without it I cannot imagine
his quick success. I remember telling Sir Frederic
Burton, the gentle Director of the Trafalgar Square
National Gallery, of one of Hugh's early rapid
dealings, and his answer, " I have never in all my
life been able to have the same courage in my
own opinion as that young man." In his later
work it turned to an indomitable energy, the faith
that breaks obstacles down.

But as to Mr. Lane, whether from slight or
sufficient reason, Adelaide's friends and kindred
would have none of him, the glorified life was still
out of reach ; he had to see her in those first
years of marriage with but the background of a
curate's lodging in a smoky EngKsh town. He
had another disillusionment — he had possessed
some sentiment, some turn for poetry and literature.
Had they spent even a few weeks together he
would have found that she who never pretended,
who as a child had given us a family word, " I hate
hy^ocry,^^ had no taste in these things. She told
me long after that once in that long engagement
she had sent him in place of the forbidden letter
a copy of some poem, a religious one, she thought
might please him, and it was not till a few days
after their marriage she discovered he had all

6 THE CHAIN OF CAUSES

the time supposed her to bo its author. She said,
"•^ It was a great disappointment to him ; things
never went very well with us after that." Yet
she had a larger share than his own, had he known
it, of the imagination that builds up a city of
dreams.

The other night, being alone, I took up a book,
the '' Life of Felicia Skene." There is a portrait
in it of her niece Zoe, who was later Mrs. Thomson,
wife of the Archbishop of York ; and as I looked
at the charming sympathetic face some memory
came back to me. I remembered that Adelaide
and her husband had soon after their marriage
been guests of that Archbishop for a night or two
for some congress or gathering of Churchmen,
and that his wife, their hostess, had asked Adelaide
for a photograph, and had written thanking her
for the portrait but saying it did not do justice to
her beauty. It had seemed an unusual grace on
so short an acquaintance from the w^ife of an
Archbishop to a curate's wife ; so I was interested
in reading that Zoe Skene had herself belonged to
a country where there is respect for beauty, that
is Greece ; and it was with an actual bodily pang
the thought came that Hugh was out of reach of
hearing what would have so much delighted him
in that windrift of memorv\

I remember also in the account of that visit
that Adelaide, accustomed as were all the county
families of that time to a certain tradition of
travelling, wrote as an event worth putting
down that they had come back in a second-class
railway carriage and had not liked it, because
they found themselves travelling with, and

AN UNHAPPY CHILDHOOD 7

recognised by, some servants who had waited
at the Archbishop's feast. But a httle later they
were finding third-class companions pleasanter,
market-women with vegetables and flowers.

It was not until after the open breach between
her and her husband that she spoke even to her
sisters of her own disappointment. The ragged
schools, the personal devotion to the poor, were
pushed farther away than before by child-bearing
(and the first child died) ; by the change from
easy luxury to the narrow cares of a home that
had upon it the critical eyes of churchworkers ;
to an entertaining she imagined a harder task than
washing a beggar's feet. When advancement
came and she was a well-to-do rector's wife,
other troubles arose. If she was stern to herself,
she did not flatter his somewhat self-indulgent
ways, and there were others to flatter. At last
there was a formal separation. A more worldly-
wise woman would have for the children's
sake kept the home unbroken, but where
jealousy comes in wisdom takes its leave, and
will do so until there comes a change in human
nature.

Mr. Lane had inherited unexpectedly a house
and small estate near the southern coast of
Ireland, and it was there Hugh was born, the
only one of their children who was born in Ireland.
It was almost within sight of this house that
thirty-nine years later the Lusitania went
down.

His childhood was passed unhappily ; he never
had good health ; he could not, like his stronger
brothers, go away to school ; he was not only

8 THE CHAIN OF CAUSES

left among the bickerings but was a cause of them.
His father was harsh to him, his mother took his
part. It may have been this lack of ease in a
well-to-do home that gave him later a contempt
for comfort, and made him hard to himself in
matters of what he thought luxury. He was
always a delicate child ; his mother used con-
stantly to write asking for game or fowl, '* a bird
of some kind " for him, and when she brought
him to stay at our houses would press on him all
that was most tempting. His more robust
brothers resented this and bore him a grudge,
and such treatment might have made him selfish
or dainty about food, but he never was one or
the other. He was a very small eater, did not
indeed take enough to nourish his tall body.
When Mancini was in Dublin and Hugh was
paying his bills I am confident there was no
stinting, and that though he sometimes longed
for the macaroni of Naples, his meals provided
by Hugh were sufficient ; for I, punctual by
nature, had often enough to await my painter,
who would come in late from his lunch with the
complacent content of a cat that had been in
the dairy. But Hugh, arriving hurriedly to see
how the work went on, would, keeping to his own
lean living, as often as not bring his own lunch in
his pocket, two hard biscuits protecting a slice
of cheese. My own meals were simple enough
in that occupied Dublin time, but I would have
on my table in the evening some provision of cold
fowl or eggs or game, for there were no eating-
houses open after theatre time, and Yeats and
Synge and Fay, or some other artist, would find

A DELICATE CHILD 0

comfort in that simple meal ; but Hugh, should
he come in, would take nothing but fruit or a little
cake, nor would he touch wine.

Although there is a memory of his wanting
to bathe at Jersey as a child when there was
danger in a high tide and stormy sea, he used to
shrink from rough play, finding more content in
the greenhouse plants that were his care, or the
dressing up of dolls in such brilliant coloured
silken scraps as came his way, or in decorating
parish feasts or Christmas trees, drawn by some
lure of yet unattainable beauty. Even then, as
I have heard him say, even in the nursery, he had
in his mind the intention to make some day a
wonderful gallery of pictures that became later
the passionate purpose of his life.

Once or twice as a child he had been brought
by his mother to visit at our family houses. I
remember that my husband liked the handsome
delicate boy ; others of us were impatient that
he did not care for the sports of other boys, as
his sunny-haired elder brother and a whole
generation of nephews had done, overjoyed with
the handling of a ferret and a gun. Those visits
were to Hugh a great romance and excitement ;
he loved to look at pictures and ornaments, finger
family miniatiu'es and jewels and the like ; it
seemed as if he had been starved by the want of
distinction, of tradition, in his changing homes.
He wrote to me long after, in 1913, in a fit of
depression : — " My early romantic notion of
Ireland was got in my childhood in Galway, and
I am now so completely disillusioned that I don't
want to be reminded of those early happy days."

10 THE CHAIN OF CAUSES

Yet as we see by his will and his codicil, it was to
Ireland his heart turned at the last.

I think his escape from school life may have
been a benefit, for his mother brought her children
away to Paris, and then settled with them for a
while in Jersey. She read Dickens to them, and
put them in the way of learning French, and that
knowledge of French served him better in his
business than classics or mathematics would have
done. She insisted also on mannerly ways. I
remember Hugh saying he liked The Bogie Men
better than any of my comedies, that it seemed
as if founded on his own bringing up. *' For,"
he said, " when we were children my mother used
to tease us by saying, if we did anything against
good manners, ' Your cousins the Beauchamps
would not behave like that,' but when, after-
wards, we met and played with the Beauchamps
we didn't see that they were very different to
ourselves." And that is likely, for poor Gertrude's
children were wild merry girls enough.

She had him taught also something of music,
so following unconsciously the way of Plato and
those Greeks who would not send a child to the
gymnasium until he had learned to play upon the
lyre. Then later, his childhood passed, and when
they had drifted back to Plymouth, opportunity
came as is its way to the mind that is all un-
consciously prepared for it, and where it may in
a moment '' work thoughts into desires, desires
to resolutions." A lady who made a poor living
by cleaning and restoring paintings, and to whom
his mother had been kind, taught her art to the boy.

CHAPTER II

LEARNING HIS TRADE

His inclination towards pictures thus fostered,
and that vision of making a great collection
still in his mind, he determined to find work
through which he could increase the knowledge
he coveted. And his eighteenth birthday being
near, when his father's help towards his support
would cease, it was necessary he should begin
to earn a living. I went to consult an old friend,
Sir Charles Robinson, the Keeper of the Queen's
pictures, and through his advice and introduc-
tion Mr. Martin Colnaghi offered him employ-
ment for a year, giving him twenty shillings a
week and an indefinite position in his gallery.
Hugh was overjoyed when the offer came. His
mother was also pleased. She had faith in him
and had written to her mother before his work
had even begun, "In a few years Hugh will be
making his thousands." He hurried to London
sooner than he need lest one day's learning should
escape him, and he wrote in high spirits of the
first meeting with Mr. Colnaghi and that they
were *' in sympathy in preferring the old painters
to the new." But disappointment came, I think,
to each of them. He was given a clerk's work to

do, and Colnaghi grumbled at his bad handwriting.

11

12 LEARNING HIS TRADE

Ho made it easier to read by the simple plan of
making it more upright, but he had always an
awkwardness in holding a pen because of an old
accident to his hand in some rough play in his
childhood. It was soon plain that Colnaghi did
not much like him, it may be he thought as some
of the dealers were used to say later, " Lane's not
a dealer, he is a damned amateur." He met him
with me one evening at a Royal Academy Recep-
tion— no great feather one would think in any
of our caps — and railed at him the next day as
an upstart. He showed no incUnation to help
him to knowledge, he would not even speak to
him about the pictures that came and w^ent ; his
consultations with his manager were always behind
closed doors. Yet in a way he trusted him. I
found Hugh in the gallery one morning alone
and lonely, very glad to see me, and I remember
that Sir Arthur Birch, who was with me, coming
from the well-manned machinery of the Bank
of England, was astonished at the sight of
this whole costly collection in the sole charge
of that young boy. With pictures so near at
hand it would have been hard to keep him
penned up in an office. And if his master
grudged him knowledge he soon made use of his
patrician appearance and com^tesy, setting him
to show pictures to possible buyers. But a part
of this work was the moving and shifting of many
stacked frames, a heavy task enough for his
slight body. He had a friend living in the country
but not far from London, a clergyman who had
been curate to his father and who made him
welcome whenever he was free to come. His

FIRST YEAR IN LONDON 13

widow, who joined in that welcome hospitality,
tells me that Hugh used to arrive very tired, and
asked only to sit still through those Saturdays
and Sundays, or to be taken out for a drive ;
although in another year, when he was in the
Marlborough Gallery, where his business was to
sit all day in the oflSce, he would be glad to stretch
his long limbs by walks, sometimes of sixteen
and seventeen miles ; or later again, when he
had done with apprenticeship, he would take
delight in working in their garden, planting roses,
making pleasure grounds, roaming in search of
flowery branches to carry back to London, " always
some for Lady Drogheda," one of his most kind
and constant friends.

Yet I think in that first year in London he was
happier than ever before, beginning to feel his
powers and to lay his foundations. No doubt he
learned a great deal there concerning the techni-
calities of painting ; yet no length of living in
galleries could ever have given him that certainty
of insight, that recognition, that is outside and
beyond knowledge, that is a gift brought into the
world at birth, any more than living in stables
and paddocks will make a man without the right
instinct divine at a glimpse in a scraggy three-
year-old the future winner of a Queen's Plate.
That is a gift that goes sometimes with the other,
as those who knew my husband still remember.
But though Hugh liked hunting, and his "gym-
nasium " in each possible year was a few weeks
riding after the hounds, his was the one highly-
developed power of judging the sign of the painter's
hand long after that hand was turned to dust.

c

14 LEARNING HIS TRADE

He lived on very little in those first London

days. I don't know what his mother added

to Colnaghi's wage. I was for part of that

time in London, and might better have given to

him the money I was using for the schooUng of

one of his brothers, who fell into ill health later

and died young. Had that help gone into Hugh's

pocket it might have hastened his approach to

fortune, but I do not think it would have softened

his bed or given him a more plentiful table. He

always grudged shillings, almost pence, spent on

the nourishment of his body. When he urged

me to some embellishment of life that I could not

reach to, he would say, " I would do it if I had to

live on bread and scrape," and I would answer,

*' Yes, you might, but my bread and scrape

wouldn't help much unless all my guests and

dependents would join in renouncing any better

dish." I remember we, his relations, laughed

because on his first visit to Italy he wrote that

after the delay of a few hours at Basle on the way

back he was so moneyless that he had not even

a soldo left for the porter *' who was carrying a

picture I had bought during the wait^ He had been

obliged to give him his umbrella in place of money,

and was, as I lately heard, very much afraid that

the delighted porter would find out before the train

started that one of its ribs was broken. Even at

Lindsay House, when he was giving with both

hands, he denied himself personal pleasures.

He always kept his love of music, he liked

to play to himself when tired or worried, and

I found him sad one day because the piano

he used had been sent for bv the old friend who

AT COLNAGHI'S 15

had lent it to him ; but he would not buy or hire
another.

I don't know if it was my fault that I did not
come nearer to him in those Colnaghi days. He
seemed, as I thought, to hanker after coronets and
fashion, and I was over-prompt to recognise some
tang of his father. In his later years, when
mellowing humour and unselfish work and the wit
he turned so readily against himself had simplified
his nature, he was gracious, dignified, and direct.
Of all the ways in which I miss him, perhaps I miss
him most as one I laughed with. And in later
days if he was glad to have friends in high places
it was because they could perchance help to carry
out his dream, or help some artist whose work
he would make known. I remember saying when
I saw a photograph of the opening of the Johan-
nesburg Exhibition in which he is seen talking
earnestly to the Duke of Connaught, " I am sure
Hugh is advising the Duke to have his portrait
painted by Kelly."

But I grieve that in those early days I was but
just an adequate aunt ; and when, from his first
tiny warehouse, he sent me with some grateful
words a Poussin I had liked, a portrait of Homer,
of Raftery, of the wandering poet of the ages, I
felt I was overpaid.

It was little wonder if he was heavy-hearted
as well as tired for a while. It seemed as if he
would gain but little knowledge in that first London
year. But " God never closed a door but set one
open " ; there was good help at hand. The
manager of the sale room, Mr. Caroline, had taken
a liking to him from the first and a friendship began

16 LEARNING HIS TRADE

which only ended with Hugh's death. He shared
with him all the knowledge he had gathered, and
he who knew the secrets of the trade must have
understood also some of the secrets of the painters,
he must have had skill as well as science. Hugh
told me on one of those days — his delight was so
great he had to whisper it to me or to the rushes —
of a wonderful thing that had just come to pass.
Caroline, amusing himself with his paints, had
made a copy of a Franz Hals, had played with it,
altering, working over it, giving it an appearance of
antiquity, till Hugh declared it would deceive even
the knowledgeable men at Christie's or Foster's,
and urged him to send it, as an audacious pleasantry,
to a sale. And Caroline, while still declaring
no one could be deceived by it, consented. On
the evening of the sale Colnaghi came in, followed
by a porter carrying in his arms the imitation
Franz Hals. Caroline turned pale ; he believed
his master had discovered and had come to
upbraid him with his folly, or accuse him of his
fraud. But he was yet more aghast when he knew
by Colnaghi' s elated look and then by his boast,
that he believed he had bought for a smaU sum an
original masterpiece. For two days, while the
picture stood in Colnaghi' s room, he was miserable,
not daring to confess, feeling a traitor in being silent.
But at the end of the two days it had vanished,
and henceforth there was silence in the gallery
about what I think we may still call a masterpiece.
When at the end of the year he left Colnaghi's
he had saved enough from his narrow means to
carry on his education by going to Holland and
Belgium for a while. He wrote in little note-books

HIS TRAVELLING CHARGES

17

descriptions of pictures and a strict account of
what he spent, these items tumbling over each
other as in a description of Rubens' ** Descent from
the Cross "—where he has written a note on *' the
kneeling figure in blue-grey, perfect in colour,"
and adds, " I am here demanded two cents for
using a chair." Indeed he had to be careful of
his little savings. At Cologne, '* having existed all
day on nothing but a cup of coffee and roll this
morning, and two penny gingerbreads for lunch,"
he has a beefsteak for dinner and writes, *' I paid
one mark 50pf., for it, potatoes and bread, in a
two-franc piece, getting no change as they don't
use Belgium money here. I carried my bag from
the station. It is so heavy that no ordinary
foreigner could support it. I couldn't lift it if it
wasn't that I am so afraid of running short as is
likely if I stay in Germany much longer, as they
seem to charge a mark — a shilling — ^here for what
we can get for a franc at Brussels. ' ' At Amsterdam
he is tempted to pay four shillings to go to the
Opera to hear Faust ; "I did not realise in the
hurry I was giving so much and was mad when I
counted up. I am now ruined, I have only £3 to
last the remaining two weeks." He makes up his
expenses each day as at Amsterdam : —

Six Museum .

. 2s. \d.

(of this he writes :
** I was consoled
by finding the pic-

Bun. Cocoa

. . 4:d.

tures very fine.")

Palace

. . lOd.

Steamer .

. 5d.

Dinner

. Is. Sd.

Biscuits .

. 2d

18 LEARNING HIS TRADE

Another day : —

Bed. Tea. Breakfast, tip . . 25. 9|d
Bun. Pear S^d,

Then : — *' Spent altogether £55 on a holiday.
£20 borrowed."

But whatever he had to go short of in food or
comfort, he never left any town until he had seen
every collection of pictures good and bad. He
would change his plans and stay even in dis-
comfort until he had made this thorough study
and search, for although endued with that amazing
perception he was determined thus to add exact
knowledge to his bag of tools. He had to pay out
some of his carefully counted francs or marks now
and then when he " had a ladder brought in to
examine the pictures better."

That was a habit which he never lost. In the
last summer I was with him we went one Sunday
afternoon to a great London house. Our hostess
had taken me to see garden and children, and when
we came back we looked in vain for her husband
and Hugh. Through the open door of a distant
reception-room I saw the end of a ladder and I
said, " That is where Hugh is to be found." And
there he was, high up on the ladder which was
being held by the butler, while he explained to
the owner the value of a picture that hung near
the ceiling. He had noticed it when at a ball
there, and had wondered why so great a treasure
should have been put so far out of sight.

In 1896 he went as manager for a year to
Mr. Turner at the Marlborough Gallery in Pall
Mall, where it is remembered " he onlv lived for

HIS OWN ADVOCATE 19

pictures," and that his great ambition was to
become the Director of one of our National
Galleries, as indeed he did in the end. There was
some dispute on his leaving — ^I remember being
called in to mediate — but it was carried to the
Courts. Hugh was not satisfied with his lawyer's
statement there, and asked leave to plead for
himself, and the Judge at first refused, believing
him from his appearance to be a minor, but let
him have his way when assured he had come of
age ; and pleading his own cause, he won. He
told Mrs. Grosvenor that he was sometimes sent
from this gallery to the country to look for
bargains and *' One day was going back rather
gloomily to the train with his third-class ticket, his
net empty, cold and disappointed, when passing
by a bicycle shop he caught sight of some pictures
and went in. There he bought one for a song and
carried it oflf to London. It was of considerable
value, and he went up in credit with the firm."
But he used to say that one seldom found any-
thing in those sort of bric-a-brac shops, the best
chances were at the small picture dealers, and of
course sometimes at the great sales.

CHAPTER III

MAKING A FORTUNE

Having thus attained to knowledge, the next step
towards his purpose was the attainment of wealth.

In February, 1898, he took a ground- floor front
room at No. 2, Pall Mall Place, and began his
regular dealing. He arranged his pictures — ^they
had been here and there in charge of friends — in
the little room, and waited for customers. But
laughing cousins came more frequently and would
play games around him, or, running out, turn the
key in the door. There was one great dis-
appointment. The Lord Mayor of that day had
some inclination towards picture buying, and one
of my nephews, to give a helping hand to Hugh,
asked him to look in at the little gallery. He
did call there but knocked in vain, for Hugh, who
could not then afford to keep a custodian, had
been carried off to some merrymaking, that was I
think but a tea-drinking, against his will as he
declared. He was very sad and very sore, for he
had waited through many days when no one had
crossed his threshold. And after all he was but
twenty- three and had known little of the joys of
boyhood.

He owned at that time a very beautiful land-
scape by Wilson. I had asked an art critic of my

20

HIS FIRST GOOD LUCK 21

acquaintance to look in on Hugh sometimes and,
if he had opportunity^ to befriend him. And it
happened that when I met him at two or three
houses about that time, he would say, " That
nephew of yours is a clever young fellow, but he
asks a ridiculous price for his pictures — £300 for
that Wilson ! " I told Hugh of this, but he did
not seem disturbed. One day later I noticed that
it had vanished. *' It is sold to your critic,"
Hugh said. " For how much ? " and we both
laughed when he said, '' For £300." I think his
mother had first seen and told him of that Wilson
landscape, but its price was then beyond anything
he could give. And I think it was the first
picture he bought when through a sudden chance
it became possible for him to reckon his sovereigns
by hundreds in place of tens.

As it happened I had never heard him tell the
story of that sudden enrichment, but Yeats had
told it to me long ago, saying that Hugh had been
astonished at his having come upon its date through
astrology. So I asked him to tell it again the
other day at Coole, going to my typewriter to
take down his words as he talked. He said : —

" Yes, I once did his horoscope. He probably
knew the hour of his birth as well as the day, and
I suppose that nobody now has the hour, so I
could only recalculate it in a very general sense.
I remember that in what is called the progressed
horoscope, his sun, for nine or ten years, had the
conjunction Jupiter. I took the beginning of this
as the beginning of a long stream of good luck,
and then found the time of year when that luck
was likely to become apparent to him, by pointing

22 MAKING A FORTUNE

out in what month Mars made an aspect of the
sun tlio cause of energy and enterprise. I told
him also that he could not count upon his luck
lasting more than a certain number of years
longer ; and there's a story going round that I hit
on the year of his death as the close of that period,
but I think that unlikely. I can easily know when
the Jupiterian influence ceased, by turning to the
ephemiris, if someone would tell me merely the
day and yenT of his birth, but I would not have
foretold the ending of his luck in any sudden way
unless I saw some other aspect, which I did not.
I would have expected a gradual lessening, and
I had only done a very cursory horoscope.

'' My recollection is that I hit the actual month
in which he made his first great success. It was
then he told me this story as far as I can recoUect,
but everything except the story is vague to me.
He was very poor, as what little money he had
went towards the purchase of pictures ; he had to
use the greatest economy even with food. Picture
sales were his greatest excitement, and he heard
of an important one somewhere in the country.
When the day of it came round he spent aU he had
on his railway ticket. When he got out at the
station he found that he had a walk of many miles
to the house, and at the house found when he had
arrived that he had mistaken the week. After a
long conversation with a suspicious housekeeper
he was allowed in, and recognised amongst the
pictures the handiwork of Franz Hals, an unknown
masterpiece. On his return he tried to borrow
two hundred pounds from his mother, but was
refused with indignation, and no one else would

A KNOCK-OUT SALE 23

trust him. Again he saved enough for his ticket
and when the right day of the sale came round
walked once again from the station to the house.
There were many Hooked noses in the sale room,
and it was plain that they too had discovered the
Franz Hals. Perhaps, after all, there was an un-
noticed signature. Presently a Hook nose came
over to him and said, ' Do you want that picture ? '
and out of pure bravado or because he did not
know what else to say, he replied, ' Of course T
do ! ' The Hook nose joined the other Hooks at
the end of the room, and they began to whisper
together. Suddenly it struck him, ' They know
that I have been in Colnaghi's. They think I am
a rich young man put there to learn my trade.'
Presently this particular Hook returned and said,
' You will not bid against us ? ' and he, not having
a penny to bid against anybody, replied, ' Of
course not.' * The meeting,' said the Hook, * will
be at the Red Lion.' (I have forgotten the real
name of the Public House — it is perhaps as well.)
Presently a picture of no importance was put up
by the auctioneer and one of the Hooks said in a
careless voice, * I will give you £10 for that picture
if I may have the picture next it for the same
price.' There was no other bidder, and the Franz
Hals went to its new owner for £10. Hugh assured
me that when he went to the Red Lion he had no
idea what was going to happen. All went to an
upper chamber and sitting round a big table
every Hook took out a pencil and a piece of
paper. He also did the same and waited.
Presently somebody bid £20, then somebody bid
£30. The man who had bid £20 walked out.

ONTARIO

24 MAKING A FORTUNE

Then somebody bid £40 and the man who had
bid thirty walked out. Gradually he realised that
they were auctioning the picture among them-
selves, and that the timid or those who could not
trust their expert loiowledge, were only bidding
small sums, for it might not be a Franz Hals after
all. He watched bid after bid and presently made
his own bid. He had bid the picture up to £900
without a penny in his pocket, and then said, * I
cannot go any farther.' One of the two remaining
Hooks bought it with a sigh of relief for, I think,
£950. For some days Hugh heard no more. He
knew he was to receive a substantial sum, and he
guessed it would be somehow in proportion to
his bid, but he did not know how much it would be.
Then came a letter inviting him to lunch with

one Z (who was known generally as ' the

gentlemanly dealer '). The door was opened by
the dealer's son, and Hugh, who now knew
exactly what had happened, said, 'I have come
about the knock-out.' ' Please,' said the young
man, ' do not use that word. My father has a
great dislike to that word. We will call it the
K.O.' Under his plate at lunch he foimd a cheque
for several hundred pounds, I forget how many.
In a year he had turned that money into £10,000.
And though he had only robbed the wolves, he
felt some remorse over the whole transaction, and
assured me that he had never attended any more
meetings in any Red Lion."

He had another lucky day about that time.
He had gone to Plymouth to see his mother, and,
as was his custom, he ransacked every shop in the
town that might hold a treasure to his mind.

A CUYP AT PLYMOUTH 25

In an auctioneer's rooms he saw a Dutch picture
and recognised its painter's hand. He made an
offer for it, but just as the bargain was being
closed, the dealer was called away, and took or
came back for the picture. Hugh was waiting
for him, was looking out of the window, when he
saw it being put into a cab and carried off by, to
his astonishment, his old friend Mr. Caroline !
He dashed out, but the cab was gone out of sight.
The dealer did not know where the buyer had gone,
or his name. He had shown him the picture, and
told him a customer in another room wanted it,
and had sold it for £40.

Hugh rushed off to the station, then from
station to station, from hotel to hotel, till at last
he found Mr. Caroline. He, on hearing the story,
agreed that Hugh had the first claim, and gave it
up to him for the price he had paid. It was by
Cuyp, and Hugh sold it afterwards for £1000.

A friend, an artist, tells me the story of another
purchase : " One morning he entered my studio,
carrying in his hand a picture without a frame.
He cast the picture to one side and threw himself
on my sofa and said he was very ill, and looked
ghastly. I was very much concerned and urged
him to see a doctor, while he told me at some length
how exhausted he was, giving the history of his
symptoms. At last we came to a standstill, having
no more to say on either side, and then I looked at
the picture. At the first glance I saw in it a
probable Rembrandt and said so ; and there was
Lane, standing at my back, gay and alert and
obviously quite recovered. I never saw him look
better. He recounted to me how he had just

26 MAKING A FORTUNE

boon staying at the Z's and had seen this picture
hanging over the door ; his host told him that it
had been accounted a R-embrandt but that they
saw that the attribution was ridiculous, and so had
hune: it in that dark corner over the door. He
answered that an old picture is always interesting,
and taking it down went to work, removing by
rubbing with his finger the coating of dust and
varnish, and as the process went on he kept
advancing his monetary estimate. He said, ' It
is worth a hundred pounds — two hundred — three
hundred,' etc. To which the good-natured couple
always replied, ' Then you can have it for nothing,
since you've discovered it.' As a fact he finally
paid them one thousand pounds, which must have
been rather an agreeable surprise. I think that
a sense of drama was one of his characteristics,
and that this little farce of sickness he played on
me was aU done in order to heighten my surprise
and his enjoyment of it. That Rembrandt re-
mained for a long time in my studio. Its subject
a very old woman, but though it was onty a sketch,
the way in which the painter had modelled the
lighted side of her face was a miracle of skiU and
knowledge, and a constant delight to me."

I have never heard where this picture went, or
what it brought him. I only know those who
sold it can have felt no discontent, for no cloud
ever came upon their friendship. But his
bargains were for the most part in the auction
rooms.

Once when he arrived in Paris on his way
home from some journey he had not enough money
either to stay there or to pay his fare home. But

"A SIXTH SENSE" 27

before the morning was over he had discovered
and bought a picture — one supposes upon credit —
and before evening had filled his empty pocket
by its sale.

Mr. James Duncan, talking of his swift cer-
tainty of recognition, told me of having seen
him buy a picture at Christie's, a Velasquez that
the dealers scorned. " It was very much painted
over and very dirty, but he made up his mind at
once. He said, ' I can't afford it, I'm in low
water just now — but I must have it.' It was
knocked down to him for something under £200.
He took it home and cleaned it, there was no
doubt it was genuine. He sold it afterwards to
Durand Ruel for some thousands."

I met the other day an acquaintance just back
from the Cape. He had been there when Hugh
arrived, and had been with him and Lady Phillips
when they visited the old Art Gallery in Cape
Town. There was a picture hung high in a dark
place, it was attributed to Both in the catalogue.
But Hugh at the first glance said, " It looks more
like Vanderneer." They got a ladder and took
it down, and there was Vanderneer's signa-
ture.

Another friend (Mrs. Hinde) says of that
mysterious power, that certainty, " It was a
sixth sense. As we motored through a town he
would recognise the handiwork of some painter
old or new in a shop window, as we passed, and
would stop the car and bring it out to show us,
and he was never wrong."

He was yet in his early twenties when he had
conquered Fortune, was of the Alchemists' Guild.

28 MAKING A FORTUNE

I think he might have Baid even then, as he once
said to mo later, when an offer of ten thousand
a year had been made to him if he would consent
to become buyer for a famous house, *' It would be
a very poor year in which I couldn't make ten
thousand pounds."

CHAPTER IV

THE RETURN TO IRELAND

I THINK it may yet have been in the balance when
and where he would begin his Hfe work, and that
he was inchned to drift for a while. And this is
no great wonder, for his mind needed freedom and
his body ease and sustenance, a lessening of the
tension of those hard and frugal years. He was
sociable by nature, and was but discovering his
power of enjoyment ; he had made many friends
in England and liked staying at houses where he
found new surroundings and made new acquaint-
ances.

In 1900 he wrote asking if he might come on
a visit to Coole. I had meant to invite him a
little later to meet those merry cousins who had
been held up to him as examples, and with whom
he had played as a child, but I would not refuse
him, and he came at his own time. It is likely
he had come to Ireland with no settled purpose
beyond a wish to revisit places of which he held
a happy and romantic memory.

But a great change had come about in Ireland
since his mother had made her curtsey at the
Viceregal Court, and the great estate owners had
been despots, if often good-natured ones, over
homesteads and villages whose inhabitants they

29 J)

30 THE RETURN TO IRELAND

could have turned out at will. Just after my
marriage in 1880 the land war had broken out,
as I have written elsewhere, *' tenant struggling
to gain a lasting possession for his children,
landlord to keep that which had been given in
trust to him for his ; each ready in his anger to
turn the heritage of the other to desolation."
During its ten most violent years habits had of
necessity been changed. Some of the county
families had shut up their houses, some had
grown poor ; dinners such as had gathered neigh-
bours from many miles around during our big
Roxborough shooting parties had ceased, for the
roads were not safe after dark ; hunting was
meddled with here and there, the days of easy and
idle hospitality had passed away. Then came
the overthrow of Parnell by English Liberals,
and the breaking up of the Nationalist Party,
and his death.

Some of us landowners, forgetting with what
certainty *' changes follow time," thought to see
the old days return. Others, but these were
rare, bade the new day welcome and found in it
a new quickening of life. For with the passing
away of Parnell' s long dominance, his necessary
discipline, there had come a setting loose of the
mind, of the imagination, that had for so long
dwelt upon some battle at Westminster or upon
some disputed farm. Action and reaction, each
was for good — ^the hard narrowness of conflict,
the widening of peace — in its time. For as someone
has written, " Where the password is ' March '
and not * Develop,' a body of men to be a service-
able instrument must consent to act as one.

CHANGES IN IRELAND 31

Nothing more fatal can be done for a country,
though for an army it is a simple measure of
wisdom." When Douglas Hyde disclosed through
the Gaelic League the poetry and beauty and
tradition still living in the Irish tongue, he gave
to the freed imagination a new region to explore.
Our neighbour, Edward Martyn, had dedicated
a part of his fortune to bringing into Church music
a more perfect form. Yeats, even before the
creation of our Theatre, had been urging by word
and example a more intense achievement, a more
stern self-discipline among writers who must no
longer be forgiven doggerel for Ireland's sake, but
for her sake must find an expression as perfect
as that of the world's poets who endure. These,
the awakenings of enthusiasm for matters of the
mind, were among the new forces around us.

Hugh was unaware of these changes, and when
he came to stay with me he was, I think, puzzled
to find among his fellow guests at Coole men whose
names he had not yet heard, Yeats and Hyde,
and for another, O'Brien Butler, the gentle
accomplished musical composer, whose tragic end
was also to come in the Lusitania, He must have
felt he was among workers, but had not yet taken
his own oar in the galley. He was a little outside
the party, a little bored by it ; and though in
after days he would deny having said to the wife
of one of them, that I, his aunt, had '' lost her
position in the county by entertaining people like
your husband," it is likely the epigram was well
imagined, and a fair enough summing up of his
thoughts. He was quite courteous, rather dis-
appointed, and not sorry to leave. He went on to see

32 TfiK liETURN TO IRELAND

otJicT friends, and tiicn 1 heard of him in Dublin,
" in tlie best Castle set." I asked Yeats the other
day if he remembered that visit, and he said,
" Yes, it was the first time I met Lane, and it is
very vivid to me because I disliked him. He
was full of his still recent success, he talked much
of the great houses where he had been, his own
ambitions seemed worldly. I think that he spoke
of taking some country house and becoming a
country gentleman, as though he would forget
as quickly as possible how he had made his money.
When he came down to dinner in the evening, a
small rose in the buttonhole of his evening coat
made him look overdressed. His smooth, hand-
some face, his movements, gave me no evidence
of his intelligence. When we spoke of modern
painters and modern writers he was ignorant.
In my impatience I thought of his knowledge of
old pictures as a mere trade knowledge, and no
true expression of an intellect. One day I was
helping you to hang some sketches by that painter
I was trying to admire against my own judgment
— but instead of any intelligible criticism he said,
' Very little they'd fetch at a sale at Christie's.'
I don't think you felt entirely sympathetic
either. I know that I was unable to hide a slight
hostility.

" A few months later he seemed changed not
only in mind, but in body. He had returned to
his old ambition of a great gallery in Dublin.
The great houses where he had visited, the people
he had met, were now but means to that end.
His face and his bodily movements seemed to have
changed, they had a curious precision. He had

TWO DUBLIN PAINTERS 33

become exceedingly unworldly, contemptuous even
of the old lures and perhaps less anxious to please,
less agreeable. From that moment to the last
time I saw him he was like a man who knew he
had but a few years to live, and who raged against
every obstacle to his purpose, saying often what
was harsh or unkind where that purpose was
involved. I remember discussing him with Charles
Ricketts one night, and Charles Ricketts saying
to me, ' Everybody who is doing anything for
the world is very disagreeable. The agreeable
people are those for whom the world is doing
something.' We had both just seen him after the
buffet from some Dublin or London opposition."

A New York newspaper of 1914 tells of Hugh
Lane having said, when asked advice as to forming
a gallery, " I believe in having a national portrait
gallery, and inviting public men to sit for their
portraits ; for so many celebrated men have not
been painted or modelled while living." It had
been with this idea he began his work in Ireland.

One day in London in 1901 I heard that he
had come twice to look for me. When he came
a third time he said he had just come from Dublin
where he had seen an exhibition of paintings by
Nathaniel Hone and J. B. Yeats. It was Miss
Purser who had formed and arranged this exhibi-
jbion of her feUow artists' work, and it had good
results. Hugh had never seen any of Hone's
paintings till then, and he was much excited —
" ran about Dublin talking of them and wanted to
buy the whole collection." He did buy a part of
it then or later, for he made a gift of pictures by

34 THE RETURN TO IRELAND

liim not only to Harcourt Street, but to the
Scottish National Gallery and to the Luxemburg.

As to Mr. Yeats' portraits, he found them so
interesting that he determined to bring him back
to Dublin. It was for that he wanted my help.

I said in a letter to W. B. Y., " Hugh Lane wants
to get your father to paint twenty distinguished
Irish or partly Irish people, Wyndham, Redmond,
Hyde, etc., for him to give to the picture gallery.
He would only want head and shoulders, and
would take all the trouble of bringing him sitters
and would look after them. ... I have written
to your father. It would probably make him
fashionable, and he would enjoy meeting various
types."

For Mr. J. B. Yeats, the artist, had drifted
away from Ireland and had spent many years
at Bedford Park, and in 1898 he had drifted back
to Dublin hoping to find work. But after a little
while he had written to me, disheartened, " I hope
to return to London shortly. It is difficult to
get portraits to do. In Dublin curiously they have
an appetite for posthumous portraits done from
photos — a ghoulish and horrible industry, corrupt-
ing to him that does it and to him on whose walls
the monstrosity is hung. I myself have done
many. The dining halls at the King's Inns have
many of these horrors flaunting in ghastly mockery
beside portraits done straight from the living
sitter, and some of these done in the days of
Queen Elizabeth."

And again : — '^ I am doing nothing, kept here
in a state of unrest — ^portraits, phantom portraits
appearing and disappearing." Even helpful A. E.,

MR. J. B. YEATS 35

when I asked for counsel, wrote, ** The artists here
with one or two exceptions live by teaching, and
Dublin can't support more than one portrait
painter — now it is Walter Osborne. The rest
would starve if they did not teach or eke out their
income in other ways, or had independent means
like Hone and some others." So to occupy Mr.
Yeats for a little while, I had asked him to make
some pencil drawings for me of " my best country-
men," his own two sons and Douglas Hyde,
Edward Marty n, Horace Plunkett, Synge, A, E.,
Standish 0' Grady (John Shawe Taylor came
later, and one of Hugh, long bespoken, never came
to me). Then he was asked to paint a portrait
subscribed for by friends of Standish O'Grady,
that " Fenian Unionist " as I am credited with
caUing him, who had carried the heroic ideas of
the Red Branch into the economic questions of
the day. A. E. writes to me of that portrait, now
in the Municipal Gallery, and certainly one of
those that had interested Hugh Lane, "It is very
striking, grim though, like some terrible warrior of
ancient days. It should have this legend attached
to it, ' O'Grady — his Financial period ' ; that would
explain the grim look. Poor Mr. Yeats painted
him under difficulties. He was always starting up
to walk about the room. The world could not
contain his spirit when the financial question
incarnated itself in him. It is a path leading to
the stars he sees, not the recovery of paltry pence.
His absence in Kilkenny will certainly be a loss
to DubUn, but the gods move their pieces with
skill, and O'Grady is one of their best."

And then the artist himself writes : — '* The

;]() THE RETURN TO IRELAND

sketch of Russell is considered good and I think
or rather hope Willie's is good. I am not so sure
as regards Douglas H^^de. He was an impatient
sitter, having come off a long railway journey
and about to undertake another. Although a
sketch takes so short a time in the doing, there is
nothing more difficult to make a success with.
By right one should stalk one's subject so as to
catch him at the right moment and with the right
gesture. A sketch is far better, reveals more of
a man portrayed than the best photograph, since
it gives not merely the facts but a comment."

I knew Hugh's offer would be welcome to him
and was able to send on his answer with a note :
*' You will see he is really delighted. ... I think
you should begin with trying to get Wyndham,
Horace Plunkett, and Redmond, this w ould make
it safe for both Unionists and politicians to follow.
Of course you won't please everybody. It would
be amusing after you have made your selection to
get the new^spapers to start ballots of the twenty
their readers would choose ! It will be difficult
to get Dr. Hyde to sit again ; he caught cold
and got a little cross at the last sitting. . . . Why
not write to ' Mr. Dooley ' of New York asking
him to sit when he next comes to Ireland ? "

Mr. Yeats took a studio in Stephen's Green
and enjoyed everything — " the light so suitable
for painting," and even the novel sensation of
envious eyes : — " My success is, I find, not very
good news to every one here in Dublin. There
is a grotesque little person, Mrs. Blank, who is
very indignant, grieved that I should have taken
in so completely that poor young man your

A STEPHEN'S GREEN STUDIO 37

nephew." Then he writes in great spirits : "I
have just painted a portrait which is, I think, a
masterpiece, and, besides, not at all unlike my
sitter." And again : " Lily says that when she
dreams of living fish it always means money.
One morning I dreamed I was fishing at Coole
and suddenly hooked a fish so big that it nearly
pulled me into the lake. I had a really hard
struggle, but got the better of it, when the dream
vanished. When I got into town Hugh Lane
met me with the Viceroy's consent to sit. I am
now more superstitious than ever." That studio
was not always a place of peace, though Mr.
Yeats wrote, " Your nephew has an extraordinary
knowledge of pictures and though, perhaps, we
don't see eye to eye as the expression is, his errors
are always corrigible and at the same time I learn
a good deal from him. I thoroughly respect his
opinion though I don't always share it."

I asked the artist's daughters lately about those
days, but they could not remember much except
that their father had not liked being interrupted
in the heat of argument by having his clothes
brushed from neck to ankle by Hugh, and had
resented his putting roses in the bowls. And
they remembered that Hugh had once rushed into
that studio laughing and muddy and out of breath,
someone had lent him a free-wheel bicycle, he
had never used the free-wheel before, and in the
short journey from Harcourt Street to Stephen's
Green he had got in the way of the traffic ; a tram
had been stopped and the conductor had shouted :
" I'll call the police to you, young man ! " He
carried that gaiety about with him, what their

38 THE RETURN TO IRELAND

father has called *Mightmindedness" — what Emer-
son calls the *• incomparable advantage of animal
spirits." They remember him in a crowd at the
gate of the Civic Exhibition that was about to
be opened. When the Viceregal carriage with
the Aberdeens drove up and there was no greeting
— there being no great haste to do honour to a
Viceroy in any open-air crowd — Hugh had called
out, " We must give them a cheer. They work
hard ! " and with the words he was out in the
road, his hat off, the sun shining on him, and the
cheer he asked for and led was given.

Yet the old artist and the young patron kept
respect for each other, and Mr. J. B. Yeats wrote
to me the other day : —

"It is good to have known him ; that shght
figure always wincing and shrinking to every
chance and change and yet with such steadfast
eyes. How well I remember his large dark eyes !
— under heavy lids — and how tranquil they re-
mained no matter what the trouble. He feared
nothing ; he did not even fear ridicule ; he felt
it, yet did not fear it, and for that reason he was
never without an invincible hope that in some
unexpected w^ay he would throw the laugh back
on his opponents. In those happy days luck was
still with him ; invariably he laughed last. I
think he belonged to the genus 'Dsmdy,' Not
because he was a vain or selfish man ; because he
w as an artist in social life. He had the intrepidity
of a man of action ; and being always cool and
collected never lost his sense of the ridiculous.

" The secret of his charm for me was that he
read his fellow creatures better than I did. Anger,

*'A PERFECT DEMOCRAT" 39

prejudice, or some cursed dogmatism of theory
would blind my eyes, but he saw clearly. While
I hated, his eyes would be laughter-lit, and
laughter clears the air. I think he positively
enjoyed his enemies, finding them more complex
and therefore more interesting than his tried
friends. He did not love his enemies in the
Christian sense, nor was he specially magnanimous
— ^it was a sort of natural aloofness, so that he
could laugh at what vexed me. I think I may
call it high breeding. . . .

" I think the mark of a superior mind is a
certain lightmindedness, and this never abandoned
him whether he talked of his friends or his foes.
Whether victorious or defeated he remained light-
hearted. Of course he did want to have things
his own way, even in painting, but this being my
business, I resisted, and then he would give in
and laugh at himself. . . .

" He was an artist in social life. When I lived
in Dublin existence was feverish. There was the
craziness of greed and of selfishness, the political
craziness, and of course the perpetual war between
the good artists and the bad artists. All this
was so much amusement to him, and to me when
I was in his company.

'' I think he was one of the best bred men I
ever saw, his courtesy was without a flaw, and
don't you think that a really courteous man is
always for the moment a perfect democrat ? . . .
The really courteous man will take as much care
of your dignity as of his own, and belongs to the
time when all men were soldiers.

" The special quality in Hugh Lane's courtesy

40 THE RETURN TO IRELAND

was, I think, deference, and to be treated with
deference by a man who looked as if he was the
darUng of society, so well dressed and elegant,
and with a musical voice — I tell you that among
the people of Dublin, who are not in the habit of
giving or taking much deference, this was an
experience as delightful as it was rare. Of course
there were times when he was out of humour, dis-
contented and despotic, yet afterwards he would
be sorry and come round and make amends by
laughing at himself, with that laugh which was
so infectious.

" I have described him as an artist whose
medium was action, and had he taken to politics
he would have been after the type of Disraeli and
not at all like Gladstone. Had it been poetry
he would have turned to action like Lord Byron
or D'Annunzio. I think it is characteristic of
men of strong will that they must find an object,
and he being a practical man and a patriotic
Irishman, his object was the modern gallery in
Dublin, — ^that was the star which he followed.
Artists must be sensitive, but if there be no
strength of will their sensitiveness betrays them
into imbecility ; again, there are artists who lose
their sensitiveness and because of their strong
wills become the painters of philistine pictures.
Hugh Lane was so sensitive it was to me a constant
wonder how he could retain his strength of purpose."

I don't think the portraits Mr. Yeats had come
over to paint — those of Synge, Sir Horace Plunkett,
Professor Dowden, William Fay — were so good
as some others of his in the Gedlery and elsewhere ;

FIRST WORK FOR IRELAND 41

ho has the artist's caprice of choosing his own
subject, he does not work well in bonds. Hugh
called in Orpen later, and gave to the Gallery
his paintings of William O'Brien, Michael Davitt,
Lord McDonnell, John Shawe Taylor, Dr. Mahaffy,
Nathaniel Hone. A fine collection altogether of
notable men of the end and the beginning of a
century. And as Hugh Lane's first work for
Ireland, it is a page of her history.

CHAPTER V

THE LOAN EXHIBITION AND THE GUILDHALL

Sometime in 1901 W. B. Yeats had written to
me from London : ** At the Irish Literary
Society last Friday I made, and got accepted,
a proposition to form a Pariiamentary Committee
to collect information and then to interview
M.P.'s, inform public opinion, etc. I hope yet to
see a row in Parliament as to why the Scottish
Academy has £1500 a year from Government,
and the Hibernian Academy £500. . . . We may
be able to get up something like a vigorous agita-
tion for the redress of intellectual grievances."

I had heard from his father also of this Govern-
ment penuriousness, and we may be sure it was
often talked of in that Stephen's Green studio.
For many, to whom art was dear, were writing to
the papers protesting in angry words against the
threatened death by starvation of the Royal
Hibernian Academy.

Hugh Lane, as was natural, was one of those
who joined in the protest. But wherever Hugh
came in, action had a way of coming with him,
the deed was in the shadow of the word. If our
Academy was threatened with death, he w^ould
show that it was yet living. He proposed that,
all scanty as were its means, it should forthwith,

42

i

AN EXHIBITION OF OLD MASTERS 43

in the manner of the wealthy Royal Academy of
London, hold a Loan Exhibition of Old Masters.
There was, of course, no money in its purse to pay
for packing and carriage and insurance, perhaps
not even for postage stamps. He had made some
of his thousands by that time, he would take that
burden upon himself, would take all risks. He
took the work also on his own shoulders ; his
enthusiasm kindled the imagination of others.
The President of the Academy, Sir Thomas Drew,
lent him his own office. He wrote to owners of
pictures in country houses, and many of these
were already of his acquaintance, begging especially
for pictures of his favourite eighteenth century.
The owners were generous. Their promises of
loans were published from day to day, and each
county wore airs of consequence when it found
that some one or more of its big houses had sent
paintings bearing a great name. Of course there
were prophets who grumbled that foreigners
hearing of the display would come and carry o£E
the greatest treasures, as they were used to carry
oflE thoroughbreds from Ballinasloe Fair. And,
of course, there were suspicious souls who believed
him to be working for his own hand. Yeats,
going on with his memories of him the other day,
said : " When he came to Dublin to gather
together that first collection of pictures, a Dublin
painter, who afterwards became, and stiU is, his
most devoted and unselfish and able supporter,
spoke to me of the project with rage, saying,
' He knows that there are many good pictures
in Irish country houses, he wants to find out
where they are that he may buy them at a low

44 LOAN EXHIBITION AND GUILDiL\LL

price and trade with them in England.' For all
I Imew it might have been so ; I had not got over
m^ first impression. But in a few weeks I met
th^^ new Lane and his sincerity. For months after
that, the criticisms I met everywhere in Dublin
were an almost hourly exasperation. They went
on, indeed, for years. There was one patriotic
man of whom I had a good opinion, for he and I
had worked together in my early twenties to get
collections of Irish books into the Irish country
Societies, but after the foundation of the Municipal
Gallery he met me with the usual opinion — Lane
was somehow or other making a fortune for himself
at the expense of Ireland. And when I said ' He
is about to give it something about £70,000
worth of pictures,' he said ' But nobody would
do a thing like that.' If I had said seventy
pounds or seven hundred he might have believed
me, but never had he met in his not selfish life
any man whose gifts ran into thousands."

On New Year's Day, 1903, Hugh wrote to his
friend, Mr. Caroline, from the Winter Exhibition
of Old Masters in Dublin, "A Happy New Year to
you and many thanks for your welcome letter.
I am afraid there is no ' business ' in this show,
it is simply ' la gloire.' I am trying to wake up
these sleepy Irish painters to do great things, to
get them a new R.A. building and a decent money
grant. I also w^ant to bring good pictures into
the country rather than out of it. So that if you
have anything good send it over. I gave up
' dealing ' some time ago, and hope sooner or later
to get some appointment which will be more
congenial w^ork. Have I missed much at Christie's ?

"A CLEAR PATTERN" 45

And have you picked up any Franz Hals
lately ? "

But this exhibition was to him not an end, it
was rather a beginning. He had given ready
ungrudging aid to the Academicians in making
their case known. But his " seven - leagued
thoughts " had already outrun even his desire
for a new building for them on a new site (and
this may yet be fulfilled in an unlooked-for way,
for the Hibernian Academy was burned down in
the fires that followed the 1916 Rising), ffis
nursery dream of a wonderful gallery of pictures
had now become " a clear pattern in the soul "
to be worked out through the dozen years before
him that were to be his sum of life. He would
make the chief city of his own country a treasury
and storehouse of art.

As to myself, then as now, being no politician,
my desire was less to seek Home Rule, self-
government, than to make ready for it. I had
tried to give a helping hand to any work that
might put out of fashion those outlandish labels,
jocose or sentimental, that had been afiixed to
us in the course of Queen Victoria's reign ; any
work that might bring back distinction and dignity
to Ireland.* I was not content to rest on ancient
heroic histories, splendid as are some of those I
have helped to make known. So when Hugh

* Yeats wrote to me in 1904 from Indianapolis, when giving some
lectures on the Theatre and the intellectual movement : '* You would
have been pleased if you had heard the compliments that have been
paid to-day, for they commended me for doing just what you have
wanted me to do. The Irish in this land often explain to me that I
have done what no other Irishman has done for the dignity of Ireland
here."

E ^

46 LOAN EXHIBITION AND GUILDHALL

came, free, with money in his hand, filled with
the enthusiastic hope of his gallery, my heart
leaped to meet him ; it is no wonder I was filled
with joy and pride. I had used my energy to
turn other millwheels before coming to that last
work of the Abbey Theatre ; he had kept his for
the one. From that time we were feUow- workers,
comrades, not always agreeing as to means, but
at one as to the end. He set his seal to that
fellowship when he left to me the task that has
proved such a difficult one of having his " Codicil
of Forgiveness " carried out ; his work as far as
this will do it, made complete.

When I was told towards the end of 1903 by
an official of the Department of Agriculture in
DubUn (which is also the Department in charge
of Art) that a collection of pictures by Irish artists
was to be sent to the St. Louis Exhibition, I said
** You will have to get Hugh Lane to do that for
you." I had said it as a mere statement of fact,
with no intention to offend ; but I noticed a Uttle
frown of annoyance, and understood him to
mutter in official language, that they were well
able to do it themselves.

So I could not but feel a little mischievous
delight when I read in a letter dated January 23,
1904, *' Hugh Lane goes to St. Louis to organise
a Loan Collection of Irish pictures and miniatures.
He has only a month to get it all up in." Then
I heard from Hugh himseK that though those who
had " tried to work the picture section for St.
Louis had failed and withdrew, they are now
furious at my doing it. But I am going on. I

THE ST. LOUIS DISAPPOINTMENT 47

never lose a chance." It seemed but a chance
of difficult and thanldess work, but the end
proved that he was right in not missing it.

It is certain also (I have seen some of his " beg-
ging " letters), that he did not miss any chance
of getting fine pictures together to go to America.
He had, I think, even packed them in little more
than a month. He was tired but well pleased.
Then of a sudden the whole plan was turned
topsy-turvy. He received a letter from the Board
of Agriculture saying they had but just found
that the Insurance rates for St. Louis were very
high because of forest fires that had destroyed
other cities ; were indeed too high for them to
take the risk. They, therefore, requested him to
return the borrowed pictures to the painters.

I was in London at that time, and Hugh came
to me like one distraught. He was very angry.
" They ought at least to have looked into the cost
before they asked me to find the pictures." He
did not grumble at his own lost weeks, but he felt
bitterly the ungraciousness to the painters he had
persuaded. Lavery, he told me for an instance,
had through his urgency given up a week of his
Berlin Exhibition to bring his pictures home
before the appointed day of shipping. He sent
me to see Sir Horace Plunkett, the head of the
defaulting Board, to make clear to him that this
unceremonious rebuff to artists was a matter less
simple than the returning of surplus kegs of butter
to a creamery. When Sir Horace understood the
matter he grieved that a discourtesy so foreign to
his nature should have been offered in his name,
but he could imagine no remedy. When all hope

48 LOAN EXHIBITION AND GUILDHALL

had perished I went back to Hugh, downcast and
disheartened. But ah'cady an idea had come to
him that would, ho bcUeved, turn the defeat to a
victory. There had lately been the Spanish Exhibi-
tion at the Guildhall. He would have an Irish
Exhibition there. Ho was off again to Dublin
and I had a telegram — " Theory I am working on
is that though not immediately remunerative,
Guildhall much greater triumph for Irish Art."
He was back in London next morning. Sir Horace
approved, and now that there was something to be
done he did not spare himself but gave whole-
hearted help. But we were not yet over the
Hill Difficulty. The Director of the Guildhall
Gallery, tired after the work that had made the
Spanish Exhibition such a triumphant success,
hesitated to take upon himself this new fatigue.
But he also, when he had once consented, put his
heart into the work. And the painters, who had
not without uneasiness agreed to let their pictures
go across ocean and continent, were well content
to have them shown so near their own door.
Hugh was free then to do the work he loved.
His days were spent not only in getting hold of
the best work of Irish painters, but in convincing
some, who had never claimed our nationahty, that
it was theirs by right of inheritance if not by
birth.

Lavery had always been Irish, though with
less intensity than has come to him in succeed-
ing years ; Mark Fisher was now claimed.
Charles Shannon could only tell of a grandfather
from across St. George's Channel, but that was
enough ; his pictures made the centre of the

THE GUILDHALL EXHIBITION 49

chief wall beautiful, and Hugh kept bringing them
in till the Du^ector (though all the while admiring
and afterwards himself a purchaser) cried out upon
their number. Once he even called out, " That
picture must come down," but the artist proved
his birthright and kept its place by the readiness
of his answer, '' That would break the glass ! "
On the very day of the opening, Hugh, not
yet satisfied with the arrangements, got up
early and rehung them according to his night
vision.

For that opening (in the spring of 1904) there
was a gathering of invited guests. I better
remember than the speeches made, that the
Curator of the Dublin Museum, who had been
brought over to give, as it were, his benediction
to the exhibition, said, as he escorted me in the
procession, '' I hope never to see a picture hung
in Dublin until the artist has been dead a hundred
years ! " And there lingers also the memory of
a bouquet of beautiful flowers given to me as to a
few others to help the decorative effect, and that
when in the evening I held it up with some pride
to show Hugh, he said rather gloomily, " It was
I who paid for it." But he was well content after
all. Seventy thousand people came to look at
the pictures during the eight weeks they hung
there. Ireland had already, for a Uttle time, been
joined in men's minds with literature and drama
as well as with the old political story, and now we
found ourselves questioned with a new interest
about our painters. Hugh did not let this interest
flicker out. He looked on this success of the
Guildhall Exhibition as another step towards the

60 LOAN EXHIBITION AND GUILDHALL

fulfilment of his pm-pose, now very definite, of
creating a modern picture gallery in Ireland.

He had written in the Preface to the Guildhall
Exhibition, '' There is not in Ireland one single
accessible collection of masterpieces of modern or
contemporary art. ... A Gallery of Modern Art
in Dublin would create a standard of taste, and
a feeling for the relative importance of painters.
This would encourage the purchase of pictures,
for people will not purchase where they do not
know. Such a gallery would be necessary to the
student if we are to have a distinct school of
painting in Ireland, for it is one's contemporaries
that teach one the most. They are busy with
the same problems of expression as oneself, for
almost every artist expresses the soul of his own
age."

As to his idea of what a modern gallery
should be, he was happily able to make that
manifest in Harcourt Street. But he thus put
it into words, when in an interview in America
in 1914 his advice as to such a gallery was asked :
" It should serve as a feeder and a sifter, a sort
of artistic reduction furnace where a man's art
work is held for the judgment of his fellows during
his life, and if worthy passed after his death to
that of coming generations, as such pictures are
transferred from the Luxembourg to the Louvre,
which is only for such works as have stood the
test of time.

"It is impossible to make a collection of
living men's work with any certainty of its repre-
senting properly and permanently the art of the
period ; for instance, a certain tendenc}^ or

A MODERN GALLERY 61

movement in Art might have a useful effect in
developing Art in a certain direction, while the
works in the initial stages might not be worth
keeping, though the final outcome might be good.

" In choosing work for modern collections 3 ou
should give the artist the benefit of the doubt.
Young men and women of talent will by public
recognition develop much more rapidly than they
would do if they were unknown and unappreciated ;
and a gallery like this can afford to take some risks,
for the outlay would not be great. The younger
artists would accept nominal prices for their work
as is the case abroad, and if one in ten increased in
value, that would pay for the cost of the work
taken out.

"As to the Director of such a gallery I think
he should not be an artist, but a man of broad
art culture and taste, and he should not be
hampered by a Board of Trustees, for such Boards
never agree on any artistic subject. It w^ould be
best to give him full power and a five years'
appointment, so that he could be replaced if he
was not broad-minded enough or efficient. I
think a painter unsuitable as a Director, for a
strong painter is usually a very narrow critic,
he sees things from his own personal standpoint.
Hals may have thought Rubens wrong in painting
his shadows red, and conversely Rubens may have
held that Hals was also untrue with his greenish
and dark-grey tones."

I find a note of a talk with Lord Mayo, who
*' became more hopeful, indeed, enthusiastic, when
I told him of Hugh's proposal to not only keep
his promise of giving all his pictures if a building

52 LOAN EXHIBITION AND GUILDHALL

is provided, but to give £10,000 if tlic other
£L5,000 can be given to make the new building.
His idea is to keep certain rooms in the building
intact, rooms he would himself arrange with
masterpieces and the work of artists who are, as
far as he can judge, sure to keep their fame, other
rooms to be for loan collections and experimental
work."

But for all his desire to '' give young artists
the benefit of the doubt," he was often stern in
his choice. In a letter of mine to Yeats, where
I object to a certain play being sent to America
with our players, I plead his example : "I don't
think we could justify it to our conscience--
Sturge Moore's words were enough, ' the old
stage traditional motive of drunkenness treated
as broad farce.' . . . Now that there seems such
good hope of getting the gallery for Hugh's col-
lection I feel so proud that the collection is so
fine, on such a high level — and I know he had to
offend artists sometimes by not thinking their
work good enough to huy, I should like the
memory of our theatre to be at least almost as
free from compromise. One should try and take
the whole question before ' the long-remembering
harpers' and their eternal audience."

At the end of the year he wrote a letter to the
Irish papers in which he said that the success of
the Winter Exhibition showed that with good
opportunities we in Ireland might produce a
school of painting equal to any in the world. That
towards the end of the eighteenth century there
had been a small demand for miniature painting,
and that such men then appeared as Reilly,

A PIECE OF ADVICE 53

Horace Hone, Robertson, Hamilton, Chinncry,
and Comerford, and deserved a place among the
best miniature painters of the day. Then political
misfortune (he might have said unrest and famine)
put out Art for a while, till 1823, when the present
Academy was built and new painters arose —
Williams, Cuming, Hugh Hamilton, Nathaniel
Hone, Hickey, and Sir Martin Shea. " Had these
men in their youth had opportunities of studying
in an efficient school, or had they even been
surrounded by collections of fine pictures of past
generations, their weakness in anatomy, and other
academic defects would not have existed, and they
would certainly have ranked with such men as
Haeburn, Hoppner, Reynolds, and Lawrence."
He proposes " the foundation of a gallery of
modern pictures for the purposes of study." He
tells of the effect of Art galleries in England.
" Already the schools of Birmingham, Manchester,
and Liverpool are world-famed. Glasgow also
has come to the front. If Englishmen and Scots-
men can thus profit, how much more could we ?
There is no single accessible collection in the whole
of Ireland that can give the necessary stimulus
to beginners."

A piece of advice he both gave and practised
was, " First make your collection of pictures, and
the gaUery will come to hold them." He had
already begged of many artists to give him some
of their work for Dublin, and as one artist at least
has said of him, " He was the best beggar that
ever stood at my door." Sir John La very was
then Vice-President of the International Society
of Painters, and he gave Hugh good help, sending

54 LOAN EXHIBITION AND GUILDHALL

him to other artists with his introduction.
WJiistlcr, in answer to a letter from him, promised
a pictm-e. Sargent made a promise also. Lavery
himself gave his first gift to any public gallery,
as did Charles Shannon. A week after the Guild-
hall Exhibition closed Hugh was able to announce
that he had promises besides these of a bronze
by Rodin, of paintings by Blanche, Legros, Kicketts,
Orpen, and John. And of sums of money towards
building a gallery.

The Hibernian Academy offered its rooms for
the exhibition of the pictures already collected,
and a committee was formed. He was pleased
with Lord Mayo's answer to him when asked to
join it : "I will join your provisional committee
to form a collection of modern paintings for
Dublin — ^not because I think we shall ever get
the money to build a modern gallery to house
them in, but because you work hard and do
something which many Irishmen do not — they
talk." 1903 had surely been a well-spent year.

He tried to idle for a while. He says, in a
letter to Lord Gough, then H.M. Minister at
Dresden, " The reason that I have so much leisure
(when not engaged in public w^ork) is that I have
given up for nearty three years selling pictures,
as I had made a sufficient amount to bring me in
a small income, and my great ambition has always
been some day to direct a gallery." And this is
the amusement he desires in that unoccupied
time (which did not last long, for he w^as soon
selling pictures again) : '' On my way from
Holland I stopped for a couple of hours at

THE DARMSTADT COLLECTION 55

Darmstadt, having read in my guide book that there
were ' a few ' pictures of interest at the Royal
Palace. I was surprised to find that the collection,
though in a shocldng state of neglect, contained
a great many fine pictures. They are, however,
for the most part very wrongly attributed to the
painters whose name ornaments the labels. The
best pictures are in the worst lights, and much in
need of cleaning and backlining. The collection
up to the present has evidently been considered
of no importance. They are about to be trans-
ferred to a fine new gallery, and they should have
been attended to and a new catalogue should be
made, but the great German and Dutch con-
noisseurs, Drs. Bode, Bredius, and De Groot, are
too busy now to afford the time for such an
undertaking. There is nothing in the world I
should enjoy so much as the doing of this work,
of course gratis." He is going back to Dublin
to arrange the next winter exhibition and some
other work. " But after that I could go to
Darmstadt for a month."

CHAPTER VI

THE STAATS FORBES COLLECTION AND THE FOUND-
ING OF THE MUNICIPAL GALLERY

Outside the portraits, which needed a Hving
artist to bring them into the world, Hugh had
for some years kept himself unmoved by, perhaps,
disdainful of, any modern work. I remember he
seemed puzzled, almost pitying, when I asked
him to bid at a sale for a little picture by Simeon
Solomon that I coveted, one that a few years
later he would surely have bought for the galleiy%
for it was beautiful, and I did not reach its price.
He had not yet made that rule he practised later
and to the end of life, of " making money by
selling old masters that he might spend it on
living ones." I think it was the Hone Exhibition
that began his awakening, but even after the
Guildhall he continued unacquainted with any
new foreign school. Sir William Orpen said the
other day, " When he went to Paris with me in
1905 he knew nothing at all about modern French
painters. I was with him at Durand Ruel's, and
he would say to me, behind his back, ' What is
that ? A Manet ? — he had never seen Manet
before — and ' What is that other ? Is it one I
should ask for to bring to Dublin ? ' — it was when

5G

DUBLIN'S OPPORTUNITY 57

he was getting some on loan for the exhibition
there. But in a very short time he had made
that great collection you are fighting for. He
trusted his own taste. That ' Seashore ' of Degas' s
he bought was a discovery."

This new interest in the French school had
come with the suddenness of any Gentile conversion,
and we may fix its date by finding that of an
announcement made by the executors of Mr.
Staats Forbes, who had lately died, that his great
modern collection was to be sold. And this was
to be no common sale, for in accordance with the
testator's wish it was to be given for a lower price
than in the open market, should it be purchased
to find a place in some public galler^^

Hugh saw the opportunity for Dublin, and as
was his custom he lost no moment. While others
had hardly begun to think of the matter he had
gone to the executors and had gained their consent
to exhibit a chosen number of the pictures in
Dublin. A price was put upon them that was,
as one of the executors (Mr. Livesay) was after-
wards able to point out, compared with later
prices, a low one. There were in this collection
many fine pictures of the Barbizon school ; it
was, indeed, best known by these.

It was to make the French side of the exhibition
more complete that Hugh had made that visit to
Durand Ruel of which Sh' William Orpen spoke.
Horace Cole tells me he was in Paris at that time,
thinldng its air favourable to an endeavour to
keep awake, according to a bet he had made, for
a hundred hours, and had met Hugh, in travelling
clothes, just come from Monte Carlo, declaring he

58 STAAT8 FORBES COLLECTION

was without a penny, having brought away
" nothing but this ruby pin." He had forgotten
the name of his hotel, and they wandered until
they found it, a shabby little one near the Gare
St. Lazare. They went up many stairs to Hugh's
attic, and there lying on the floor was his travelling
bag, not locked, and in it, rolHng about loose, were
many pearls. Horace had taken him to make
acquaintance with Mr. Tyler, the expert, who
when he had talked with Hugh for a while had
said, '' I didn't think there was a man in the
world who knew more about pictures than I do,
but that man does." Horace had also spent
some of these sleep-combating hours with him at
Durand Ruel's, where, he says, Hugh, still pro-
claiming poverty, bought a Manet — Eva Gon-
zales ? — ^for £10,000. I think, however, he did but
borrow the Manet masterpieces then, and some
others of the Impressionist school. His hopes
were high ; he thought that the whole collection
might remain in Ireland, might be kept for the
gallery that was as yet no solid building, but a
vision.

A hundred and sixty pictures from the Staats
Forbes collection were shown in the exhibition
opened in the Hoyal Hibernian Academy in 1905.
With these were hung the pictures already given
by artists for the new gallery, should it happily
come into being, and Hugh could tell of other
promises to be redeemed. He showed there also
forty or fifty pictures, his own possession. The
greater number of these are now in the Dublin
Gallery, given or bequeathed by him.

But there were still some who imagined in all his

A SLANDER 59

work some secret purpose of his own enrichment.
Yeats says, "a rumour ran through the town that
if the Staats Forbes pictures were sold to Ireland
he was to receive a large secret commission. One
of the patriotic weekly papers had a paragraph
giving authority to this rumour without putting
it into words, by skilful innuendo. I went to the
office of the paper, which had till then been a
supporter of our movement, and had the most
substantial row of my lifetime, and acquired an
animosity that will last till my death. Yet what
could these people think and w^hat could they
make of a man who, in the words of Charles
Ricketts, had ' joined to the profession of a
picture dealer the magnanimity of the Medici ? ' "
I have come upon a letter from Yeats, written to
me at that time, in which he gives a fuller account
of this quarrel: "At first the editor denied that
there was any insinuation that Lane is making
money out of the Forbes collection, but finally he
owned up and said he wrote it because three
Academicians had told him that Lane had made
large sums out of the Guildhall, and would make
large sums out of the present collection if it was
bought. You can imagine the scene that followed.

I said, ' My dear , you have published just

enough of a slander to give wings to it, while
keeping yourself out of the Law Com^ts.' He
promised some sort of retraction next week, but
I can imagine the grudging spirit it will be made in.
As I was coming away, I said, ' It is a custom of
gentlemanly life to presume that a man's motives
are good until they are proved the contrary.'
He answered without a smile, and in obvious

60 STAATS FORBES COLLECTION

earnestness, ' I don't agree with that principle at
all. If any Irisli newspaper were at this moment
to act on the assumption, or to say, that Lord
Dunraven's motives were good, the country would
be wrecked in six months."

I do not know who these three Academicians
were, or if many gave credence to their statement
that Hugh was making money out of his public
work. I was given a letter but a few weeks ago
that should if an assurance is needed be a sufficient
one. The late Lord Gough, a man as thoughtful
as he was generous, and always ready to help any
Irish cause he could approve, wrote at that time,
with a promise of ninety guineas towards the
purchase of a picture from the Staats Forbes
Exhibition, a private note to Hugh Lane in which
he offers to pay for the paper and postage used on
its business. Hugh wrote refusing the offer. " I
would rather pay everything till the project has
proved itself," and goes on to say, " My task
would be a light one and a very pleasant one were
there a few more such helpful kind people to do
with ! ... It is a fact that during the three
years that I have worked for this cause, no one
has as yet even asked ' who ' was paying the
costs. I have circularised the United Kingdom on
several occasions — got up deputations to corpora-
tions, a commission in the House of Commons
last summer — and each exhibition has left me
out of pocket very considerably, the last one at
the Guildhall to the extent of over £1000."

But if he had been struck on the one cheek he
was now to be buffeted on the other, and to suffer
through those suspicions that are a malady of the

POLITICAL SUSPICIONS 61

mind of politicians on one and the other side.
And he had not yet made up his mind on which
side were the people of most importance to his
work. So Yeats writes again, " I went to see
Hugh Lane to-day and asked him if I should reply
to a stupid little paragraph about him. I am not
to do so, however, as he finds association with us
Nationalists too injurious with the monied people.
Many of his rich friends are saying that they will
not help him now, that he is a part of the Move-
ment. It's only the Gaelic League over again,
etc., etc., and they had thought it something
quite different. I am not even to speak of my
father's lecture. All this amuses me very much.
My father says that the Unionist classes are
secretly angry with themselves, and that this
is the one sort of anger a man never gets
out of."

And a few days later: " The last event is that
Sir Thomas Drew has written to Lord Drogheda,
who had, as you remember, promised £100,
remonstrating with him for belonging to a com-
mittee which included such rebellious persons as
Edward Martyn and myself. Lord Drogheda is
very valuable, as he is nearly the only entirely
' safe ' person Lane has. Even Ma^yo seems to be
suspected of red republicanism. Lord Drogheda
won't let his wife go on the committee as a result,
but whether he has himself resigned I don't know.
Edward Martyn is to be asked to resign and to
state his reason in a letter to the Freeman,
offering a subscription. I have offered to resign
at any time Lane likes." Then I wrote, *' Hugh
came in to say Mahaffy was indignant at his

62 STAATS FORBES COLLECTION

proposal to give his pictures, says such a gift would
be ' ostentatious ! ' "

Yet if some withdrew their countenance there
were many working in one way or another on his
side. J. B. Yeats had written that if this col-
lection should become the possession of Ireland
it would *' do more for the education of the people
than a Catholic University." '' Masefield is over,
and writes for the Manchester Guardian,'^'' " Shorter
is getting photographs of Lane's pictures made,
and will help in every way he can." " Lane is in
great delight with your article in Claidheamh
Soluis ; he thinks it a most beautiful article."

I have looked back to see what had so much
pleased him and think it may have been this
sentence : " Ireland has no gift for compromise,
and suffers often from the lack of it. But now and
then she gains when some faculty is enabled to
express itself with logical force through a single
mind. Parnell did it in our day in politics, and
it must surely be done in things of the spirit ;
Sinn Fein — 'we ourselves' — ^is well enough for
the daj^'s bread, but is not Mise Fein — 'I myself'
— ^the last word in Art ? "

And when I at last came to Dublin and drove
straight from the train to the Gallery, I found
it crowded. I was bewildered by a hurly-burly
of committees, of groups collecting money to buy
one at least of the pictures on the walls, and
amused to watch Hugh's suavity amongst them
all, for I knew he had to act as peacemaker now
and again after hot discussions. Yeats had arranged
a committee among Dublin Art Students, I myself
among writers, Jane Barlow, Emily Lawless,

BERNARD SHAW'S BUST 63

Martin Ross, Professor S. H. Butcher, *' A. E."
and Douglas Hyde; Countess Markievicz, gay
and pretty, then one of the Castle folk, a Woman's
Picture League. From time to time a picture or
two was bought by some individual or some group
to add to the collection already given. President
Roosevelt was one of those who sent a cheque,
saying that he " believed this gallery would be
an important step towards giving Dublin the
position it by right should have." But as well as
Hugh some of his fellow workers may have had
need of patience. Dermot O'Brien, now President
of the Hibernian Academy, said the other day as
we talked of that excited time : " He didn't mind
what trouble he took — or gave — ^for the sake of
that Gallery. When we were buying pictures for
it from the Staats Forbes collection, there were
subscriptions for some particular one, and then
after it was bought perhaps he would think
another would be better, and I, as treasurer,
would have to explain to people — to my own
O'Brien clan among them — ^why, when they had
given their money for one picture yesterday, their
name would appear to-day upon another."

Mr. Bernard Shaw gave the bust of himself
by Rodin, and I find a letter from him to Hugh
about the pedestal. " Are you sure that green
marble is the right thing ? . . . I am myself
convinced that what is wanted is a block of white
marble, not too smoothly finished but of the
same colour as the bust. However, you have a
good eye in these matters ; and I confess to an
unpatriotic loathing for green marble, which will
be the ruin of Ireland."

64 8TAATS FORBES COLLECTION

He suggests trying experiments by painting
a wooden pedestal, and adds, " These experiments,
if you think it worth while to try them, will add
a little to the expense ; but it is a poor heart that
never rejoices, and I will go another five pounds
to make the job sure."

Yeats had writtentowards the end of November,
enthusiastic about the exhibition, but saying,
" The wretched Academicians never go near him
and are openly obstructive. They have lent the
Academy to a Paper- Hangers' Exhibition for one
week in January, so Lane will have to close after
a month. The paper-hangers being NationaUsts
with some public zeal are very sorry, and are
ready to do anything, but they have sent out all
the announcements, etc. The Academicians are
stony."

But Hugh would not suffer his work to be thus
thrust aside. He gained leave from the executors
to keep for yet another w^hile certain of the Staats
Forbes pictures, and no sooner were these turned
out of the Academy than they were hung, together
with the pictures which had been already given
to " form the nucleus of a Gallery of Modern Art
in Dublin," in the Kildare Street National Museum,
"with the sanction of the Department of Agri-
culture and Technical Instruction and by per-
mission of Colonel Plunkett, C.B.," my friend of
the Guildhall ; we can hardly think with his
approval, for he must now see in a place of honour
in his own sanctuary pictures whose creators so far
from having been dead a hundred years were yet
living. I see in a letter to Hugh : "I went round
the pictures on Saturda}^ Colonel P. was showing

THE COROT CONTROVERSY 65

two showy-looking ladies the plate, and whenever
they looked at a picture he turned them off it
and on to the plate again."

Lord Dudley had all this time been a powerful
friend. There was a story that Hugh, wanting to
see him on some weighty matter at the very be-
ginning of his scheme, was told on the telephone
by the Private Secretary that it was impossible,
" the Viceroy is leaving to-night for the Conti-
nent," and that Hugh had said in answer, " To
what country is he going ? I will meet him there."
Whether this be true or well invented, it is certain
that he was met with a gallant eagerness akin to
his own. So when the Prince and Princess of
Wales, the present King and Queen, were at the
Viceregal Lodge on their first visit to Ireland,
they came to the museum where the pictures were
hung, and the Prince buying two by Constable
and two by Corot, the Princess another Constable,
'' A Seaport," they presented them, a generous
act of faith and hope, to the yet unaccomplished
gallery.

But where is the place so exalted that ill will
cannot use it as a vantage point ! One of these
pictures, a landscape by Corot, had been owned
by Mr. Forbes for many years before his death,
he had kept it in the room where his best Corots
hung. (I take these facts from Hugh Lane's own
note to the Municipal Gallery catalogue.) It is
believed to have been the first picture Corot ever
exhibited ; there is a letter now pasted to its back
from Arnold and Tripp of Paris, the great experts
in Corot' s work, saying they believe it was painted
while he was a boy working with his first master,

66 STAATS FORBES COLLECTION

Michalon. It had often been exhibited. J. F.
Millet looking at this pieture onee said to Mr.
Forbes : " If I lived my life over again I would
paint with this precision until I had mastered
every detail in landscape painting." Sir John
Millais had brought several friends to see it at a
London exhibition, saying, " You see that even
Corot began as a Pre-Raphaehte."

But (this is from the same note) : " There
appeared in an illustrated journal a photograph
of a picture by a, till then, little known Hungarian
artist, G. Mezzoly — a ' View of the Balaton Lake,'
now in the gallery at Buda Pcsth. On the left
side of the canvas is a group of trees that resemble
closely this small picture. The Mezzoly, which
is a very large canvas, when reduced by repro-
duction to a few inches, gives a false impression
of a similarity of execution ; it w^as painted in
1877, so that when our picture was submitted to
Paris experts in 1888 it would have had to have
been painted during the previous eleven years.
Our picture is painted on a panel, which, in itself,
is enough to dispose of the idea that it is a fake.
The Dublin Arts Committee had the picture sub-
mitted to some of the best-known experts in
London, who are agreed that it is a very good
painting, evidently by a young man ; that it
was, in their opinion, by Corot, and that it was
unmistakably fifty years old at least. Some
experts were sent from Hungary, who, on seeing
the picture, decided that it was older than 1877
(the date on the Buda Pesth picture) and that it
was not an earlier study by Mezzoly, as they
had thought might have proved to be the case.

STONE-THROWING 67

'' This established the fact that our picture was
the original painting. It is said that Mczzoly
studied in Paris under Corot, and it is possible
that he made a study of this group of trees, or
that he possessed himself of a drawing for it.
The attack was never one of Art criticism, but
purely a campaign of extraordinary malice against
the project of a Gallery of Modern Art."

I am afraid that this accusation is true. It
gave an opportunity for excusing apathy, for
making a virtue of obstruction, for accusing Hugh
Lane of having brought over a collection of
forgeries to be sold at a vast price to Dublin.
What was first an acrid whisper grew to an out-
cry in the newspapers. His friends were anxious.
Orpen writes, *' If you do not take an action
against Truth or the Star every one must come
to the conclusion you are in the wrong and know
it — you cannot let people say you are a swindler
in print and let it pass." " Any stick will do to
beat a dog," and Hugh was the dog who had
disturbed a sleepy peace, at a time when, as one
of the chief officials of the Board of Agricultm'e
and Art is reported to have said, '' The time has
not come for encouraging art in Ireland," and
when the critic of one of the chief Dublin papers
spoke with a sneer of the whole collection as
" Botticelli and that." I was pleased when
I came across an Eastern proverb, " No one
throws stones at an empty tree, the tree stoned
is the one that bears the golden fruit."

My memory of all this annoyance had rather
died away, but I asked Mrs. Duncan, the curator
of the Modern Gallery, about it in Dublin the other

68 STAATS FORBES COLLECTION

day and she said Colonel Plunkett was the chief
enemy, collecting any opinions he could against
it. Ho had once asked her to get them into the
papers, not knowing her loyalty to Hugh. But
other friends were loyal also, Sir Walter Armstrong
had threatened to resign, so angry was he at the
malicious attack. Dermot O'Brien had said, " The
mean people hate him because of his splendid
generosity, it makes them uneasy." And to me
Mr. O'Brien said, " That Corot attack was quite
unjustified. I have never had the least doubt the
picture was authentic, it was one of Corot' s
earliest exhibited paintings. Lord Mayo had
bought it for the Gallery and then the Prince of
Wales liked it so much he yielded it to him, and
then when the attacks were made the committee
took it over to present themselves, they didn't
wish the attack to be associated with the Prince's
name. It may have been through jealousy —
the Curator had a grudge against Lane — or he
thought the picture gained more attention than
the other things in the Museum. Anyhow, when
the Prince and Princess paid their visit he was
taking them past the room where the pictures
hung, not intending them to go in there at all,
but Lord Mayo came out and took the Prince
by the arm and actually brought him in."

Yeats had spoken of this trouble in that
dictated talk : '' When the pictures were being
exhibited in the Kildare Street Museum its curator
was so carried away by the popular spite that he
hung over it a photograph of the imitation he had
got from Buda Pesth for the purpose. Sir Horace
Plunkett, and not the curator, was responsible

THE VICEREGAL WINDOWS 69

for the exhibition, so he felt himself free, without
any statement showing there were two sides to
the story, to exhibit daily what looked like irre-
futable proof that the picture was really a painting
of some lake in Hungary where Corot had never
been. He gave the weight of official authority to
an attack which was intentionally designed to ruin
Lane's Dublin movement. It was then that
John Shawe-Taylor went with a screwdriver, and
in the presence of a bewildered policeman un-
screwed and carried off the photograph, which
the curator had, it seems, taken particular care to
make, as he thought, irremovable. The family
decision once more ! "

And I remember that Hugh, always prompt in
action, took John to lunch at the Viceregal Lodge,
where he asked and received pardon from the
Lord Lieutenant for his violent methods before
the official complaint had time to reach the Castle.

Though Hugh used to declare that he had been
converted to Nationalism by discovering that the
Viceregal windows, which badly needed cleaning,
could not be cleaned without long-pondered leave
from London, it was certain from the time he
began his work that he must incline to the side
towards which the imaginative forces in Ireland
had already tilted the beam. His nature, always
unsatisfied, needed the vision of some Delectable
Mountain on the horizon, and so long as he could
see it as a home where art and beauty would exist,
" would not have to be born," it mattered little
whether it were called Beulah or. Home Rule. I,
with the theatre as my work, had kept free from
any such entanglements as official society might

70 STAATS FORBES COLLECTION

have wound about mc, but lie accepted and used
it for awhile, and made his success there one of
his tools. I did not need much persuasion when,
later, he took me to tea at the Chief Secretary's
Lodge, for our host was George Wyndham and the
pleasant talk was a pleasant interlude, and when
a guest in the house whispered that she had been
promised five pounds for a charity if she could keep
us both to dinner, I felt a moment of sharp tempta-
tion. But I was working with Nationalists, and
would not disturb them by what they would have
thought a step into Bypath Meadow. But there
was no such objection to the Castle visiting the
Abbe}^, and all that gracious group pledged them-
selves to come on, I think, the next evening but
one to see the plays and make acquaintance with
the players. But, instead, there came a hurried
note of change of plan. A change, indeed, for it
was the sudden recall of the Chief Secretary, who
had done so great a thing for Ireland through his
Land Act, and was on the way to do yet more
through his sympathy. It is fitting that we have
in the Gallery a bronze bust of him given b}^ its
maker, that was Rodin.

But as to Hugh, there was a friendship that
helped to bring him closer to Nationalists. Coole
was not the only one of the family houses into
which the new dawn had shone. There is in the
GallerjT^ a portrait of John Shawe- Taylor — he who
had taken down that photograph put up in hos-
tility to Hugh. Under his name in the catalogue
these words of William O'Brien's are given : "It
is one of the most bizarre of history's little ironies
that a retired army captain, unknown outside his

JOHN SHAWE-TAYLOR 71

[bounty Club, the day before he wrote a certain
lewspaper letter of September, 1902 (calling for
I Land Conference), should have succeeded where
}he genius of Gladstone failed."

I find written on one Christmas Day to W. B. Y. :
' John Shawe-Taylor came over yesterday evening,
•ode over in the dark and stayed a long time. He
ooked tired ; I think the excitement of working
rery hard for a while and then having to wait
i.nd do nothing for a while is trying to him. He
ays his Conference is all right. He is getting up
neetings in Galway and Limerick.

" He has dreams which I am afraid will not be
ealised in his time, but which account for his
nthusiasm. He sees a time coming when all who
)elieve in invisible things will unite against un-
belief. He thinks Protestants and Catholics will
ee then, as he sees clearly now, that differences
if dogma are nothing, that their belief is prac-
ically the same. ' Our doctrine is that by Faith
he Saviour enters into us, and lives His life through
ur body ; the Catholic believes that through the
lacraments the Saviour enters into him, and lives
lis Ufe through his body.' I had never heard
heology stated in this way before. Certainly John
.aving that belief, need not be worried by little
bstacles.

" But he wants some better National ideas,
le had been telling the Castle people they ought
very year to reward those who had done some-
hing for the country ; give Lord Dunraven a
larquisate, etc. I said that would be a very bad
ervice to his own class, it would leave the Nation-
lists a monopoly of disinterestedness."

72 STAAT8 FORBES COLLECTION

Yeats has written in his '' Cutting of an Agate,"
of that unexpected letter that called the Land
Conference together : " The calculation of his
genius was justified. He had — as men of his type
have often — given an expression to the hidden
popular desires, and the expression of the hidden
is the daring of the mind. It was as though some
power deeper than our daily thought had spoken,
and men recognised that common instinct, that
common sense, which is genius. Men like him
live near this power because of something simple
and impersonal within them, which is, as I believe,
imaged in the fire of their minds as in the shape
of their bodies and their faces."

And Yeats in talking to me of these two, said :
" Hugh said to me once, ' Ever3^body loves John,
he has personality, but I am only an eye and a
brain.' Yet his talent was just as much rooted
in character as John Shawe-Taylor's. To begin
with there was the same audacity. You will
remember how when John was returning from
America the boat reached Queenstown in a storm
and he was the only man who left it in a tender,
he had leaped into it before the ships were swept
apart. And I remember his arriving at Coole
once, and telling how he had overslept himself
in the train from Dublin and leaped out of the
train when it had moved out of his station at
Athenry. The station-master had come running
along the line to find if he was alive or dead.
He was quite safe, for the action came from a
power of calculation too rapid for the intellect to
follow, like Hugh's in deciding on the authenticity
of a picture. I, too, have occasionally had

THE PLANET NEPTUNE 73

intuitions that surprised me afterwards by their
wisdom, but had I been one of your nephews I
would have acted upon them. The ' eye and brain,'
however, was this far true, that John had Httle to
say for himself, and that Hugh had a great deal.
I have heard him criticise everybody and every-
thing, but not pictures. At any rate, I have heard
the uncertainty of others much more lucid and
explanatory on that subject than his certainty.
I remember his meeting at your rooms a certain
popular authorit}^ on painting. Hugh had just
given you that picture of the blind Homer playing
the fiddle, which hangs in the drawing-room at
Coole, and said ' It is a Poussin.' ' No,' said the
art critic, ' that is impossible,' and became full of
eloquent generalities. But Lane stuck to it.
* That yellow tree is Poussin.' He had nothing
else to say. I felt he could not have explained
himself in the least, I do not think that he could
even have named pictures by Poussin in which
he had seen a Hke handling, but he was quite
certain. The popular authority became angrier
and more eloquent. He had never heard of Lane
before and disliked convictions that could not
explain themselves. I think he was not really
certain of himself, for as we left together he said,
' I could have put that young man down, but I
had to remember that he is Lady Gregory's
nephew.'

" The astrologer in me was amused, for his
horoscope shows Mars in opposition to the Planet
Neptune, which gives — so far as we can be certain
about a newly-discovered planet — inexplicable
convictions one cannot reason over.

74 STAATS FORBES COLLECTION

" But no man could have met Hugh in his
later years without remembering ever after his
intense restless nervous energy. Life was all bars
against which he beat himself, and unlike John
he had a single pui-pose that filled his life. He
began like one of Balzac's heroes, like Rastignac,
let us say, apparently all personal ambition, and
would, I daresay, have shown himself as brutal as
Rastignac, and like a Balzac hero put aside his
personal ambition and become the providence of
others. The meeting at the Red Lion, at any rate,
was pure Balzac, though he did but shear the wolves.

" His own petulance and irascibility made
many of his difficulties. He was constantly trying
to hurry people, the Dublin Corporation particu-
larly, by threats he did not carry out, until at last
his threats lost all meaning, and Dublin lost the
pictures.

" Shelley, a little before he was drowned, dreamt
that some unseen being took him to the Mediter-
ranean side and said, ' Are you satisfied ? ' and
he answered, * I am satisfied.' But Hugh was
not, and subconscious revision, as I think, pro-
duced perpetual exasperation."

In spite of the unlikeness there came to be a
very close comradeship between these tw^o, my
sisters' sons. The energy they both used for
Ireland's good took hold of people's minds.
Perhaps that is why Mrs. Asquith, meeting Yeats
for the first time and doubtless finding him full
of some enterprise, had told me she thought she
liked him best *' of aU your nephews ! " Yet Mrs.
Asquith did a kindly thing for Hugh. The Prime
Minister was going to Ireland for some meeting,

IMAGE-MAKERS 76

and Hugh was very anxious he should look in at
the Modern Gallery, take off his hat to it, as it
were, as Lord Aberdeen had done more con-
spicuously to the old Parliament House. He had
begged the officials to arrange this as part of the
day's programme, but they said it would not be
possible, there was no moment that could be spared.
I, happening to meet Mrs. Asquith at a play, told
her of this wish and this difficulty, and she said,
" Write and remind me just before the visit, and
I will see what can be done." The day after the
visit I saw in the papers that the Prime Minister
in going through Dublin, from speech to speech,
had stopped to visit the Municipal Gallery.

I wrote in a note to my play, The Image,
a play dealing with those who hold " a heart
secret": "The Directors of our theatre are
beginning to get some applause even in Dublin
for its success; but only they know how far it
still is from the idea with which they set out.
And so it is with my sisters' sons, to whom I have
dedicated this play. One brought together the
Conference that did so much towards the peace-
able and friendly changing of landownership.
The other has made Dublin the Orient of all —
artists or learners or critics — who value the great
modern school of French painting. Yet I fancy
it was a dream beyond possible realisation that
gave each of them that hard patience needed by
those who build, and the courage needed by the
' Disturber ' who does not often escape some
knocks and buffetings. But if the dreamer had
never tried to tell the dream that had come across
him, even though to ' betray his secret to the

76 STAATS FORBES COLLECTION

multitude ' must shatter his own perfect vision,
the world would grow clogged and dull with the
weight of flesh and of clay. And so we must say
' God love you ' to the image-makers, for do we
not live by the shining of those scattered frag-
ments of their dream ? "

The pictures saved from the Forbes Collection
by gift or subscription (besides those of the Lane
Collection), were: — Corot : Evening Landscape,
Rome from the Pincio, Marseilles, The Fisherman,
Woman Meditating, Early Landscape, On the
Terrace Steps, The Punt, Landscape and Figures
(charcoal). The Sempstress (pencil). Monticelli :
Forest Scene, The Banquet. Troyon : Cutting
Brushwood, Study of a Cow (drawing). Fantin
Latour : Portrait of the Artist, Venus and Cupid,
Blush Roses. Conder : The Gondolier, The Grey
Fan (water colour and silk). Stott of Oldham :
An October Morning. Constable : Brighton, Wey-
mouth Bay, Study of Clouds, Elder Tree, A Sea-
port, Mill on the Stour, Near Arundel. Orpen :
Reflections, China and Japan. Steer : A Summer
Afternoon. Mauve ; A Shower. Artz : Boats
Ashore. Degas : A Peasant Woman. Harpig-
nies : Village and Roadway. Millet : The Gleaners
(drawing). The Bather (three sketches). Daumier :
In the Omnibus (drawing). Legros : Evening
Landscape. Jongkind: Delft (sketch). Segantini:
Shepherd Asleep (drawing).

Hugh had hoped someone might from time to
time give a picture in memory of one who had
been dear in friendship or near in blood. And this

PICTURES "IN MEMORY" 77

in Ireland would be a happy thing to do, rather
than to place a monument before the eyes of a
congregation of one or the other creed, as though
— and this, thank God, is not customary —
Protestant could not hold Catholic, or Catholic
Protestant, in honour and affectionate regard.
The Gallery knows no such divisions, but is wide
and liberal for all. A tranquil landscape by
Stott of Oldham was thus given by me and my
son to the memory of an old friend who had been
kind to us, and whose grave is on the headland
of Duras, by the sea. And lately, to Hugh's own
memory, and as a symbol of ultimate reconcile-
ment, a friend who had stood by him through all
his work for the Gallery has given and put up
there portraits of John Redmond and Edward
Carson, those stout fighters for South and North.

a

CHAPTER VII

THE WATTS EXHIBITION

In 1906 there was yet another exhibition, when
the Watts' pictures, which had already been
shown in England, were brought to Dublin. The
weight of preparation was not on Hugh's shoulders
this time, he had been abroad, and the money for
the guarantee was asked for by Lady Dudley.
But when he came back and was told the exhibi-
tion must be made pay its way or the guarantors
would lose their money, he put his hand to the
work. He asked again for afternoon tea parties,
and his friends were ready to help ; but this time
the guests, or it may be some who wrote to the
papers telling of their discontent, complained of
this hardship of having to pay the usual shilling
for admittance at the door. I am not sure if Hugh
was used as Court of Appeal or was brought
before one, but for all his suavity he was stern.
He would not let off the guests from paying their
fee, and he would not allow the hostesses to pay
it on their behaK. It was a custom, he said, that
had worked well in other places, and there was no
reason it should be changed for Dublin. The
guests were pacified ; concerts were sometimes
given ; I am sure that at my own party there
was no grumbhng, for our Abbey players came and

78

SOME LECTURES 79

gave of their best. There were lectures also given
in the great room. I find a note of mine to Yeats :
" Hugh Lane hopes you will turn up for your
lecture as your sisters told him sometimes you
don't. He says you wouldn't answer him about
a name for it, so he has had to invent one himself."
And Yeats wrote to me: "My father has just
come in and read me his lecture, he lectures at the
Hibernian Academy on Thursday. Alas, he thought
he had an hour's lecture written, and when he read
it to me it took about a quarter of an hour."

"A. E." in his lecture gave cause for scandal,
saying that ** Ethical pictures, if anything, were
immoral in their influence as everything must be
which forsakes the law of its own being."

One of the pictures exhibited there was to
find in Dublin its lasting home. When in 1903
Mr. Watts had been asked by Hugh for the promise
of a picture for the new Gallery — should it come
into being — he had promised '* to give the matter
his careful consideration," adding that in making
his gifts to London he had always considered they
were as much given to the Scotch and Irish people.
This had already been his answer when asked to
give a picture to the Scottish National Gallery.

Mrs. Watts had written to me in 1904 from
Limner slease : ** You will forgive me for writing,
for I hope it may give you pleasure to hear what
pleasure you have given to us by your wonderfully
beautiful rendering of Cuchulain. It has been
quite the look to us of this last year, and I have
often wanted to tell you what we feel about it,
and how many beautiful evenings you gave us
when we read it together. I see you have brought

80 THE WATTS EXHIBITION

out a new book which I mean to get, but nothing
can ever displace that wonderful Cuchulain.

** I suppose you know personally the poet who
wrote * Earth Breath ' and other beautiful things ?
Mr. Russell ? I read them often and often. If
you see him do tell him that chiefly for his poem's
sake I got my husband to send his picture called
' The Slumber of the Ages ' to be exhibited at
the Dublin Academy. It would be a pleasure to
my husband to see you again. He is well and
works very hard still at painting and sculpture."

When I was next in England I went to spend
a day at Limner slease, my son, who had just begun
to work at painting, coming with me. Watts
talked of the Cuchulain stories and said that if
he had more time before him he would choose for
the subject of his art some of these heroic people.
And then he or Mrs. Watts said that on account
of this newly awakened interest he intended to
give one of his pictures to Ireland.

It was but a few weeks after this visit that
the great painter died. I think his kindly inten-
tion had not been written in his Will, for I had
a note from Yeats, *' Hugh Lane tells me that
Watts has left a number of his pictures to British
galleries, not, it seems, specifying what galleries.
He is very anxious that you should take the first
opportunity of putting in a claim for Ireland. I
promised to tell you, but write for fear of being
delayed." I do not think Mrs. Watts had needed
reminding ; and the beautiful " Faith, Hope and
Charity " was sent by her to the Gallery in glad
and wiUing fulfilment of his desire.

It was in the month when that exhibition was

THE SARGENT PORTRAIT

81

opened, January, 1906, that Hugh was given by
a few friends his portrait by Sargent *' in recog-
nition of his unselfish and untiring efforts to
estabhsh a Gallery of Modern Art for Ireland."

He was very much pleased, he was a great
admirer of Sargent's work. He had been used
to say, " If I ever marry it will be that my wife's
portrait may be painted by Sargent." And as
the money subscribed was but a little, and a
painting seemed out of reach, he had asked that
at least a drawing might be made. This was his
story to me of how, when he was taken to the

THE HUGH LANE PRESENTATIOK. H. P. WEEPS TEARS OF ASTONISHMENT.

Sketch in a letter to Hugh from A. E.

studio, the painting was accomplished in its
place. " Sargent has a fancy for ears that stick
out, and mine stick out. And he has a fancy for
red ears, he has coloured a model's ears sometimes,
and mine are red. So he took his brush instead
of a pencil and began working in colour, and went
on, and after a while when a sitter came who had
an appointment he was put off, and he went on
with me. Then he told me to come again the
next day, and after another long sitting it was
finished." But when later I met Mr. Sargent
and spoke to him of the beauty and value of the

82 THE WATTS EXHIBITION

portrait ho said, ** I could not help doing it, I was
so attracted by the great nobility of his face."
Through whatever cause it came into being, I
thank God and the artist that it exists. It hung
on the staircase at Lindsey House until Hugh's
death, and is now, as a part of his bequest, in the
DubUn Municipal Gallery.

CHAPTER VIII

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM

In his letter to Mr. Caroline in 1903, Hugh had
said he would like to find some official work in
place of dealing. And we know that even when
at the Marlborough Gallery he had hoped to be
some day Director of a National Collection. So
when in 1907 he was asked to apply to be made
curator of the Dublin National Museum, it was
natural that the idea pleased him. Not only this,
but his imagination took fire. He determined
to make it one of the great Museums of the world.
He at once began buying precious gifts for it.
He would take no pay, that should (as afterwards
at the National Gallery) go to its enrichment.
He would come and live in Dublin or near it, he
would buy a house. He was told by those in
authority to wait quietly, that the place was
certain to be given to him, for there was no other
candidate with anything like his knowledge. I
wrote to him : "I never thought you would take
the Museum, and am overjoyed to know you think
of it, it would make a great difference having you
there, for all Ireland as well as to me personally.
I have written to T. W. Russell and to Stephen
Gwynn and to John Redmond threatening to turn
Sinn Feiner if they don't all support you ! They

83

84 THE NATIONAL MUSEUM

will be perfect idiots if they don't, they will not
find any one to do the work as well as you.'*

Redmond could not, as leader of the Nationalists,
help towards any official appointment, and Stephen
Gwynn wrote: " Russell himself, I may tell you in
confidence, suggested Lane to me as the best man
he could think of, if he would apply. I had gone
to him to say we would raise Cain if he continued
Colonel Plunkett in the post. ..."

So I was spending the summer tranquilly at
Coole when one day I had a troubled letter from
Hugh who was in London, saying there were
rumours that the appointment was to be given to
another, asking if I could find out from the
authorities what was being done. The letter
came by a late post, and I sent it over to John
Shawe-Taylor, five miles away, saying I didn't
think any writing or telegraphing of questions
would be of use, and asking if he could go at once
to Dublin to see the President of the Board of
Agriculture. The answer was a disappointment,
he was not able to go. I had a wakeful night,
and in those '' tiger-clawed " hours I resolved
to go myself to Dublin, and so I got up early and
caught the morning train. When I arrived in
Dublin I drove to the President's office and to
his hotel, and at last to his private house in I
forget what suburb. He spoke kindly, but his
news was unkind. The appointment had already
been made. It had been given to one who, if he
had no great knowledge, was, in the opinion of
the Castle officials, "a safe man." I drove back
through Dublin and again crossed Ireland, a rail-
way journey with as its end a nine-mile drive on

YEATS' LINES 85

an outside car hired at Athenry ; and I got home
close on midnight. I had sent a telegram home,
as well as one to Hugh in London, telling the dreary
news. Yeats was staying with us, and had raged
when it was received. It was, in his mind, one of
the worst of crimes, that neglect to use the best
man, the man of genius, in place of the timid
obedient official. That use of the best had been
practised in the great days of the Renaissance.
He had grown calmer before my arrival, because
when walking in the woods, the sight of a squirrel
had given him a thought for some verses, the
first he had ever written on any public event : —

" Being out of heart at Government
I found a broken root to fling
Where the proud wayward squirrel went
Taking deUght that he could spring )
And he, with that low whinnying sound
That is Uke laughter, sprang again
And so to the other tree with a bound.
Nor timid will nor the tame brain
Nor heavy knitting of the brow
Bred that fierce tooth and cleanly Hmb
Nor threw him up to laugh on the bough —
No Government appointed him."

Hugh, having a certain reverence for writers,
was pleased, though a little puzzled, by the lines,
that do but put in form of fantasy what another
poet has called " the difference between men of
office and men of genius, between computed and
uncomputed rank."

This, now printed with Yeats' poems, was
written out by him at the time on a blank leaf
of one of his books that he had given me, and
looking at it just now I find written above it,
On the appointment of Count Plunkett to the

((

86 THE NATIONAL MUSEUM

Curatorship of Dublin Museum, by Mr. T. W.
Russell and Mr. Birrell, Hugh Lane being a
candidate."

It had seemed strange to me that it was Mr.
Birrell who had thus acted, he who had so often
helped even hazardous work at the Abbey Theatre
and elsewhere. He was away from Dublin when
we '* defied the Lord Lieutenant " in the Blanco
Posnet business ; but I was told that on his
return he had spoken of the attempt to banish
the play in language beside which that of Blanco
was '' as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water
unto wine." But it happened the other day,
just before I left London, I was talking with him
on many matters, and among them on this book
I had undertaken to write. And at the mention
of Hugh Lane's name he said, " How scandalously
he was treated about that Museum." I answered
that I had believed him as ** a Castle official " to
have been responsible. '' So far from that," he
said, " I was never told of the appointment until
it was made, and when I heard of it both I and my
Under-Secretary raged at it in the office for half
an hour." I ought to have acquitted him in my
thoughts, for it had been a time when, as Yeats
wrote, "against Lane all the incompetents com-
bined."

Although so gracious in matters he looked on
as of a lower importance than Art, Hugh would lose
his natural affability when that matter was in
question, and speak his rapid decisive words even
in the presence of dignities. He had but just
been put upon the Senate of the New University
when Yeats wrote to me : '' He has succeeded,

A THEOLOGICAL QUESTION 87

Etfter an encounter with old Z., in getting the
Board to agree, provisionally at any rate, to give
£300 instead of £100 to a Professor of Art. Old
Z. said that the professor * should confine himself
bo beautiful old Irish Art,' and Lane retorted that
' we have got all we can from that art, considering
we have covered match-boxes and table-legs and
3ver}^thing we could lay hands on with it.' Old
Z. said he had no doubt Mr. Lane wanted a pro-
lessor of Impressionist painting, a school which
le would venture to say would soon cease to be
leard of. Lane thinks the encounter rather
shocked the Board."

Yeats says also that Hugh " had said in a
noment of irritation to one of the officials of the
Museum, ' If I am ever head of this Museum I will
nake you work,' and that official became a very
ictive agitator. While it was another official, who
rvould have been his superior, dreading a strong-
-willed subordinate, had justified his opposition with
}he sentence, ' The time has not come to encourage
ihe arts in Ireland.' At least this is the account
^iven generally in Dublin at the time. Though
[ imagine that what weighed most with the
jrovernment was that the time had very definitely
5ome to appoint a Catholic. To them it was an
entirely theological question."

I had sent Hugh a telegram, and I wrote him
aext day an account of my journey and the
failure of my errand, and I said, " Mrs. Russell
who was very nice, indeed they both were) told
ne you were coming over, and I am thinking with
imusement to-day of your interview with them,
50 far as I can be amused with anything, for I am

88 THE NATIONAL MUSEUM

passionately indignant at the whole system of
Irish officialism which is driving one after anothei
the best out of the country. Standish Hayeg
O' Grady, the greatest Irish scholar who is also
an Irishman, was treated just the same way aboul
the Hoyal Irish Academy, a man with no Irish tc
speak of being appointed, and nobody cared. I.
for one, will fight on till I die, and in a way, over the
Playboy fight I have been treated worse than any
of you."

And as fate would have it, he who had beer
pitched upon as a " safe man " was arrested as a
rebel by Government after the Rising in 191 6j
carried off from his Museum and sent to England
in banishment, his son shot in prison ; and thai
tragedy has pushed aside any carping words.

Had Hugh been given that work and made
Dublin his home, perhaps one of those desertec
Georgian houses he so much admired might have
been made as beautiful and as rich in its influence
as the house by the Thames. For one feels he
had but to imagine it and there would appeal
one of those grand buildings, full of music anc
fine people and beauty, that our country people
see built up in a moment by the enchanted hands
of the Sidhe. Yet that rejection may, after all,
have been for Ireland's profit ; would Joseph have
had the means so to enrich his brethren if he had
remained in hunger-stricken Canaan ?

As to " The Playboy fight," when an attempt
was made through a week in January, 1907, to pul
down Synge's play by violence, I have written
in the story of " Oult Irish Theatre " of Hugh's
part in it: "A caricature of the time shows him

A STONE IN THE BUILDING 89

1 evening dress, with unruffled shirt cuffs, leading
ut disturbers of the peace. For Hugh Lane
^ould never have worked the miracle of creating
[lat wonderful gallery at sight of which Dublin
J still rubbing its eyes, if he had not known that
1 matters of Art the many count less than the
5w. I am not sure that in the building of our nation
e may not have laid the most lasting stone. No
3ar of a charge of nepotism will scare me from
the noble pleasure of praising ' ; and so I claim
place for his name above the thirty, among the
hief, of our mighty men.*'

CHAPTER IX

MANCINI

On the 24th March, 1905, the Municipal Council
of the City of Dublin decided to allow a yearly
grant of £500 for the maintenance of a Gallery
" in which the valuable pictures offered to the
City by Mr. Lane and others might be safely
housed." At a later meeting, in June, the Council
authorised " the hire and maintenance of temporary
premises in which these Works of Art can be
preserved and exhibited, pending the erection of
a permanent building in a suitable locality. ' ' A fine
old house in Harcourt Street, once, I think, the
town house of the Earls of Clonmel, was hired for
a term of years, and Hugh set to work with great
enjoyment to improve and embellish it. I
remember coveting two beautiful small carved
frames in an antiquity shop, I thought they would
look well in a room I was arranging at Coole. But
while I was making up my mind they vanished,
had been sold, and the next time I saw them they
were over the doors of one of the Gallery rooms.
And while the house was yet being put in the
disorder that comes in the van of order, grates and
chimney-pieces being torn out to be replaced by
Georgian brass and marble, the large upper room

90

THE FRANCO-BRITISH EXHIBITION 91

was used for a while as a studio for Mancini. Hugh
enormously admired his work. Even when he
was arranging the Irish room at the Franco-
British Exhibition, many pictures by Mancini kept
tumbling out of the hurriedly-opened cases, as
though he also was to be swept into our nation-
ality.

He had hiuTied back from Spain, or Italy, to
collect and arrange pictures for that exhibition.
He had but one da}^ to spend in Paris ; it was a
Saints' day and Durand Ruel's was shut. But
fie carried off three of Lavery's paintings, one a
loan from Rodin, the others from the Luxembourg.
[n gratitude he gave the Luxembourg one of Hone's
paintings, and Paris welcomed it ; the Tate Gallery
bad refused such an offered gift. He was all but
late with his Irish Room, but the workmen, I
know not by what persuasion, or maybe it was
but that of example, worked through the night,
and on the opening day, as he was able to boast in
briumph, the only one of the Art collections ready
W8is the Irish.

It may have been at this time it happened
that coming back from Monte Carlo with his
pocket full of diamonds he ran short of money,
30 that he had to pawn some of them in Paris
before he could take his ticket home. For there
are some entries in his pocket diaries written at
Monte Carlo ; '' Won £540. Bought diamond and
pearl necklet, £280." Then, "Lost in evening all
capital, £400. Bought three pearl strings and
olivine ring for £233," and then the purchase of
a rose diamond necklace is put down; all this
written as conscientiously as the " Bun and pear

92 MANCINI

3 Irf." and ** two penny gingerbreads " of his careful
needy days.

Having established Mancini and his easel in
that large room of the Dublin Gallery he set
him to paint his sister Ruth Shine's portrait, and
then mine. I sat in a high chair in an old black
dress, in front of a brown curtain lent by Miss Purser.
Mancini set up a frame in front of me. He pinned
many threads to this, crossing one another ;
their number increased from day to day, becoming
a close network. The canvas on which he painted
was crossed little by little with a like network.
This — as he would explain in almost incomprehen-
sible French, though sometimes turning to little less
comprehensible Italian — was not his own method,
but had been the method of some great master.
Having put up a new thread or two he would go
to the ver}^ end of the long room, look at me
through my net, then begin a hurried walk which
turned to a quick trot, his brush aimed at some
feature, eye or eyebrow, the last steps would
be a rush, then I needed courage to sit still. But
the hand holding the brush always swerved at
the last moment to the canvas, and there in its
appropriate place, between its threads, the paint
would be laid on and the retreat would begin.
I was well repaid for my patience or courage, for
at the end his portrait of a woman growing old,
and a dusty black dress, and a faded brown
curtain would have lighted up a prison cell.
Synge, not often enthusiastic, spoke of it as ** the
greatest portrait since Rembrandt." Mancini
himself liked it, though he was not quite satisfied,
as towards the end he begged me to come to London

A PASTEL OF YEATS 93

and sit for another portrait that would immeasure-
abh' excel this one. It is one of my lasting regrets
that I allowed opportunity, that " winged nymph,"
to escape me then. The portrait was photographed
and Yeats, writing from London, tells me : "I had
a long lesson in the mathematical part of astrology
from Ralph Shirley yesterday, I think I must ask
you to meet him, he was struck with your horoscope.
* Those Jupiter and Scorpio people,' he said,
'have such a o;rand wav with them.' I showed
him the Mancini photograph to prove it."

Yeats himself was not quite so fortunate, he
says :

"At some time or other Lane asked me if I
would sit to Mancini for a pastel. The pastel,
which I still have, was an evening's work. Mancini
put his usual grill of threads where the picture
was to be and another grill of threads correspond-
ing exactly with it in front of me. He did not
know anj^thing about me, we had no language
in common, and he worked for an hour without
interest or inspiration. Then I remembered a
story of Lane's. Mancini, Italian peasant as
he was, believed that he would catch any illness
or deformity of those whom he met. He was not
thinking of microbes, but of some mysterious
process like that of the Evil Eye. He had just
been painting someone who had lost a leg, and
whose cork leg he believed was having a numbing
effect on his own. He worried Lane with his
terror — ' My leg is losing all power of sensation,'
he would say at intervals. The thought of this
story made me burst into laughter, and Mancini
began to draw with great excitement and rapidity.

H

94 MANCINI

In a few minutes he had produced a most vivid
likeness, not indeed of me, but of some dark-
skinned Italian cafe king, in whom I see a curious
resemblance to myself."

Meditating, I sometimes w^onder how that
visit now appears in Mancini's memory, should a
thought ever drift back to it from Naples or from
Rome. Even to me there seemed to be a little
touch of tragedy under the laughter that rippled
about him in Dublin. I think an immense lone-
liness as of a prison must have encompassed him
sometimes, when evening closed in, and there was
drizzling mist around him, and he hurried to his
lodging under a sky without stars, through streets
without chatter or gaiety, and open spaces
without the music that would have been a speech
he could comprehend. There were but few — ^per-
haps because of the difficulty of language — to
show him hospitality.

Hugh said the old gentlemen of his club had
abeady been startled by the entrance of Augustus
John, who on his way from a visit to us at Coole
had called upon him there, in blue jersey and
gold ear-rings, and that he must give them time to
recover before he brought another artist among
them. But when at last he brought in Mancini,
half hoping that the elderly round-shouldered little
man might fit better into its composition, Mancini,
always doing what was least expected, put his
hand on his heart, went up to each chair in suc-
cession and bowed low to its occupant. That
civility was yet more disconcerting to the members
than John's disdainful air of a strayed apostle
come from converting, or being converted by, a

HIS SELF-PORTRAITS 95

camp of gypsies. So when Hugh was not with
him at the hotel his dinner would bo a silent one,
and finding his best interpreters in chalk or char-
coal, he would go to his room, and, failing another
model, draw^ his own portrait from the looking-glass.
There is one of these self-portraits in the Gallery,
I was given two or three, and they show, I am
bound to confess, no mark of melancholy, whether
the laugh may have been at himself or at the town.
One day, I forget with what companion, he broke
a;way as if to search for some distraction in the
city's shops, returning puffed with pride in the
possession of a fine gold watch and a heavy gaudy
3hain. Hugh reproved him for his extravagance,
md above all for his taste, declaring that no one
rt^ould believe he was a real artist if he flaunted
50 ostentatious an ornament. It was a very
iejected man who painted me the next day.
^nd Hugh also was dejected as he murmured,
' and the bill has been sent to me ! " For Hugh
vas keeping back his money till all the work was
lone, lest he should squander it, he said, or it
nay be with some misgiving that with a full
)urse and the packet boat at hand he might make
)ne day his escape. It was in their bargain that
bU materials should be provided, and Mancini
nade at times an over-Uberal use of paint, white
ispecially, slapping it on as a mason slaps mortar on
he stone. So rumour was, perhaps, well informed
n saying that Hugh, returning after dusk to the
Jallery, would scrape some of the most extravagant
umps and masses from the canvas, putting them
)ack upon the palette for the unsuspecting artist's
ise next de^j.

96 MANCINI

Sometimes Mancini would write him a letter,
not very legible but very much in earnest, demand-
ing sums of money in advance. Even in tranquil
moods his ^mting was difficult. Hugh had once
received one of his letters torn in pieces ; he had
torn it in impatience, probably at not being able
to read it himself and intending to write another,
but had then, repenting, put the bits in an envelope
for Hugh himself to mend and find the sense of.
I liked to see them together, Hugh, but just out of
his twenties, responsible for so irresponsible a
grey-haired genius. They had their little quarrels
but forgave one another quicldy, one because of
his great admiration for the other's work, the other
because of that appreciation. As for myself,
even when my portrait appeared but a thing of
dabs and blotches I forgave the long waiting and
the chilly hours in that evening dress, because I
had within sight at the end of the room the
" Maker of Figures," that portrait by Mancini of
his father given to the Gallery by Mr. Sargent, and
one of the pictures in which I take most delight.

When Hugh had been making a motor journey
with friends, Lady Phillips and her party, he had
persuaded them to go to Rome to be painted by
Mancini. He himself had been painted by him
there, the large portrait in the Gallery, having, I
think, rather too much confusion of background,
yet friends notice that his custom of sitting on the
edge of his chair shows something of his character,
as if he was but poised for a moment. He gave
a fine picture by him to the Leeds Gallery, another
portrait of the artist's father. Besides the por-
traits he had ordered and the pictures he had

MANCINI'S THREADS 97

bought direct from him he once recognised his
work in a shop window, when in an Enghsh country
town. The friend who was with him doubted
it, and bet him £5 it was no Mancini. They went
in, and Hugh having won the £5 offered it for the
picture (it is one now in the Gallery). The shop-
keeper accepted it, saying, " My word, it is a funny
looking thing ! " and told him, to his mischievous
delight, that it had been taken away "with other
rubbish" from the house of a rival admirer of
Mancini. It was by no witchcraft, however, he
divined the artist that time. He had recognised
on the canvas the marks of Mancini' s threads.

Mr. J. B. Yeats, writing to me last July and again
mentioning Hugh, says, "I don't think humour
derives its satisfaction from a sense of superiority
so much as from a sense of difference — a sense of
difference with as practical result a sense not of
superiority (your true humourist will deprecate
the idea) but of giving protection (it must be one
of the attributes of God the Father). When the
helpless Mancini was in Dublin Hugh Lane went
about with him everywhere and conducted him
everywhere, spending every evening with him,
and obviously enjo^^ed every moment of his time ;
was that because he wanted to gratify his sense
of superiority, or was it from some mysterious
enjoyment in the sense of giving a constant
protection, and a laughing protection, because
Mancini by his queer ways and crazy nature was
a constant shock? I think a shock, a sudden
surprise, always makes us laugh unless one is
frightened or angry — and it was not easy either
to frighten or enrage your nephew.

98 MANCINI

" I first heard of Mancini in this way. One
morning in Dublin 1 met Lane and he stopped me
to say that he had just had a letter from him to say
he had arrived in London and asking when was
ho to come to Dublin to paint Lane's ' illustrious
sister.' It seems that when your nephew sat to
Mancini for his portrait in Rome he did mention
his sister with the remark that she was a much
better subject for a portrait. On this Mancini
meditated and finally came to London. Evidently
Hugh Lane was both perplexed and amused,
for of course he knew that Mancini would be no
ordinary handful. I again met him and asked
about Mancini ; it was all right, he had written

to Mrs. I forget the name of a lady who was

a friend of Sargent and artists generally. She
had taken him into her house, and that he might
not be lonely hired another Italian of whom she
made a footman, and they were such friends that
they went about together all day with their arms
round each other's necks. Again I met H. L. He

was in great perplexity. Mrs. had written

to say that the friends had quarrelled, and that
this mattered greatly, because they both took up
and threw at each other ornaments and bric-
a-brac in her rooms, which were valuable."

There is another portrait of me in the Gallery.
It was at a little dinner, in BurHngton Street, in
an ante-room after a lecture that had been given
by Yeats, that someone praising Epstein's work,
Hugh said with sudden agreement that he would
like me to sit to him for a bust for the Gallery.
I had pleasant hours enough in those sittings,
and my thoughts went to placing a replica of

EPSTEIN'S BUST 98

it for my grandchildren to remember me by.
But one day some writer came in, asking questions
about the work of our Theatre, and I was over
ready to answer and grew eager in talk and forget
the calmness that befits sculpture, that is for
eternity, and I did not notice how time passed
or watch the artist's hand. And then suddenly
I found that, pleased with some gesture, he had
cut through the clay throat, tilting head and
chin in an eternal eagerness. Hugh grumbled
at it, and it was thought too revolutionary for the
company of the serene marbles that preside at
Coole. It is very clever and I do not quite dislike
it ; yet when set beside Mancini's radiant trans-
figuration the thought has crossed my mind that
as if for balance and by some star less magnificent
than Jupiter, Epstein had been beckoned in as
Devil's Advocate.

CHAPTER X

A SITE FOR THE GALLERY

When Hugh was asked, as sometimes happened,
for advice as to the right way to found a Gallery,
he was used to say, " Get your pictures together
first and then think of your building " ; and in his
own practice he ever conformed to this rule. So
now that the splendid collection made by him was
lodged in the house in Harcourt Street, the time
seemed to have come to give it an enduring home.
I say *' lodged," for although the rooms where
we still go to look at the pictures have great
beauty and charm, an intimacy of which some-
thing will be lost in a new building when it comes,
the windows are those of a dwelling-house, many of
the pictures can only be seen in their full beauty
at certain hours of the day, there is not space or
light for an}^ who would copj^ them, and besides
and beyond this, as it stands with houses joining
it on each side, it cannot be guarded from even
probable accident. Mr. MacColl had advised us to
be content with " a simple carcass — a shell, well
lighted, and rain and fire proof," but this house
has not one of these qualities. I am anxious
in every one of the troublesome days of the present
year, for some of the Harcourt Street houses are
used for their business by the Sinn Fein committees,

100

THE CONDITIONAL GIFT 101

and while soldiers make their sudden raids and
searches, rumour keeps one in mind of that Easter
time when O'Connell Street was shattered into
ruins. So both for hghting and for safety's sake
an open space on which to build a Gallery was
needed.

Hugh Lane had written in the Preface to the
Catalogue of the Municipal Gallery in December,
1907 : —

*' I now hand over my collection of pictures
and drawings of the British School (seventy) and
Rodin's masterpiece, ' L'age d'Arain.' I also
present the group of portraits of contemporary
Irish men and women. ... I have also deposited
here my collection of pictures by Continental
artists and intend to present the most of them,
provided that the promised permanent building
is erected on a suitable site within the next few
years. This collection includes a selection of the
Forbes and Durand Ruel pictures bought by me
after the Royal Hibernian Academy Winter
Exhibition, and some important examples of
Manet, Renoir, Mancini, etc., which I have pur-
chased to make this Gallery widely representative
of the greatest masters of the nineteenth century."

The pictures in this conditional gift were : —

Les Parapluies, Renoir ; Le Concert aux
Tuileries, Edouard Manet ; Portrait of Made-
moiselle Eva Gonzales, Edouard Manet ; Prin-
temps, vue de Louvecienne, C. Pissarro ; Vetheuil,
Sunshine and Snow, Claude Monet ; The Mantel-
piece, E. Vuillard ; La Rivage, entree de Tour-
geville, E. Boudin ; La Plage, Degas ; Jour d'ete,
B. Morisot ; Due D'Orleans, Ingres ; In the Law

102 A SITE FOR THE GALLERY

Courts, Forain ; Portrait of Marquis del Grille,
Mancini ; En Voyage, Mancini ; Aurclia, Mancini ;
La Douane, Mancini ; The Mountebank, John
Davis Brown ; Portrait Study of a Woman, R.
Madrazo ; Portrait of Honore Daumier, Charles
H. Daubigny ; Forest at Fontainebleau, Ant.,
Louis Barye ; Avignon, Ancient Palace of the
Popes, J. B. Corot ; Landscape, A Summer
Morning, J. B. Corot ; The Slave, Eugene
Fromentin ; The Snowstorm, G. Courbet ; The
Pool, G. Courbet ; In the Forest, G. Courbet ;
The Offspring of Love, N. Diaz ; Portrait of a
Naval Officer, Jean Leon Gerome ; Still Life,
F. H. F. Fantin Latour ; Still Life, Francois
Bonvin ; Moonlight, Theodore Rousseau ; The
Toilet, Puvis de Chavannes ; Decollation de
S. Jean Baptiste, Puvis de Chavannes ; The
Hayfield, A. Monticelli ; Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza, Honore Daumier ; Feeding the Bird,
James Maris ; The Present, Alfred Stevens ;
An Italian Peasant Woman, J. B. Corot ; Skating
in Holland, J. B. Yongkind ; The Artist, G.
Courbet.

The condition being, as I have already said,
that a suitable Gallery should be provided. But
after the Harcourt Street house had been taken
there were difficulties even in keeping it open.
The Corporation had been obliged to apply to
Parliament for power to carry out that vote of
£500 a year made in 1905, and this power was not
granted by *' a too-occupied Parliament " until
1911 ; the Gallery through these years was
maintained by friends of Art, and by Hugh himself.
While there was no money even for lights or fires

•, ^ -^ .■^'

[Bollard, Dublin.

THE TOILET.

By Puvis de Chavannes.

THE CITIZENS' COMMITTEE 103

or doorkeeper's wage, there was of course none for
making a new building. Hugh worked on in
patience, but even in 1909 Yeats had written to
me from Dublin : "I met Lane last night ; he
is once more threatening the Corporation with
the withdrawal of his pictures and he is taking a
house in London ' with a nursery ' as he puts it.
He says also that he has told his landlord that
* a bachelor wants room to expand in.' " And a
little later I wrote from London: " Great pressure
is being put on Hugh Lane to give his pictures to
the Tate Gallery here, where the value of his gift
would be understood and appreciated."

In the autumn of 1912 he was growing im-
patient. He wrote to me in September from North
Devon : " The hunting is slowly bringing me back
to life, though I don't expect to put on flesh till
the Gallery question is settled one way or the other
in January." And he wrote to the Lord Mayor
reminding him that his promise had been only
" for the next few years " and that already five
of these had passed, and asking him to take
immediate steps toward the fulfilment of the condi-
tion. The Lord Mayor was entirely in sympathy
with him. He invited the Citizens' Committee
to call a public meeting at the Mansion House.
The Committee wrote from there that ** it ought
to be known to the people of Dublin that
the pictures lent by Sir Hugh Lane at present
housed in Harcourt Street are in immediate
danger of being lost to the city unless a suit-
able building be provided for their custody and
exhibition."

The meeting was held in November; the Lord

104 A SITE FOR THE GALLERY

Mayor gave an assurance of sympathy on behalf
of himself and his colleagues in the Corporation.
** But," he said, '* we can only levy a halfpenny
tax which will not be sufficient, and so we have to
appeal to the citizens for contributions to keep
such a treasure in Ireland and in Dublin." It was
told also at the meeting that these pictures had
been valued some time ago at £60,000, but that
after the sale in Paris of the Henri Rouart collec-
tion, Sir Walter Armstrong, a very high authority,
had written : *' Great as was the market value of
the collection a fortnight ago, its value has been
greatly increased by this sale, great enhancements
of price were shown by every master included
in these whose w^orks are at present hanging in
Dublin." Among the letters read was one from
Mr. Robert Ross, sa^dng, " Some of the pictures at
Dublin are already regarded as marking an epoch
in European Art, and they are the envy of every
modern Art Gallery Director with w^hom I am
acquainted." Mr. Birrell had written of the
collection as having " already obtained world-wide
celebrity," and IMr. George Bernard Shaw, having
asked me in a telegram, '* Is the Lord Mayor Right
Hon., or what?" wrote to him: "Sir Hugh
Lane has placed in the hands of the Corporation
of Dubhn an instrument of culture the value of
which is far beyond anything that can be expressed
in figures b}^ the City accountant. ... A good
GaUery is the best of investments, because people
will give you pictures to hang in it which you would
not get otherwise except by buying them in
competition with American millionaires." John
Redmond gave the meeting his blessing, and

ST. STEPHEN'S GREEN 105

Professor George Baker of Harvard " wondered the
people of Dublin could sleep at night knowing
that collection to be in a building that is not
fireproof."

There was great enthusiasm at the meeting and
no doubt as to what was the desire of the citizens ;
and the Municipal Council holding a special meeting
in January, 1913, agreed to give £22,000 for
the building of a Municipal Art Gallery provided
that a site was given by the Citizens' Com-
mittee, as well as a sum of £3000 towards
the building. A Committee began to collect
money for this, and of the various possible sites
w^hich had long been spoken of one had now to
be chosen.

I have been looking at some notes written and
sent to me about this matter of a site. The first
mentioned is on St. Stephen's Green, the large
oblong square in the very centre of Dublin made
by Lord Ardilaun at much cost into a garden with
green turf and flower beds, and shrubberies, and
ponds where wild fowl swim and are the delight
of children. I have been looking at a letter written
about this site at the time : ''It has the advantage
that the cost of acquiring it would be nil ; the
excellence of the situation and the beauty of its
surroundings. But it is hopeless, as Lord Ardilaun
when he acquired the Green for presentation to
the citizens of Dublin had to do so under an Act
of Parliament under which certain powers are
reserved to him. He is strongly opposed to the
scheme, and consequently his opposition will be
fatal to the passing of an Act which would be
essential."

106 A SITE FOR THE GALLERY

It was on this place that Hugh Lane had set
his heart. He wrote, 21st August, 1912 : " Lutyens
has promised me to architect the new Gallery
(Dublin) and garden in exchange for an Old
Master, so that now we only want the £25,000 and
Stephen's Green." He found it hard to believe
that the Gallery he had already asked Lutyens
to design would not find its welcome where it
would be " like the Luxembourg in its garden on
the only good site in Dublin." If this was given
he would add £10,000 to what he had already
promised, for he was sure it would be for the enjoy-
ment of the people on whose behalf Lord Ardilaun
had turned the Green into a pleasure ground.
So he was very sad when he wrote to me in 1912
that it had been refused. He had still some hope,
and said: "I will let Lutyens go on with his
design for St. Stephen's Green and hope for a
miracle to carry it through." And he asked me
to find out if there was yet any hope for it. But
Lord Ardilaun beheved that the building would
" totally destroy the proportions and beauty of
the most attractive part of the Park. It is only
twenty-two acres in extent, and the loss of space
would be serious." Hugh, on the other hand, was
convinced that " properly designed the gardens
would look very much larger than they do now%
and the building make very little impression on
it."

But although Lutyens' fine design had been
made — "a beautiful low building with a pillared
portico on the garden front for a rest and shelter " —
it had to be put aside. Another place proposed
was Merrion Square, but the Mansion House

PROPOSED SITES 107

Committee were against a new Gallery being
" added to the already large number of free public
institutions grouped together in a residential
quarter at a distance from the business centre of
the city." Lutyens gave his opinion that it
would for architectural reasons have to be placed
in the very centre of the Square, and as for Hugh,
" he wanted it built on a thoroughfare." When
someone said later of his Bridge site that only
workmen would be passing there and they would
not care for the pictures, he said, " I shall be
satisfied if they only go in to warm themselves."
But he was not asked to make a decision, for the
cost was found to be heavy and mortgages made
the business complicated, and the idea was for
the time given up.

There were other proposals. There were the
old Turkish Baths in Clare Street. But that site,
like one of Upper Ormond Quay, and one in
Dawson Street, would have cost close on £50,000.
Another was proposed directly opposite the
buildings of the National University, then being
built. But Yeats wrote : " Hugh will not
hear of this, he says he has seen the designs
and nothing would induce him to put a beautiful
building opposite such an ugly one." An addition
to the Mansion House was thought of ; an addi-
tion *' which could be used as a ballroom or for
banquets," Sir E. Lutyens reports, ** and the
reception of public guests. ..." But, besides
other reasons against it, Hugh said, " The Mansion
House site does not give us any scope for a fine
building which is even more necessary to Dublin
than pictures. It is more than a hundred years

108 A SITE FOR THE GALLERY

since a good piece of architecture lias been raised
in Ireland."

Dec. 15. It is near Christmas time and the
letters and papers given to the keeping of poor
dead Martin Wood have not yet come to mo. I
have still to work without them. Tliat vexed
me when I began to work this Monday morning,
for my stor^^ had come to the year of the proposal
and rejection of the Bridge site for the Gallery,
a project th?vt was so loved and so hated that
it led to much rancour and bitterness in Dublin,
and even to-day the branches of the bitter root then
planted are bearing their sour fruit in London
where Hugh's coveted pictures, taken out of
Ireland in that unhappy quarrel, are being held
from us by some who would put an unforgiving
name upon one whose nature turned always
to forgiveness. But, thinking of the ungracious-
ness showed him by his own countrymen at
the time, I begin to be glad that so much
of the record is missing, and that I must of
necessity shorten the histor}^ to a few necessary
pages.

And before I go on with those pages I w^ould
like to write here a passage from a letter that
came to me only a few^ days ago, sent to me by
Yeats who had searched for it in vain till he
came into a settled house at Oxford. It was
written to him by that good friend now gone, the
Right Hon. W. F. Bailey, on January 17, 1917,
and told of some words that Hugh had said to him
one of those last days in Dublin in the Spring of
1915 : "He came to see me, bringing with him

ALDERMAN THOMAS KELLY 109

I pair of Chinese statuettes as a present. We
ialked about his French pictures and I remarked
)hat it was a tragedy that such a proffered gift
;hould not have been accepted by Dublin. He
'ephed that this was largely due to misunder-
tanding, that there were mistakes and misappre-
lensions on both sides, and that if the matter came
ip again he thought things would take a different
urn. ' Then,' I said, ' there is still a hope
hat we may get the pictures ? ' ' Certainly,' he
eplied, *with some give and take an agreement
v^ill be come to on the question of a site for the
Jallery and Dublin will get the pictures.' He
dded that too much had been made of this site
[uestion."

I am putting this near the beginning of my
hapter because I do not wish to blame unduly
hose who went against him or to hold him alto-
ether free from blame. I know that many of
hose who were not with him believe now as he
[id at the last, that the " mistakes and misappre-
lensions " were not all on the one side. To-day
,lso I am thinking of one who believed in him all
hrough, and supported him against his own
ompanions and fellow-workers for a long time,
Ithough at the last he gave his voice against
lim through honest belief that in so doing he was
ipholding Ireland's rights, and who but a few
lark mornings ago, having been roused from his
led by soldiers in the night-time, was put on board
> warship and taken to a prison in England —
Thomas Kelly, an alderman of Dublin. Hugh
»lways held him in affection and respect. It
ras but a little while before he left Dublin for

I

110 A SITE FOR THE GALLERY

that last voyage that the}-, meeting in the street,
talked over this matter of a building, and at
Hugh's urgency the other said : " Why don't
you give us a little more time, why are you in
such a hurry ? " And the answer, " Because I
have not long to live," had lingered in his ears
but some thirty days when that fatal news from
Queenstown turned it to an immutable memory.
This might well have served for " the Binding "
at my chapter's end, but, as I say, I would like the
thought of Hugh's placable words to be carried
through its harsh record.

It was soon after the Mansion House meeting
that the great idea that was to prove so great a
disaster came into being. It was that, no plot
of earth having been found on which to place
the Gallery, it should be built upon a bridge,
poised, as it were, between air and water, in the
manner of the Uffizi Gallerj^ at Florence. So daring
an idea was, I think, Hugh's own. He wrote to
me, to America, on February 15, 1913 : " The Com-
mittee and the Press, and the principal Corporation
Officials have agreed to pulHng down the hideous
metal bridge (covered with advertisements) and
to build a Gallery on a stone-faced bridge. It will
be a most beautiful and sensational ornament
to Dublin and will in no way spoil the existing
view and will bring more life to the centre of the
old city." Lutyens approved of it as " an idea so
full of imagination and possibility that it is
almost impossible to resist," and made his design
forthwith. The City Architect, having seen the
design, considered it w^ould be "a very greab
ornament to the city." Yeats wTote me of it ;

•^f

Jk-^- "^hS-SSRsS.

M
73

w

0
O

o

Q

M

W
H

p:5
O
W

Q
H
W
M
c»

<:

THE BRIDGE DESIGN 111

*' I hear it is most beautiful, it seems to be con-
quering everybody," and later in the same letter,
*' I have just seen the Lutyens' design — beautiful.
Two buildings joined by a row of columns, it
is meant to show the sunset through columns,
there are to be statues on the top."

The practical advantages were that this site
could be obtained by a grant from the Corporation,
without an Act of Parliament or Law difficulties.
It was near the centre of the city, would take the
place of the ugly metal foot-bridge, and as the
Corporation intended sooner or later to pull this
down and build a more worthy one the cost would
not be for the Gallery alone, it would still act as
a foot-bridge. The Gallery would be detached,
and especially safe from fire. But there is no
doubt it was the beauty of the design that awoke
and kindled enthusiasm. As to Hugh, he already
saw (even beyond this) a new Parliament House
with a river front, the rebuilding of all that was
poor and ugly, all Dublin put in harmony with what
it already possessed of beauty.

Sir E. Lutyens made an estimate of £45,000
for the Bridge Gallery. Of this the Corporation
would have to find £22,000, and they agreed to
this in accepting the design. The site was to be
paid for, as alread}^ agreed, by private gifts.
Hugh was hopeful, and before January was out
Yeats wrote: "He has just bought a Degas for
£4500 to go to the Gallery if the money for build-
ing it is found." But money came in very slowly.
For, good givers as most of us in Ireland are, we
are not used to give for anything that is not to
help charity or politics or religion. We^are but

112 A SITE FOR THE GALLERY

slowly learning the value '' to the life of the soul "
of " the great unselfish interests — science, love of
knowledge, love of beauty in all its forms."
The Dublin citizens had already accepted taxation
for the building of a Gallery, and dwellers in the
country, it may be, looked on such a building
as a luxury for a well-to-do Dublin. And the few
rich men in Ireland were also slow to help. Yeats,
hearing that one of them had refused to add to
what he had given at the first " unless it could
be proved the people wished for pictures," wrote
a vehement poem, " To a Wealthy Man " —

'- You gave but will not give again
Until enough of Paudeen's pence
By Biddy's halfpennies have lain
To be ' some sort of evidence '
Before you'll put your guineas down
That things it were a pride to give
Are what the blind and ignorant town
Imagines best to make it thrive.
What cared Duke Ercole, that bid
His mummers to the market-place,
What th' onion-sellers thought or did
So that his Plautus set the pace
For the ItaUan comedies ?
And Guidobaldo, when he made
That grammar school of courtesies,
Where wit and beauty learned their trade
Upon Urbino's windy hill,
Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherds' will.
And when they drove out Cosimo,
Indifferent how the rancour ran,
He gave the hours they had set free
To Michelozzo's latest plan
For the San Marco Library,
Whence turbulent Italy should draw
Delight in Art whose end is peace,
In logic and in natural law
By sucking at the dugs of Greece.

THE COLLECTION IN DANGER 113

Your open hand but shows our loss,
For he knew better how to live.
Let Paudeens play at pitch and toss,
Look up in the sun's eye and give
What the exultant heart calls good
That some new day may breed the best
Because you gave, not what they would
But the right twigs for an eagle's nest ! '*

Early in 1913 I was in America with the Abbey
Compan}^ Yeats wrote to me there teUing me
the Gallery matter was still urgent. He went
on : ''I dined with Gwynn last night at the
House of Commons, Hazleton, member for North
Galway, and several of the other Irish members
came up. One was lamenting that a Home Rule
Bill did not give a House of Lords. He was
interesting on the subject; he said, 'The towns
are hateful and it will be their influence if the
gentry go away. An honest man can be a dreamer
in the country, but a town dreamer is a loafer and
a drunkard.' Later on Devlin came up. They
were all excited about the Gallery, complained
they had not been told of its peril until the last
moment."

I had written to Hugh before leaving home in
December: "Is it to the beginning or end of
January that your offer holds ? If to the end I
would have a month to try for help in America,
if all else should fail."

And the letters that followed me there told me
of the increasing danger ; that nothing could be
done without more money towards the building,
that the time had all but run out when Hugh
would take his loan collection awav from Dublin.

114 A SITE FOR THE GALLERY

But^lio Citizens' Committee still needed some
thousands to make up the necessary sum for a
site and for their promised contribution.

I again begged him to stretch his patience a
little farther and he did so by degrees, at last as
far as to my birthday, the fifteenth of March.
I knew that Americans were generous, and especi-
ally towards Ireland, and would in all likelihood
help us. But I was bound to the business of the
Theatre, going here and there with the Company,
and it was difficult to make our need known. But
when we came to Chicago I spoke of it to those
kindly lads who came to see me from the news-
paper offices — one of them a nephew of my old
friend Chenery, the Editor of The Times — and
they were good in finding a place for what I said.
And I told some of the friends of our Theatre of
this anxiety about the Gallery, and spoke of it
at a matinee we gave to help the Citizens' Fund.
Before the end of January had come I wrote to
Yeats from Chicago : —

" I have used up a good deal of time and energy
trying to do something to save the pictures, and
after endless ejfforts at last, last night, got a few
men together to start a subscription list. I am
afraid it is rather late for much to come of it, but
even a small sum from abroad might set a good
example. We made about £200 by the matinee.
I will cable news of it."

And next day I added to the letter : " Oh,
my dear Willie, ' the help of God is nearer than the
door ' — and hardly had I put up my letter when the
telephone rang and said there w^ere gentlemen
doAvnstairs waiting for me, and there I found

AMERICAN HELP 115

nine or ten business-like people, Judge Cavanagh,
Judge McGowan, Mr. McCormack (just going to
receive three million dollars at his bank), IVIr. Ira
Morris, Mi\ Dillon (my old enemy), and others.
They listened to my few minutes' statement, all
said they would try and help, some had to go,
some stayed to lunch given by Mr. Morris, and
before lunch was over the cable was written
guaranteeing £1000, and more will certainly
follow, though I am sorry to be leaving to-night,
but of course my hopes are up. I am so relieved.
I had worked so hard and seemed to have done
nothing, but at last when those blessed men came
in and the spark was struck every one knew the
facts. The atmosphere was ready. ... I had
cabled to know how much is still wanted for the
Fund and had heard ' Four thousand,' which
is nothing ! "

And then from Philadelphia : " The Gallery
still first in my mind. Hugh cables that the
decisive meeting is to-morrow. I am still trying
for a little more American money, but not sure
of much, and this morning we had a consultation,
Company and I, and decided to cable guarantee
for £1000 inclusive of £180 already sent. I
guaranteed against personal payment and the}^
will work it out by Matinees, New York, Boston,
Dublin, London, Oxford, etc. I am sure you will
approve. It was very nice of them. . . .

^' Our last triumph, or chief one, in New York was
the conversion of Bourke Cochrane. I brought him
one night to the plays in the last week and he came
two other nights — says all the genius of Ireland
is in us — wants to make a public announcement

IIG A SITE FOR THE GALLERY

of his opinion — and is to give us a reception and
make a speech before we sail. He was less amiable
about the Gallery — which I had hoped he would
have helped — says it would do Dublin good if all
the pictures were sold at Christie's and they
found what they had lost. It was at a lunch at
Mrs. Guinness' s and she sided with him, and I
should have had a hard time but that Peter
Dunne (Mr. Dooley), to whom I will never forget
it, was not only kind but full of tact, and at last
proposed to Cochrane that he should see John
Quinn to-day, and they arranged to lunch with
him and he is to come and tell me by and by what
happened, but I am not very hopeful."

Then \^llen w^e came to Montreal we, the
Players and I, were asked by Mr. J. C. Walsh,
President of the St. Patrick's Society, to luncheon
at an Irish Club or gathering. And before the
lunch w^as over another cable had been sent to
the Lord Mayor guaranteeing another thousand
pounds.

And I wrote from Boston in March, before we
sailed for home : " We give a Matinee in New
York 22nd to clear off part of Gallery guarantee.
Mrs. Bourke Cochrane is to sell tickets and Avill give
tea on the stage after, and B. C. will then make
his speech — he has given £50 for the GaUery.
They asked me to dine on Sunday, so I set out
from Philadelphia on Friday night, travelled all
night, arrived here morning, did business at the
Plymouth Theatre and had interviewers for a
couple of hours, went back to New York Saturday
evening and back here Monday, rather tired, but
well content. For, after all mv vain efforts for

MRS. GARDNER'S PICTURES 117

the Galleiy, they had asked a young man, Mr. C,
to dinner to meet me who at the first mention of
it promised £1000 ! So I had a cable from the
Lord Mayor of DubUn : * You have worked wonders
for us, I do not know what we should have done
without your powerful advocacy. Ireland could
not afford to lose these pictures — that they shall
not be lost to Dublin is the one point as to which
I am concerned.' "

For the then Lord Mayor, Mr. Sherlock, was
a staunch friend to Hugh, as well as the present
Lord Mayor, Mr. Laurence O'Neill ; Miss Harrison,
in or out of the Corporation, was always a devoted
and tireless worker ; Alderman Foley also, and,
above all, Alderman Tom Kelly. But of those
whose minds suspicion had clouded there is no need
to give the names.

I was still anxious and I had written to Hugh
on my way home on board the Cymric, April 26 :
" The day I left Boston I thought I must have some
beautiful thing to remember, and I went to Mrs.
Gardner's ' palazzo 'and sat with her, just moving
from room to room to look at the pictures. She
told me to tell you how little help she had had, and
how much ingratitude and annoyance. And at
first the Boston people didn't care for the pictures,
used to ask to see her own rooms, but now they
are growing more intelligent. So Dublin has
comrades in ungraciousness."

Yeats had written while I was still away : —

" I saw Lane last night. I think all is right
for the Gallery largely through your success in
America, I believe. I wrote at his dictation a
long wire to Dublin stating the conditions on

118 A SITE FOR THE GALLERY

which he will hand over the pictures. He insists
on the river site — the Gallery to be put on a bridge
over the river close to Grattan Bridge. I, knowing
wo had not enough for this site, tried to get him
to accept a site opposite the new University, but
he is unshakable on the Bridge site. He wants
to put up a beautiful building in fine surroundings.
He says the most beautiful buildings would be
lost in front of the ugly architecture — ^he has seen
designs of the New University. He goes to Dublin
at end of week and will, I think, make over pictures
on the Corporation finally accepting Lutyens'
and the River site and will be content till the
money has been raised. The estimate for making
the Bridge Foundation is £12,000, but he thinks
it will cost more."

Hugh wrote : "It may be some satisfaction
to you to know that if the pictures are saved
to Dublin it is entirely owing to you and the
generosity of your American friends."

Want of money was no longer the stumbling
block. But already another difficulty had arisen.

I

CHAPTER XI

THE REMOVAL OF THE FRENCH PICTURES

Ihere had always been some who had looked
3oldly or with scorn on the scheme of a bridge
building, while some others, though allured by it,
'eared so dazzling an idea could never be brought
nto solid being. One of the letters sent to me
says, after putting the case for it, " but against
bhis is put the likelihood of serious engineering
iifficulties ; the damp situation and danger from
sffluvia ascending from the river, which is most
njurious to the paint in pictures, attacking the
iead in the paint." Lutj^ens, however, in his
report in favour of the bridge says of this danger,
"It is a question of fact that could be easily
proved," and asks to have the matter submitted
bo certain simple chemical tests. But there were
also ill-wishers who saw an opportunity to blast
the whole project. First in whisperings and then
in the newspapers accusations were made of the
sort to which " this man contributes his Malice,
another his Wit, all men what they please, and
most upon Hearsay." Yeats has written an
account of what took place in this vehement note
to his book " Responsibilities " : " During the
thirty years or so during which I have been reading
Irish newspapers, three public controversies have

119

120 REMOVAL OF FRENCH PICTURES

stirred my indignation. The first was the Parnell
controversy. There were reasons to justify a
man's joining either party, but there were none
to justify, on one side or on the other, lying accusa-
tions forgetful of past service, a frenzy of de-
traction. And another was the dispute over The
Playboy, There were reasons for opposing as for
supporting that violent laughing thing, but none
for the lies, for the unscrupulous rhetoric spread
against it in Ireland, and from Ireland to America.
The third prepared for the Corporation's refusal
of a building for Sir Hugh Lane's famous col-
lection of pictures.

" One could respect the argument that Dublin,
with much poverty and many slums, could not
afford the £22,000 the building was to cost the
city, but not the minds that used it. One frenzied
man compared the pictures to Troy horse which
' destroyed a city,' and innumerable correspon-
dents described Sir Hugh Lane and those who had
subscribed many thousands to give Dublin paint-
ings by Corot, Manet, Monet, Degas, and Renoir
as ' self seekers,' ' self advertisers,' ' picture
dealers,' ' log-rolling cranks and faddists ' ; and
one clerical paper told ' picture-dealer Lane ' to
take himself and his pictures out of that. A
member of the Corporation described a haK-hour
in the temporary Gallery in Har court Street as
the most dismal of his life. . . . Someone asked,
instead of these eccentric pictures, to be given
pictures ' like those beautiful productions dis-
played in the window^s of our city picture shops.'
Another thought that we would all be more
patriotic if we devoted our energy to fighting the

YEATS ON THE CONTROVERSY 121

[nsurance Act. Another would not hang them
in his kitchen, while yet another described the
vogue of French impressionist painting as having
^one to such a length among ' log-rolling en-
thusiasts ' that they even admired ' works that
were rejected from the Salon forty years ago by
bhe finest critics in the world.'

" The first serious opposition began in The Irish
Oatholic, the chief Dublin clerical paper ; and Mr.
W^illiam Murphy, Mr. Healy's financial supporter
n his attack upon Parnell, a man of great influence,
Drought to its support a few days later his news-
papers The Evening Herald and The Irish In-
iependent, the most popular of Irish daily papers.
He replied to my poem, ' To a Wealthy Man ' (I
ivas thinking of a very different wealthy man),
:rom what he described as ' Paudeen's point of
t^'iew,' and Paudeen's point of view it was. The
enthusiasm for ' Sir Hugh Lane's Corots ' — one
paper spelled the name repeatedly ' Grot ' — being
3ut an exotic fashion ' waited some satirist like
3rilbert,' who killed the aesthetic craze, and as
lOr the rest, ' there were no greater humbugs in
:he world than art critics and so-called experts.'
^.s the first avowed reason for opposition, the
lecessities of the poor got but a few lines, not so
many certainly as the objection of various persons
bo supply Sir Hugh Lane with ' a monument at
bhe City's expense ' ; and as the Gallery was
supported by Mr. James Larkin, the chief Labour
leader, and important slum workers, I assume
bhat the purpose of the opposition was not ex-
clusively charitable.

" These controversies — political, literary, and

122 REMOVAL OF FRENCH PICTURES

artistic — have showed that neither religion no
politics can of itself create minds with enoug
receptivity to become wise, or just and generous
enough to make a nation. Other cities have been
as stupid — Samuel Butler laughs at shocked
Montreal for hiding the ' Discobolus ' in a cellar —
but Dubhn is the capital of a nation, and an
ancient race has no place else to look for an educa-
tion. Goethe, in * Wilhelm Meister,' describes
a saintly and naturally gracious woman, who
getting into a quarrel over some trumpery detail
of religious observance grows — she and all her little
religious community — angry and vindictive. In
Ireland I am constantly reminded of that fable,
of the futility of all discipline that is not of the
whole being. Religious Ireland — and the pious
Protestants of my childhood w^ere signal examples
— ^thinks of divine things as a round of duties
separated from life, and not as an element that
may be discovered in all circumstances and
emotions ; w^hile political Ireland sees the good
citizen, but as a man who holds to certain opinions
and not as a man of good will. Against all this
we have but a few educated men and the remnants
of an old traditional culture among the poor. Both
were stronger forty years ago, before the rise of
our new middle class, which showed as its first
public event during the nine years of the ParnelHte
split, how base at moments of excitement are
minds without culture."

When I talked with Yeats of writing this book
he was insistent that all the truth about him he
called that " bitter-tongued man " should be put
down, I reminded him of Plutarch's counsel to

i

UNWORTHY METHODS 123

beware how we speak ill of the dead, '* and so
make immortal enemies." And I said, " I have
here a letter written to me at the time by one of
Hugh's best friends and supporters, who says,
' I don't wonder at your being upset and mortified
— as indeed we all are — at the action of the Dublin
Corporation in regard to the princely gift of your
nephew. The sad part of it all is that I really
don't believe the Corporation would have acted
as they did but for the unaccountable part which
Mr. Murphy played in the transaction, and the
intensity of his opposition throughout. Those
who know him assure me that he was not actuated
by personal or unworthy motives, but honestly
believed he was speaking in the interests of
Dublin.' " " Yes," said Yeats, " I am ready to
admit that, but what I object to are the methods
he used, and the unworthy attacks. And you see
even in that letter the writer says, ' I confess I
find it hard to beheve.' But whatever he thought,
no man has a right to use such methods."

The other day, in Dublin, I went to see Sir

to tell him how the matter of the pictures

stands ; of the breaking off of the discussion in
the Cabinet, and of the word spoken by one of the
Trustees to Sir John Lavery.

Someone who was listening said then, "I think
Sir Hugh Lane's face was the most beautiful
I have ever seen." We talked a little of his
treatment in Dublin and I said I rejoiced that it
had been outdone in ungraciousness in London,
and to this they, hke Mr. Birrell, agreed. Another
said how fine the Bridge design had been, and our
host said, " But for Murphy there would never have

124 REMOVAL OF FRENCH PICTURES

been that trouble." The first Avho had spoken
said, " Yet I beUeve his opinion was sincere, that
is an excuse." But he said, " No, that is no
excuse, it is no excuse for him that he formed an
opinion on a matter on which he was entirely
ignorant, and that was the value of the pictures.
He knew nothing about it at all." And then he
said how splendidly the National Galler}^ had been
emiched by Hugh's gifts and his bequests.

The opposition went on growing through the
spring and summer. In March Yeats wrote : " I
am afraid there will be a great deal of opposition,
some of it genuine, to this particular site. The
Arts Club is in a most quarrelsome state ; eveiy-
body wants a different site and hates everybody
else as a result." And I wTote later, after my
return from America : ''I am not veiy happy
about the Gallery, there are constant letters in
the papers about it and hardly any one seems
really enthusiastic for the Bridge site. And I am
not really sure m^^self it would be good. I had
forgotten the Liffey w^as so small till I drove across
Dublin the morning I came. Lut3^ens seemed to
be fairly well pleased with the Mansion House as
an alternative, and I said something about this
when writing to Hugh, but he answered that
Dublin w^ants a good building even more than the
pictures, and the Mansion House w^ouldn't give
scope. But I don't think the Lord Mayor wdll
hold out about it, there are so many against it.
And I am in terror of Hugh losing his temper and
spoiling all he has done."

And again : " Things look bad. I have written
to Hugh about Merrion Square site, but expect a

THE NEED OF PATIENCE 125

violent refusal. I am more anxious about his
reputation than the pictiu'es, and hope the
Corporation will put themselves altogether in the
wrong by going on with opposition to Lutyens."
And to Hugh I wrote : '' The papers make one in-
dignant about the Gallery, and it is hard to have
patience with the carping group, and still one has
to be oneself and not disappoint those who
believe in you. I am very anxious about Mon-
day's meeting. I suppose as Lutyens seems
fairly content with the Mansion House site you
will agree to that if necessary. My own feeling
is that whatever you wish ought to be done in
recognition of what you are doing for Dublin,
but I suppose there may have to be a compromise,
you of course holding on to Lutyens. As I drove
past the Parnell statue yesterday I remembered
that opportunity was not given to an Irish sculptor,
but to St. Gaudens. As Yeats says in a letter I
am giving in my Theatre history, * I will not feed
my country's stomach at the expense of its brains.' "

And again: " 'Looking from things visible to
things invisible,' that is what has given us power,
you, and John, and I myself to do anything at all
— we have to think of the invisible witnesses."

But Hugh wrote in return: '*A building will
take about two years to build, and from the late
(and in fact the constant) experience I have had
of the Corporation's ways, I feel that the only
thing that would enable me to go through with
the project would be the thought of a beautiful
building to recompense one. . . . You never
seem to mind much how bad the scenery or
costumes (or wigs !) of your plays are, but I feel

K

126 REMOVAL OF FRENCH PICTURES

that tho importance of a proper setting is quite
as important as the pictures. ... I am trying
a ' Hypnotic ' treatment for nerves, twenty
guineas first week, and two guineas for every
half-hour after that, but it has done me no good
so far."

His patience was hardly tried. He wrote to
me again, putting his case : —

" August 15, 1913. If the pictures are removed
at the end of six weeks (from the first of August),
the only thing that I will have to regret is that I
did not keep m}^ earlier threats of removing them
and thereby saving every one a lot of trouble
and annoyance.

" A committee was formed with the consent
of the Corporation to choose a site. They chose
the river site. The Corporation on the 19th March
passed the river site. Lutyens then came over
and made his design and becomes daily more
enthusiastic on it, and does not w^ant to consider
an^^ other.

** The opposition to the project is entirely got
up by the anti-galleryites, who would have done
just the same thing over the St. Stephen's Green
or Merrion Square sites.

** I refuse the Merrion Square site. I have told
them that if I am offered the Mansion House site
I will give them my Barbizon pictures and all
the recently acquired British pictures. It w^ill
be a second-rate building (at the back of the
Mansion House) and therefore a second-rate
collection is quite good enough for it.

'* I am worse than useless personally. If you
will ask a doctor what an advanced state of

DEPRESSION 127

neurasthenia means, you will understand that
one's fighting days are over.

** I was going to open up the question of St.
Stephen's Green again, when I received your
enclosure from Lady Ardilaun, this seemed to
close that site. If it can be got instead of the
Bridge site within the time I shall of course be
satisfied."

I sometimes asked for sympathy as well as
gave it. Writing from London, I said: " I feel
your troubles are nothing beside mine ! The
Manets don't turn and rend you, and the hall
porter anyhow is grateful for a means of living —
at least I hope so. Anyhow, I am at the end of
my strength and must go. I may have to come
back for a few days later, and, of course, would
come here or go to Dublin, or go anywhere that
would help the Gallery, which seems to me the
one bright and restful result of all our labours in
Ireland. Of course if we turned the Abbe}^ into
a music hall and you turned the Gallery into a
picture palace all would go easity, but we are
' image-makers,' and must carry out our dreams.
But we need much patience sometimes ! "

He writes : " I am ver^^ sorry to hear that you
are ill. Goodness knows you have worked. Your
wonderful combination of gifts has carried through
what you have set out to do. I, with my one talent
of ' taste,' should never have attempted to work
in Ireland."

Yeats was writing to me in increasing indigna-
tion. " I think the dislike to the Gallery can
only come from fear of culture, which was described
by a man — ^who is, I believe, on the staff of the New

128 REMOVAL OF FRENCH PICTURES

University — as ' the enemy of faith and morals,'
at least I am told that was his description. All
the Irish orthodoxies — political and religious —
are at this moment in fear of a dissolvent."

He wrote again from London in July : "I made
a good speech on Monday. Lane was anxious
about some vote coming on in Dublin that day, but
I know nothing, of course, of what has happened.
I spoke with him quite as much as the possible
subscribers in my mind. I described Ireland, if the
present intellectual movement failed, as ' a little
huxtering nation groping for halfpence in a greasy |
till,' but did not add, except in thought, ' by the
light of a holy candle.' "

And in August : " I have just seen a paragraph
y in the Morning Post in which the Lord Mayor

states that he believes the Gallery project is at
an end, as the Corporation will not accept an
English architect. It is lamentable, but I would
sooner it failed because of this than anything else.
If it had been Lane's insistence on a bridge site
it would have put him in a bad light. I think if
the bad news is true, and if nothing can be done
— if it is quite certain the thing is over — we must
insist on the principle of a great connoisseur being
free to choose where he will. I do not want to say
anything now because, of course, I would sooner,
have the pictures in a barn than not at all, but if
it is finished we must make as good a statement]
as we can for the sake of the future. Ireland, like
a hysterical woman, is principle mad and is ready
to give up reality for a phantom like the dog inj
the fable."

For the sharpest opposition was now directed I

A FINE POEM 129

against the employment of Sir E. Lutyens, for no
reason save that of alien birth, just as one of the
causes that years ago brought to naught Newman's
planned Catholic University, was the objection
to his having chosen one or two professors who
were English. And that reason was but half
valid in our case, for Lutyens had an Irish mother.
More than any rebuff to himself, Hugh felt this
ungracious rejection of his friend.

Those vehement words of Yeats in his speech
had made the foundation of a fine poem. He gave
it to the Irish papers, although he wrote : "It is
not so appropriate now, as the Corporation are
appealing to a hysterical patriotism to escape, I
suppose, from a position Murphy has made difficult.
I had not thought I could feel so bitterly over any
public event."

" What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence,
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone ;
For men were born to pray and save,
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

" Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save ;
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone.
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

*' Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide ;
For this that all that blood- was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,

130 REMOVAL OF FRENCH PICTURES

And Robert Knimot and Wolfo Tone,
All that delirium of the brave ;
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Lcary in the grave.

*' Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were.
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry ' some women's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son ; '
They weighed so lightly what they gave —
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave."

For all this time, although there was enough
money in hand, or all but enough, the building
of a Gallery seemed as far as ever away. Meetings
of the Corporation were held, but brought it no
nearer. It was said, and I am afraid it was true,
that the opponents put in agendas for the sole
purpose of making a decision impossible. At last
at one of these meetings several of the members,
to block the business and make a decision im-
possible, stayed outside the door. They got their
wa3^ and at another meeting the Bridge site was
abandoned, and the City architect was dnected
to make estimates for another. And then Hugh,
who was waiting for news in England, was invited
to come and talk things over.

He came, indeed, but passionately indignant,
less I think at the defeat than at the unworthy
methods by which it had been brought about, he
came to take down the French pictures, his
conditional gift, from the walls on which he had
hung them in Harcourt Street.

I think, and others say, that had he been in
Dublin all would have yet gone well. Even

THE CORPORATION MEETING 131

Alderman Tom Kelly, who though he had worked
for him " in season and out of season," went
against him at the last upon this question of
Irish birth, said afterwards, "If he had stayed
here with us all would have been right." And I
believe that he who had so often in his public
work kept great civility and good nature and had
showed himseK a *' Master of Temper " under
outrageous personal accusations, would have won
over with more frequent companionship that
fractious part of the Corporation. But incivility
in written words is harsher than in the spoken
word, and his patience would no longer stand
against " the Ebbs and Flows of Popular Councils
and the Winds that move those Waters," and that
were sending his plans that seemed so near accom-
plishment to wreck.

He had asked me to go to Dublin when the
meeting of the Corporation that was to decide
the matter was coming on, and I did so, but
finding what was its temper I could do little but
attend it as an onlooker. A friend of his. Miss
Swan, told me the other day that she had been
staying at the Reeves' country house with him
at the time of the decision. He was anxious and
told them he had left it in my hands. " And if
she cannot get it nobody can." Then my telegram
came saying I had failed. I asked if he was very
much cast down and she said, " Yes, but I think
he had still hope."

I wrote to him a few days later ; "I haven't
written since the meeting. For one thing I made
a dash for home, and drove on a car from Athenry,
and rain came on, and between that and the

132 REMOVAL OF FRENCH PICTURES

exasperating days in Dublin I was quite knocked
up with cold and headache. ... I am glad in a
way I was at that meeting. It took away some
bitterness, the aldermen were so far from any
understanding of what was offered and what the
gift would mean to the country. It is not their
fault, it is the fault of the system that puts our
precious things into the hands of a democracy.
I am pretty sure English corporations are much
on the same level. One said the ' Beheading of
John the Baptist ' was ' a travesty ' ; another
that Irish artists could paint pictures like that if
they liked ; some one quoted what I had said
about the appreciation of those pictures in America,
and Alderman Quaid said, ' She's his aunt, a
family affair — a family affair," and another said
Lutyens' design was an exact replica of a picture
of a bridge he had seen somewhere. But it is not
for them we went to work, but for the young
generation, and with the desire of giving dignity
to the name of Ireland for the sake of all those we
have cared for who have belonged to this unlucky
country. I am afraid it wiU become a laughing
stock now for a while, we shall all suffer for the
stupidity of a few."

And in other letters I wrote : " One has only ■
to go ploughing on, ploughing on, knowing that
some day or other our work will be recognised,
though not probably in my lifetime." And then
again : '' Your letter is rather a heartbreak. You
could hardly say anything about Dublin that I
could not cap ! And if you have had ingratitude,
have I not had a threatening letter with a picture
of a coffin from a countryman while in Chicago ?

A REAL HEARTBREAK 133

. . . But one must go straight on, that is all I
have learned from life so far. ' Even a fool, if
he continue in his folly, shall be counted wise.'
If you knew how I hate ' Playboy ' that I go out
fighting for ! And all for the sake of this un-
fortunate country that doesn't think it possible
for any one to walk in a straight line."

He wrote on September 27 : "I have been very
busy hanging pictures here (in Belfast). ... I am
always anxious to get out of Ireland. My early
romantic notion of it was got in my childhood in
Galway, and I am now so completely disillusioned
that I don't want to be reminded of those early
happy days. As soon as the London N.G. has hung
my pictures I will be off to Cape Town. The Lord
Mayor is taking me to a review of the Ulster
Volunteers this afternoon ! "

Again, " I am too ill to do anything more for
this horrible country where one can only collect
advice ! "

And I answered: "It is a real heartbreak.
I am very sad, and ashamed of our country — or
one should say Dublin. The ungraciousness of it
all ! I am glad you are going to the Cape. . . .

'* I hope with all my heart you will sell the collec-
tion at Christie's — it will be the best object lesson.
' He came unto His own and His own received Him
not.' I keep thinking of that, and of all you have
gone through. One looks beyond present sur-
roundings to the ' cloud of witnesses,' but it is
hard to keep patience sometimes. ... It is like
a death, one keeps thinking 'is it possible that
hope is dead and gone ? ' I am trying not to
cry!

134 REMOVAL OF FRENCH PICTURES

" You aro one of the ' I mage- makers,' and
you have done more for the future than any
one else. Our Theatre will pass away before
your pictures."

I find quoted in a letter to Yeats much later —
during the war — a passage with something the
same thought : "I have just to-day got Rolland's
' Au dessus de la Melee.' It begins : ' A great
people assailed by war has not only its frontiers
to defend ; it has also its reason. It must be
saved from the hallucinations, the injustice, the
follies flung up b}^ the flail. To every one his
office ; to the armies to guard the country's soil ;
to men who think, to defend its thought. If they
put it in the service of the passions of their people
it may be they will be of use, but they run the
risk of betraying the mind (esprit) which is not
the least part of the heritage of this people.'
Does not that apply to all om^ long struggles in
Ireland ? "

I think " the young generation " understands
these matters now, and that at least Synge's name
and Hugh's are held in honour. New Ireland has
told that Pearse some time before his death had
said he was sorry he had ever opposed The
Playboy ; and I wrote last summer : " On
Wednesday I was sitting in the Abbey Theatre
watching the rehearsal of The Saint when the
author, a Sinn Fein M.P., came in and sat beside
me. I asked if he had been waiting much, and he
said, ' Only when I am in prison.' He said he had
been chained to De Valera as they were taken to
the gaol. I told him my symjpathies went a long
way with his friends, ' but,' I said, ' such is the

HE MAKES HIS WILL 135

irony of Fate, I am praying for the health of Sir
Edward Carson, because he is taking up the matter
of the return of Hugh Lane's pictures to Ireland.'
' Then,' he said, ' we must all pray for his health ;
for I found when I was living in Paris the thing
bhat seemed to interest the French in Ireland more
than any other thing was the possession of those
pictures by Dublin. They would say, Is it
really true that Dublin holds that great coUec-
bion ? "

He said also (and this is what Hugh himself
caight have said), " Is it not a great burden this
:eeling that drags us back to Ireland. I was so
lappy in Paris and in Brittany, but that force
brought me back to a troublesome life. It is so
^vith De Valera also, who hates politics and wants
jO begin building, and feels the long separation from
lis wife." I said all of us workers knew the Hill
Difficulty and the Slough of Despond. Did not
Eugh also leave the open doors of pleasant houses
[or a fight that was all the harder because it was
^ith his own countrymen ?

But it is no wonder that Hugh suffered sharp
brouble of mind under the defeat and the dis-
3ourtesy. Had not I myself in a moment's
bitterness given my opinion that the best thing
w^ould be to sell the pictures by auction and
let those ungracious enemies know by this the
^alue of what had been lost.

He was ill, he was about to go into the
surgeon's hands, and on October 11, 1913 — less
bhan a month after that disastrous Corporation
meeting, and in a resentment that was natural —
made his new will. In it, having left a few

130 REMOVAL OF FRENCH PICTURES J

thousand pounds and some keepsakes to family
and friends, he says : ''I bequeath m}^ Sargent
portrait, the modern pictures now being shown in
Belfast, and any modern pictures of merit (John
drawings, etc.) that I possess, to the Dublin
Gallery of Modern Art, other than the group of
pictures lent by me to the London National
Gallery, which I bequeath to found a collection
of Modern Continental Art.

" I bequeath the remainder of my property
to the National Gallery of Ireland (instead of to
the Modern Art Gallery which I considered so
important for the founding of an Irish school of
painting) to be invested, and the income to be
spent on buying pictures of deceased painters of
established merit. I hope this alteration from
the Modern Gallery to the National Gallery will
be remembered by the Dublin Municipality and
others as an example of its want of public spirit
in the year 1913, and of the folly of such bodies
assuming to decide on questions of Art instead
of relying on expert opinion."

Even now I sometimes hear idle clamour
against him among some who have seldom spent
but on themselves. " He ought to have made
his brothers and sisters rather than the Galleries
rich." I wonder if there were, in like manner,
carping voices when Caesar's will was read. For
it often happens that what a man has taught and
lived seems to be broken from in that last settle-
ment of life's affairs ; William Morris's disciples
have spoken sorrowfully of this. And I am proud
that Hugh has carried on his life work over the
borders of death.

"POEMS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION" 137

And yet, as one of his friends has written,
" while he endowed his country with all his great
treasures of art he also remembered to leave
trinkets to children he was fond of, and fifty
pounds to an old friend to buy a horse. This
will help to explain why his death which was a
European loss was also a bitter personal grief to
many an obscure simple man."

I went back to my tree-planting at Coole ;
and Yeats went on through that September
making those noble and indignant " Poems written
in dejection " that will always help to keep
Hugh's work and name in mind. The first has for
title, ''To a Shade," the shade of Parnell —

" If you have visited the town, thin Shade,
Whether to look upon your monument
(I wonder if the builder has been paid)
Or happier thoughted when the day is sj^^nt
To drink of that salt breath out of the sea
When grey gulls fly about instead of men,
And the gaunt houses put on majesty :
Let these content you, and begone again :
For they are at their old tricks yet.

'' A man
Of your own passionate serving kind, who had brought
In his full hands what, had they only known,
Had given their children's children loftier thought,
Sweeter emotion, working in their veins
Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place,
And insult heaped upon him for his pains,
And for his open-handedness, disgrace :
An old foul mouth that once cried out on you
Herding the pack.

" Unquiet wanderer
Draw the Glasnevin coverlet anew
About your head till the dust stops your ear.

138 KEMOVAL OF FRENCH PICTURES

Tlio timo for you to taste of tli<at salt breath
And listen at the corners has not come,
You had enough of sorrow before death —
Away, away ! You are safer in the tomb."

This he has called " Paudeen " —

" Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spito
Of our old Paudeen in his shoj^, I stumbled blind
Among the stones and thorn trees, under morning light,
Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind
A curlew answered, and I was startled by the thought
That on the lonely height where all are in God's eye,
There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,
A single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry."

And this is to Hugh, to " A Friend whose Work
has come to Nothing " —

" Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat.
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbour's eyes ;
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult.
Because of all things known
That is most difficult."

It was with all this in mind I spent a while
in the Gallery the other day, looking at the pictures
given in remembrance of Hugh, and those given
by him. One of the caretakers recognised me.
He spoke of Hugh, how he had loved that Gallery.

" He worked harder than anv of us. He would

HOW HE IS REMEMBERED 139

be moving pictures and iianging and shifting them
till far into the night ; he never would ask any one
to do what he would not do himself. He never
spared himself, and if he went out for lunch or
his dinner, he wouldn't take as long at it as you'd
be drinking a cup of tea.

" I know he was sorry to take the French
pictures away. For every other day he would
have a smile for us, but on that day when he was
taking them down his face was all sadness.

"It's a great pity they didn't let him build
in Stephen's Green ; there's room enough, and,
above all, where he wanted it, where the rockery
is that is of no use to any one,

'' He was very happy the day Mr. Asquith
and his family and Mr. Birrell came here. They
stopped forty minutes. I could hear his laugh
on that day.

"It is wonderful what insight Sir Hugh had,
there would be a heap of pictures sent here for
him to look at that I, knowing nothing about it,
would have jumped at. But with one look he
would say they were to be taken away.

" With flowers, too, he was wonderful. He
would put them in so quick, and they would look
just as if they were growing in the bowl. But
when I would take them out to put in fresh water
I never could make them look like that.

" There was something going on upstairs — I
forget what it was — and some speeches- made,
and he called to us to come up ; that was kind of
him, he thought it might amuse us.

" Often upstairs, and in this room, he would
put a paper into my hand and would bid me to

140 REMOVAL OF FRENCH PICTURES

sit down and read it, that 1 would be tired with so
much standing. He was very gentle. Too gentle
nearly for a man.

" We have a hundred people coming here every
day, more than three thousand in the year, that
is more than goes to the National Gallery.

" We had a great many students that had
joined the army during the war, they would come
from morning till night, and many of them would
say the pictures in EngHsh Galleries were rubbish
beside these. And a gentleman that came several
times said that the Louvre in Paris is better, but
he wouldn't say there's any other Gallery that is.
I am sure Sir Hugh was fonder of this than of the
National Gallery to the end."

And a friend tells me that as she stood looking
at the Sargent portrait one day she listened to
like praises. " You had a loss not to have known
him, for there never was any man that ever I
knew like him. He never thought of himself ;
it was always for others he was thinking and
working. And he w^as so good to the poor, he
was so good to me, and when he'd see poor people
especially looking at the pictures, he'd leave
whatever he was doing, and he'd go round the
Gallery and tell them all about the pictures and
explain things to them.

" And there was no pride in him. There's
people who wouldn't like to be seen carrying a
small parcel, but Sir Hugh was that good he
wouldn't care what he carried. Many's the time
I've seen him carrying up from the Club or some
place a picture, and he'd come in and he'd say,
' Another little gift for the Gallery.'

HOW HE IS REMEMBERED 141

" I'm always thinking of him, he loved this
3lace ; ah, it's a pity you didn't know him. And
tvhen he'd be talking to you he'd always look
straight at you, but his eyes were very sad, sadder
}han what they are there. I could say no words
yood enough for Sir Hugh if I was talking the
ivhole day."

CHAPTER XII

THE JOHANNESBURG GALLERY

In 1909 Hugh Lane " brought together the col-
lection of modern paintings in the Johannesburg
Municipal Gallery." We in Ireland best remember
this by a sentence written to Mr. Thomas Bodkin,
when he gave up buying for it : "I find that one
cannot buy for two Galleries (the same sort of
thing), as I want all the bargains for Dublin."

I find in a note of mine written at that time :
" I lunched with the Lionel Phillips at Beit House.
Mrs. Phillips is quite ready to start the Johannes-
burg Gallery with Hugh's help. He has already
persuaded her to buy three of Steer's pictures as
a beginning. ' I didn't want to, but he told me
to, and I hadn't any money, but I found a little
sum I had forgotten and bought them.' She is
going to get mone^^ from other milUonaires,
£50,000 if she can. She says ver}^ sensibly, ' When
there is a man like Mr. Lane to be had, one should
use him.' "

When I was in London in October, 1919, Mrs.
Norman Grosvenor came to see me, and knowing
that Hugh had written her name in a catalogue
he had sent her as " the godmother of the Johan-
nesburg Gallery," we talked about it. Lady
Phillips had first thought of building a Galler}^ to

112

LADY PHILLIPS 143

bo filled with loans from English museums, of
ancient craftsmanship as well as pictures. But
she found there would have been legal difficulties
in getting such loans. So then her thoughts
turned towards a collection of pictures by old
masters. Mr. Beit had promised her to spend
£10,000 in gifts for such a Gallery if it could be
provided, but he remembered that his brother
had given a fine collection of casts to South Africa,
and they had been left in packing cases for want
of such a home. I asked Mrs. Grosvenor how she
had gained the name of '' godmother," and she
said she had been staying with Lady Phillips in
Hampshire, " and she talked of pictures and said
she would like to found a Johannesburg Gallery
if she knew how to go about it. I told her I knew
the man who could best help her in that — Hugh
Lane — and she asked me to telegraph him an
invitation. He came in the afternoon, and at
once he told her it would be a mistake to try and
fill such a Gallery as she wished for with pictures
by old masters ; there are but a few of the best
to be had, and the price of these is enormous.
He pressed for a modern Gallery for the work of
living men. She said she didn't like modern
paintings, that they did not interest her. But
before nightfall she had promised him to come
next day to London, to see on its first daj^'s
opening an exhibition of Steer's pictures."

I had heard also that she pleaded that she was
not ready to buy pictures at once, that the Gallery
had yet to be founded, and must take money and
time, and that then Hugh had said (as one feels
certain he did say), *' Sell this fine house and its

144 THE JOHANNESBURG GALLERY

surroundings, and use the money to make a great
Gallery." But that was not possible had she
wished it, for they belonged to her husband, and
he had returned to South Africa.

Next morning, Mrs. Grosvenor said, they all
set out for London and went straight to the
Goupil Gallery, where the pictures were being
shown. Lady Phillips did not at first appreciate
them, she, as Hugh himself had been a few years
before, was out of sympathy with modern art.
But whether from growing admiration of the
paintings or from Hugh's urgency, or the fear
that he w^ould, if disappointed, lose his interest
in the matter, and she would be left without his
help, she made a sudden resolve. She would sell
her blue diamond (for that, as I am told was the
'' little sum she had forgotten ") and buy the first
pictures for the dream-galler}^

" He left Goupil's before us," said Mrs. Gros-
venor, " and I passed him at the end of the street
and stopped the cab to ask him to come back with
me to lunch. He refused, and I said, * You must
be tired.' ' Tired ! ' he said, ' I am running all
over with perspiration ! ' "

It was announced in the evening papers that
Mr. Steer's great landscape '* Corfe Castle," with
his " Limekiln " and " A Chelsea Window^ " had
been bought for South Africa.

That was a battle won with more than the
sweat of his brow, and I take pride in his all-
conquering intensity. Though sometimes that
insistent parochial voice in me murmurs Sars-
field's last words at Landen, " Would that this had
been for Ireland ! " as I ponder on what such a

" OUTLANDERS " 145

blue diamond might have wrought in our own
city by the Liffey.

Then later Hugh, in the autumn of 1910,
had gone out to Johannesburg to give what help
he could to Lady Phillips in her efforts that were
akin to his own. There were troubles there also,
not unlike those of Dublin, about the choice of
an architect. The committee wanted some one
belonging to South Africa. Yet, when none of the
designs satisfied those most concerned, they
decided that a beautiful building w ould be of such
value to the country that whatever man could
best bring it into buing should be chosen. And
so they took Hugh's advice to call in Lutyens.
He was in Rome v.hen the telegram came, and
hesitated for a moment, but then accepted — *' What
fun it will be ! " — and Johannesburg is proud now
of his beautiful building.

Their country gained more than this by their
brave humility in looking outside their own
borders for a skill and knowledge greater than
was to be found within them. For largely through
that action South Africa of to-day has her own
architect to take pride in, and the noble design
for the great Cape Town University has been made
by one of her own sons, who, still young, might
even now be struggling towards the mastery he has
attained to were it not for the influence, the help
and friendship of those two '* outlanders " brought
to Johannesburg, Hugh Lane and Edwin Lutyens.

Hugh would call out sometimes impatiently
that all had been done so easily in South Africa,
as he fretted at the long Dublin delays. I had
written this at some troublesome moment to Mr.

14G THE JOHANNESBURG GALLERY

Bailey, and be answered, " Your letter and
enclosure filled me with concern. There is so
much in Hugh Lane's objection that no one has
been able to do much to force the Gallery on here.
The political situation is partly responsible, as
people's minds are diverted to so many things.
South Africa is now in the position of ' building
up.' We are in the fluid and formative state,
and to one so full of his subject as Hugh Lane,
that does not explain the difficulties sufficiently.
If one had a Government that would help us as
in South Africa, it would be all right, but there
we are ! "

" Full of his subject ! " That, indeed, he was.
I thought of him just now as I read in a review
by Mr. Birrell : "It has been shrewdly said that
w^hen the Almighty wants anything reall;y done.
He creates a man or woman foolish enough to
believe that if the thing were done all w^ould be
well with the world." And as to that Divine
foolishness, was it not in Johannesburg that it
was said by one of his own near kin, " I can't
think what any one can see in Hugh — he is such a
fool ! "

Soon after my talk with Mrs. Grosvenor, I
went to see Sir Edwin Lutyens at his office. He
was soon to go out to India, where he is making
the Delhi Memorial, and business calls by knock
at door, or ring of telephone, hardly ceased. But
for Hugh's sake he sat and talked with me for a
while. I asked how Hugh had lived out there,
if he had felt astray in that strange atmosphere.
But he said, " No, he brought his own atmos-
phere." In the mornings he enjoyed his leisure

HUGH AT JOHANNESBURG 147

at the Phillips' hospitable house, lying under
mosquito curtains — a luxury of the imagination,
for no mosquitoes came — *' smoking cigarettes and
reading news cuttings." For in no rummaging
behind shop-counters could even his eyes discern
any old masterpiece in Johannesburg. And he
had pictures to hang, he talked and persuaded,
he was angry with his friend for his proneness to
treat lightly the serious committees, for making
a play -game of attending them, not treating them
as solemn assemblies. " I never could look on
them as serious things." Hugh's own lau;:liing
time was not when business had to be got through,
the laughter and the gaiety came on the way
home, on shipboard. The architect, for all his
bubbling jests, had made a noble temple for the
"Corfe Castle," the ** Limekiln," and ** A Chelsea
Window." That was Lutyens' firstborn picture
gallery, beautiful in the design he showed me.

They sparred and quarrelled and made friends
again, there at Johannesburg and later in London,
and had their merry plans, Hugh telling him he
must design for him one day a room with twelve
panels, in which should be placed twelve por-
traits of that never-to-be wife of the future, by
twelve separate artists. Mancini would surely
have been one, and Sargent, and Orpen who
had painted his sister's head so finely, and Steer,
and Kelly, and Charles Shannon, and Augustus
John. And then perhaps that shadowy wife
would have come by degrees to the water-shed of
life, and its descent, each new generation of
painters adding grey to the brown and white to
the bleaching head.

148 THE JOHANNESBURG GALLERY

And amidst these soaring ideas Lutyens had
been taken to dine at that favourite httle Chelsea
restaurant, and when they had eaten the three
scanty courses, and Hugh had asked him to admire
the meagre dinner, " So wonderful for eighteen
pence," he had cried out. " Yes, wonderful !
Let's have it over again ! " And he used to declare
that when he sent a telegram with prepaid answer,
Hugh would come on foot bringing the answer, to
save the sixpence for another time.

But now that Hugh is gone, he tells how kind
he was and liberal and straight in business, a
trafficker in pictures, but never making money
out of his friends. And he speaks also of his love
of Ireland, and says his heart was there, and he
always meant to bring back the French pictures,
and did but make use of London " as threat for
Dublin."

And while Sir Edwin talked, he was fingering
the drawing he had made for a tablet to be put
up to his lost friend.

At Christie's I made the acquaintance of an
old man, knowledgeable in pictures, who said he
well remembered Hugh and his wonderful instinct,
that discerning sight that is as mysterious to
common men as is the power of the desert man
of Arabia to see the constellations at noonday.
And he told me that Hugh had been wise, and
had gained knowledge in South Africa, and of a
time when he had given him good counsel.

There had been a sale in Holland, a collec-
tion had been broken up, and some of the pictures
had come to London, and, " escaping Christie's,"
had been held for awhile. Berlin wanted them,

A VERY WISE HEAD 149

saw them, bought them, but the money could not
be paid until the Kaiser gave his consent, and I
know not for what reason, this he could not be
brought to do. Then Berlin tried to go back
from the bargain, but the English owner refused.
The bargain had been made, the pictures had been
held, there was no breaking it ; still the Kaiser
hardened his heart, and at last, that his country
might not be shamed, some rich German brought
the money, £20,000. But then he asked that
they might be sold again, he did not want to keep
or to make a gift of them. " Then I said to myself,
* Hugh Lane is my man ! ' I sent for him and I
said, ' Would not these be a great thing for some
South African millionaire to buy ? He could hang
them in his dining-room and point to them and
say, boasting, " Those are the pictures the Kaiser
could not afford to buy, but I bought them ! " '
But Hugh Lane said, ' No, you will not find an
African millionaire to do that. He would not
think it neighbourly.' And I saw that was quite
true, for there is a comradeship of feeling between
the rich men of South Africa and of Germany.
He had a very wise head."

CHAPTER XIII

THE COLLECTION FOR CAPE TOWN

In November, 1912, Hugh had written to me
from DubHn : "I have to return to London at
latest next Monday, and I must use my remaining
strength on finishing my South African work.
It is a great satisfaction to me to have created
an ' Old Master ' Gallery for a Continent that
wants one so badly."

And in May, 1913, he wrote : " We look for-
ward to the 31st, your coming. ... I am franti-
cally busy on the Cape Town Gallery Exhibition
which opens the da}^ after to-morrow."

I had written some months before : "I am
really glad that South African scheme is coming
ojBf, for when you were buying the pictures I
asked you if there was any real prospect of it,
and you said none, except that you usually found
when you made up your mind a thing ought to
be done, that somehow it was done in the end ;
and this is good s^ngury for the Gallery in
Dublin."

Mr. Solomon has thus written of this in a
South African paper : "It was General Smuts
who first inspired in him the desire to make
a collection of Old Dutch masters for South

liO

THE DEMIDOFF REMBRANDT 151

Africa, and together we conspired to get our
South African magnates to start a National Art
Collection Fund, which might pm'chase works
over a period of years. When at the end of 1911
I went to stay with Sir Hugh in London, he had
added to his own collection a completely repre-
sentative collection of Dutch and Flemish seven-
teenth-century masters, which, by a great and
unique act of generosity, Mr. Max Michaelis
decided to present to the land where he had
acquired his wealth, and so for ever link it with
the great European centres of Art. South Africa
thus became possessed of one of the choicest collec-
tions of its size and kind in the world. The debt
this country owes Lane is incalculable. He pushed
forward the boundaries of Art into the Southern
Hemispheres, and by his genius brought a light
into the life of our land which Eternity alone can
extinguish."

I was at Lindsey House after the pictures for
Cape Town had been acquired by Mr. Michaelis,
and I was sad to think of one of them, the
Rembrandt, going overseas. Of all his pictures
it was the one I cared most for. Often when I
came back late from the Court Theatre I would
go into the drawing-room where it hung just to
look at its radiant serenity, the " continual
comfort " in that face. It has been known and
was famous as " the Demidoff Rembrandt." The
highest price ever given for a Dutch picture was
said to have been once given for it. Hugh had paid
for it £25,000. But Dr. Bredius of the Hague,
the learned authority on Dutch Art, now gave it as
his opinion that it might not be by Rembrandt, but

152 THE COLLECTION FOR CAPE TOWN

by Bol. Sir Claude Phillips followed this opinion,
and Mr. Michaelis could not make up his mind as
to whether, with this doubt hanging over it, he
would send the picture to the Cape. He wanted
this collection to have the immunity of Caesar's
wife. Hugh entirely believed it was Rembrandt's
handiwork, but he was willing to withdraw the
picture and fill its place with other Dutch master-
pieces. He did so, and the whole collection was
the richer for these, and Cape Town and the donor
were well served.

Mr. Alec Martin writes : '' The collection of
pictures which Mr. Michaelis presented to Cape
Town, and now hanging there, contains more
than one example of the first importance. It
is, perhaps, worth noting that the attributions
under which the pictures were bought have,
in the great majority of cases, received the
approval of Dr. Hoplede de Groot. I would like
to single out the 'Portrait of a Lady' (1644) by
Franz Hals, the two ' Landscapes ' by Jacob van
Ruisdael, the ' Fruit and Still Life ' by A. van
Beyeren " (Mr. Martin had telegraphed to Hugh
from Christie's that it w^as the finest van Beyeren
he had ever seen, and he, telegraphing to him
from Rome, gave his authority to buy it), " ' The
Landscape ' by P. de Koningh, the * Harrowby
Metzu,' and the fine ' Portrait of John Oxen-
steirn.' The great merit of the collection, however,
does not lie in its star pieces, but in its general level
as a representative of Old Dutch Art, and in the
characteristic subjects interpreted by the painters ;
the latter is, Mr. Michaelis considers, an important
point, in view of the fact that these pictures hang

^IR. RICKETTS ON THE REMBRANDT 153

n a community largely Dutch, and supply examples
Art in a country where the opportunity of
leeing Old Dutch masters are otherwise of the
•arest, and indeed almost non-existent."

I asked Mi\ Charles Ricketts to write me his
mpression of the Rembrandt "A Lady with Gloves,"
IS he calls it, for he had studied it closely at
Lindsey House. And he writes : " This picture
nay be confidently classed with other works
lated about 1632-1633, such as 'The Wife of
Ian Pellicorne ' in the Wallace collection, and
The Woman Seated ' in the Hof Museum,
Vienna ; it belongs to that early golden manner
3f which * The Anatomy Lesson ' is the most
popular example, with this difference, that in
• The Lady with Gloves ' the sense of form is more
searching and the workmanship more delicate
Eind intimate than in the above-mentioned paint-
ings. Later, with the advent of the early Saskia
portraits, the handling becomes more romantic
and Rembrandt's taste for about a decade some-
how less secure ; we have to wait for the be-
jewelled ' Saskia ' of the Berlin Gallery, better
still for the * Lady with a Fan ' at Windsor, for
portraits of women which surpass this one in the
qualities of vision and for a more searching and
exquisite quality in workmanship. ' The Wife
of Jan Pellicorne ' is inferior to ' The Lady with
Gloves ' ; the portrait at Vienna, to which it bears
the closest technical resemblance, is a colder work.
In the Lane picture the golden light emphasises
the construction of the face, the diflering texture
values of bone and flesh in the brow, cheeks, and
nose — ^the painting of the lips is miraculous.

154 THE COLLECTION FOR CAPE TOWN

** Ferdinand Bol has imitated works of this
period, but with him the Hght is artificial as if the
figure were Ut from within and the draughtsmanship
always vague and vulgar. The distance between
the master and the imitator could not be better
illustrated than by this picture in which the cool
reflected lights from the ruff emphasise the
construction of the chin. Apart from quahties of
draughtsmanship there are little ' mannerisms '
in pigment and colour, in the treatment of the
bracelet and cuffs, which leave a student of
Rembrandt's painting in no doubt ; for its date
it is a first-rate specimen of the master's work,
more cool in colour and more reticent than is his
wont during the thirties."

Mr. Michaelis had asked him to leave the
matter of changing the Rembrandt for other
pictures open for a while, and in agreeing Hugh
wrote : "I wish that you would write to Dr. Bode
and beg him to come over or give a written state-
ment." He was ready any one should examine the
pictures ; " as I have offered to sell the pictures
subject to Dr. Bode's opinion as to their genuine-
ness there was no risk in the matter whatever."

Dr. Bode did not come over, but it was not in
Hugh's nature to accept the belittling of a picture
he loved so much. It needed cleaning, and he
packed it up and sent it straight to Berlin, that
the cleaning might be done under the very eyes
of the man counted as the master critic upon
Rembrandt. He, having full opportunity, de-
clared it to be undoubtedly Rembrandt's work.
Hauser, of Berlin, who had cleaned most of
the famous Rembrandts, declared the same

PORTRAIT OF A LADY WITH GLOVES.

By Rembrandt.

BROKEN DAYS 155

certainty. It is well that Hugh had made no
delay in sending it abroad, for the picture was
safely back in England before the breaking out
of the war. Rescued from a second danger of
exile it hung again in its old place of honour as
long as Lindsey House was unsold, and now it
has been brought to its lasting home in the
National Gallery of Ireland. Though I grieved
at the time in sympathy with Hugh's annoyance
over the matter, I cannot but feel that no wilder-
ness of Metzus and De Koninghs could make up
in Dublin for that tranquil loveliness.

But all this matter troubled Hugh. I wrote
from his house : " He ought to be lying up, the doctors
ordered him three weeks in bed for the concussion
and giddiness he suffers from, and when I begged
him to take warning by John and take care of
himself he said he had this picture business to do,
arranging the collection for South Africa."

But he wrote after I had left : '' Dr. Fried-
lander came at last — ^to-day. He says that he
was against Michaelis exchanging the Rembrandt
' as it is in my opinion by the Master ! ' But he
says now that he, Friedlander, sees how many good
pictures I have to offer in exchange, he will advise
him to do so. This will suit me quite well."

I had grieved because of his health and because
there were some days that were broken and
wasted while he waited for a decision to be made,
and Dr. Friedlander, and others consulted on the
matter, to come to the house ; for of all things
wearing to the patience surely the hardest when
work is to be done is being forced to sit still
waiting on the time or good will or energy of

156 THE COLLECTION FOR CAPE TOWN

others. And such waiting filled perforce many
days and hours of Hugh's short working life,
while his own fiery spirit would gladly have burnt
itself out could it thus have swept away obstacles.

He had once designed, leaf by leaf, a beautiful
ornament, a rose formed of moonstones, as a gift
for his sister. I begged of him to continue such
designing, and even learn the jeweller's handi-
craft, that he might have that slight occupation
for eye and hand found bj^ women in knitting or
embroidering, and that a wise doctor has ordered
as a soothing medicine for the nerves. There is
something in the act of making, the adding of
stitch to stitch, row to row, leaf to leaf, that tends
to quiet restless nature through its hour.

But at last all was settled as to the pictures,
and he wrote to me : " We are in daily commu-
nication with Botha about a building for them,
— they will probably give either the old Court
House or Government House in Cape Town." And
in a note I have seen he wrote ; "I sold the
Dutch collection at practically what it cost me,
to fulfil my ambition of forming a picture gallery
of old masters for South Africa."

Mr. Solomon has lately been in London
looking for draughtsmen to go back with him to
help him with the work he has in hand — the new
University. I talked with him of the Cape Town
Gallery, and he said : "It is well known through
the world now, so many from all countries, land-
ing during the war, came to see it. They are
astonished to see so splendid a collection there.
The Franz Hals portrait of ' A Woman ' is one
of the finest to be seen, no one can make a real

THE OLD DUTCH HOUSE 157

study of Hals without seeing it. And the De
Koningh and about twelve are masterpieces.

*' When I was in America I went into one of
the largest architectural offices there, and when
the Principal heard I had rebuilt the old Dutch
house for that Gallery he said : ' Oh, we all know
of that collection, it is one of the first.' The
Dutch house where it is placed was built about
the time when Rembrandt was painting."

I said I was glad we had got the Rembrandt in
Dublin, but he said : "I am not glad, and I
think Michaelis regrets it now. It is a wonderful
thing. It was a great annoyance to Sir Hugh
at the time that attack was made on it. He
told me of a day when he and Michaelis sat in
different rooms, with a lawyer taking messages
from one to the otlier. But all was amicably
settled in the end."

October 6. Mr. Solomon wrote to me from
Cape Town on August 12, "I have had a rather
trying time since I returned to the Cape owing to
the breakdown of my colleague, which threw a great
deal of additional work of the Office on my shoulders,
and in the midst of it all I was laid low with a very
severe attack of influenza from which I am only just
beginning to recover enthusiasm after a long period
of listlessness. ... I am going to send you some
snap-shots of my home and family shortly. ..."

But before this letter reached me news had
been flashed from South Africa of the sudden
death of " a famous Architect " ; and it was with
grief I learned that one Hugh had cared for and
who had so lately helped to honour his memory
with grateful words had passed away.

M

CHAPTER XIV

LONDON LIFE

I HAVE gone straight on telling the story of the
Gallery in Dublin and of Hugh's help in beginning
those South African ones. He used sometimes
to say : '* I am best at beginnings," but to that
all we who know the Dublin story will be slow to
agree, knowing how his courage, patience, and
tenacity had stood many an assault before that
disastrous September of 1915.

Yeats wrote in 1909 from London, where our
plays were being given : "A full house last night
and great enthusiasm. Sir Hugh Lane was there,
very pleased with his honours, and Kelly the
painter with him. . . . Lane thinks that his
knighthood means that the Government is going
to give his Gallery the £500 a year it wants."
For he had just then been knighted " for his
services to art."

I think the distinction was of real value to
him, especially in foreign galleries, giving him a
sort of official rank without having to explain
what he had done, and this helped his work.

He was very much pleased later at being given
the freedom of the City of Dublin. He bought
an old silver vessel shaped as a ship wherein to

158

LINDSEY HOUSE 159

keep the parchment. But this was yet on its
way to him when he died.

As to his Hfe in London, while Hfe grew harder
in Ireland it had become easier there. When he
had made a little money he had moved from his
lodging in the Harrow Road to one in Duke
Street, and then to Jermyn Street, where he
began to take a pride in his rooms, putting up
pieces of brocade against which to hang his pictures
and bringing in the pieces of old furniture he had
already collected and stored in the houses of his
friends. It was there he began inviting friends
of an afternoon for tea and for the music he loved.
Later again in 1907 he took the rooms adjoining
Orpen's Studio in Bolton Gardens. It was in that
studio " Hommage a Manet," now in the Manchester
Gallery, was painted, in which he and certain
critics are standing in contemplation of the great
Eva Gonzales,

Though he lived alone he went in and out of
the Orpens' house almost as a home, and Lady
Orpen would tell him as he played with her children,
that when all trades failed he could take a place
as children's nurse. Then in 1909 he bought
Lindsey House, 100 Cheyne Walk. He needed a
house of his own with large rooms in which to
lodge his pictures, for he liked to have them
around him, and never put them in a shop or
showroom away from his own abode. ** If ever
I want to marry," he said, " I shall now have a
house to settle on my wife." And certainly that
riverside dwelling would have made a noble
show in marriage settlements. A part of old
Lindsey Palace, it had its own high ancestry.

100 LONDON LIFE

The date 1674 is cut over the porch ; Charles
the First's chief physician, Sir Theodore May erne,
had Hvod there ; there is a legend that the first
opera ever given in England was performed there
by Nell Gwynn and was attended by the King.
Passing afterwards to the earls of Lindsey, it took
its present name ; the Chelsea Parish book tells
of " ten shillings paid for ye Ringers when the
King came to the Earl of Lindsey s in 1674." Lady
Plymouth, with her son Lord Windsor, had lived
there in the eighteenth century, and Lord Conway ;
Francis, Marquis of Hertford, was born there ;
the Duchess of Rutland was its tenant in 1727.
In 1750 it was sold to the son of the Duke of
Ancaster ; a year later to Count Zinzendorf, who
thought to make it the headquarters of a colony
of Moravians. The Brunels lived there early in
the last century, but that was after the house
had been divided. They were in number ninety-
eight, while Hugh Lane's house contained the
two numbers thrown together, ninety -nine and a
hundred.

It w^as fortunate for Hugh that before he had
been long in the Chelsea house his sister Ruth
Shine, her husband having died, came to make
it her home. She, like Hugh, had not let her
life run to waste. She had set to work to learn
gardening at Glasnevin, and had then taken
charge in its early days of Lady Wolseley's garden
at Glynde. She was young then as well as beauti-
ful ; Lady Haliburton told me Lord Wolseley
had spoken of her as the most beautiful girl he
had ever seen. One of Orpen's best portraits is
of her ; Mancini's was not of his best ; other

LINDSEY HOUSE 161

artists painted her and there is a drawing by
John.

She married a country gentleman in the South
of Ireland, and occupied herself ceaselessly with
her home. She loved, and still loves, the beauties
of the oountr}^ better than those of the cities, and
when Hugh talked of restoring some great mansion
her dream was of a cottage within its shadow.
She had less approval for his plans for filling
Dublin with beauty than for his gifts to charity,
and these were large. " Money is nothing in
itseK," he used to sa}^ " but only in what it can
bring," and he liked to use a part of it in bringing
comfort to the poor. His many guests recall her
ready welcome, her cheerfulness and courtes}^,
even at the time when her own sorrow was new
and the new life jarred with it. Hugh's heai*t
could safely trust in her ; to the end and after
the end his interests were her unceasing care.

An American guest of Hugh's at Lindsey
House — and often some friend or acquaintance of
his or of mine from across the Atlantic would be
invited there — ^has written in a Michigan paper :
" There was a pond in the small square garden at
the back of the house, with a mulberry tree
spreading over it, and after tea the visitors would
be invited into the garden to enjoy the berries.
Lindsey House was built in the reign of King
James, so Sir Hugh Lane told me, and I believe
he said that monarch planted the mulberry tree.
If he did it is much to his credit as a planter of
mulberry trees, for they were the largest and most
wonderful berries I have ever tasted."

Hugh called in Lutyens to re-rriake the garden,

162 LONDON LIFE

and he put a marble floor in place of tiles in the
great hall, and put up old panelling upon the walls.
The mantelpiece in the Green Room had come
from some famous house and the massive fire-dogs
in the drawing-room, with the Lion and Unicorn,
were said to have been stolen from Windsor
Castle. The octagon dining-table had been made
by Chippendale himself for Queen Charlotte's
summer-house at Kew ; and to that table he called
what company he would.

The Michigan writer goes on : " At Sir Hugh's
house one met many people, they came to after-
noon tea, all kinds of people from everywhere and
nearly always interesting. The guests were not
dotted about the room at random, as is invariably
the case at a London ' At Home,' endeavouring
to carry on a conversation across the room while
desperately trying to balance a cup on the knees ;
here all were gathered around a large circular
table which appeared to have an unlimited
capacity for seating people, however many came.
Sir Hugh was untiring in his attentions to his
guests and had the faculty for making each guest
appear at their best ; reticent and inclined to be
nervous at meeting new people, yet one of the
most delightful hosts I have known ; a man with
a keen sense of quality, artistic to his finger-tips.
No description of the man could be more apt
than one made in a letter I received recently
from a mutual friend and great admirer of Sir
Hugh's who describes him as ' a vivid soul.' "

But one of those cousins who used to tease
him in Pall Mall Place tells me that when he
began giving those afternoon parties he suffered

AFTERNOON PARTIES 163

such misery from nervousness that he sometimes
head even to take a little brandy. But the arrival
of the first guest would act as a sedative and he
would be at once quite at his ease and making
others so.

Hugh had written to me of his friend Mr.
Solomon : " You will meet here a young architect
who knows more about London and more about
EngUsh history than anyone I have ever met " ;
and that young architect has written of those
afternoon gatherings and how, among the great
people, " It was Sir Hugh's delight to search out
some poor young artist who, on the verge of
starvation, he had brought thither that he might
be helped," and how " he would take one who
couldn't afford a frame for a picture up to that
room where he kept frames, and let him choose
one for himself that had perhaps cost him £15
or £20 ; or would recommend another for a
commission for a portrait. No effort was too
much for him if in an}^ way he was able to help
a friend. Often when from sheer physical weak-
ness he found it impossible to attend to his own
affairs, he might be found going half-way across
London to keep an appointment which he had
made to look at some young painter's work.
Lane possessed a gift beyond anyone I have ever
known for bringing out the best in his friends.
Chelsea is full of young artists who will mourn
his loss."

There are very many others who could tell
of his kindness, his liberality. All those he met
he seems instantly to have divided in his mind
in two groups : those who could help his work,

1G4 LONDON LIFE

or the work of his friends, and those to whom he
could be helpful, and these not artists alone. 1
remember his saying of someone who had written
to ask him for a loan of money : ''I scarcely
knew him, but I was going for a motor drive and
I thought he looked sallow and took him with
me that the fresh air might do him good."

Once when looking for a frame for my portrait
painted by Gerald Kelly, I found that he had but
lately given away several to set off the work of
some yet unknown painter. Mr. McColl said to
me : " The first thing that interested me in him
was finding that he was making people do what
I had been so long begging them to do, buy the
work of living men." His plan in business was
the ** selling pictures b}^ old painters to buy
pictures by living painters," and that was a fine
thing to do. I had written from New York that
a certain critic was there " lamenting that no
one in London will buy a picture without leave

from Hugh Lane, and that is starving and

growing fat and lazy thereby ! I am very

proud of this ! "

Often like our wandering folk-poet Raftery,
he had " made a w^edding of w^hat was no wedding "
by his presence and his gaiety and his gifts.
Sometimes a lovely picture given by him would
make some little shabby sitting-room its shrine.
It seemed as if he hardly walked through a
friend's house without adding to it some beauty,
through discovery or arrangement or through a
gift.

I have liked to give memories of his win-
ning courtesy from travellers belonging to two

PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN,

By Strozzi. •

HUGH'S COURTESY 165

Continents, and 1 can add yet other testimony
Tom a third, that is Asia. I find ir .i letter I had
^vTitten from Lindsey House in the Coronation
jummer : "I went yesterday to lunch with the
jr's and met a young man in some regiment just
3ack from India. He said there were a great
iiany beastly natives about and he wouldn't
jBbke any notice of them, had seen one he didn't
inow well at a party, and another that he knew
^ery well at Ascot. ' I suppose you spoke to
iiim,' said Lord G. ' Indeed I didn't, I hate
latives, I think them beastly.' I said I supposed
we were all natives of some country, but Lord G.
lurriedly changed the conversation. Lady W.,
tvhom I found when I came home, said she had
been in an omnibus the other day opposite a
respectable old Indian in a turban reading his
^uide book, and a man who had sat down next
lim bounded up again and said audibly to a friend
le ' wouldn't sit next a nigger.' Hugh said he
net some young natives of India at a country
louse where he was staying the other day, and he
►vas surprised when his host said as he was leaving
ihat they were very grateful to him ; ' they say
^ou are the finest gentleman they have met.' He
lad been but courteous and friendly to them as
)ne generally is to fellow guests, and had asked
3hem to come and see him. His host said they
50 back to India filled with rancour from the way
jhey are treated over here. If we have another
□autiny it will be from the doings of that young
nan and his like."

The other day I was sitting with Mrs. Childers.
She had told me, looking so fragile as she lay there

I

166 LONDON LIFE

ill, about the gun-running and how she had
steered the yacht into Kingstown Harbour. Then
I told her what I was writing and she said : ** I
only saw Sir Hugh once, when I came to see you
at Lindsey House, but I remember him very
well. For it seemed strange to me that a man
who was in the habit of meeting so many people
and had affairs on his mind should come in as ho
did, and shake hands as he did, giving the impres-
sion that he expected to find a friend in each of
us, just as a child does when brought in to meet
strangers. I thought of what Emerson says,
' I carry the keys of my castle in my hand, ready
to lay them at the feet of my friend wherever
and whenever I shall find him.' "

He always took dehght in the company of
children. Mr. Dermod O'Brien, talking of his
Dublin troubles, said, ** He felt the way he was
treated, and yet he had a sort of frivoUty that
helped him. He would come into our house
vexed and jaded and out of heart. And then,
perhaps, the children would come in and call to
him, and he would romp with them and roll over
on the floor for half an hour and then he would
suddenly jump up and remember he had an
appointment, and would try to smooth his frock
coat." He was always doing them little kind-
nesses. I remember asking a poet's child which
of his father's guests, and they were many,
*' gentle and simple," he liked best. He thought
for a minute and said, " Do you know Mr. Lane ?
He gave me half a crown." Once he had invited
the Orpen children to tea at Lindsey House to
play with Tinko, his little Pekinese. But before

I

THE ORPEN CHILDREN 167

the day camo Tinko had fallen ill and died, and
Hugh spent his morning at a very busy time in
searching for another Pekinese — he would not
hear of a puppy of less distinction, '* These children
must not be disappointed, they must have the
best." He found one at last, or I think Mr. Alec
Martin found it for him, and he borrowed it for
the day, being first obliged to insure it for £100.
And he took risks in doing that, with lively
children awaiting it, and unaccustomed cakes.
And although, after all, the costly puppy had
refused to play with them. Lady Orpen tells me
they had enjoyed that party very much ; it had
been hard to get them to leave. He bad intended
to get some Christmas crackers for them but had
failed, perhaps because of the time given to the
quest of the dog ; but in place of them he had
given each child a little enamel bowl to put
flowers in.

But almost every day brought its guests. I
was saying to his cousin, Ida Cunningham, the
other day how I had urged him, and have ever
wished I had done so with more insistence, to go
to Rodin for a bust ; I had written begging him
to do this while he was still young and in his good
looks. At that time we were arranging for one
of John Shawe-Taylor after his death, and I
said, '' I won't be living when 3^our time comes,
and I do hope you will have it made while you
are still young and handsome, for you will be so
far appreciated b}^ that time that X, or rather
his successor, will be entrusted with a memorial
that will annoy your ghost." He could easily
have arranged it, she said, for he had told her

1G8 LONDON LIFE

one day that he was buB}- unpacking in the
collars any bits of bronze ho possessed because
Rodin himself was coming to visit him that day.

I had sent a note on I forget what small
matter, to Ellen Terr> , and it happened it was
not given to her for some days, on one late after-
noon, and she hurried to Lindsey House in her
sudden gracious way to explain, and bring the
answer. Hugh was out, he had gone to Mr.
Steer's studio, and I sent to tell him of our visitor
and he hurried in, delighted to pay his homage to
one he so much admired and had never met. He
showed her the treasures of the house, and when
she was leaving he took from a cabinet a crystal
figure, a Chinese version of the Madonna and
Child, made after the Christian missionaries had
brought the story there, and asked her to accept
it. It was pleasant to look on at the offering and
the acceptance, a courtly unrehearsed scene. It
was not the onty time I saw him take down and
give away some treasure to a guest. Yet he did
not give idly, and I have seen Royalty so keen
in admiration of some cup or vase that I thought
it must surely go to his country, but it was put
away in safety again. Yet Mr. Solomon tells me
" he gave a fine Chinese figure to Herbert Baker,
just because he admired it so much. He packed
it up after he had left and sent it to him. He
thought it would be in its right place."

Another visitor who came to see me there
was Henry James. It happened that although
The Outcry had already been written he and
Hugh had never met till then. Their first meeting
was on the staircase where I was going down

VISITORS AT LINDSEY HOUSE 169

with my guest as Hugh came in, and they had a
long conversation there. Hugh told him how he
had bought The Outcry, having been told he
was its hero. Mr. James declared he had not
founded his novel upon Hugh, but confessed he
had heard much of him ; and I was pleased again
to witness the meeting of two such courtesies.
Another visit from Henry James was not so
fortunate, for a young and pretty countrywoman
of his asked him with mocking intent if he had
ever been in America, and he was rufHed, and spoke
of it after she had gone with some indignation,
Baying, *' It was not ignorance, it was imperti-
nence."

Of all his visitors the least welcome were
people wdth whom he had but slight acquaintance,
bringing small properties or doubtful pictures for
him to set a price on. To one who questioned his
opinion he spoke sharply, " You may set your
judgment against me in anything else, but this
knowledge of pictures is my gift." One guest he
told me of as never coming without " an old
knocker in his pocket, or some rubbish of the
kind." " Tell me the secret of getting rich as
you did," they all seemed to call out. That
same persevering guest had one day come with a
proposal that they should go into partnership,
saying complacently, '* We shall get on very well
together. I have fiair and can do the buying,
I will leave the selling to you." Hugh did not
often use strong language ; I don't know if he
used it then, but that acquaintance ceased to
come to his door.

One of my letters to my sister says : *' On

170 LONDON LIFE

Thursday tho Crown Prince of Sweden came to
tea, a very nice, bright, unaffected young man.
Ruth and I and Lady C'. were waiting to receive
him, when Lad}^ W. and Mrs. T. came in to call,
and sat down with us in the drawing-room. ]
wondered if Hugh w^ould be annoyed as he had
not invited anyone ; however, he ran up having
left the Prince downstairs — ^they had been driving
together — and simply took them by the shoulders
and sent them away ! They didn't seem to
mind, and it was very sensible of him. I had
just received a request from a Swedish editor
asking leave to translate some of my plays and
Synge's into Swedish. I showed H.R.H. the letter
and he said it was a very good paper, very literary,
and he would send me some numbers if I liked.
He was a long time going over the house with
Hugh and meanwhile I took Lady C. into the
garden where Richard " (my grandson) " was
saihng his boat, and she made friends with him
and fed him with grapes.

** And next day Richard came to play in the
garden and then Steer appeared to do a sketch of
it as a background for a picture he was painting.
Nurse asked who he was, and seemed disappointed
and said, ' I thought he might be the Duke

Qf .' I said he was a greater man,

an artist, and she, more satisfied, said, ' Y'co^
I heard something about Baby being hand-
painted .^' "

He lived very simply in his stately surroundings.
For he who had been acquainted with poverty had
no mind to be cumbered with a large household,
nor did he hanker after a fat larder, though he

A LAWSUIT 171

used to say he was no niggard in housekeeping
because he had no idea what should be its cost.
His Cunningham cousins tell me that the first
meal at Lindsey House, where they came unex-
pectedly one evening, was Uttle more than bread
and bovril. He was not yet well settled and the
new housekeeper was crying out because when he
had gone to a sale promising to buy a bedstead,
he had but brought home a pair of bronze vases.
But just at that time of moving into the house he
was tormented, agitated, walking up and down,
because of a lawsuit that was going on, one that
he lost. I think he had but three in his life, and
this was more distressing than the rest, because
it was with a friend, Robert Ross. As well as
memory holds the tale, a picture had been left
by him at Carfax's for sale and it had not been
sold, and he took it away at their asking, selling
it afterwards to some man who had first seen it
at the Carfax rooms ; and lawyers found their
deUght in prolonging the argument, and he,
helpless, took an enduring hatred to their trade.
He believed he was right and he was very angry
with Ross at the time, but I knew this had passed
away because he had pleased Ross by putting
him in his own place as buyer of pictures for
Johannesburg, and I remember his taking him
to Bagshot to see the Duke of Connaught on some
of its business. Indeed, I had forgotten the
quarrel until the other day Alec Martin, telling
me how good Hugh had been in friendships, said,
" Just after that Ross case he was giving one of
his big parties and said, ' I must ask Robert
Ross.' I said, ' Some of the people coming here

172 LONDON LIFE

won't like that,' and he said, * Then those people
who don't like it may stay away.' "

Though I think he often read character well
lie had not the same discernment in the matter
of living servitors as of Old Masters, and it was
desirable that what is called '* a treasure " should
bo found to guard that house so richly stored.
But the search was not always rewarded, and I
remember when arriving one early morning after
the night journey from Ireland I was forced to go
in search of a constable, and misled by a passer-
by crossed Battersea Bridge on the errand, all
ignorant that '' the force " had its headquarters
but a hundred yards or so from our gate, while
Ruth (for neither of us would disturb Hugh's
morning rest) held fast the key with which she
had locked the " treasure " of that period with a
confederate into his own pantry. But Hugh was
placable in such things and did not even lose his
gentleness when the sweeping of a room once led
to a hole being knocked in a canvas that had cost
him many thousands.

He kept something of the Evangelical religion
of his childhood ; a certain austerity in morals
and admiration of good works and of *' the Good."
General Booth had once come to his father's
rectory for lunch, and had sat next Hugh and
talked to him, and as he left had taken off his
own badge and pinned it on the child's little coat.
It had been lost, stolen by a servant they thought ;
and Hugh among all his jewels lamented this
loss to the end. But though a church-goer he
was a little impatient of observances, and when a
clerical relation staying with him at Lindsey

THE OCTAGON TABLE 173

House said grace before dinner, he murmured to
me, " I think I who provided it might have had
some of the thanks."

Even after he had come to live in Lindsey
House he would go to dine at some little restaurant
— ** such cheap dinners " — but I protested, saying
that there was no economy in paying for food
you could not eat. I was a little insistent upon
this because I saw that any meal at home, how-
ever simple, in his quiet beautiful dining-room,
would be better rest to him after the unrest of
the day. And so in May, 1912, he wrote to me :
'* I hope you will be more comfortable this time,
we have engaged another servant in honour of
your coming and will be able to give you dinner in
the house." And it was not long before the little
dinner parties that host and guests enjoyed so
happily were begun. For these were among his
greatest pleasures. They were seldom arranged
beforehand, he would ask one or two friends for
the next day or that same day, though his sister
would beg for a longer notice, and then another
and another till the octagon limit was reached.
Once or twice he went beyond it, and the guests
on whom the lot fell were put at another table.
But that enforced banishing proved so irksome
to his courtesy that he often put a curb upon a
hospitable impulse rather than repeat it.

Mr. Tonks writes : "To dine with him in
Cheyne Walk, and at one's leisure look at the
pictures on the wall, was undoubtedly one of the
greatest pleasures of my life."

I told Miss Cunningham how a critic, Mr. X.,
had lamented his turning to Bridge in the evenings,

174 LONDON LIFE

and she said, " Yes," she remembered well meeting
him at Lindsey House, just, she thought, in that
last year, at a small informal dinner. Her sister
and some others had sat down to the game with
Hugh, '' and j^oor Mr. X. had only me to talk to,
and then he tried to decipher a name on some
picture that had been brought in, and would call
to Hugh to look at each letter as he made it out.
But Hugh would not turn from his cards, and
besides if he had not already made out the name
it is not likely he thought X. could do it."

The guests would sit after dinner around one
or another picture ; the latest treasure was
usually put upon an easel for a while. One evening
it was the portrait of the Due d' Orleans by Ingres,
that is now in his French collection. Mr. Francis
Howard told me he had been with Hugh in Paris
once when he had set his mind on buying an Ingres,
and they went to many dealers' shops but there
was not one to be found. But he did get one
after all, that portrait. I remember someone
saying on one of those evenings as we looked at
the refined palHd face, " He looks as if it was time
for him to marry a comedy actress and put vigour
into that worn-out aristocratic race." I had
written when he brought it home : " Hugh has
just got an Ingres and means to keep it, it cost a
thousand pounds. He thinks in thousands now."

Mr. Howard said, also, that after one of these
long searches Hugh had promised and given him
a costly dinner. " But," he had said, " I am doing
this with pain."

The Titian portrait of the author of " The
Courtier," Baldassare Castiglione, now in the

PORTRAIT OF BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE.

By Titian.

EVENINGS AT LINDSEY HOUSE 175

Dublin National Gallery, had its turn upon the
easel, and Mr. Charles Ricketts, having seen it
there, allows me to use this note from his diary :
'' Lane's newly discovered Titian is of superb
quality, it belongs to that stately and magisterial
type of portrait which the painter initiated
during the later thirties and early forties. I
imagine it slightly later in date than the
' Francesco Maria Delia Rovere ' and the ' Eleanor
Gonzaga ' portraits, not so late as the ' Antonio
Porcia,' and at a rough guess I think 1540 might
be a probable date. The landscape vista is
magnificent, the quality of the clothes very fine.
The lettering is a seventeenth-century addition
and may be based on traditional evidence as to
who the sitter was."

I remember an evening at Lindsey House
when Mr. Ricketts sat for a long time gazing at
this picture. And I was not the only one to
notice the strong resemblance between his absorbed
face and that of Baldassare, he also absorbed in
meditation upon some noble beauty.

Mr. Solomon wrote of one of the evenings :
'' Three years ago in the drawing-room at Lindsey
House the talk had turned on Synge, the Irish
playwright, who had died all too early ; and one
of us, I forget who, suggested that the volume
with which he laid claim to be remembered by
posterity was even slighter than that of Thomas
Gray.

" I can recall the evening well ; the quiet,
rather sombre dignity of the long, oak-panelled
room ; the marble Venus in the bay window
which overlooked the river where the light of the

176 LONDON LIFE

1

barges, the warehouses, and the tall cliimneys,
becoming campanili in the night, reminded one
irresistibly of Whistler's * Nocturnes ' ; and whilst
the fire in the grate between two fire-dogs, which
years before had been stolen from Windsor Castle,
caught in its zone of light Rembrandt's ' Portrait
of a. Young Lady ' and Goya's ' Femme Espagnole,'
Sir Hugh sat among his guests, nervously smoking
his cigarette, perhaps a little melancholy at the
turn the conversation had taken.

" By the dim light this pale, slender, dark-eyed
knight, with his trim black beard, his slim hand,
and his poised, nervous, illusive manner, presented
an appearance similar to the figures in the paintings
of that strange seer. El Greco.

" The guests were few ; . . . George Moore,
talking even more wonderfully than he writes ;
Henry Tonks the artist, who has distinction written
in every line of his form ; and Wilson Steer,
quietly nodding a disinterestedness in all that was
being said.

" Sir Hugh talked little, perhaps over- tired, as
he often was in those days, but it was evident
that his mind worked and he was serious. When
the guests had gone and we were about to climb
the stairs for bed he turned to me saying : ' How
foolish to talk of Synge's small volume of work.
Why, generations after I, who have created nothing,
am dead and forgotten, Ireland will be watching
his plays.' This was the pathetic thought of
one who had tried to paint and had failed, but in
his modesty forgot those other creations, his
galleries in his native land and far-off Africa."

Mr. Solomon said also to me : " You remember

AMONG THE ARTISTS 177

hat Snyders, ' A Concert of Birds,' that hung
>ver the sideboard, it is now in the Cape Town
oUection. One evening Yeats and Moore dined
here, and as they were looking at it Yeats pointed
o a parrot and said, ' That is Moore on his perch,'
bnd it really had a look of him, and everyone
aughed. But then Moore pointed out the raven
md said, ' And that's Yeats, very much disgusted
o see me on the perch ! ' "

Another friend tells me with amusement of an
evening when she met John, and other artists.
' We dined at Lindsey House. Martin Wood was
ihere and kept saying, ' This is a very remarkable
gathering.' We went upstairs after dinner to
ook at the Titian, ' Philip II.,' and I, venturing to
jpeak to John for the first time, said, ' How can
}he wonderful brilliancy of that colour keep its
'reshness so long ? ' And John said, * Ah-h-h 1 ' "

If Hugh was not grudging of food in his own
lOUse, it did not interest him, his first look and his
3riticism would be for the flowers on the table.
fin American friend at Eome once said to me,
" I can do without necessities but not without
luxuries." (And I remember that as she spoke
[ noticed that, perhaps as an example, she had
diamond rings in her ears and a hole in her veil.)
That was in part Hugh's feeling. The flowers were
El necessity, a part of the beauty of life ; they must
Qot only be fresh but of the right colour for the
harmony of the room. I hardly remember him
more indignant than w^hen coming suddenly
home one day he found guests in the drawing-room
and noticed that (through accident rather than
neglect) the flowers had not been changed. '' I

178 LONDON LIFE

have nothing but my taste," ho said, and ho felt
this outrage to it Ukc an insult, a blow in the
face. ^

He was glad when he could tempt his friend
Alec Martin to dinner and an evening's talk, or
snatch him away from Christie's for a drive. He
did this one Saturday when he motored me to
Buckhursb, where I was to spend Sunday with the
Robert Bensons. I was in the garden when they
were leaving and came to say good-bye ; my
hands had been filled with roses by my host, and
I thought it greedy to keep them among that
abundance, and gave them to Mr. Martin, because
he had told me his little ones were going to a
flower service for children next day. But when I
met Hugh again he was rather sad and said, '' I
should have liked those roses for myself." Fruit
also was a luxury and so necessarily must be also
good to see ; the cakes also for his tea-table must
be chosen with care, good to see and to taste.
But the meat, fish, the ordinary courses for a '
dinner, though not outside his notice were outside
his care, his housekeeper might look to those.

Even when there were no guests the evenings
were not without excitement ; he would come in
with a story of his doings. " Hugh, who had been
talking as if near the workhouse, confessed he had
been to Christie's and bid up to £3000 for a
Gainsborough, but was outbid. So he felt he
owed himself £3000. Then he took Colonel Poe
to Nicholson's, and the Colonel could not make up
his mind to anything. There was a wonderful
picture of an orchid there, unfinished. Nicholson
said the Duke of Marlborough had asked him to

NICHOLSON'S ORCHID 179

como to Blenheim and paint it, and afterwards
they talked of price, and Nicholson asked £600
which the Duke refused to give, though he said
he had spent a fortnight painting it, shut up in
a hothouse as there was snow on the ground. Hugh
wanted Colonel Poe to buy it, but he thought
it too much for Still Life, and then Hugh said,
' Well, I offer you £500 for it, and you can wire
that to the Duke and see if he wants it.' Just
before we went to dinner the telegram arrived
from Nicholson : ' Duke withdraws, you possess
orchid.' So now he only owes himself £2500."

In his earlier days he had accepted and even
been ruled by convention. I sometimes said to
his mother when I went to see her in her Dublin
house, " I would have brought you this or that,
but was afraid of meeting Hugh while I was
carrying the parcel ! " But all that had changed
with his character, '* like the turning of an oyster-
shell from black to white." And as his surround-
ings had grown stately he had come to practise
simplicity. One evening, giving the gossip of
some fine dinner I had been at, I said for talking' s
sake, " One is given aU delicious things in plenty
except cucumber. That is handed round in one
tiny plate for all the table. I never feel greedy
except for cucumber." A little while after this
Hugh came in one Saturday evening hurrying
over the marble pavement of his hall looking as
if he had just discovered a Giorgione. " I have
brought you this ! You said you liked them and
they were on a stall and so cheap." And he held
up in triumph a cucumber ! He was very kind to
me, taking me here and there though I would

180 LONDON LIFE

tell him that people didn't expect to sec an old
woman when they were expecting a young man.
I told him one night at a Stafford House party
that people would think from his attention to mo
that ho was expecting a legacy.

Late one afternoon he rushed in his impetuous
Avay into the little yellow room used by me as a
sitting-room at Lindsey House, and said that I
must go with him to the Shakespeare Ball at the
Albert Hall that evening. I thought it was a jest,
I whose balls could be counted on my fingers far
more readily than the number of years since I
had attended the last, I think at Buckingham
Palace in the old Queen's time. But no one could
stand against his vehemence, and in an ancient
black brocade and carr^dng a bundle of black lace,
I saw nothing better to do than to drive to the
Lyceum Theatre where kind, clever Mrs. Martin
Harvey was playing, and there she arranged
with quick, skilful fingers my veils and diamonds
until I could pass muster in a crowd. And that
I might not loudly challenge immediate criticism
of my dress I chose the name of Lady Woodville,
because she is only once mentioned in Shakespeare.
So with Ruth, who looked extremely well as
Katherine of Aragon, we set out and I enjoyed
looking from my box at the brilliant unexpected
scene, and at Hugh, impressive in a ruff, making
up for those young days starved of beauty, and
enjoying the freedom given by a little unmortgaged
wealth ; greeted from their box by beckoning
royalties of the day as well as by his fellow masquers
in Drake's and Raleigh's attire.

Another letter says, '* Hugh called for me at

MRS. GRENFELL'S GARDEN PARTY 181

^umpelmeyer's and took me on to the Grenf ells'
)arty. He had been to lunch with the Asquiths
md there was royalty there, and the governess
lad said to the little Asquith girl, * Look at the
>own Princess of Sweden ; see how she holds
lerself up and behaves better than anyone else,'
Lud Hugh, hearing this, had immediately repeated
t to the Princess, to the indignation of the
governess though the amusement of the Princess.
Che Grenfells' party was very pleasant ; I met
jord Roberts and we talked a little of India
vheve I had stayed in the same house with him. Sir
Ufred Ly all's. . . . Then ' God Save the King '
v^as played and the Connaughts arrived, the
Duke looking very lively and amiable. Hugh
ntroduced me to the Duchess, who apologised for
lot having had time to come to the plays and hoped
lO see them in Canada and asked when they would
)e there ; and then someone came between us
md I went to tea with Lady Tree, who introduced
ne to a young man as ' the great Lady Gregory,'
md he seemed so excited I thought perhaps I
•eally was great, but it was only because he had
I friend who wants to get into the Abbey Company
md thought I might see her, which I promised
)0 do " (Miss Cathleen Nesbitt, who I am proud to
jay became a member of our Company for a while).
* The Boy Scouts, two or three dozen of them,
jame running on to the lawn, and were reviewed
)y the Duke and Lord Roberts and Lord Grenfell
—such a small army and such big men ! Lord
jrrenfell asked me if Spreading the News had been
wrought over, says it is his favourite play. Garden
md lawn, and house beautiful, it was very

1S2 LONDON LIFE

pleasant altogether, but we were going on to the
Martin Harvey's garden party, and only arrived
when the last guest was leaving. However, they
forgave us and I was glad that we came. . . . Yeats
came here and we all dined at the Good Intent,
and he and I and Hugh sat and talked in the draw-
ing-room and had tea, until Hugh went off to two
parties or balls, one at the Grand Duke Michael's."
Then, " I lunched at the Shaws' yesterday,
G. B. S. in great good humour. Hugh came in
afterwards to fetch me and they got on very
well, he was amused at G. B. S. having said that
' Lane had been wise to take to picture dealing ;
he would not have been fit for any useful job,
whereas Lady Gregory, if she had been a washer-
woman would have been an excellent one ! ' " (But
Bernard Shaw, before many had understood what
Hugh was doing had written on coming back to
Dublin of a difference made there by those two
new facts, the Abbey Theatre, and the Gallery
in Harcourt Street ; and he has written in the
preface to his latest book that he *' understood,
perhaps better than most people, the misfortune
of the death of Lane.") ** Mrs. Shaw was talking
with satisfaction about the advance in the position
of women in the last few years, and of all the
things they did now that they would not have
thought of before. I was listening cautiously
when L. R., who was there, said in his slow Cork
accent, ' The young lady at the box office was
saying that yesterday, she said it was surprising
how many ladies now paid for the gentlemen
they bring with them, and if they borrow six-
pence they say, ' I will pay you back again ! ' "

A DREAM OF MARRIAGE 18:^)

Once, a few years before Hugh's death,
marriage had seemed near at hand ; marriage with
a young girl, gentle, charming, in whose presence
he felt content and rest. He was pleased that I
liked her and made easier the informal meetings
at Lindsey House away from the balls and re-
ceptions where they used to see one another,
for it was a period at which he went a great deal
into Vanity Fair, wanting to know it through and
through, getting its best in great houses among
great hostesses, and meaning then to put it away
as a memory. He was never bewitched by all
this fine company, but used, and in a measure
enjoyed, it for a while. I say in a measure, for
I think it was with children and music and his
pictures, and a few close friends and fellow-
workers that he made his nearest approach to
feUcity.

That dream of marriage near fulfilment stilled
his restless nature for a moment. I had left
London thinking all was going on well. Then
in a little time he wrote that '* the early intimacy
that had been so dehghtful " would never come
to more than " a warm friendship." Meanwhile,
the shadow of ill health, never far away, had
deepened ; a motor accident had increased it,
and it was in a Nursing Home, recovering from the
surgeon's hand, that the sweet vision died away.

I wrote from Coole : " I am a little sad at your
news, for I hoped there was a happy future for you
and her, and one's life becomes more and more
engrossed by the happiness and the hopes of the
young. . . . But, indeed, I had not been very
content about it at the end, for I am sure you

184 LONDON LIFE

ought to lie by for a while and lot your strength
build itself up, and it was difficult to do that
while you had so much to think of. I do hope now
you will lay aside business and have a real rest of
body and mind. Money is such a little thing now
that you have no immediate use for it, in com-
parison with health, and poor John S. T.'s sudden
breakdown is a warning. I have only had your
letter this afternoon so have not quite looked at
all sides of it. ... I had been looking forward
to welcoming you both here, and planning to hide
our weak points from you."

I have sometimes said, " Marriage legitimises
selfishness," and I tliink that had Hugh married
it might have been to Ireland's loss. Yet even
during that short dream of a possible married
life he said he w^ould never endow a child of his
with riches enough to make him idle. He had
worked, and an}^ son of his should work. The
chief endowment he would provide would be for
what he never lost sight of, a Gallery in Dublin of
great pictures, of great art, free to all.

When someone had once asked me, " Would
Hugh be happy in married life and would his
wife be ? " I had said, laughing, " Yes, if they
lived in separate houses." Yet there was some
truth in those jesting words. His vivid hfe, and
the excitement of his work, and air and sunhght,
restored his strength each day. But there was
nostril trouble that made sleep broken and breath-
ing difficult. I would find him in the morning
exhausted, white, taking his light breakfast in
bed, lying late, irritable and nervous. Even to
me at those times he would say some sharp word,

TIGER AND TINKO 185

so that it was not all in jest that I said to him once,
** You are like Jophthah in the early morning,
going out determined to slay the first person you
meet, even though it should be your dearest."
And often coming home in the evening white and
jaded, dark rings under his tired eyes, the little
frown of annoyance that I remember on his
mother's face when she was crossed, he would sit
down at the piano and play himself to a happier
mood ; or would stroke Tiger, the big Persian cat
that I had never quite liked since it had come
in at my window one morning with a torn bird
in its mouth. But Hugh loved it, and did not
wince when it walked among his costly China orna-
ments. He writes to his sister : " Tiger was found
mewing before one of the pictures in the hall this
morning, and a pigeon was seen on top of the
picture, its best tail feathers all over the floor !
It had come down the chimney of the yellow
room and strewn it with soot."

But he loved yet better little Tinko, the tiny
Pekinese given to him by his friend Alec Martin.
His face would light up at the sound of its tiny bark
or its bell. Mrs. Hinde told me that sometimes
when she asked him to sta}^ to lunch he would say,
" and there's Tinko — is there enough for him ? "

Yet late at night, coming in from the plays
that were my business, I would find him sitting
up answering letter after letter, for he never would
consent to have a secretary, about many things,
but especially about the Gallery. His cousin
Ida says, " I think he must have hated that Dublin
gallery at times, as we did when he stayed with us,
because he was always writing hundreds of letters

18(5 LONDON LIFE

about it, he was so much its slave." But then he
would lay down his pen and turn round in his chair,
unruOlcd, uncomplaining, kindly interested in all
I had been doing, telling me of his own day's
doings, till at last he would finish the letters in a
hurry and carry them off to the pillar-box in
Beaufort Street. I was glad it was no nearer at
hand, and that he was forced to go out even for
those few minutes into the empty road and the
fresh night breeze from the river. He was always
glad at that hour to linger and talk. I think he
had come to dread, without confessing it to
himself, the night and the awakening. I wrote
to him at the time of the Louvre robbery : "I
am so glad you are taking that much needed rest
cure, though I always wonder how one's mind is
kept quiet, for it is in the middle of the night,
when one is supposed to be resting, it works most
determinedly, and what I call ' tiger-clawed
thoughts ' rise up and seize one by the throat. . . .
I hope you will have patience to get really strong.
We think you will be accused of stealing the
' Monna Lisa ' because no one will beUeve you are
really taking a rest, they will think you have got
. someone to personate you here, while you were
securing the Leonardo for Dublin ! "

A little hunting now and then was a great help
to him. He wrote to Ruth on the day after
Christmas, 1913 : "I had my first hunt to-day,
the New Forest foxhounds. The meet was eight
miles off, and no one else would go, so I went
with a groom who knew the way. He was very
tactful and looked the other way when I funked
any rather big jump. There were a good many

SEARCH FOR A RUINED PALACE 187

spills owing to the bogs and big holes hidden by
heather, but I brought my priceless horse back
safely (the sire was a famous racer). We also
rode on Christmas Day and yesterday. I hope
to hunt on Monday and will perhaps return to
London that night." Yet he had written only a
month earlier : "I went to the Drag hunt on
Saturday — but never again. It was as fast as a
steeplechase, and more devious. I fell off twice,
once badly, right on to my head and broke
my hard riding hat to pieces, and nearly my
neck as well."

And a friend, Mrs. Reeves, writes : " Did
you ever realise his extraordinary courage ? With
80 nervous a physique it was remarkable. I
noticed this concerning riding. He knew nothing
of horses but didn't mind a mount of any
kind."

The doctors thought that he might find his
needed tranquillity in the peace and quiet of the
country, and the search for a house was added to
his occupations or perhaps his amusements for a
while. He wrote me in 1914 when I was in
America: *'. . . I have a motor now and have been
taking trips into the country looking for a ruined
palace to restore. It will be some time before I
can hope to recover from this neurasthenia, and
as I am ordered quiet, fresh air, early hours, I
must not live in London. I think that ' restoring '
some wonderful old house will give me something
to do. At times I feel that I shall never be well
or able to work, but this depression is the principal
result of the illness."

He enjoyed the search for the " wonderful

188 LONDON LIFE

old house " thougli he never found one quite to
his mind. Mr. Bodkin tolls me how, tempted for
a moment by a beautiful old Elizabethan house
near Lewes, with yew trees and a moat, but falHng
to decay and used but as a lodging for harvest
labourers, he planned not only its restoration but
its furnishing with old oak and old Elizabethan
plate, the walls to be hung with masterpieces by
Holbein, John Batty, Zuccano. '' He would show
England a perfect Elizabethan house in good
order." Mr. Solomon tells me he went with him
sometimes and that '* he wanted something built
by Wren. He liked Kirby Hall best, it was a
mere ruin, but he would have liked to restore it
and fill it with beautiful things. I told him it
would cost £100,000 and he said it would not be
so much, that I was giving South African prices.
But then he asked Lutyens, and he said £200,000.
He would not have lived there much, though he
said he would Hke the country, that London was
too near Christie's. But he used to say of Johan-
nesburg that it was too far from Christie's." And
Mrs. Grosvenor writes : '* You will remember his
keenness to buy and restore Kirby, the beautiful
house belonging to Lord Winchelsea, which had
been allowed to fall into the most lamentable
state of decay. He only asked to be allowed to
live in one corner of it, spending all his time,
money, and energy on rebuilding it with the
most faithful care and understanding, in order to
restore it at the end either to its original owner
or to the nation for exactly what it had cost him,
without maldng a farthing of profit on the trans-
action. Had his offer been accepted, I feel sure

BARGAINS AT CHRISTIE'S 189

bhat it would have ended in his spending much
Df his own money on it without asking for any
return."

He happily did not buy that splendid ruin or,
with, his grand ideas of rebuilding, the war would
liave brought yet greater disaster to his fortunes.
Oliver Gogarty tells me that when he was himself
looking for a house outside Dublin, Hugh had gone
with him on some of these excursions — admiring
Delville above all — he would see at once what
could be made of such a house, but his ideas would
outrun possibilities. They had passed by a
terrace that looked out in full sunlight upon
coast and sea, and he had cried, '* Buy that whole
terrace ! You could turn part of it into such a
wonderful picture gallery ! "

But all this time money had to be made. A critic
said of him, " His acuteness in discovering master-
pieces is almost uncann3^" And it was oftenest
at Christie's he discovered them, so that in time
if he was seen to look closely at a picture its value
would go up. It was there he bought for £1000
Watteau's '* Centre Danse." It was in a very
dirty state and bidding had begun at £5. But later,
when I first met Alec Martin at Lindsey House,
Hugh, introducing him, said, " There is no chance
now of bargains at Christie's. This man knows
too much."

The Romney portrait of Mrs. Edward Taylor,
now in the Dublin National Gallery, gave him
great delight. The day before the sale he came
to lunch at 1, Old Burlington Street, where I was
staying, and he talked of a picture he was going to
bid for at Christie's. It was put down in the

o

190 LONDON LIFE

Catalogue as a Romncy, but experts said it was
of the *' school of Lawrence." It had the
Lawrence dress, a dark gown, dark hair, a great
muff ; the critics who looked at it said it was
impossible that Komney could have painted
fashions that would not be in existence until a
quarter of a century later. But Hugh was
certain. He said, '' I cannot be mistaken in those
Romney eyes." He bought it at the sale for
£766 ; his bidding had perhaps sent up the price.
He told us afterwards of the impatience with
which he carried it home. Mr. Solomon was
there, and tells me of the tremendous excitement
when he began to rub at the heavy black paint
of the hair and white began to appear. Then he
rubbed away the blue scarf that covered the
shoulders, and the black gown, and large muff,
and again wiiite was seen and the outline of pale
arms. With this certainty he brought in his
cleaner, and when all the overpaint ^^^as very
carefully removed there appeared the lovely
portrait with its powdered hair, light blue plumed
hat, gauze handkerchief and bare hands.

Romney's receipt for the money paid him
for this picture was afterwards found by Mrs.
Taylor's representatives. They suppose that as she
grew older she thought a more sombre dress would
best befit her, or it may be that among her
neighbom's Romne}^ had gone out of fashion. It
was all for Ireland's good, for the original paint
had been protected by the late daubing. The
Medici Society published a print of this picture
later, and Hugh liked to bestow a copy of this
print on his friends.

TITIAN'S "MAN IN A RED CAP" 191

It was at Christie's, in 1906, that he bought
Titian's " Portrait of a Man in a Red Cap." This
account of it was later given in the Morning
Post : " In May, 1906, it appeared at Messrs.
Christies' as a ' Portrait of Lorenzo Dei Medici by
Titian,' and starting at twenty guineas it was run
up to two thousand one hundred guineas, at which
figure Sir Hugh Lane acquired it. Exactly thirty
years earlier the portrait had been bought in at
Christie's for ninety-one guineas. . . . Our in-
formation is that at some time after 1876 it was
sold in the provinces for a less sum than that at
which it was bought in. In 1906 there was a
thick coating of dirt and varnish on the picture
through which the handiwork of a great master
did not emerge to the satisfaction of many experts.
Some adhered to the attribution to Giorgione
suggested earher, some regarded it as a Francesco
VecelHo influenced by Giorgione ; others as a
Moretto affected by that master. On this point
opinions generally changed when the work was
cleaned and shown in the Grafton galleries at the
National Loan Exhibition in 1909. Mr. Charles
Ricketts has publicly recanted an adverse judg-
ment and claimed it as a genuine Titian."

This is what Mr. Ricketts has written of it :
" This picture passed through Messrs. Christies'
hands in a darkened and dirty condition. I then
imagined this beautiful Giorgionesque painting
to be an early work by Francesco Vecellio, basing
my impression on the colour and on the evidence
of Francesco's knowledge of Titian's technical
methods. The picture has since been cleaned.
When I saw it again the scales fell from my eyes,

102 LONDON LIFE

to uso a consccratod expression. How was it
possible that I could have mistaken this master-
piece for the work of a second-rate man ? How
was it that the shape of the eyelids, the construc-
tion of the chin, had escaped me ? The back-
ground, formerly brown, had become a luminous
warm grey, the glove and fur, which I had thought
indifferent, revealed the tender pigment of the
master ; the painting of the linen in ' pate sur
pate ' was a practice of Titian's. The work
stood out, not as a mere interesting problem, bub
a masterpiece superior in preservation to the
Cobham ' Ariosto,' contemporary with, or slightly
later than, the beautiful portrait at Temple
Newsam."

Hugh had never any doubts about it, he was
certain it was by Titian. It was bought from him
by Mr. Grenfell for £25,000.

Another great picture that he owned for a
while, and that he cared for most of all those he
sold, was Titian's portrait of Philip 11. of Spain.
One evening he had promised to come to the
theatre with me ; I had been given a box and we
were to see Miss Marie Tempest in some new
play. But when I came in to dress for dinner he
met me at the foot of the staircase, very^ pale, and
said, " I can't come — ^haven't you seen the
evening papers ? " I had not then noticed the
placards, " Great Titian gone to America. Eighty-
thousand pound picture sold." He said men from
the newspapers were arriving constantly to
question him about it and he must stay and see
them ; people seemed angry at the picture having
been allowed to go out of the country. It was

TITIAN'S *' PHILIP 11. OF SPAIN" 193

the great portrait of Philip II. that had gone.
It had been bought as a gift by Mrs. Emery for
the Gallery at Cincinnati.

It had been in the collection of Professor von
Lembach who had bought it from its original
owners the Giustiamni family. Hugh said to some
one writing of it, " I've been on the track of this
great painting for years. I first saw it in Germany
when I was a youth of nineteen, and I was fasci-
nated by the wonderful workmanship. No other
picture has affected me so strongly." Mr. Charles
Ricketts writes to me of it : " When in the
Lembach collection this picture was overlaid by
the work of other hands ancient and modern. I
think the open princely crown — now revealed by
the removal of a velvet cap — ^proves it to have
been the rapid sketch done at Augsburg from
which Titian painted his superb full-length
portraits of Philip II. in the Prado and at Naples.
The handUng is looser than in these two highly
finished works and I believe it to be to some
extent still unfinished, as it resembles in many
points of handling the group of ' Paul III., Ottavia,
and Cardinal Farnese ' at Naples."

It was after the death of Professor Lembach
that it came through other hands to Hugh. It
had then the cap upon the head, but he was
convinced there must be a crown underneath, and
with that certainty of insight that did away with
any credit or blame for courage or rashness, he
cleaned away the paint and found the crown. It
was no wonder if he had remembered that great
portrait for years, one it is difficult to forget.
But after he had become Director of the Dublin

19 i LONDON LIFE

National Gallery lie saw the notice of a sale of
furniture in a house in Limerick, which he had
visited in his early boyhood, and he remembered
a picture of Still Life he had seen there, and sent
an order to buy it, and placed it in the Gallery.

It happened when I was giving some lectures
on a National Theatre in the United States that
I spoke at Cincinnati. 1 was pleading for what
I called " parochialism," the building and endow-
ment of a theatre in each State, in each city ;
and I said I believed this would come, because the
sense of citizenship was so strong in America.
And then I told of the great Titian, and of that
evening when it had become known it had been
taken away from the Chelsea house ; taken, I
said, '* because someone living in far-off Cin-
cinnati had not thought the best too good, the
greatest too great, to bring to her own place and
her own city." Only after I had finished speaking
I learned that the giver of the picture was there
in the Hall, and she came and spoke to me and
seemed pleased. I told this to Hugh when I
saw him again, just before he set out for that last
voyage ; and he was happy that a generosity
akin to his own had thus been recognised. After
his death I met friends to whom he had told the
story in his enthusiastic way.

Mr. Duncan tells me : "I was with him one
day in an old furniture shop in Dublin, and I
said, as we looked at some fine old pieces, ' Buying
and selling these must be a pleasant trade.' But
he said, ' Buying, yes, like buying pictures ; but
selling is the very devil.' And he went on to say,
' I never sell a picture till I am driven to it. And if

'* TO GIVE AWAY WAS TO POSSESS " 195

I sell it to some millionaire it is lost, I don't see it
again, it may not give any very great pleasure to
him and it is lost to everyone else. But if I give
a picture to a gallery, that is really good business.
It is as much mine as ever, I still possess it, I can
see it when I like and everyone else can see it
too, so there's no waste in the matter. I hate
waste.' That was his temptation, to give away
was to possess."

CHAPTER XV

THE DUBLIN NATIONAL GALLERY

Hugh told me one evening in London that he
had spent the day at the National Gallery because
he had been asked, on behalf of some in authority,
if he would, when the place fell vacant, be willing
to become its Director. '' But, I felt," he said,
" as I went through the rooms that they were so
well arranged and catalogued, the pictures so well
cared for, that there would be but little for me to
do. I made up my mind I would rather go to
Dublin."

I was very glad he said this, for I had feared he
might have been tempted to forsake Dubhn, where
some hostility yet lurked and muttered, and stay
in the brilliant hospitality, the gracious geniality
of the society around him in London. He hated
the railway journey, the early rising or the night
crossing, he could not sleep in the train, and he
had long abandoned those Castle festivities that
had served his purpose for a while.

I did not know our National Gallery well, I

went into it but seldom, I had been but little in

Dublin until my theatre work began, and that

once having begun held me to the Abbey. My

husband had taken me there one Sunday long ago,

Ida

HENRY AND DICKY DOYLE 197

soon after my marriage, that I might see the people
coming in, and that many of them were working
men with their wives and children ; for he was
proud of having fought in Parliament for that
Sunday opening, and proud that it had been
accepted in Ireland long before London museums
and galleries had unlocked their Sabbath door.
Although a trustee of the Trafalgar Square
National Gallery he had never lost interest in the
one on Leinster Lawn.

That Dublin Gallery had been founded and
built in the last century, soon after the great
Exhibition of 1851. Mulvany, the painter of the
portrait of O'Connell, now in the Gallery, was its
first Director ; then for twenty-three years Henry
Doyle. A note in the Catalogue of 1914 says of
him truly that '' by his sound judgment, pure
taste, and wide knowledge he made the collection
under his charge one of great interest." He had
much charm of manner, though he was more staid
in appearance than his brilliant brother " Dicky,"
whose name is kept before us every week in the
'' D " and the dicky-bird in the corner of the cover
of Punch, and who was as whimsical in conversa-
tion as in design. Lord Houghton told me of
hearing him say one day at the Garrick, when
advised to give up his quill pen in favour of a steel
one, *' Would you have me take the bread out of
the mouth of the poor goose ? " Henry Doyle
had stayed with us at Coole, and was often at our
house when he came to London, where I know the
National Gallery Trustees of the time looked on
him with favour as a desirable successor to Sir
Frederic Burton, then growing old. But he died

198 THE DUBLIN NATIONAL GALLERY

suddenly in 1892, and left Ireland with no successor
at hand. My husband was written to for advice,
but was lying in the illness from which I yet
thought he might recover ; so hoping that I might
some day be able to tell him what I had done in
his name, I took the letter and the bundle of
applications to Sir Frederic Burton and asked whom
he w ould recommend. He would not hear of any
of those who had offered themselves, and said he
only knew two men well fitted for the office, Mr.
Claude Phillips and Mr. Walter Armstrong. I
think Mr. Phillips was unwilling to leave London,
but I sent on Mr. Armstrong's name to the Dublin
Trustees, or, as they are called. Governors, and he
was appointed Director, and held the office until
1914. So there was to me a sort of traditional
interest as well as the personal one when I found
his successor might perhaps be Hugh Lane.

Bernard Shaw, arguing against me for
argument's sake, that pictures ought to be kept
in a place where the greatest numbers see them,
confessed that his own interest in art is due to the
days he spent as a boy going idly through that
gallery ; and this had but given me a new argu-
ment, for one had already been that Foley had
become a sculptor through wandering as a poor boy
among the collection of casts given to the city of
Cork ; given by George the Fourth, who, receiving
during his visit to Ireland at the same time news
of the arrival of that collection as a gift from some
Italian Government, and of a deputation of Cork
Aldermen, had bestowed the one upon the other.
Yet who would have prophesied the creation of a

"A MAN WHO SELLS PICTURES" 199

sculptor as an outcome of that royal after-dinner
mood ?

Hugh had already taken his place on the Board
in 1903. He says in a letter to Lord Gough : '* I
have just been appointed to be a * Governor and
Guardian ' of the National Gallery of Ireland, in
place of the late Lord de Vesci. This was a great
surprise, as I was supposed to be at war with the
Director, Sir W. Armstrong, and at the same time,
having no ' influence ' or official position I could
only have been appointed on my merit." It
amused me to hear later that one of the Governors
of that time had resigned rather than " sit with a
man who sells pictures."

When Sir Walter Armstrong's time was near
its end Hugh was asked by some of the Governors
to apply to be made Director in his place. He had
already written to a friend : '' The Directorship
of the Dublin National Gallery used to be the great
longing of my life, it is only serious ill-health and
perhaps the realising of how little interest is taken
in art in Dublin, that makes me dread a fresh task.
Still, I would like to leave my mark there, and as
old pictures are the only things in the world that I
know anything about, I feel that in two or three
years (if I live so long) I may be able to do some
little good. Of course I would spend the salary
on the collection — ^probably a great deal more —
and though I feel bound to add to the Modern
Gallery, collecting old pictures is my real pleasure
in life. ... I have always contended over here, in
reference to the London National Gallery, that if a
Director has not a special ' flair,' he is not wanted,
and his salary can be added to the purchase fund.

200 THE DUBLIN NATIONAL GALLERY

There is always a secretary or registrar to do the
practical managing of the Gallery, and Trustees
to see that the accounts are paid. Anyone can
go to a first-class firm and buy an annual picture
of good pedigree that will not disgrace a Gallery."
One evening in December, 1913, just before he
left Lindsey House for his first visit to America,
he asked me to write to Dr. Mahafiy, the Chairman
of the Board, begging him to give any help he
could during the time he was away. " Tell him,"
he said, " that if I am appointed to the National
Gallery I will make it my adopted child."

Some were against his appointment, because
they only thought of him as a dealer, and some
because he would not promise to live in Dublin.
He was not likely to neglect Dublin, but he
believed he would serve the Gallery better by
staying within reach of Christie's.

And as to deahng, he made a promise to give the
first offer of any picture he might buy in each year
to the Gallery at cost price, if it was within the
limit of its means.

I was able to write to him in January, 1914 :
^' I have been working about the National Gallery,
and as far as I can ascertain a good majority of the
Trustees are safe for Hugh Lane."

But on February 2, I wrote to Yeats:
" To-morrow may bring another blow, for the
election of the National Gallery Director comes on.
I had a letter from Colonel Poe saying Hugh hadn't
applied, and that it would probably go to Strick-
land, and that there was a good deal of feehng
against the dealing ; but by the same post one
from Bailey, saying he thought most of the

HUGH MADE DIRECTOR 201

Trustees were for him. Then I wrote to Mahaffy
to ask if I should cable to Hugh to send in an
apph cation, and he answered that he considered
the letter Hugh had written him as an application,
and would rule it so at the meeting, and that he
thinks he has a good chance. But I don't feel
hopeful, there seems misfortune over us just now."
For there were still men in Dublin who believed in
some hidden covetousness, and some who twitted
him with his trade.

And at the election when his name was put up
by Dr. Maha%, one of the Governors, a Mr.
Kennedy, objected, pointing out a rule that no
Governor could become Director. Hugh, with his
usual carelessness as to the forms of business, had
never looked into the rules. Dr. Mahaffy at once
adjourned the meeting to give him time to resign.
It was supposed that this objection had been made
to give Mr. Strickland, the only other candidate,
the place, and there was some anger about this.
But Miss Purser teUs me, " when Kennedy was
lying a long time in his last illness I used to go
and see him, and once he spoke of the matter, and
said he had only made the objection because
Mahaffy had offended him, he thought him too
dictatorial in the Chair, and was glad of the oppor-
tunity to snub him, and this with no intention of
helping any other candidate."

But on the 26th Hugh was elected by ten votes
to five, and I wrote to Yeats again : "I awoke
this morning more happy and satisfied than for
a long time — almost radiant — because of Hugh's
election to the Directorship yesterday. It seems
as if that barren tide may have turned, and that

202 THE DUBLIN NATIONAL GALLERY

tho worst hour is over. There is one of om^ ' best
men ' employed anyhow. And though you have
not been chosen yet" (he was a candidate for a
professorship of hterature) *' you are working as
though you had been called to employment (and,
indeed, so am I), and I don't think our work can
go to loss. I am quite satisfied now about the
Modern Gallery ; that is, satisfied that Hugh
will be very generous, and that the matter is out
of our hands." And Yeats answered : "I am
greatly cheered by the news of Lane's ap-
pointment, it will improve the whole position
in Ireland."

Hugh himself was less elated. He wrote :
*' I am feeling very depressed at my new responsi-
bilities, but I am sure that once I get started it will
become absorbing."

And when he took up his duties he was not free
from discouragement. For one disappointment,
the rooms had just been decorated in a way he
disliked, and, of course, the Treasury could not be
asked for money to undo what had been done.
He gave up his search for a country house and
seemed more content, and wrote in April : *' I
have begun rehanging and repainting (at my
own expense) some of the smaller rooms. I have
discovered a good picture by N. Poussin at
the Castle, which had been lent by the National
Gallery some years ago, so that I have de-
manded its return ! Mr. Bailey has been most
helpful. . . ." But a little time later, in May,
I heard from him from London : "I have had
to give up the Butes, and am going to Dublin
on Saturday next to make preparation for the

HIS GIFTS TO THE GALLERY 203

Board Meeting. I have received a very rude
letter from the Treasury (evidently inspired from
Dublin) saying that they could not accept me as a
civil servant, but that I can draw my salary, which
they consider excessive, considering that I am only
giving a part of my time. Besides giving up my
salary I have just bought a great bargain for the
Gallery. I gave pictures to the value of at least
£18,000 at last meeting, and I was going to give
an important Gainsborough landscape and some
good pictures to fill important gaps in the collection
at next week's meeting, but I feel rather angry at
the moment. I've a good mind to write to Mr.
Birrell and demand a * decoration ' to confound my
enemies and complete m}^ costume for future
fimctions, or to resign my post." I am glad to say
he gave the Gainsborough landscape, and glad he
did not carry out either of these momentary threats.

And in the autumn Yeats wrote from Dublin :
'' I went yesterday morning to the National
Gallery and found Hugh there. I think he is
getting more content as he is planning to get
Lutyens over to see how the building could be
improved. He seems to have added a great many
very fine pictures." For, as one of the Governors
said to me, " He was giving all the time."

The other day, at Mespil House, Miss Purser
showed me in every room something she owed to
Hugh, by a gift, as the Chinese figures and over-
mantel, or by advice or choice ; all had helped to
make her house beautiful.

I asked her if he had been impatient at the
National Gallery Board, and she said he was very
courteous there, did not, she thinks, assert himself

204 THE DUBLIN NATIONAL GALLERY

enough, though at one's own house he would
criticise and say, *' upright bricks are not the right
pattern for a wallpaper." But he would not have
liked her wallpapers whatever their pattern, she
says, because they were chosen by him who had
chosen also the decorations for the rooms of the
National Gallery.

Some of his best friends and supporters were
Governors, Sir W. Hutcheson Poe and Lord Mayo
and Miss Purser and W. F. Bailey. Dr. MahafEy,
though a friend, was at times a rough one, and I
heard that at one meeting he rather curtly refused
to allow a picture by Devis to be bought, that
Hugh had bought at Christie's. He said the draw-
ing was bad, and Hugh had accepted the judgment
quietly. One is glad to l^Jiow it was sold later at a
much higher price than he had given, and at which
he had offered it. He had been anxious to have a
little room of the " English conversation school,"
that is why he had wanted the Devis ; there was
already the little Hogarth and some others, and one
he had just given. At another time he was going
to read a very interesting note about the fine
portrait of Gainsborough's brother, '' Scheming
Jack," which he had just given to the Gallery, but
Dr. Mahaffy, wanting to catch a train, said : *' We'll
take it as read " ; and broke up the meeting.

Yet there was a real friendliness between them.
Mahaffy had, when he was made Provost, asked
him to arrange for the cleaning of the pictures in
the Provost's House, and an estimate w^as made
w^hich was accepted. Miss Purser tells me, " I
went to the National Gallery one day and found
him with his sleeves rolled up, in an overall, cleaning

THE PROVOST'S FITTINGS 205

some of them himself. Afterwards he came to me
and said he had saved £40 on the estimate by doing
a large part of the work himscK, and he wanted me
to arrange through my brother Lewis, who was
Bursar of Trinity, that this forty pounds should
not be given back to the College funds, but should
be spent on lights — some special electric fittings —
for the Provost's drawing-room, that he thought
would suit its stateliness. I didn't think this
could be done, I thought the authorities would say
the estimate had been too high, and would just
keep the money. But he in his urgent way in-
sisted. He could not see any justice in that ' I
saved the money by doing the work myseK because
I wanted to see those lights put up on that fine
room.' "

After his death she told this to Mahaffy, and
he said he would like indeed to have whatever
Hugh had recommended, if they could find out
where the fittings were to be had. And by inquiry
in London they found those he had set his heart
on, and these were put up in the house which I
grieve to think the Provost did not long live to
enjoy.

Mr. Thomas Bodkin, one of its Governors, has
been good enough to write — a welcome enrichment
of this chapter — this account of the Dublin
National Gallery : "It now consists of over six
hundred pictures, about six hundred drawings
and watercolours, and a collection of engraved
portraits and busts, which latter are mainly of
local interest. It is without question the second
Gallery in importance in the three kingdoms.
It was opened in 1864.

P

206 THE DUBLIN NATIONAL GALLERY

** Its most remarkable feature prior to Sir Hugh
Lane's Directorship was its group of paintings of
the Dutch and Flemish schools. This comprised
not only adequate but exceedingly fine, examples
of the art of Rembrandt, Franz Hals, Jan Steen,
the two Ruisdaels, De Hoogh, Cuyp, and Rubens.
The best Dutch critics are familiar with these
pictures ; and references to them may be found
scattered in such books as Dr. Bode's ' Dutch and
Flemish Masters.' But the very existence of the
Gallery is scarcely adverted to in England. The
minor Dutch and Flemish masters, such as Bega,
Codde, Van de Capelle, Claesz, Duyster, Van
Delen, Dusart, Berchem, Eeckhout, Karel du
Jardin, Duck, De Jongh, Van Goyen, De Keyser, De
Heem, Van der Heist, Hondecoeter, Van Huysum,
Wouter Knijf, Govert Flinck, Judith Leyster,
Jordaens, Nicholas Maas, Jan Molenaer, Adrian
van Ostade, Gerard Terborch, Palamedesz, Paul
Potter, Pourbus, Van Rossum, Ravestyn, William
Romeyn, Schalcken, Sorgh, Storck, William van
de Velde, and Cornehus Troost are also amply well
represented.

" The outstanding pictures in the Italian school
are Andrea Mantegna's ' Judith with the head of
Holof ernes,' of which Mr. Berenson says : ' The
Dublin Judith is one of the masterpieces of ItaHan
art, as composition, as arrangement, as modelling,
as movement only to be surpassed by Mantegna
himself.' This picture is a companion to the
' Samson and Delilah ' in the National Gallery of
London, and to ' The Judgment of Solomon ' in
the Louvre. The three were apparently painted
on the same piece of linen, and folded in the same

PICTURES OF NOTE 207

way across the centre ; the trace of the fold still
remains on each. The Dublin ' Fra Angelico ' is
almost as famous as the Mantegna. It is a small
panel, supposed by most authorities to be a portion
of the predella of the altarpiece in the Saint's own
Convent of San Marco at Florence. Of almost
equal interest is the extraordinarily fine portrait
of a musician, now generally attributed to
Sandro BotticelU, formerly variously ascribed to
RaffaeUino Del Garbo, Ercole Roberti or Francesco
Cossa.

" The ItaUan section of the GaUery contains
several other items of almost unique interest.
Chief among these is the superb altarpiece by
Zenobio de Machiavelli. It is undoubtedly the
best of the three or four known examples of this
master's work. Remarkable, too, in their way,
are the two pictures by Alesandro Oliverio. These
two works are the only known pictures by him
which now exist. The portrait of a man which is
inscribed ' Alesander OHverius v,' was formerly
ascribed to no less a person than Leonardo Da
Vinci. The Palmizano (signed in full) is also a
striking example of the art of a master who ranks
high among the quattrocentisti.

" Neither the Enghsh, the French, nor the
Spanish school was well represented in the Gallery
before Lane took up office. Yet, in the Enghsh
section were such magnificent works as Reynolds'
portrait group of ' George, the Second Earl Temple,
his wife and son, and servant ' ; Raeburn's
' David, Eleventh Earl of Buchan ' ; Hogarth's
portrait group of ' George the Second, his Queen,
son, grandson, and others ' (this was Whistler's

208 THE DUBLIN NATIONAL GALLERY

favourite picture of the Gallery) ; and Gains-
borough's ' Hugh, Duke of Northumberland.'

" The French section contained an excellent
Watteau purchased with the help of a donation
from the National Arts Collection Fund.

"The Spanish room contained a fine portrait
' J osua Van Belle ' by Murillo, two remarkable
pictures of saints by Ribera, a good, small, Goya,
and an indifferent one from the same hand.

'' Between the years 1904 and 1915 Sir Hugh
Lane, by his judicious additions to the Gallery,
more than doubled its interest and importance.
He made efforts to fill every gap in the collection,
to make every group of painters representative, to
give the whole a unity and significance which it
had not hitherto possessed. His first gift to the
Gallery was the striking portrait of John Hoppner,
by himseK, which he presented in 1904 when he had
become one of its Trustees, or Governors. He gave
twenty other pictures in his Ufetime ; and on his
death forty-one were selected from those which he
possessed and had bequeathed to his country. He
supplemented the Italian school with the superb
portrait of Baldassare CastigHone, by Titian ; with
the portrait of Cardinal Antonio Ciocchi del Monte
Sansovino, by Sebastiano del Piombo ; with a
portrait of a gentleman (as fine as most Van Dycks)
by Bernardo Strozzi (II Prete Genovese) ; with a
gorgeously caparisoned lady by Veronese ; and with
a ' Diana and Endymion,' which, if not altogether
by Tintoretto, was certainly painted in part by the
Master and pervaded wholly by his influence.

'* The Gallery, before Lane's advent, contained
a charming group of pictures of the silver period

A SPANISH GIBL.

By Goya

HUGH'S GIFTS AND BEQUESTS 209

of Italian painting by Tiepolo, Canalc, Belotto,
and Panini. Lane crowned this group with his
great decorative composition by Giovanni Batista
Piazetta, Tiepolo' s son-in-law.

*' To the meagre group of Spanish pictures he
added the astonishingly impressive El Greco —
' St. Francis in ecstacy,' formerly in the collection
of the Conte de Quinto ; and the portrait of a
Spanish girl, b}^ Goya, traditionally known as
' La Moue,' which he bought at the Rouart sale
in 1912. I have his own catalogue of this sale,
which records that he paid no less than £5680 for
this small picture, which was only valued by the
experts at £3000. The French Press at the time
made a great stir about this purchase, and I re-
member sending Lane an article on his prowess,
which appeared, I think, in the Echo de Paris,
and was entitled ' La folic des Encheres.'

** To the English school in the Irish National
Gallery, Lane added the two great Gainsborough
portraits of Mrs. King and Anne Houghton,
afterwards Duchess of Cumberland ; the Gains-
borough ' Landscape with Cattle,' from the Gren-
fell collection ; Romney's ' Portrait of a Lady ' (the
one he discovered under the pseudo Lawrence. A
reproduction of the picture before it was cleaned
appears in the margin of the Medici print which
was afterwards done from it) ; two Hogarth groups
of the MacKinnon family and the Western family ;
the Constable portrait of a child in a landscape ;
the magnificent Lawrence from the Vere Foster
collection, of Lady Elizabeth Foster, afterwards
Duchess of Devonshire, as fine an example
of the pathetic fallacy as exists in paint ; the

210 THE DUBLIN NATIONAL GALLERY

Reynolds portrait of Mrs. Francos Fortescue ; the
Romney portrait of his wife ; the Gainsborough
portrait of his brother ; and several others.

" Ho practically created a French room in the
Gallery, giving no fewer than four Poussins, two
Chardins, the great Claude from the Choiseul
collection, and ' The Broken Doll,' not to be sur-
passed in its degree by any other picture of the size
by Greuze.

" The Gallery, though containing a Rembrandt
interior, a Rembrandt landscape, and Rembrandt
portraits of an old man and a young man, con-
tained no Rembrandt portrait of a woman. Lane
remedied this deficiency with a most famous
picture, which was formerly in the collections of
Count Pourtales, Prince Demidoff, and many
others. To the Dutch and Flemish school he also
added a large and excellent Van Goyen — ' The
Winter Palace of the King of Bohemia ' — more
prosaically described in the catalogue as ' A view
of Rhein-on-the-Ems ' ; a boy, by Sir Anthony Van
Dyck, and an elderly woman by Ferdinand Bol."

It was at the National Gallery I last saw Hugh. I
had arrived on Easter Monday, 1915, from America,
and I did not hear until the next day that he was
in Dublin. I had a note from him : " Dear Aunt
Augusta, what a pleasant surprise ! I have just
received Yeats' card telling me that you are here.
I wonder if you can possibly manage to look in at
the National Gallery between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
I am very busy hanging an exhibition of the
Provost's pictures at the Gallery. We have a
Board meeting at 2.30, I have another engagement

OUR LAST MEETING 211

at 4. On Thursday I leave for London, on Friday
for New York ! All news when we meet. If you
cannot turn up I will call at Bailey's between
6 and 7."

I had some work that kept me at the Theatre,
but he came to dinner, and the next afternoon 1
spent with him at the National Gallery, but Yeats
being with us we had no intimate talk. He took
us through the rooms to show me all he had done
and all he had given in those thirteen months. He
was proud of his work and well pleased. I said to
Mr. Bailey, to whose house I returned, that I had no
more anxiety about the French pictures. I felt cer-
tain by seeing Hugh's renewed devotion to his work
in Ireland that he would bring them back to us.

His life's desire had been accomplished ; he
had charge of a great Gallery already enriched by
his bounty ; his heart was in it, and in that other
Gallery he had created. I said to him as he gave
us tea in the Directors' room, with its look of
dignity, its mahogany bookcases, and its books, " I
am glad to see you in your right setting at last."

I Uke to remember him there, in authority, in
love with his work, in harmony with all that was
about him.

There are others who remember him in the
same way. The other day Oliver Gogarty quoted to
Yeats some lines from a poem of Lionel Johnson's,
saying, " You will know who these lines describe —

" ' Magnificence and Grace,
Excellent courtesy ;
A brightness on the face,
Airs of high memory,' "

and Yeats had nodded " Yes," so well they fitted
Hugh.

i^MT % Dl /-\

CHAPTER XVI

THE '^LUSITANIA"

His first serious anxiety about money came
towards the end. Though I hold to it that the
* keeping back of that Rembrandt was all for
Ireland's good, its sale to the Cape Town Gallery
would have brought in ready money, whereas he
had to pay out money for the pictures he bought
in its place. Then he bought many pictures at the
Grenf ell sale, and as we know for him to bid was
to send up prices. Some spoke after his death as
if he had but thought of his own profit in doing
this, but I knew it was not so by what he had said
to me at the time ; and Alec Martin also had told
me he had crippled himself for the sake of his
friends. It had troubled him that they should be
forced to sell at a time when the trade in pictures
had languished as it were under the shadow of the
brooding war ; for there was misgiving in the
minds of those who best knew of the nations'
unrest, and how the armies, trained and over-
trained, had become like a nut over-ripe, that must
be loosed with the first stir in the air.

So I was happy when meeting with Mrs.
Grenfell I found she had nothing but kind
memories of Hugh, as she told me how good he
had been at that troublesome time, and of his
generosity through it all. For I knew that it was

212

MONEY TROUBLES 213

his buying so largely at that sale that had left him
with heavy bills to meet when war was indeed
declared. A year or two earlier this would have
meant nothing to him, when, as Alec Martin says,
*' he had but to walk into Bond Street and sell a,
picture to get what money he would." But the
war had crippled him, " the worst season on record,"
he wrote to Mr. Bodkin, " and the dealers against
my things." His creditors wanted their money.
" The hounds are after me," he said in his de-
pression to Gerald Kelly. He wrote me a very
sad letter on the last day of 1914, saying : "I
suppose that it is always what one cares for most
that gives us most trouble and anxiety. In my
case it is the probable losing of all my pictures,
which I must do unless I find a large sum by the
1st of April. I feel, however, that one's troubles
ought nob to count at this time, considering what
those have to suffer at the front. . . , Best of
wishes to you all for the New Year."

He had been used to take money troubles
lightly. Mr. Duncan says he told him once he
had to raise £30,000 by a certain date, " and I was
appalled, it seemed such a colossal sum, and he
had failed so far in getting it. He was amused
when he saw my despair. He took my arm and
said, ' Don't worry, it will be all right. You've
got it rather out of proportion. Think of a char-
woman trying to raise thirty shillings and you'll get
the idea.' "

But now, in war time, when he asked his bank
to advance the money he needed it was doubtful.
I went to see its manager, Mr. Meagher, in the City
the other day, an old and good friend of Hugh's,

214 THE -LUSITANIA'*

and ono I ]iad often met at Lindsey House, and
I asked him about these difficulties. He said it
was £30,000 Hugh had owed for the Grenfell
pictures. Agnew had them in his care, and at
last it was decided that if the money were not
forthcoming next day they would have to be sold.

Hugh owed the Bank already £30,000, and
there would have been no trouble about it, or a
further advance at any other time, but the war
and the fall in pictures had made bankers nervous.
But on that very last day Mr. Meagher, saying he
himself, had he the money, would not hesitate to
trust Hugh with it, persuaded the Directors to
lend it. He took this news to Hugh in the evening,
there was no telephone to Lindsey House — Hugh
used to say that he wouldn't have one because
people so often said to him, " If you were on the
telephone I would have asked you to lunch."
He found him just sitting down to eat his dinner,
a piece of cake and two oranges. Anxiety had
left him no stomach for more. He took the news
quietly, and celebrated it by taking him to dine
at the Good Intent, ** a very pleasant evening."
And then when Mr. Meagher said he must take out
some insurance policies, he began to cavil and
grumble at the cost.

His immediate anxiety was thus quieted, but
there was still £60,000 of debt. He had under-
taken to go to America to appraise for Lloyds some
pictures damaged in a burning ship, and he kept to
this promise, though it had been in part to look
at the market there and free himself through it
that he had accepted the commission.

As he was at Liverpool leaving for America

A LETTER FROM NEW YORK 215

:urther relief came. He had a cable telling him
^hat the Titian " Man in a Red Cap," and Holbein
* Thomas Cromwell," had been sold in America.
Se was free again. The first use he made of his
Tcedom was to cable to Christie's making an offer
)f £10,000 for a portrait to be painted by Sargent
:or the benefit of the Red Cross.

A letter from New York, and that only reached
ne after his death, though written on April 28,
laid ; '' It is beginning to be very pleasant here.
\ am quite sorry to be leaving next Saturday. I
vas fortunate in selling my Holbein and Red
^ap Titian the day before I sailed — by cable,
through an agent, and only found out on my
irrival that it was to Mr. Frick. Unfortunately
le got them at nearly cost price. I am happy at
getting the Titian installed in such a famous
joUection. Quinn has twice dined with me here,
md he took me a delightful motor ride on Sunday,
md also to a play. The exciting air of New York
nade a wreck of me for the first week, but now
\ feel better than I have done for years ! All
)ther news when we meet."

On May 5 I was at Coole with my son.
Bernard Shaw and his wife were with us, and
Augustus John. I was to leave the next day to
/ake charge of the Abbey Plays, which were just
3eing taken to London ; I looked forward to seeing
lugh there very soon. But at midday I had a
;able from New York, from John Quinn, saying he
lad heard of the sinking of the Lusitania, and
loped Hugh Lane was safe. I enclosed it in a
etter to Yeats, saying : "I had enclosed this
norning. The postman had brought a rumour.

216 THE ^'LUSITANIA"

and then there was a wire saying the Lusitania
was lost, but this was the first I heard of Hugh
being on board. I liavc wired to Ruth for news,
but no answer so far, and I am almost without
hope, for I am sure he would have sent me a
message if he had come to land — though it is
possible he might be wounded or unconscious.
I had a terrible feeling of depression all yesterday
and last night. T thought it must be the dislike
of leaving home and going to London, and put off
going till to-morrow night. Now I think it was
presentiment. It is too dreadful to think of. . . ."

The rest may be told in this letter from his
sister, who, when the news reached her, had gone
over to Queenstown. She wrote to Alec Martin,
Hugh's devoted friend, who had gone to see him
off from Liverpool three weeks before :

" There is no hope of finding him alive now. . . .
It is not even certain his dear body can be found, as
there are currents running off shore round this coast,

" The Mr. L. I saw yesterday had been raving
for two days from the shock, but was quite calm
when I spoke to him ; he had sometimes played
Bridge with Hugh. My uncle motored us down to
Queenstown in the afternoon to inquire for Lady
Allan, whom Mr. L. told me Hugh had played
Bridge with the night before. She saw me, though
badly hurt, very bruised, and they think a sUght
fracture of the thigh. Hugh came up to her when
she was standing ready, holding her two young
daughters by the hand. He had no life-belt on.
There was only a small one to be had. He then
said (he was pale, but quite calm) he would try and
find the Pearsons in case he could help them. He

''NOT AFRAID" 217

walked towards the bow of the ship, and that was
the last she saw of him. Mrs. Pearson's body has
not been found yet." He had said also, '* This is
a sad end for ns all."

Mr. J. B. Yeats has written to me of him :
" I don't think there is an3^thing so fine in life as
a man sufficient unto himseK, or so rare. It is
what is called a ' personality.' Hugh Lane was a
man sufficient unto himseM, and that self — what
was it ? A strange combination of extreme
sensitiveness with an absolute intrepidity. Indeed,
he was so sensitive that it was to me a constant
surprise that he could not be frightened. Given
these conditions of fearlessness and sensitiveness
there had resulted such a plenitude of resource
that I verily believe what he most enjoyed was a
desperate situation. Remembering this, I have
speculated in my mind as to what he must have
thought, or did, during those last few moments
of his life when he stood on the deck of the
Lusitania, Of two things only am I sure — that he
was not angry, and that he was not afraid. Yet,
because of the sensitiveness of his mind he would
miss nothing of the dreadful inevitableness. I
suppose that all his thoughts went away from
himself to what was before his eyes — the women
and the children especially. ..."

Mrs, Hinde was told afterwards by a steward
who had been on board that he had seen Sir Hugh
Lane at the last, helping women and children to get
into the boats. I cannot be certain this is true,
but I am certain he met the end in a way that was
in tune with the undaunted courage, the passionate
generosity, of his dedicated life.

CHAPTER XVII

THE CODICIL OF FORGIVENESS

When I had to write about the rebuffs Hugh had
to suffer from DubHn I felt very sad at having to
show to the outside world these " wounds with
which he had been wounded in the house of his
friends." And yet I could not tell the story of his
passionate pilgrimage without telHng of the thorns
and thickets he had to go through. I have also
told, and found the telling difficult, of the
impatience and excitabiUty that at some times
made these difficulties harder for his helpers and
friends.

But all the time I had thought that it would
be with positive joy I would tell how the un-
graciousness shown him in Ireland had been out-
done by that shown to him later in London.

And yet I have only pain now in the telling.
Personal sorrow and the advance of years and the
grittiness of official discourtesy have done away
with any joy of battle. And if *' to understand all
is to forgive all," then also what we do not under-
stand we must forgive.

About the time (September 15, 1911) Hugh had

218

HIS ANGER SLACKENS 219

taken away his group of French pictures, his
conditional gift, from Dublin, he wrote to me :
*' My operation is to take place in about a week's
time, and then I am supposed to go back to the
' rest cure ' for two months. Some days I feel
that I won't be alive then, on others I think that
I don't require any rest. The Doctors say that
I can never be really rid of neurasthenia, I have
left it too long. But they say by living a quiet
life without worry (!) that I shall feel much better.
As soon as I can get my affairs in order, estabUsh
the Gallery and make my will, I shall not much
care what happens."

His will, made in anger that autumn (October
11), I have already given.

But his anger had soon begun to slacken.
Only a month later Yeats wrote to me in a letter
dictated to Mr. Ezra Pound : '' November 5, 1913.
I saw Lane last night. He says you may write to
your subscribers that we hope to carry through the
Gallery project after the change in the Irish
Government, though we have been defeated for
the moment through passing conditions of poUtical
and economic strife. At first he said that you
could write that the collection would be kept
together, but afterwards said, ' No, that statement
might get back to Dublin.' He doesn't want the
National Memorial" (I had made some proposal
of one) " because he says his supporters are all
tired. He thinks the whole thing should be
allowed to rest for the present. He says he wants
time to recover his own enthusiasm. He then
said : * But you may be very sure I have no
desire to leave the present Dublin collection to

220 THE CODICIL OF FORGIVENESS

represent me.' * His plan is to found an Inter-
national Gallery in London, to use his French
pictures for it ; but only if sufficient endowments
are forthcoming to make a really great gallery.
If he can do this he is convinced that his prestige
will be so great that it will be impossible for Dublin
to refuse his next offer. He will make a completely
new collection for Dublin. He says he is tired of
the old one, and knows much more now. He
needed no urging, and is, I really think, as deter-
mined about Ireland as we are ourselves. He
evidently intends to take the Dublin National
Gallery post, though he professes to have lost all
desire for it. He has re-made his will. He had
left everything to the Modern Gallery, but has now
left his money to the Irish National Gallery and
his (French) pictures to England. Belfast has no
chance of getting anything from him. They refused
a painting of a mother and child because they
couldn't see a wedding ring (the hands were rather
roughly finished)."

I wrote in answer : "I had been anxiously
watching for your letter, and now it has come and
is the greatest relief. I feel Hugh is behaving so
well, that is the great thing. He is extraordinarily
generous and forgiving. ... I don't like the idea
of any pictures going to London, but if Hugh
comes to the National Gallery all that may
change. I am glad he is going away for a time

* He wrote to me a few days later (November 12, 1913) : " You
give me much too much credit for my intentions toward Dubhn. But
I am simply ashamed to have my name associated with a bad collection,
and would like to make it really good of a kind. I don't think that I
will ever bring back the same pictures, as I could best work up a fresh
interest (to myself as well as Dublin) by making a fresh collection."

HIS FORGIVENESS BEGUN 221

0 get his nerves right and forget some of the
nnoyances."

And I wrote to Hugh : "I have heard from
feats of his talk with you, and I am very happy
bout it. All I want to be able to say to my
Lmerican people is that there is hope in the future
-it seemed so ignominious to say we had quite
ailed. And of course for the sake of my descen-
iants I am glad to think there is a chance of a fine
Jallery for Ireland. And I am best pleased of
,U at being more than ever proud of you ! I am
iraid at moments my own indignation and
emper would have made me sell the pictures at
Christie's to show Dublin what it had lost, but you
Lave kept your generosity and nobility in spite of
bll. Of course I shall feel jealous if London gets
^ny pictures, but perhaps ' the longest way round
s the shortest way home,' and that it is ' reculer
)our mieux sauter.' With love (and pride),
^r. aff. A. G."

And two months later (January 17, 1914) there
s other evidence, in an American paper, the Art
yfews^ that his forgiveness had begun : "As
0 Sir Hugh Lane, he says the Municipal Art
^rallery is now in temporary quarters in Harcourt
Street, and he has been agitating to secure a
Dermanent building, and hopes that when Home
Elule comes he will get one. He thinks Munici-
palities rather slow to appreciate the educational
ralue of fine paintings."

As to the story of his troubles with the London
N'ational Gallery, Yeats, summing up the case
ifter a controversy, in the Observer of January 21,
1917, says : " On July 27th, 1913, Lane wrote to

Q

222 THE OODICIL OF FORGIVENESS

Sir Charles Holroyd : ' These pictures are com-
plementary to the collection I have already given
them (the Dublin Corporation), and the other
pictures given and subscribed for by others. I
think if they were hung in the National Gallery
or the Tate Gallery it might encourage the Corpora-
tion to fulfil my conditions.'

" A little later, when it had become probable
that the Dublin Corporation would refuse the
building upon the Bridge over the Liffey, that he
had asked for, he got a letter from one of the
London Trustees asking if there was any chance
of the National Gallery receiving a gift of the
pictures ' or would the loan, if accepted, be a loan
in reality for the aid of Dublin.' A gift of the
pictures to London would have implied the founda-
tion of some kind of International Gallery to
contain them, for neither the National Gallery nor
the Tate can, by their constitution, permanently
exhibit modern Continental works of art.

" It must have been about this date (I have
no means of fixing the exact date) that Lord
Curzon suggested to him the foundation of such a
gallery." (Hugh wrote to me on July 31, 1913:
*' I am busy taking down my ' conditional gift.'
It is my last trump card. ... I have had a good
many letters from Directors of English and Scotch
galleries asking for the loan of my pictures —
Aitken, Sir C. Holroyd. Lord Curzon came to see
me — ^pressed me to give them to London if they
got a new building. I refused, but offered to
lend them to the National Gallery. This they
are considering. If it comes off it may help to
bring the Corporation to its senses.") ** There was

I

YEATS STATES THE CASE 223

always someone at his elbow to suggest that he
should give to England — so rich in pictures —
what he had promised to Ireland in her poverty.
He replied on August 8 : ' As I still hope that
my work in Dublin will not prove a failure, I cannot
think of giving them to any other gallery at present.
But the gallery that, not having such, refused the
loan of them for one or two years, would appear to
be quite unworthy of them as a gift. I confess
to being quite out of sympathy with the English
National Gallery.'

" On August 12 the Secretary of the National
Gallery replied, unconditionally accepting the
loan of the pictures. A few days later came the
Dublin refusal, and its refusal was aggravated by a
disgraceful Press attack. In a cautious interview
in the Manchester Guardian, Lane spoke of a
possible international Gallery. He took his French
pictures from Dublin, sent them to the National
Gallery, where they are still in the cellars, and
changed his will. He had left everything he
possessed to the Dublin Municipal Gallery, but
now, with the exception of these pictures left to
London, he gave all to the Dublin National
Gallery. Dublin was still, it is plain, his chief
interest.

" Yet in letters to Lady Gregory, who always
pleaded for Ireland and the work there, he spoke
of Ireland with great bitterness. We were all
very angry, less indeed with the Corporation than
the newspapers, and some of us thought that only
the sale of the pictures in the open market would
prove their value. I myself printed as a pamphlet,
* Poems written in Discouragement 1912-1913,'

224 THE CODICIL OF FORGIVENESS

and certainly those poems are as bitter as the
letters Mr. MacColl has quoted. That is the
manner of our intemperate Irish nature (and I
think the Elizabethan English were as volatile) ;
we are quick to speak against our countrymen, but
slow to give up our work. I once said to John
Synge, ' Do you write out of love or hate of
Ireland ? ' and he replied, * I have often asked
myself that question ' ; and yet no success outside
Ireland seemed of interest to him. Sir Hugh Lane
wrote and felt bitterly, and yet when the feeling
was at its height, while the Dublin slanders were
sounding in his ears, he made a will leaving all he
possessed except the French pictures, to a DubUn
gallery. A few days after writing Ireland had so
completely ' disillusioned ' him that he could not
even bear ' to hear of his early happy days in
Galway,' he had bequeathed to Dublin an in-
comparable treasure.

" Now a wonderful thing happened which
certainly did not incline his mind to London. The
Trustees, after they had accepted his loan un-
conditionally, after they had hung his pictures,
after he had announced in Dublin (he was still
thinking of Dublin) the day when they were to be
first shown to the public, decided to make con-
ditions. They would only hang a small collection
chosen by themselves ; fifteen pictures which they
considered well worthy of temporary exhibition
in the National collection, and they would not
hang even these fifteen unless he promised to
bequeath them to the Gallery in his will. The
selection was capricious or careless ; it rejected,
for instance, Daumier's ' Don Quixote,' according

AN UNGRACIOUS LETTER 225

to the mind of some of us a master work surpassing
all the rest in beauty. Sir Hugh Lane, though his
new will was only some three months old, refused
both conditions. It became exceedingly difficult
to get any reparation made to him for the Dublin
Press attack ; all his enemies were heartened.
The rumour ran, ' The National Gallery in London
has refused the Lane pictures because they are not
good enough.' He considered himself abominably
treated, and remained so far as I know of this mind
to the end."

In his answer to that letter of the Trustees,
which had met him on his return from New York,
he says (February 12, 1914) : " Its contents
were an unpleasant surprise for me, rendered no
more agreeable by its singularly ungracious
tone. . . . The loan of pictures was proposed not
by me, but by Lord Curzon and others connected
with the National Gallery who persuaded me to
make a formal ofter. In that letter I submitted a
list of the pictures from the Dublin collection that
I had in mind, pictures most of them known to
Sir Charles Holroyd and familiar to other students
of painting. My letter was duly considered by
the Board, and my offer formally accepted by your
letter of August 12th on their behalf. . . . The
collection had been accepted, arranged, publicly
announced, and a date fixed for its opening.
I am now informed that the Board have reversed
the decision communicated to me, that they have
made a selection of fifteen pictures out of thirty-
five (about), and that they will be good enough
to accept those as a loan on condition I pledge
myself ultimately to present or bequeath them,,"

22G THE CODICIL OF FORGIVENESS

In a later letter he says : '* I cannot even
return the pictures to Dublin without removing
the slur that has been cast upon them."

The fifteen pictures chosen for exhibition from
the thirty- nine were : " The Present," Alfred
Stevens ; " Summer Morning," '* Papal Palace,
Avignon," and '' Italian Peasant," Corot ; " Fon-
tainebleau," Barye ; " Due d' Orleans," Ingres ;
*' Study of a Woman," Madrazo ; '' Eva Gonzales,"
and " Concert aux Tuileries," Manet ; " Skating
in Holland," Jongkind ; *' En Voyage," Mancini ;
" La Plage," Degas ; " The Law Courts," Forain ;
" StiU Life," Bonvin ; " The Toilet," Puvis de
Chavannes.

Among those left out were Monet's ''* Vetheuil " ;
Daubigny's " Portrait of Daumier " ; three land-
scapes by Courbet ; Kousseau's " Moonlight " ;
Daumier' s " Don Quixote and Sancho Panza " ;
Renoir's " Les Parapluies " ; and " The Beheading
of John the Baptist," by Puvis de Chavannes.

Hugh had said in his letter of February 12, to
the Trustees : "I would never have dreamed of
submitting my pictures for selection to members
of the Board. I took for granted the Director was
their adviser in matters of art. If that were not
so I should have been ready to refer the matter
to any other expert agreed upon between the
Board and myseH."

This authoritative opinion was not long in
coming to him, for he wrote to me from London
later in February : "I am rather enjoying myself
with the National GaUery here. After sending me
a list of the pictures that they would kindly hang,
if I promised to give them later, they asked

RENOIR 227

MacCoU and Sargent to make a written report.
They are both very hard to please about pictures,
but they have sent in very good reports, par-
ticularly praising most of the pictures that the
Trustees left out. I have written to them rather
strongly."

He wrote to me a little later : " The National
Gallery here is coming to its senses, and is likely
to offer the Tate for the showing of my pictures.
They are also taking immediate steps to found a
Gallery for foreign contemporary art ! "

Yet in spite of Mr. Sargent and Mr. MacColl's
reports, " that are quite satisfactory from my point
of view," the pictures were sent back to the cellars
where they remained until 1917. They were only
brought out and exhibited after we had publicly
asked that according to Hugh Lane's direction as
written in his codicil they should be returned to
Dublin.

I do not think that this discourtesy was the
cause of his revoking his bequest ; that was rather
through his continued interest in his own country.
Yet it was surely a good reason for such revoking.

I was myself at Lindsey House at the time
these pictures were hung ready for exhibition in a
room of the National Gallery, and with Ruth
Shine I went to see them on Sir Charles Holroyd's
invitation. He asked for a list of friends we might
like to have invited to the private view. I was
puzzled at missing so many of what we had con-
sidered the best pictures, but diffidence in the
presence of exact knowledge did not allow me to
venture any questions.

I read the other day in an article on Renoir

228 THE CODICIL OF FORGIVENESS

in a New York magazine : *' When in 1917 ' Les
Parapluics ' was placed in the National Gallery
some hundred English artists and amateurs seized
the opportunity of sending the Master a testimony
of their admiration. In this they said : ' Des
Tinstant ou votre tableau s'est trouve installe
parmi les chefs-d'oeuvre des maitres anciens, nous
avons eu la joie de constater qu'un de nos con-
temporains avait pris place d'emblee parmi les
grands maitres de la tradition Europeenne.' "

Yet in 1914 that picture had not been even
thought worthy of hanging with other modem
pictures. It had been one of those left in a cellar
by those in authority at the National Gallery.

I quote again from Yeats : " His interest in
Dublin was returning ; he had become Director
of the National Gallery there. Dublin became as
little distasteful to him as any place can be to a
man whose nerves are kept on edge by bad health
and the desire to achieve more than the public
opinion of the time permits. He took a keener
interest in the Municipal Gallery and began to give
it gifts, adding to it, for instance, a fine bust by
Rodin. After all, Dublin had founded a gallery
for him, and exhibited his French pictures for
years, and that gallery was well attended, and
among the rest by working people. His most
vehement years had been expended in its service ;
it could but remain his chief work, his monument
to future generations, and lacking important
pictures that he had gathered for it, that noble
monument would lack a limb. Was it not more
natural to wish to leave behind him a small perfect
thing with the pattern of his own mind than to be

n

LES PARAPLUIES.

By Renoir.

[Dollard, Dubl'm.

HE WRITES THE CODICIL 229

haM remembered for a bequest soon lost in the
growing richness of a London Gallery ? More
than all the rest, he was Irish, and of a family that
had already in their passion and in their thought
given great gifts to Ireland."

It was on February 3, 1915, that he wrote,
with his own hand and signature, what has been
called " The Codicil of Forgiveness."

Some ten days after the sinking of the Lusitania,
Hugh Lane's executors were at Lindsey House,
and with his sister looked in all places where he
had kept papers, for he had, before sailing for
America, spoken of making a will to take the
place of the one he had dictated to his sister in
1913, and which was acted upon in the end as no
later one was found.

I was tired and sad, and went to lie down in my
old room upstairs. My mind was upon that will
; he had made in anger, and I longed that another
might be found in which, as I believed, those harsh
words about Dublin would have been left out, and
the pictures restored, as I felt certain Hugh had
intended to restore them. After a while I felt a
sudden conviction that had he made such a will,
it might be found in the desk of his room at the
Dublin National Gallery. I had only been once
in it, and had not taken notice of a desk, but I
went down at once to Ruth Shine and found her
alone, the others having gone. I told her this,
and though she did not think it likely there would
be anything there I urged her to write at once to
Dublin to have the desk searched. She wrote
to Mr. Duncan, who took the letter to Mr.

230 THE CODICIL OF FORGIVENESS

Strickland, Hugh's Registrar, who afterwards be-
came Director for a short while in his place. Mr.
Strickland found no will there, but found a sealed
envelope addressed to Mrs. Shine. It contained a
codicil written in Hugh's own handwriting and
signed by him, signed (or initialled) three times.
I give a facsimile of it.

There was no doubt in his sister's mind or
mine that he had written it believing it to be legal,
and that in addressing it to her who had the keep-
ing of his w ill, he had intended it to be carried out.
But she had at once noticed that the signature
had not been witnessed, and that it was therefore
not valid in English law, although it would be
valid in Scotland, or in the trenches.

I did not know if the codicil could yet be
accepted as legal. But I rejoiced that Hugh had
shown this great forgiveness of those in DubUn
who had roughly driven away his offered gift,
and that he was in full reconcilement with his
country when he died.

His signature has never been questioned, but
because of the lack of a witness to it, the pictures
with which it is concerned have become the
property of the London National Gallery.

Memorials asking that Hugh Lane's last wishes
as expressed in his codicil may be carried out, as
well as a resolution to the same effect passed at a
great meeting held at the Dublin Mansion House
in 1918, have been laid before the Trustees by me
as the Trustee he had named ; by the Lord Mayor
and Corporation of Dublin ; by representatives of
the Learned and Educational Societies of Dublin,
including the Vice- Chancellor of the University of

T

l/^^" ^'^

^

[r^^

I \ J'TL

yjXA ^- ^-^

L' t^ ^ fl — 1- /^ . v^^^^

234 THE CODICIL OF FORGIVENESS

Dublin, tlie President of the National University,
the Chief Commissioner of the Board of National
Education, the Archbishop of Dublin (representing
the Royal Irish Academy), the Presidents of the
Royal Hibernian Academy, the Royal Institute
of Architects, the Royal Society of Antiquarians,
the Royal College of Physicians, the Director
of the National Gallery, and the Principal of
Alexandra College; by English artists who had
already given of their work to the Dublin Gallery —
among them Max Beerbohm, George Clausen,
Augustus John, William Nicholson, Briton Riviere,
William Rothenstein, Charles Shannon, William
Strang, and Wilson Steer. And an appeal has
been made to the Prime Minister by Irish artists
and writers, including Sir Wllham Barrett, John
Eglinton, Mark Fisher, Katherine Tynan,
Nathaniel Hone, Douglas Hyde, Sir John Laver}^,
George Morrow, Standish O'Grady, Sir WiUiam
Orpen, George Russell (A. E.), Dora Sigerson
Shorter, James Stephens, Bernard Shaw, Jack
B. Yeats, and W. B. Yeats.

Although several among the Trustees have
recognised that this is a matter where a greater thing
than legaUty is concerned, they do not as a whole
feel at Uberty to give up a bequest that has become
their legal property, except through legislation
that will set them free from possible reproach
from any who may put the legal before the moral
claim. We have, therefore, appealed to Parha-
ment to pass a Bill legalising this codicil, as it
had already done in the case of wills signed
without a witness by soldiers who lost their Uves
in the War.

HIS INTENTION TO THE LAST 235

As to the moral claim, those who knew Hugh
best have no doubt as to what his intention was ''at
the time he wrote the codicil, and up to the time
of his death." His sister, who had no great mind
to see Dublin's ungraciousness to him so easily
forgiven, yet says in her statutory declaration,
*' I have no doubt whatever that he considered
the codicil legal."

Mr. Alec Martin, who " would have preferred to
have seen the pictures placed in London," declares
that on the way to Liverpool, where he went
to see the last of Hugh as he set out for that
journey from which he was not to return, " he
spoke of Ireland and of his recent visit to DubUn
with the greatest affection, and he gave me to
understand that his mind was made up that it
should be after all the destination of his pictures."

Mr. John Quinn, the distinguished lawyer and
art collector, writing from New York, tells how
Hugh on that last visit had given him to under-
stand Dublin should be the destination of his
pictures, "as he had always wanted them to go
there " ; Mr. S. O'Kelly, an Alderman of Dubhn,
told at the Mansion House meeting that having
seen Hugh at a picture gallery in New York, and
asked him if he would return the pictures to
Dublin, he answered, " They will all be in Dublin
yet." And that was but a day or two before he
sailed in the Lusitania,

These are his last recorded words on the
matter.

And this is the record of his last day in
Ireland in that 1915 Easter week.

He had been urged with insistence in London

236 THE CODICIL OF FORGIVENESS

to promise his collection should remain there if
London should outstrip Dublin in the promiso]
or foundation of a gallery, and this idea as w(
know had for a short time tempted him. But
as if to secure himself against further importunity!
we see in the sworn statement of Mrs. DuncanJ
the Curator of the Harcourt Street Gallery, that
on that last day, that was but two days before
he sailed from Liverpool, he being in the Harcoui
Street Gallery, said he wished to bring back the
pictures to Dublin, and would be content if the
Corporation reaffirmed their already expressec
intention of building a gallery (and this has since
been done). '' For," he said, " I wish to brinj
the pictures back to Dublin as soon as possible
they could hang here pending the building ol
any gallery the Corporation may decide upon."

It does not seem as if evidence could be am
stronger. Yet five years have passed away since
his death. Chief Secretaries have one after anothei
promised sympathy and help ; the last, Mr. Mac-
pherson, has given it, carrying the needed Bil
before the Cabinet, believing as he said to me
after he had examined all the evidence " absolutely
convinced Hugh Lane intended that codicil to be
carried out at the time he wrote it and at the
time of his death." But Parhament has beei
occupied with many things, some it may be of lest
lasting importance than this ; and Ireland is out
of fashion, and the London Trustees still hold to|
their legal right.

And yet they have been set what I must thinkj
a fine example by the Trustees of the Irish Natiom
Gallery, the residuary legatees of Hugh Lane's wilLj

*'THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES" 237

For that promise of ten thousand pounds to
ithe Red Cross Fund for a picture by Mr. Sargent
might well have been contested in law, and advice
was not wanting that this should be done. But
those legatees, knowing Hugh personally as they
did, were certain it was his wish that his splendid
promise should be fulfilled, and so carried out that
wish, to their own loss except in honour.

I write this in May, 1920, just five years after
Hugh's death. I have, I will not say wasted, but
spent unceasingly time and energy and strength
that might have been better used than in refuting
quibbles, striving to carry out the trust th8.t he
placed in me. I have written the story in full
from month to month through those years, but
this is not the place to give it. I have knocked at
many doors. Some helpers, among them John
Redmond and W. F. Bailey and Robert Ross, have
died ; some, like that good friend Mr. Birrell, are
out of office. Yeats is in America. But when one
helper fails another comes. Those who are for us
are stronger than those who are against us. I have
never given up assurance, because as I have felt
and said from the beginning, we have "the Cloud
of Witnesses " on our side.

B

CHAPTER XVIII

MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

February 18, 1920. I went to London last
September, having found that the writing of this
story of Hugh's Ufe must be done by me or left
undone. And finding also that through some
untoward mistrust or misunderstanding, the letters
and documents from which a part of it should
have been told were withheld from me, I turned to
find in place of them some chronicle in the memory
of his friends, so each afternoon I went out from
the little house in Chelsea that had been my son's
to look for any of these who might have come back
from their summering. But they were few, for
the sun was yet warm and the branches of the
trees were full of leaves. Yet some I found, and
these were kind, and searched their minds for such
things as they could remember of him. And when
I returned home in the evening I would write down
my day's gains, what I had gathered through a
memory that had been trained through much
gathering of folk-lore. And this seemed akin to
folk-lore, the tradition coming through many
memories, and that come together makes a whole.
Some of what I reaped I have already given, and
some I am giving here.

Of the artists I looked for. Sir Wilham Orpen

238

IN SPAIN WITH ORPEN 239

was away, still painting that great hall at Versailles
where the Peace Conference had held its meetings.
But he was back before I left London in November,
and on, I think, my last evening in London I
dined with him in the Corner House, that is only
two doors from mine. Lady Orpen and her
daughter were there, and one or two guests, and
through dinner time we talked of the war and of
France. But later, in the drawing-room, he said :
" Of course Hugh and I came near to quarrelling
sometimes — he said things that hurt, and I would
say, ' This brings us very near to a break,' and then
he would burst out laughing. He was the most
forgiving man I ever knew. You know how they
treated him in Dublin, they could not believe he
could be so generous without a motive — they said
he wanted them to build a gallery for rubbish he
couldn't sell. It was the same here. Wertheimer
said to me, ' I know now the sort of man he was,
I used not to know it, I used to think it was
humbug when he talked about buying pictures
to give to a gallery. I never thought then it was
true.' "

Then he told me what I have already recorded,
of Hugh's early ignorance of French pictures, and
he went on, '*I will tell you a story about him
though it may seem to go against myself. We
went together to Spain. He had no money then,
and I had no money. But when we got to Madrid
I wanted to be enjoying myself and have a good
time. But he would scold me and say, ' How can
you waste money on dinners when there are such
beautiful things to buy ? ' He would hardly eat
enough, he would keep bread and fruit from his

240 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

lunch and make it do for his dinner. I didn't
hke his wanting me to Hvc Hke that, I was cross.
We used to go into antiquity shops together, and
in one I saw that pair of figures, Adam and Eve,
you see them on the chimney-piece [he took down
two fine old pieces of wood carving]. I said,
' Those are what I would like to have, I like them
better than anything I have seen.' But they were
£20, that would have been a big sum to either of us
in those days. Well, we went on in the same way,
he going hungry and grumbling at me, and I
getting Grosser and crosser, so that when he left —
he was going on to Rome — ^I wouldn't go to the
station to see him off. And when I went up to my
room after he had gone I saw on my bed those two
figures. He had bought them wdthout telling me,
and left them there as a gift. That is just what he
was, giving everything away, denjdng himself.
He thought anything spent on himself was waste.
He had a great power of enjoyment for all that, he
saw the humour in everything. That kept him
from rancour."

October 6. This evening I went in to Mr.
Steer's house where Hugh had so often been.
The artist had painted there a portrait of her
who had given Hugh that short dream " that had
been so delightful in the beginning," but as it
faded he and his criticisms had been less helpful
and the sitter had come less frequently, and in the
end the picture itself had vanished away.

He is glad he does not know those who now
inhabit Lindsey House, he likes to think of it
always as he knew it. He had signed the request

MR. STEER 241

to the London Trustees asking for the return of
the French pictures ; he knew that Hugh had
always kept to that one idea, that one purpose in
his mind. He thinks that "as to portraits we
are happy in having as well as the Sargent ^tho
Mancini. He is sitting alert, on the edge of the
chair, as he used to do, though it cannot be com-
pared with the Mancini portrait of you — that
wonderful thing." He had thought when he saw
the Kelly portrait of Hugh unfinished that the
head was very fine, though not the composition.
But the El Greco Hugh gave as his first gift to
the Dublin National Gallery may also count as
one, '* a wonderful likeness."

Mr. Steer harbours a little regret in his memory.
He recalls a day when Hugh came in and he offered
him lunch, sending down for a cottage pie he had
used but a part of. But it had been eaten down-
stairs, and Hugh had only bread and cheese. He
had not minded, *' he never cared what he had " —
it was his host whose hospitality was wounded.
It is just such a consuming thought, " a worm that
dieth not," that regret for a lost opportunity,
that grips a liberal housewife in the night time.

1 spoke of Yeats' line in a Cuchulain play, " his
life as a bird's flight from tree to tree," as appro-
priate to Hugh's swift, soaring transit. But he
said the lines I had sent him awhile ago from
another play were yet closer ; he had quoted them
to Mr. MacCoU, who had thought of putting them on
the first page of the Memoir if he had written it : —

" the laughing lip
That shall not turn from laughing whatever rise or fall,
The heart that knows no bitterness although betrayed by all.
The hand that loves to scatter, the life Hke a gambler's throw."

242 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

And strangely enough I had not thought of these
of late, while he had kept them all the time in his
mind.

On one of those autumn evenings Mr. Charles
Ricketts came to see me bringing a sheaf of
beautiful lilies, perhaps in memory of the day
when Hugh had called on him and Shannon, and
although or because they were out had filled the
vases in their rooms with flowers. " He was
almost criminally generous," he said, " but almost
criminally penurious to himself." He remembers
him once at the door of Christie's ; rain had just
come on, but he would not hear of taking a cab. —
" Don't you know what I've just given for that
picture, how can I afford a cab ? " He told me
of a tragedy at an American house where Hugh
had been invited to come from New York and see
some pictures, and while finding them admirable
he, as usual saying out his conviction, said that the
best would be better seen with some change of
light or position. The owner did not take the
proposal well, he was not used to have his judgment
questioned, he had already said his collection was
as good as any to be found in Europe, and Hugh's
spirit had, I imagine, already burned within him.
But the host turned his back, would not speak
further to his guest. He could not lessen his
ungraciousness even through the meal to which he
had been invited, " and it seemed a very long
time," said Hugh, " till I could escape to the
train."

And some days later I was at tea with Mr.
Ricketts and Mr. Charles Shannon. I had indeed

SIR JOHN LAVERY 243

invited myself, for I felt a longing to sit in spacious
rooms looking at beautiful things. They showed
me a table in the studio where we were sitting, a
long marble one against the wall, and said it had
been in the centre of the room, and Hugh had told
them they ought to change its place, and they
had cried out against this. But lately they had
been making some changes, and when all was
arranged they suddenly remembered that this
table was now standing exactly where Hugh had
seen it as its right and inevitable place in his
mind's eye.

October 28. I was with Sir John Lavery this
afternoon, and spoke of his kindness in helping
Hugh when the Modern Gallery was first spoken of.
He had forgotten this and said : '* After his death,
when I knew what sort of man he was, I felt
sorry I had not done more for him." But I knew
he had done a great deal for him when he was but
little known, giving his own name to the appeal for
a Dublin Gallery, and going to plead with Whistler
on its behalf, and that with such success that
Whistler promised to give a picture " to show his
sympathy with Irishmen in the endeavour."

I think he was pleased at having this brought
to mind, and he told me that Belfast, where he
had been the other day, is now asking for a modern
gallery '' because the students say if they want to
see fine work they have to go to London — or
Dublin ! " He showed me a report of some advice
he had given there at a meeting : " Artists might
arrange good exhibitions, but unless they had the
support of the people they could not go on, or unless

244 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

they had a power like that of the late Sir Hugh.
Lane behind them, one of the greatest experts on]
modern masters, who, in spite of the greatest
difficulties raised by those he worked for, had left
them one of the greatest heritages that any city,
could possess." Yet his gentleness could not leave;
even these words unsoftened, and he had spoken
of the needs and poverty of Dublin at that un-i
gracious time. He had said also that " but for a
technicality omitted in his last will, which enabled
the National Gallery of London to take possession
of the French pictures Sir Hugh Lane had collected]
for Dubhn, the Municipal Gallery would have been
second to no other gallery of modern pictures in(
Europe." And he had spoken at another gathering |
of Hugh's " untiring zeal." One of our obdurate
opponents is coming to dine with him to-night, and
he will tell him that no one who understood how
Hugh's life had been given up to that one aim could
imagine he had not meant his wish for the return
of the pictures to be accomplished. Also, he is
going to paint one of them, and, as I said, a portrait
painter is a dangerous man for his sitter to offend.

October 30. I have been to see Gerald Kelly.
He had a Spanish friend there who sat and listened
as he walked up and down the studio talking.
And then he got out the portrait he had made of
Hugh, tragic with its melancholy eyes. He says
a young doctor, a friend of his, had often gone to
see Hugh though not professionally, and had
believed his life would be but a short one. Hugh,
when he said good-bye to Kelly before sailing for
America, had said he was going into danger. " And

GERALD KELLY 245

I saw he was a frightened man." He had asked
Kelly to come with him to the Grenfell sale, and
to sit beside him while it went on : " But you
talk too much, you mustn't talk unless I speak to
you." When it was over he went away without
saying good-bye, but explained next day that he
had been very tired.

*' He wore a great coat while I painted that
portrait rather than light a fire — ' such extrava-
gance ' — amongst those pictures he had paid vast
sums for. That was his way, a bun and a glass
of milk for lunch, saving everything to buy pictures
for Dublin. I believe he would have killed his
whole family, his grandmother — though perhaps
not his aunt — he was very fond of you — but
certainly he would have killed me and all his
friends for the sake of that Dublin Gallery. He
was so excited when he thought he would get his
beautiful Bridge building, and he was never so
cast down in his life as when he failed. No wonder,
it was a splendid thought.

*' He helped Orpen, and he was the first to
give John a commission, and he did a great deal
for Alfred Hayward. And as for me, within a
week of my coming as a young man from Paris he
came to Camberwell, and there were four pictures
in the studio. He bought the ' Mrs. Harrison '
for Dublin, and then ' this must go to such an
exhibition, and this to such another.' And they
were all sold. Then he would get me portraits,
bringing me through a line of duchesses at his
parties and saying to some unfortunate woman,
' Here is Mr. Kelly who is going to paint you.'
There was Lady X. The day she promised to

246 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

sit I saw him when she was leaving take down a
jade figure and give it to her — I suppose it was
worth £40. He bribed her. It was a bribe."

" But he was angry with me for going to Spain.
He would say, ' I don't mind your going abroad
to idle as much as you like, I mind your going to
paint there. If you can't find anything worth
painting near your own door you are no painter.'
He was very quick to point out anything wrong in
a picture, but he had no idea how it should be put
right. There was one I was pleased with and had
taken great trouble with, and he said, ' It is a
cigarette paper ! ' I was very angry, he often
made me angry. I have often worked at that
picture, but I have never been able to get it right.
Of course he made me angry sometimes . . .

" With all his kindness he was hard, because
he couldn't understand temperament — he couldn't
understand that one's mistakes may be worth
something to one. He could not bear bad taste.
I have seen him pull down the curtains from a
window in a friend's drawing-room, saying, ' You
really must not have these in your house.' He
would come in among apathetic people and take
them by the hair of the head as it were, and fill
them with enthusiasm for some ideal that perhaps
he did not himself understand.

" He gave me advice as to painting. He said,
' Don't try to improve your faults, try to increase
your good qualities. Hard work is necessary
because it will give you power.' He was like no
one else — he was unearthly."

Someone else said, " He seemed to me

OVER-CANDID WORDS 247

whenever I saw him like a drawing in pastel, some-
thing free from heaviness, he gave an impression
of something fugitive."

And a friend in Dublin, writing about the

Gallery, says : "It has become more personal to

me since the last time (as I heard it was) that

Sir Hugh was in the Abbey. I did not know his

I appearance, but remarked to my friend with me

i that there was something very unusual and

j beautiful about the personality of the young man

; in the seat right in front of me, ' he did not seem to

I belong to this world,' and soon after, he turned

' round and I saw his wonderful eyes, I could never

I forget them. I asked an attendant who he was,

and she told me, but my friend and I (she, too, is

like me, somewhat psychic) came away from the

theatre very sad, for we both Icnew that we would

never see that beautiful face again. I do not

think anyone ever made such an impression

on me."

I am afraid he angered more people than
Gerald Kelly by his over-candid words. I wrote
to ask one of my nieces about some story I had
heard through her of a Frenchman who had
written to ask Hugh to take his son as an appren-
tice that he might learn the secret of discovering
masterpieces. She had forgotten it, but wrote :
" One thing I remember, when Lady Z. said,
*Mr. Lane, do tell me what you think of my
drawing-room ' ; Hugh : ' Do you really wish me to
tell you what I think ? ' ' Oh, do, please ! ' 'It
is like a Bazaar.' " Mrs. Grosvenor, when I told
her this, said it was with difficulty she had kept him

248 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

I

from telling some friends of hers whose house she
brought him to that their room was of the Bazaar
type, lie did tell them what he thought of some
of their pictures. Yet he spent hours on his
knees cleaning for them some that he thought
worth it.

And Mr. Duncan says : "I remember our

going together to lunch with Lady . She kept

talking about two pictures by Leader on the wall,
asking him if he thought they looked well there,
or if he would advise any other place. He hated
Leader, and when at last he gave his opinion it
was ' hang them behind the coal-box.' But he
knew her well, and she was very fond of him and
didn't mind."

I came again to London in March, hurr^dng my
visit that I might see Mr. Solomon. He said how
much Hugh had done for him, " he put me in
touch with influences that will last through my
lifetime. I was young and raw — a barbarian —
when he came out to help Lady Phillips about the
Johannesburg Gallery, but he beUeved in me, and
when he found I wanted to work, to do the best
with my life, he helped me in every way. He
made all the plans for me to come to Europe for
three years. He told me how I must save money
for it. ' You spend too much on food,' he said,
' going to your clubs. Come with me to-morrow
and I will show you how to lunch.' So he took
me to a little shop next day, and we each had a
glass of ginger-beer and a bun. But a friend of
mine said to me, ' It is all very well for him, with
his lean body he looks as if he had never eaten
anything more substantial than a bun, but you

J. M. SOLOMON 249

^re of a substantial build, it is not enough to keep
lyou going. And the ginger-beer is bad and the
bun is worse, and all the nourishment you get out of
them both is the little bit of sugar that sweetens
them.'

I *' This passion for economy was very strong
in him. He used to say that unless you economise
Dn the unessentials, upon which most people were
incUned to waste, you would never be able to own
the essentials, which to him meant beautiful
pictures and objects of art.

! " But when I was staying with him at Lindsey
House I wanted to buy a present for my mother,
ind I consulted him. And one day as we were
ivalking we stopped to look in at a little jeweller's
shop in the King's Road, and saw in it a pendant,
It beautiful thing, old German work with enamel.
Ke said, ' That is what you must give your mother,'
ind I said it was beautiful, but I was sure beyond
ny means. We went in and asked the price, and
|t was ten pounds. I had very little money at
hat time, I was earning about ten pounds a
nonth, and I said I couldn't think of it ; but he
nsisted, he made me buy it. And I am always so
^lad he did when I see my mother wearing it.
ie used to say, ' If you see a thing you are certain
70U like, do not hesitate, don't go home to think
tbout it, buy it at once. You may be sure the
irst thought is right.'

*' But he thought I spent too much on meals
vhen I was in London. He said, ' A young artist
ike you should never depend on getting a good
linner unless you are invited out.'

*' He and I were left alone at the Villa Arcadia

250 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

in Johannesburg for a while. Sir Lionel and Lady
PlulHps had gone to Cape Town for the opening of
the first Parliament of the Union of South Africa.
He saw my interest in art and architecture, and
that drew us together. He used to ride in the
morning, it was the only thing that could get him
out of bed before breakfast — and at sunset. He
loved riding passionately, rapid riding ; he always
would race ahead and with so much pace that at
the end of his visit his horse was a crock. It
seemed to me extraordinary, this recklessness and
longing for rapidity on horseback in so frail a body.
In motoring here it was just the same, he would
have the chauffeur go at top speed, though all the
time he sat up straight, and one could feel he was
nervous.

'' With all his kindness and humour he had a
very penetrating way of discovering the weak-
nesses of friends and acquaintances, and he would
point these out with a sort of rapier-like thrust
if he were annoyed. He of course offended people
sometimes by plain speaking. There was a
magnate out there who had fiUed his house with
huge sentimental pictures. He often invited Sir
Hugh to come and see them, but he never would,
having heard what they were. But then he heard
that this magnate was likely to help (as he after-
wards did) the Johannesburg Gallery, and fearing
his help would take the form of a present of
something from this collection he went to see it.
He looked at the pictures, and when his host
asked what he thought of them he said, ' Do you
really want to know ? ' * Yes, of course.' ' Well,
I think they are worse than oleographs.' * Oh,

HIS EVASION OF READING 251

you may not approve of them, but why worse ? '
* Because they are bigger I '

" But he told me he was obliged to speak
frankly in matters connected with pictures, because
he had very often, when he had not said how bad
he thought them, found he had been quoted as
having approved.

" Before I came to stay with him in London I
had lived as it were by a miracle through an
accident in Italy. I had fallen over a steep
precipice at Frascati, and lay there for many hours.
When I was rescued and found to be alive it was
declared to be a miracle. The Italian papers were
fuU of it. I stayed at Lindsey House while I
was recovering from it, and he would insist on my
telhng the story to people who came in, he wanted
to interest them, to make them friendly to me.
George Moore was one of them, and when Sir Hugh
sent me down with him afterwards to let him out
he said on the staircase, ' That is a wonderful
adventure you told of. Of course you had made
it all up ! ' I was amused, but when I told Sir
Hugh he was quite vexed and said, ' I wish you
had brought all those Italian news-cuttings.'

" I was surprised to find how little he read.
He used to say ' nothing but news-cuttings.' Yet
authors were always presenting him with their
books, and I used to be amused by his tact and
humour in evading the reading of them. He had
an almost uncanny remembrance for these gifts,
and I remember many occasions when an author
coming to dine at Lindsey House, his book would
be put out on a table in the drawing-room, and
with a ' See, this is a pleasure I am reserving for

252 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

myself,' Sir Hugh would sail round any awkward
questions that might be asked. I used to remon-
strate with him sometimes, but he always pointed
out to me that life would be so much easier if we
all thought a little more of the other fellow's
feelings and vanity, and harmlessly played up to
it. He would not give in to this amiable in-
sincerity though, if he thought it might hurt the
work he cared for.

" When I was last in London I went to see
the firm that had carried out Lutyens' designs in
the Lindsey House garden, and one of them said,
' Sir Hugh was a very remarkable client. When we
sent in our account he came to pay it with some
Old Masters under his arm.' They seemed very
well content.

" When he was giving me advice once he said,
* And you must learn to play a chatty game of
Bridge. That will help you along.' But I found
it didn't, and that he himself talked more than
people liked at Bridge.

" My mother, who admired him as the most
courteous of gentlemen, wrote one day of his
kindness to me, and said she must put his name in
her will. But he said quite seriously, ' Don't let
her do that. I feel that if I knew my name was
in anyone's will I should die.' He noticed omens
very much, and days of ill-luck. But he had
always courage to venture into anything he
believed in. He held that when he was on the
edge of a crisis something always turned up to
carry him through.

" When I was going to marry and set up for
myself many of my friends thought I was rash and

PORTRAIT OF CARDINAL ANTONIO CIOCCHI.

By Sebastian del Piombo.

MRS. GROSVENOR'S HOUSE 253

foolish. But he wrote, ' If two people love each
other, Providence will look after the well-matched
pair.'

** He was always an influence for good, inspiring
one to do more, admiring and encouraging any
talent, endeavouring to find opportunity for its
display. I could tell much more of his kindness
and encouragement to me, but that is not what you
want."

It was what I wanted, but Mr. Solomon in his
hurried visit, filled with business, had already been
most generous of his time. He showed me then his
design for the great University, and when, finding
it so beautiful, I said Hugh would have been so
glad to see it, he said, '* Yes, that is my great
regret. He saw something in me. I should have
liked him to see this."

I wrote one afternoon : "I have been sitting
in a beautiful drawing-room in an old Georgian
house, where he used to say he liked to go and
spend a restful hour ; I could understand that, for
art is held in honour there, and colours are
harmonious. And like every house he had much
frequented there remained gifts that are cherished
for their own beauty as well as for his memory's
sake. ' His coming in was like the sun shining,'
one said. ' There is but little pleasure in setting
out new treasures when we know we cannot call
him to admire.' And another said, ' There were
some houses we could not bring him to, the owners
would have been angry. He could not keep from
teUing out what he thought. There was that
Lazlo portrait of their daughter those poor
Z.'s had paid so much for ; they would have his

254 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

opinion on the best place for it, and he said, * The
best place would be in the dark.'

'' And one, still young in married life, went
on to laugh and tell how when her own portrait
was being painted and he found her sitting in some
diaphanous dress, he had water-lilies brought in
to deck her in the likeness of a Naiad. But when
meal-time came, and she, young and hungry from
the long sitting, ate heartily, he was sad and
grumbled at her for not keeping up the illusion of
that ethereal part. ' He was wonderful in his
influence,' she said. He had so filled her with the
desire to excel that she had left him and other
friends with whom she had been motoring towards
Italy, and turned back to Munich to work at what
she had a gift for, that was singing. ' He had a way
of making every one do their best with whatever
talent they possessed. He always hated waste.' "

Mrs. Nicholson had been of that motor party
with Hugh in Italy, and said how wonderfully he
enjoyed it — ^loved every moment of it and made
the most of all. One evening at a small town where
they stopped he said they must go to a circus, and
they found one in a tent — he always hked a circus.
And he would find treasures in unexpected corners,
even in Johannesburg he had found a fine pendant
made from an old Dutch earring, and had given it
to her.

He had made her work also at her gift of
painting (perhaps her marriage was the result !),
and not waste it. " No waste," he would say.
All the coffee brought them after lunch should be
drunk, and he would gather up the fruit they had
not eaten and give it to poor children. Once Lady

*^N0 WASTE !" 255

Phillips, teasing him, had motored to Florence
especially that they might buy him the rarest
fruits at some renowned shop. He had accepted
it, but at a railway crossing there were children
watching them while they waited, and all that
expensive fruit had gone to them, such an emptying
of Ceres' basket !

Another friend, Mrs. Reeves, has told me of
her first meeting with Hugh when he had come
to dinner in the country, and at dinner she had
told him that she had possessed and had sold to
her brother Holman Hunt's " Pot of Basil,"
and he said at once, '' They ought to have that at
Johannesburg ! " But that could not be.

He had often stayed with them after that. '' I
think he was a little puzzled, did not quite know
me. One evening I went to the piano and sang
some Uttle German songs, and after a time he
started up and said, ' Now I know where your
force comes from. You have force, and I didn't
know its root. You must work at singing, you
must go to the best masters.' He did make me
go and work, and helped me to find who could
teach me best, but now I have given it up. I
don't know how to express it — that vision he
had — this was a glimpse of it."

I said I thought it was a perception of the
essential in people as well as art, and that when he
found it he insisted it should be made the most of.
" No waste ! " That was the feeling that was
behind his economies in small things that his
friends laughed at. But as one of those friends,
Mrs. Hinde, said to me, ''His economies were all

256 MEDITATlOi^S AND MEMORIES

upon himself, he made fun of them. He would
have tea if he was alone at any little shop he
passed, but if he took one to have tea it would be
at Rumpelmayer's. He would make a joke of
his economies. He took us to dinner one evening,
Lutyens was there and Mrs. Fry, and he declared
that if we had a sweet we mustn't have a savoury,
and if we had a savoury we mustn't have a sweet.'*
She told me also that Agnew had said to her :
** We had quarrels. He would come here in anger
and he would call me a thief, and I would call him
a liar. And yet 1 loved the man. Now that he
and Morgan are gone, I feel my interest has died
away. They were the two who bought pictures
because they loved them."

One October evening when I came in late for
tea I thought that this had been a lost day, for
I had seen no one who had known Hugh. But as
I was pouring out tea Miss Swan came to the door,
and I very happily brought her in. And among
other things we talked of the " little economies."
She told me how one night at the Reeves', playing
bridge, someone had said, " Let us go to Monte
Carlo," and they did go there, within a few days,
Hugh among them. He had been there in other
years and brought them to his old hotel. I asked
if it was a good one or chosen for economy, but
she said, '*Very good," but that Hugh, leaving
before them, cried out, " When 1 am gone I know
you will all waste your money eating things in the
restaurant ! "

He had taken her and Ruth to keep Bank
Holiday just after the war had begun, motoring to

1

A CHURCH CURTAIN 257

Boxhill with lunch, eating it where they had the
finest view ; and when they came back they stopped
for dinner at a Httle restaurant in the King's Road.
She had wanted to act hostess there, but he would
not allow her, said, " This is my treat, but you
may take us to the cinema that is opposite."
*' So I took the best seats for them there, at about
sixpence each, but he looked at the boxes and said,
' They are a shilling — but we'll take one after the
war.'

" At the Collin's little church there was a
shabby curtain, baize, with holes in it, and he said
he would make a present of a new one. And when
he came again it had been chosen, but not by him,
gorgeous with crimson and gold, and it had cost
£16. He made loud lamentations, saying he had
expected it would cost but twelve and sixpence,
or possibly up to thirty shillings, the baize, and
that a housemaid would have sewed the seams.
But then he took comfort in the thought that its
richness would earn him a high place in heaven.
But in the evening and after he had seen soiled
hands of villagers pushing it aside, he was sad
I again and said : 'I'm afraid it is the intention that
counts in Heaven, and that I will only get credit
for the twelve and sixpence, and all the rest of the
money will go to waste ! ' She had asked him
why he did not throw up the Dublin Gallery with
all its annoyances and he said, ' What should I
do then ? That would be waste of my life.' And
one evening at dinner he had taken jade ornaments
from his pocket and given one to every guest.
'Two hands scattering and one hand saving.'"
I may so quote an old Kiltartan saying.

25S MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

I have compared him already to the old poet
Raftery, whose coming " made a wedding where
there was no wedding," and who left something
to be remembered by, if only a word of praise,
in many a house. And I thought of this when
one Sunday in Connemara I went a long way to a
poor little empty church, and was glad I did so.
For the preacher came to speak to me afterwards
and told me that Hugh, like me a guest at some
house a good way off, had once come to service there.
And again at his son's, a clergyman's, marriage
he had met Hugh, where the finest of the wedding
gifts was a picture of great beauty given by him.

For Mrs. Grenf ell's marriage at the Royal
Hospital, Dublin, when her father was Com-
mander-in-Chief, Hugh had decorated the Chapel
with laurel wreaths, he himself making them, and
orange trees — or bay trees hung with oranges —
to be a fit setting for so beautiful a bride. And it
happened this year, 1919, that when the younger
sister's marriage came it was at the Chapel of the
Royal Hospital, Chelsea, where their father was
now Governor, and where no wedding had taken
place since that of Napoleon's Gaoler a hundred
years ago. I took my little grandchildren to see
the marriage procession, and there was again a
beautiful bride, and it pleased me to know that the
London chapel was dressed with laurels and golden
fruit according to Hugh's old design.

One evening I went to the Royal Hospital and
found Lady Lyttelton and Hermione at tea.
When I told them what I was writing Lady
Lyttelton told me it was Hugh who had saved the
old oak paneUing there. It had been in part

AT THE ROYAL HOSPITAL 250

broken away and in part covered with canvas and
wallpaper, and she, when she came there, had
lamented this, but was a new-comer, and " treading
on eggshells," and could not assert herself too
vehemently against the representative of the
Office of Works who said the panelling was past
repair, and nothing could be done but to pull down
what was left or put over it canvas or wallpaper.
She was coming down one day in despair, having
given up the argument, when she saw Hugh Lane
at the foot of the staircase and told him her
trouble, and he went up to see the official, and spent
an hour with him. Next day Lady Lyttelton
had a letter from the Office of Works saying it
was believed the panelling could be saved after all.
And so it was, and not only that, but a little room
long covered with laburnum-yellow paper was
found to be also oak panelled, and that also was
uncovered and saved. Hugh had appealed to the
official's ambition, told him of the lasting reputa-
tion he would leave if he succeeded in saving this
ancient and beautiful decoration.

At the Royal Hospital in Dublin he had begged
her to take down an engraving by Leader of
*' Light in the Evening." But she said it had been
a wedding present. But one day when she came
in she found he had come in and taken it down
and another with it, and had put in their place
some French engravings she still possesses. She
spoke of his enjoyment of little things, and said
the saying of some writer fitted him, " He had a
genius for festivity." ,

He did enjoy and bring enjoyment with him

262 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

motoring with him one day to some place in Kent,
where he had an appointment with a " faith-
healer " or Christian Scientist. " He left me for
an hour at the door, and when he came out told
what the process had been — ' he took me into a
sort of church and asked questions, and told me
there was nothing the matter. Then he took me
to a room and made me lie down on a sofa and
bring my mind to repose while he counted twenty-
five minutes ; and then he told me to lie quite
still with my eyes closed till the end of the hour.'
' And did you lie still ? ' I asked. ' No, after a
while I got up and walked about looking at his
beastly pictures and china, and when I heard him
coming I lay down again.'

" He was so kind teaching me what he could.
One day in London I said I had never seen the
Dulwich Gallery, and he said I must not miss it,
he would take me there. And though he had been
going to keep an appointment that morning, he
put it off and motored me to Dulwich and spent
the morning showing me the pictures.

" We were motoring to Brighton one day, and
after we had passed through Lewes he said, 'I'm
sure we shall not get a cup of tea at Brighton as
cheap or as good as at Lewes,' and we turned back
and had it there."

November 16. I went by train to Dundrum
though the rain had come on, it seemed as if it
would be a soft wet afternoon in our Kiltartan
way. But as I walked up the bare steep road the
wind rose, I was almost driven back, the ribs of
my umbrella were forced backwards, the silk was

AT GURTEEN DtlAS 263

torn. It was too late to turn back, and I am glad
of that, for when I came to the little Cuala work-
shop I found shelter and peace ; the girls were
working at their embroidery in one room, in another
they were printing cards for Christmas. A little
blot came upon each, they were trying to discover
from what fault in the type. And when we went
on to Gurteen Dhas I found warmth and welcome,
my hostesses gave me tea by a bright fire. Many
of their father's sketches were on the walls, and
among them they showed me one of Hugh, and
they talked of him for a while.

I said he seemed never to have even walked
through a room without making some difference in
it. "Yes," one of them said, ''even at the Abbey
I remember him standing on the steps inside the
auditorium and saying, * I don't feel I am looking
my best,' there was a very white light, and even
beautiful people were looking haggard, and he
asked to see the electrician, and they put in a
kinder lighting, amber, and we all rejoiced. But
now the white lighting has been brought back
again." So I promised to have it changed.

Then they reminded each other of a party
given at the Club in Lincoln Place, and how at
the last he had come in and changed the whole
appearance of the table, piling wonderful fruit
in its centre. He was vexed because beautiful
Miss E. went out to sit on the balcony with some
young men. " She ought to have stayed in here,"
he said. He lamented the loss of so much beauty
to the room. " He made us all feel at our best
because he appreciated it. He came to a little
party we gave here, and when he was going he said,

262 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

motoring with him one day to some place in Kent,
where he had an appointment with a " faith-
healer " or Christian Scientist. " He left me for
an hour at the door, and when he came out told
what the process had been — ' he took me into a
sort of church and asked questions, and told me
there was nothing the matter. Then he took me
to a room and made me lie down on a sofa and
bring my mind to repose while he counted twenty-
five minutes ; and then he told me to lie quite
still with my eyes closed till the end of the hour.'
' And did you lie still ? ' I asked. ' No, after a
while I got up and walked about looking at his
beastly pictures and china, and when I heard him
coming I lay down again.'

" He was so kind teaching me what he could.
One day in London I said I had never seen the
Dulwich Gallery, and he said I must not miss it,
he would take me there. And though he had been
going to keep an appointment that morning, he
put it off and motored me to Dulwich and spent
the morning showing me the pictures.

" We were motoring to Brighton one day, and
after we had passed through Lewes he said, 'I'm
sure we shall not get a cup of tea at Brighton as
cheap or as good as at Lewes,' and we turned back
and had it there."

November 16. I went by train to Dundrum
though the rain had come on, it seemed as if it
would be a soft wet afternoon in our Kiltartan
way. But as I walked up the bare steep road the
wind rose, I was almost driven back, the ribs of
my umbrella were forced backwards, the silk was

AT GURTEEN DtlAS 263

torn. It was too late to turn back, and I am glad
of that, for when I came to the Httle Cuala work-
shop I found shelter and peace ; the girls were
working at their embroidery in one room, in another
they were printing cards for Christmas. A little
blot came upon each, they were trying to discover
from what fault in the type. And when we went
on to Gurteen Dhas I found warmth and welcome,
my hostesses gave me tea by a bright fire. Many
of their father's sketches were on the walls, and
among them they showed me one of Hugh, and
they talked of him for a while.

I said he seemed never to have even walked
through a room without making some difference in
it. '' Yes," one of them said, '' even at the Abbey
I remember him standing on the steps inside the
auditorium and saying, * I don't feel I am looking
my best,' there was a very white light, and even
beautiful people were looking haggard, and he
asked to see the electrician, and they put in a
kinder lighting, amber, and we all rejoiced. But
now the white lighting has been brought back
again." So I promised to have it changed.

Then they reminded each other of a party
given at the Club in Lincoln Place, and how at
the last he had come in and changed the whole
appearance of the table, piling wonderful fruit
in its centre. He was vexed because beautiful
Miss E. went out to sit on the balcony with some
young men. " She ought to have stayed in here,"
he said. He lamented the loss of so much beauty
to the room. " He made us all feel at our best
because he appreciated it. He came to a little
party we gave here, and when he was going he said,

264 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

' I wish I had you in Dublin, I would make you
give one every week.' "

One of them said, " 1 was at the opening of the
Harcourt Street Gallery, and the room where the
speeches were to be was so crowded that the
architect was in a panic, he thought the old floor
would give way. But Sir Hugh went about quickly
getting people into the other room without giving
the real reason, saying, ' Only the deadheads will
stay in here ! ' or some such thing. I did not
hear the speaking, he had sent me to the upper
room, I forget what he said, but I know I felt aa
if I had been paid a compliment.

" Do you remember Sara AUgood being asked
to recite at the supper you gave on the night of
the opening of the Gallery ? She stood up and
looked straight at him, and said in her beautiful
voice, just as she used to do on the stage, the lines
from Cathleen ni Houlihan, but putting ' he ' for
' they ' :—

' He shall be remembered for ever
He shall be alive for ever
The people shall hear him for ever ! ' "

I had forgotten that, I am glad she brought it back
to mind.

January 8, 1920. I came back to Dublin to
see The Golden Apple. Kerrigan came to the
Green Room to-day, back from America, and not
ill-content with Ireland. All other countries are,
he says, in the same state of unrest, but with money
as the motive ; in Ireland there is the idealism of
Nationality.

When I spoke of Hugh he said, " He used to

AT *'THE SOD OF TURF" 265

come in like a breeze of wind. There seemed
always something boyish about him."

Later looking for Miss Mitchell I found A. E.
alone in the big room at Plunkett House, and we
talked for a while. He thought I might write the
book all the better for the want of the documents,
and reminded me that when Standish 0' Grady was
writing his *' History of Ireland for Boys," he had
deUberately gone to some place where there were
no books, and written it there from memory.

He remembered going through the National
Gallery with some critics, and how they had judged
the pictures by " cracks or technical points," and
that Hugh, who was one of them, said, " If a picture
is beautiful it is certain it was not painted by a
second-rate man." And that he seemed to know
the picture's worth by instinct rather than by
science.

Later when we were at tea at the little room,
" The Sod of Turf," and Miss Mitchell and James
Stephens and his wife had joined us, he said that
Hugh had told him of a visit to BeKast where some
one had asked him to come and see a '' splendid
picture," a sunset on the Rhine (a dreadful thing),
and had told him its history to prove how splendid
it was. He had bought it in Germany, and some
years afterwards a friend at Hamburg had written
to tell him of a fine picture to be sold — a great
bargain, he could have it for £12. He bought it,
and when it came found it was identical with this.
He found that one man had gone on painting
these replicas, and after his death the demand had
continued, so that another, finding it so popular,
had taken up the trade and gone on painting

266 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

replicas. '* So you see what a fine picture it
must be ! "

I told of the *' Mother and Child " Belfast had
refused to hang because the Mother was without a
wedding ring, and Stephens said, " Let us make a
legend of Belfast — put it away as if in a distant
age."

Stephens said some pictures stored in the
National Gallery were being sent back to the Castle,
and that to-day he had told one of the porters that
he should go there and see after them. But he
had been reluctant and said at last : "I might be
shot by the sentry." This at 11 o'clock a.m.

He said Hugh's death was a great misfortune
in his life, for these last four years in the National
Gallery that have been so irksome would have
been a delight, *' No one has ever showed me a
picture, he would have showed them to me."
But by ill chance he had never met him at all.

He, like A. E., longs to be free from bonds,
but the war stopped the sale of his books, and he
must keep to the National Gallery to pay his way.
But he is writing still.

A. E. said an Alderman had offered Hugh a
bust of himseK, stating as reason for its acceptance
that " it was real marble."

I asked him about Alderman Thomas Kelly,
now in gaol, who supported Hugh so well. He
says he was the only pacifist in Dail Eireann, was
always standing up against violence, and now the
Government have seized him and put him in prison.

December 17. The other day when 1 heard of
the death of the American millionaire Frick, and

OLD CHELSEA CHURCH 267

of the great collection of pictures he had left to
New York, I felt a sort of jealousy for Hugh, his
gift seemed for the moment to be thrown into
shadow. But that thought lasted but for a
moment ; there are in what the one has given to
Dublin and the other to New York, and each gave
of his best treasures, examples of the highest
attainment of some among the greatest masters.
And then, thinking of the many millions Frick
had owned, I found it harder to drive out a regret
that Hugh had not made a fortune great enough to
allow him to build a gallery at his own cost and
according to his desire. And, indeed, in now
writing, this regret returns, and I suffer in thinking
of the unfulfilled dream, the anguish of longing to
carry out that " harmony of purpose," that fitting
home for the pictures he had gathered with such
joyous intention.

I had written one Sunday evening, in London :
" To-day I went to service in the Old Chelsea
Church. It was there that Hugh's friends had
come to the service in his memory, when all hope
of his having been saved had died away. Hymns
that he had liked had been sung there : —

' Peace, perfect peace — our future all unknown —
Jesus we know, and He is on the throne.

* Peace, perfect peace— death shadowing us and ours —
Jesus hath vanquished death and all its powers.'

And the flowers heaped about the altar were as
beautiful as he could himself have chosen, for they
were placed there, like the tablet put up to his
memory in a distant Irish Church, ' by his sorrowful
sister, Ruth Shine ' ; and many of his friends were

268 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

there. . . . That gathering was in my memory
to-day, and I remembered also Sundays when
Hugh had sat there, his morning pallor after those
difficult nights made still more ghostly by the
green-dyed window-panes. And with this vision,
as it seemed, more distinct to me than the figures
of living worshippers, I heard the words read of
one of the psalms for the day : * I will not suffer
mine eyes to sleep nor mine eyelids to slumber,
neither the temples of my head to take any rest
until I find out a habitation for the mighty God
of Jacob.' And it seemed to me that Hugh's
lifelong dream of that shining treasury he so
passionately coveted to create was not far away
from that of the Jewish King. And I can surely
witness how from first to last, when all went well,
or when discouraged and foiled and out of heart,
he never, when there was any work to be done
towards it, suffered ' the temples of his head to
take any rest.' "

I am glad that on Hugh's last visit to New
York he and Mr. Frick, these two good lovers of
pictures, had met ; and I was pleased when
Mrs. Hinde told me she had been lately in the
house of the great American collector, and he had
said to her as they looked at I know not what
picture, " Some say I ought to change that picture
to another place, but I will never move it because
it was hung there by Hugh Lane."

January 1, 1920. This morning, being away
from home and idle, and no newspaper having
come, I took up a volume of Lodge's Portraits and
read the memoir of one whose name was to me

THE BODLEIAN LIBEARY 269

unknown, Sir Hugh Middleton. But the historian,
after an apology for the lack of " lively occurrences "
and " decorative materials," claims that he had
well earned the epithet " illustrious " through
" superlative public beneficence and the con-
trivance and execution of a design worthy of the
mind."

It is likely this design and its accomplishment
in the reign of James the First are better known
to others, for it was surely a worthy one, " the
better supply of water to London through the
means of that artificial stream so well known by
the name of ' The New River ' " ; and I, no great
Londoner, had never heard, or heard so as to note,
whence that clear and sparkling water comes,
save that science or superstition has at times
attributed its brightness to the properties of ancient
and dissolving bones ; and so this benefactor's
name had been a stranger.

But I knew well what had been the achievement
of the illustrious person on another page I turned
to, by no chance but of purpose, it having of late
been in my mind. For Yeats, newly settled in
Oxford and offering me a welcome to his house,
had more than once spoken of the great ease and
dehght of reading in the Bodleian Library. And so
I was glad to learn something of the Elizabethan
diplomatist who threw up his Embassy and gave
his life and wealth to " the noble design of restoring
or rather founding the pubUc Library at Oxford."

And in reading one of his letters I could not
but think of Hugh, and indeed this passage of it
might well have been written by him : '' And as
for myself I am wholly uncertain how far I shall

T

270 MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

proceed in my expense about the work, having
hitherto made no determinate design, but pur-
posing to do as my abiUty shall ailord, which
may increase or diminish, and as God shall spare
my life, though unto myseK I do resolve in a
general project to do more than I am willing to
publish to the world."

At midday when the newspapers came to hand
they told the grievous (but happily false) news
of Horace Plunkett's death. . . . After a while
my meditation turned to the work of these two
my countrymen, and I wondered whose name
would longest endure, his who brought the helpful
Danish methods to our farms and dairies, as
Middleton had brought spring water from the
Welsh well-heads to Islington ; or his whose
Gallery is of the kindred of the great Library.
Both have made a noble use of their life, both are
hke Hyde and A. E. and Yeats and Synge and
others whose names I have written in this book,
and some, our fellow-workers, whose names are
''in the book of the people," of those who, in
Lord Rosebery's fine w^ords, ''form the pedigree
of nations, and whose achievements are their
country's title-deeds of honour."

A POSTSCRIPT

After Hugh's death some of his friends arranged
that a memoir should be written that would give
some account of what he was and what he had
done. I was told of this, and while refusing a
request to write it I helped to gain Mr. MacColl's
consent to do so. In talking of this he said, as I
have already told, he had first been interested in
Hugh by " finding he was making people do what
I had been for years begging them in vain to do,
buy the work of living men " ; but that he knew
nothing of his early life. To make a beginning
easier for him I wrote some of the notes on
" Causes," which I have now used. He withdrew
his consent later in the heat of a newspaper argu-
ment as to Hugh's intention in the codicil to his
will, and the work abandoned by him was given to
Mr. Martin Wood, together with the documents
that had been entrusted for the purpose to Mr.
MacCoU.

I had again at that time been urged to take up
the task, but had refused. I had written to Yeats
in December, 1916: *'As to Hugh's Life, I should
not feel it right to undertake it now, and doubt if
I could in the future. I am really suffering from
the long strain of anxiety about Robert, and his

271

272 A POSTSCRIPT

ever-increasing danger. He is kept very hard at
work now leading patrols and his squadron in
these air-lights, his promised leave has been twice
withdrawn, and there is no doubt the German
machines are ahead of ours. I try to do what
work comes my way as well as I can, and not
to be a nuisance, but my mind is not free for a
new task. I sometimes awake feeling as if some
part of me was crpng in another place. And all
the war seems horrible and interminable.

" I tliink in any case I should have found it
hard to write about Hugh till the picture question
is settled — it is a constant irritant. My hope is
that if any scheme of Home Rule is carried through
this may be pressed at the same time. ..."

I, however, undertook the work later, in the
autumn of 1919, after a failure in Mr. Wood's
health, followed by his death.

As to the papers given to Mr. MacColl and
then to Mr. Wood, and containing, as weU as
letters written by Hugh to me and to some near
friends, " fourteen or fifteen newscutting books ;
ten or twelve envelopes of letters from individuals ;
diaries ; bundles of letters to do with various
collections " ; by some mistake or misunderstand-
ing they did not come to me until I had aU but
finished these pages. That is my apology for
making them so personal as to seem egotistic,
my own memory being the nearest attainable
document.

This is my apology to the many I have
troubled and importuned, asking for recollection
of a phrase, a movement, a moment of gaiety or

A POSTSCRIPT 273

anger, to help the portrait's shadows or its
lights.

These hold my lasting gratitude ; for all I have
written of Hugh seems now as nothing beside the
record that has come out of the memory of his
friends.

APPENDIX I

When Hugh Lane's will was read, it was found that,
after disposing of his modern pictures, he had left the
residue of his property — which included Lindsey House,
Chelsea, and his collection of old masters there — to the
National Gallery of Ireland. He directed that the
pictures and objects of art in his house in London were
to be sold, and that " the revenue " was "to be spent
in buying pictures of deceased painters of established
merit." The Board of Governors and Guardians of the
National Gallery of Ireland, however, decided to apply
to the Courts for permission to retain forty-one of the
more important of the works by old masters owned by
him at the time of his death.

Of the sixty-two pictures from his collection, now
in the Irish National Gallery, forty-one were thus chosen,
and twenty-one had been given during his lifetime.
They are as follows : —

LIST OF PICTURES GIVEN AND BEQUEATHED
TO THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND.

British Schools.

Chinnery (G.R.H.A.), Portrait o^ a Mandarin,
Linnell (John), Portrait of a Lady.
Romnoy (George), Portrait of a Lady.

, Portrait of Mrs. Edward Taylor.

, Portrait of the Artiat's Wife.

Hoppner (John), Portrait of the Artist.
Doughty (William), Portrait of Miss Sisson.

276

276

APPENDIX I

Lavvrenco (Sir Thomas), Lady Elizabeth Foster (afterwards Duchess

of Devonshire).
Reynolds (Sir Joshua), Portrait of Mrs. Francis Fortescue
Hogarth (WilHam), The Mackiuuon Family.

, The Western Family.

Hunt (William Henry), Portrait of the Artist's Mother.
Gainsborough (Thomas), Portrait of John Gainsborough.

, The Gamekeeper.

, Portrait of Mrs. King, nde Spenco.

, Portrait of General James Johnston.

, Portrait of Mrs. Horton (afterwards Anne, Duohess of Gumb^i >

land).
, A Landscape with Cattle.

Collins (William), Portrait of the Artist's Mother.
Slaughter (S.), A Lady and Child.
Constable (John), Portrait of a Child with a Dog.
Wilkie (Sir David), Portrait of a Lady in White.
Stubbs (George), Sportsmen at Rest.

Italian and Spanish Schools.

Florentine School, The Battle of Anghiari, a.d. 1440.

, The Taking of Pisa, a.d. 1406.

Bordone (Paris), St. George and the Dragon.

School of Tintoretto, Diana and Endymion.

Greco, El (Domenico Theotooopuli), St. Francis in Ecstasy.

Magnasco (Alessandro), Landscape.

Strozzi (Bernardo), Portrait of a Gentleman.

llanos y Vald^s (Sebastian de), The Madonna with the Rosary,

Vecelli (Tiziano), called Titian, Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione.

Luciani (Seba&tiano), called Sebastiano del Piombo, Portrait of the

Cardinal Antonio Ciocchi del Monte Sansovino.
Bassano, II (Jacopo da Ponte), Portrait of a Man.
De Espinosa (Jacinto J.), Jael and Sisera.
Piazzetta (Giovanni Battista), A Decorative Group.
Veronese (Paolo Caliari, called II Veronese), Portrait of a Lady.
Goya (F.), A Spanish Woman.

French, Flemish, and Dutch Schools.

Vallain (Nanine), Portrait of Letitia Bonaparte.

Gellee (Claude, called Claude Lorrain), Juno confiding lo to the care

of Argus.
Jamesone (George), ascribed to, Portrait of Lady Alexander,

APPENDIX I 277

Desporfces (Alexander Frangois), Group of Dead Game.
Chardin (Jean Baptiste Simon), The Young Governess.

, Still Life.

Poussin (Nioholas), The Youthful Romulus.

, Bacchante and Satyr.

, Pluto and Proserpine.

— — , The Marriage of Thetis and Peleus.
School of Watteau, A Musical Party,
Horemans (Jan), Interior of a Kitchen.

, Interior.

Lancret (N.), Mischief.

Greuze (J. B.), The Broken Doll.

School of the Master of the Holzhausen Portraits, Portrait of a Man

Witte (Emanuel de), Interior of Antwerp Cathedral.

Cuyp (J. G.), The Violinist.

Horstok (J. P.), Portrait of a Man.

Goyen (Jan Van), A View of Rhein-on-the-Ems,

Rembrandt Van Rijn, Portrait of a Young Woman.

Dyck (Sir Anthony Van), A Boy Standing on a Terrace.

Bol (Ferdinand), Portrait of a Lady.

Beerstraaten (Jan), A Winter Scene.

Snyders (F.), A Breakfast.

Early Flemish School, The Adoration of the Magi

APPENDIX II

GIFTS AND BEQUESTS TO THE DUBLIN
MUNICIPAL ART GALLERY

Bayes (W.), The Bathers.

Boudin (E.), At the Seaside.

Bough (Sam.), A Wet Day, Kileburn Castle.

Burne- Jones (Sir E.), The Sleeping Princess.

Charles, (J.), A Country Road, November.

, Landscape.

, In the Orchard.

, Return from the First Communion.

, Winter Landscape.

Chinnery (G.), Oriental Group.

Conder (C), A Stormy Day, Brighton.

Connard (P.), Flowers.

Corot (J. B.), Evening Landscape.

Crowley (H.), The Grandmother.

Fisher (Mark), The Bathers.

Granet (F. M.), Interior of a Monastery.

Greaves (W.), Old Battersea Bridge.

Gregory (E. J.), View of the Mall.

, Piccadilly.

Gregory (R.), Coole Lake.

Harrison (S. C), Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. T. Haslam.

Hayes (E.), Coast Scene.

Hollo way (C. E.), Tilbury Fort.

Hone (N.), The Donegal Coast.

, A Grey Day, Malahide.

, View of Howth, with Cattle Grazing.

, View on the Nile.

, Malahide Sands, Stormy Weather.

Hurlestone (W. Y.), A Spanish Jade.

Ingres (J. A. D.), Portrait of Vincent Leon Palliere.

Jacquand (C), At the Bedside.

278

APPENDIX II 279

John (A.), Decorative Group.

, Portrait of a Lady.

, Portrait of Miss Iris Tree.

, A Boy in Brown.

Kelly (G. F.), Portrait of Mrs. Harrison.
Knight (Buxton), Peele Harbour.

, View in Wales.

Knight (Laura), The Cottager's Family.

Maolaren (D.), Celtic Legends.

Mancini (A.), Portrait of Sir Hugh Lane.

, Portrait of Mrs. Shine.

, Portrait of a Lady.

, Portrait of a Man.

, Portrait of Lady Gregory.

Markievicz (Dunin), Portrait of George Russell (A. E.).

, Study of Trees.

Millais (Sir J.), The Return of the Dove to the Ark.

Moore (Albert), Azaleas.

Muirhead (D.), Harvest Time.

Nicholson (W.), Souvenir de Marie.

O'Brien (D.), Portrait of Alderman Cotton, M.P,

, Landscape Study.

O'Meara (F.), Towards the Night and Winter.
Orchardson (Sir W. Q.), Imogen in the Cave of Belarius.
Orpen (Sir W.), China and Japan, Reflections.

, A Breezy Day, Howth.

, Portrait of the Rt. Hon. Sir T. W. Russell, Bt.

, Portrait of Lord MacDonnell.

, Portrait of William O'Brien, M.P.

, Portrait of Michael Davitt.

, Portrait of Nathaniel Hone, R.H.A.

, Portrait of Sir J. P. Mahaffy, D.D., K.C.V.O.

, Portrait of Captain Shawe Taylor.

Osborne (W.), The Fishmarket.

, Tea in the Garden.

, Mother and Child,

Potter (F. H.), Study of a Child.

Previati (G.), Funeral of a Virgin.

Robinson (F. Cayley), The Landing of St. Patrick

Russell (George), (A. E.), The Winged Horse.

, Children at Play.

, The Woodcutters.

— - , The Log Carriers.

-, On the Roof Top. Moonlight.

280

APPENDIX II

Ru38olI (George), (A. E.), The Stone Carriers.

, Is not this Great Babylon that I have built ?

Sargent (J. S.)> Portrait of Sir Hugh Lane.

, Portrait of Lady Charles Beresford.

, Statue of Vcrtunnus at Frascati.

Sickert (W.), The Old Church, Dieppe.
Shannon (C), The Bunch of Grapes.
Solomon (S.). The Finding of Moses.
Spencer Stanhope (R.), Venus.
Steer (P. Wilson), The Bend of the Severn.

, The Estuary, Porchestcr.

, Evening.

, The Blue Girl.

, Iron Bridge, Salop.

Stevens (J.), The Lacemaker.
Swynnerton (A. L.), The Young Mother.
Symons (W. Xtn.), The Convalescent Connoisseur,
. Unknown, Portrait of G. F. Watts.
Ward (James), Sheep Dipping.
Watts (G. F.), Portrait of Mrs. Louis Huth.

, Head of a Girl.

Whistler (J. McN.), The Artist's Studio.

Yeats (J. B.), Portrait of the Rt. Hon. Sir Horace Plunkett, K.C.V 0

, Portrait of Edward Dowden.

, Portrait of John M. Synge.

, Portrait of W. B. Yeats.

, Portrait of W. G. Fay.

Yeats (Jack), The Maggie Man.

Drawings and Wateecolours.

Beerbohm (Max), Mr. W. B. Yeats introducing Mr. George Moore to

the Queen of the Fairies.
Bonvin (F. S.), In Church, Vaugirard.
Boudin (E.), The Market Place.
Bume- Jones (Sir E.), Two Designs for Stained Glass.
Callow (W.), Southampton.
Chavannes (Puvis de), Study of a Man

, Seated Figure.

Conder (C), The Bather.

, The Findmg of Don Juan.

, The Bather's Repose.

, Behind the Scenes.

APPENDIX II 281

Corot (J. B.), Landscape with Figures.

Daumier (H.), In the Omnibus.

Duff (James), The Sheepfold.

Fisher (Mark), Boat House, Bourne End.

, The Back of the Mill.

-, Arcachon.

Helleu (P.)> A Lady Resting.

, Study of Children's Heads.

James (F.), Lilies.

, Geraniums.

, White Stocks.

, Primulas.

John (A.), Study of a Girl,

, Study of a Girl.

, The Artist's Wife.

, Portrait of Mrs. Shine.

, Studies of Children's Heads.

Lamb (H.), Head of a Girl.
Leighton (Lord), Studies of Boys.

, Study of a Draped Figure.

, Study of a Nude Figure.

MacNair (F.), The Birth of the Rose.

MacNair (J. H,), Tamlame.

Mancini (A.), Portrait of Mr. Alabaster.

, Portrait of the Artist.

, The Mantilla.

, Four Studies.

Maris (W. the Younger), The Straw Hat.
Millet (J. F.), Studies for " The Bather."
Orpen (R. C), Fishing Smacks, St. Ives.
Orpen (Sir W.), The Gipsy.
— — , The Artist's Wife.

, Family Group, after Ingres.

, Five Pen and Ink Dra\^*ings.

, Five Watercolours.

Pearce (C. M.), The Vestibule.

, The Court of the Palace.

School of Burne- Jones, Death of a Saint.
Scott (G.), The Advance Guard.
Segantini (G.), The Sheepfold.

, The Shepherd Asleep,

Solomon (S.), The Bride.

, The Bridegroom.

, The Greek Festival.

/

282 APPENDIX FI

Solomon (IS.), The Acolyte.

, Illustration to tho Song of Solomon.

Steor (P. Wilson), Porcheater CJastlo.

, Portsdown Hill.

, A Stormy Day.

, With the Tide.

Tonka (H.), Lcs Sylphides.
Tyrvvhill (U.), l<'our Flower Pieces
Walker (J. C), At Sea.
Wolfing (E.), Nude Figure.
Yeats (Jack), An Old Slave.
, On the Lake.

Etchings, Lituographs, and Woodcuts.

Condor (C), Le peau de Chagrin.

Daviel (L.), Study of a Baby (after A. John).

Legros (A.), The Frugal Meal.

, The Fisherman.

, The Woodcutters.

, The Pear Tree.

Sherborn (C. W.), Etching.

Sculpture.

Aronson (N.), Count Tolstoi.
Barye (A. L.), A Lion.

(Lent by the National Gallery of Ireland.)
, A Lioness.

(Lent by the National Gallery of Ireland.)
Carpeaux, The Empress Eugdnie.

(Lent by the National Gallery of Ireland.)
Dalou, Study of a Woman.

(Lent by the National Gallery of Ireland.)
, Head of a Girl.

(Lent by the National Gallery of Ireland.)
Epstein (J.), Lady Gregory.
Furse (J. H. M.), Horses Fightmg.
Maillel (A.), Three Statuettes.

(Lent by the National Gallery of Ireland.)
Rodin (A.), The Age of Bronze.
, Frere et Soeur.

(Lent by the National Gallery of Ireland.)

APPENDIX 11 283

Rodin (A.), L'Homme an Nez Cass6.

(Lent by the National Gallery of Ireland.)
, Le Pretre.

(Lent by the National Gallery of Ireland.)
Stevens (A.), Truth and Falsehood.

(Lent by the National Gallery of Ireland.)
, Courage and Cowardice.

(Lent by the National Gallery of Ireland.)

APPENDIX III

PICTURES NOW IN POSSESSION OF THE
LONDON NATIONAL GALLERY

Pictures now in possession of the London National
Gallery ; the bequest revoked in favour of Dublin in the
Codicil, of which a facsimile has been given : —

Monet (Claude), Vetheuil ; Sunshine and Snow.

Renoir, Les Parapluies.

Manet (Edouard), Le Concert aux Tuileries.

, Portrait of Mademoiselle Eva Gonzales.

Pissarro (C), Prin temps, vue de Louvecienne.

Vuillard (E.), The Mantelpiece.

Boudin (E.), Le Rivage, entree de Tourgeville.

Degas, La Plage.

Morisot (B.), Jour d'Et6.

Ingres, Due d' Orleans.

Forain, In the Law Courts.

Mancini (Antonio), Portrait of Marquis del Grilk.

, En Voyage.

, Aurelia.

, La Douane.

Brown (John Devis), The Mountebank.
Madrazo (R.), Portrait Study of a Woman.
Daubigny (Chas. H.), Portrait of Honore Daumier.
Barye (Ant. Louis), Forest at Fontainebleau.
Corot (J. B.), Avignon : Ancient Palace of the Popes.

, Landscape : A Summer Morning.

Fromentin (Eugene), The Slave.
Courbet (G.), The Snow Storm.

, The Pool.

, In the Forest.

Diaz, (N.), The Offsprmg of Love.
Jerome (Jean Leon), Portrait of a Naval (jfficer»

284

APPENDIX III 285

Fantin-Latour (J. H. J.), Still Life.
Ronvin (Frangois), Still Life.
Rousseau (Theodore), Moonlight.
Chavannes (Puvis de), The Toilet.

, Decollation de St. Jean Baptiste.

Monticelli (A.), The Ha\iield.

Daumier (Honore), Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

Maris (James), Feeding the Bird.

Stevens (Alfred), The Present.

Corot f J. B. C), An Italian Peasant Woman,

Yongkind (J. B.), Skating in Holland.

Courbot (G.), The Artist.

APPENDIX IV

STATUTORY DECLARATIONS

Statutory declarations made with regard to Hugh
Lane's intention that his codicil should have the weight
of law, by his sister Mrs. Shine, his friend Mr. Alec Martin,
and Mrs. Duncan, Curator of the Dublin Municipal
Gallery ; —

I, RUTH SHINE of Lindsey House, 100 Cheyne Walk,
London, S.W., Widow, do solemnly and sincerely
declare as follows : —

The late Sir Hugh Lane was a brother of mine and
he is hereinafter referred to as " my brother."

In January 1915 my brother spoke to me of making
another will. He went to Dublin, however, without
having done so. It was there (on February 3rd) that
he wrote and signed his codicil and locked it in his
desk at the National Gallery in a sealed envelope
addressed to me ; it was very clearly and carefully
written and I have no doubt whatever that he considered
it legal.

My brother had no business habits in the ordinary
sense of the word and was ignorant of legal technicalities.
He dictated both his wills to me, the first leaving all
to the Modern Art Gallery in Dublin and the second
leaving all to the National Gallery of Dublin with the
exception of the French pictures left to London. But
for my persistence neither would have been witnessed ;
even when he dictated the second will he had forgotten
all I had told him about that necessity. So little

286

APPENDIX IV 287

am I surprised at there being no witnesses to the codicil
that my surprise is altogether that he should have
written it so carefully. He must have made rough
drafts, as he composed letters with great difficulty, and
the codicil was so well written.

I think from my knowledge of him that if he thought
of a witness at all he would perhaps have considered that
a codicil to an already witnessed will needed no further
formality. When he sealed up the envelope he was
going on a dangerous journey to America, and was so
much impressed by that danger that at first he had
refused to go at all unless those, who had invited him
for business reasons, would insure his life for £50,000 to
clear his Estate of certain liabilities, and he thought he
was going not in seven or eight weeks as it happened
but in two or three.

I have approached this subject without any bias in
favour of Dublin but as his sister anxious that his
intentions should be carried out, and I make this
declaration conscientiously believing the same to be
true and by virtue of the Provisions of the Statutory
Declaration Act 1835.

RUTH SHINE.

Declared at Markham House, King's Road, Chelsea,
in the County of London, this 13th day of February
1917

Before me

G. F. WILKINS.
A Commissioner for Oaths,

I, ELLEN DUNCAN, Curator of the Dublin Municipal
Gallery of Modern Art, 17 Harcourt Street in the City
of Dublin, aged 21 years and upwards make oath and
say as follows : —

1, For fifteen years I was acquainted with the late

288 APPENDIX IV

Sir Hugh Lane, who was a dose personal friend of
my husband and myself.

2. Sir Hugh Lane was Honorary Director of the
Municipal Gallery of Modern Art until his death. I
was Curator from October 1914. Whenever he came
to Dublin he spent a good deal of time in the Gallery
and took a keen interest in its working and obtained
some gifts for it, the last being a bust by Rodin.

3. I last saw Sir Hugh Lane on the last day of his
stay in Dublin before he sailed for America. He came
to the gallery that day and had a conversation with
me about his collection of continental pictures which
were then stored in the London National Gallery.
He said that he wished to bring these pictures to Dublin.
He said that with regard to the building of a new
gallery he did not wish to insist now upon any special
plan but would be content if the Corporation reaffirmed
their already expressed intention of building a gallery.
He asked me whether I thought I could get the Corpora-
tion to give some assurance to this effect. The words
he used were, " I do not wish to appear to have ' climbed
down ' about a new gallery building, but I do not
wish to revive any of the old controversies. I wish to
bring the pictures back to Dublin as soon as possible,
and they might be rehung here pending the building of
any gallery the Corporation may decide upon."

4. The impression I gathered from the conversation
aforesaid was that Sir Hugh Lane had definitely made
up his mind to adhere to his original intention with
regard to these pictures which he bought for the Dublin
Municipal Gallery of Modern Art. He expressed him-
self as indignant at the way in which these pictures had
been treated by the London National Gallery, with the
result that the public had no opportunity of seeing
them.

ELLEN DUNCAN.

APPENDIX IV 289

Sworn this 12th day of February 1917 at City Hall
in the City of Dublin before me a Commissioner to
administer oaths for the Supreme Court of Judicature
in Ireland and I know deponent.

HENRY LEMASS,

Commr, for Oaths.

I, ALEXANDER MARTIN, of 37, Vicarage Road,
East Sheen, do solemnly and sincerely declare as
follows : —

I have been asked to state in a word my impression
of Sir Hugh Lane's wishes regarding these Pictures,
in so far as I gathered it in conversation with him when
I accompanied him to Liverpool.* I am pleased to
accede to this request, and I should like to preface it
with the remark that it was the more strongly fixed
in my mind because his wishes as he expressed them
were not those with which I had most sympathy
Personally, I should have preferred to have seen the
Pictures placed in London rather than in Dublin.
From earlier conversations I was aware, of course, of
Sir Hugh Lane's deep interest in Ireland, and was not,
therefore, at all surprised when on this occasion he
spoke of it, and of his recent visit to Dublin, with the
greatest affection. He spoke to me also of the Modern
Gallery, referring again to the ambition he had enter-
tained when collecting the Pictures of seeing them
housed in Dubhn, and he gave me to understand that
his mind was made up that it should after all be the
destination of his Pictures, and I make this declaration
conscientiously believing the same to be true, and by
virtue of the Provisions of the Statutory Declaration
Act, 1835.

Signed: ALEXANDER MARTIN.

* Where Sir Hugh Lane was to sail for America. — A. G.

290 APPENDIX IV

Declared at No. 15 Duke Street, St. James's, in the
County of Middlesex, this 27 day of February 1917.
Before me,

A. FAIRLIE ALLINGIIAM.

(A Commissioner of Oaths.)

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED.
LONDON AND BECCLES, ENGLAND.

The OLD STORIES of IRELAND.

Works 'treating of Gaelic Legends.
Edited and Translated by LADY GREGORY.

CUCHULAIN OF MUIRTHEMNE.

The Story of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster. With
a Preface by W. B. Yeats. ^th Edition.

" In his interesting preface, Mr. W. B. Yeats expresses his opinion
that it is the best book that has come from Ireland in recent years.
In this we heartily concur. For the first time we have a thoroughly
literary version of the ' Tain ' and its cycle of tales, which may be
compared, without the least misgiving, to Lady Charlotte Guest s
version of the ' Mabinogian.' " — The Times.

GODS AND FIGHTING MEN.

The Story of the Tuatha de Danaan and of the Fianna of
Ireland. With a Preface by W. B. Yeats. 5/// Impression.

" Lady Gregory has added another leaf to the crown of laurel she is
winning by her studies in ancient Gaelic folklore and legend. Her
\ Gods and Fighting Men ' is as naively delightful, as mentally refresh-
ing and invigorating as her previous books. . . . She is at heart a
poet, and the limitless wealth of imagination of the Irish mind, its
(juaintness and simplicity, its gravity and peculiar humour, have
passed into her possession and. inspired her pen to fine issues." —
Yorkshire Post.

A BOOK OF SAINTS AND WONDERS:

According to the Old Writings and the Memory of the People
of Ireland. '^rd Impression,

"A delightful volume of stories. . . . The book imparts a fresh
literary charm to the fine old times about Saint Bridget, about
Columcille, about Saint Patrick, about the Voyagers Maeldune and
Brendan, and about many other legendary wonder-workers and un-
canny adventures. For an Irish youngster, or, indeed, for anyone
interested, to have the old Irish tales simply, faithfully, and sympa-
thetically told, it would be hard indeed to find a better book."— T/^^
Scotsman.

THE GOLDEN APPLE.

A Play for Kiltartan Children in three Acts. By Lady
Gregory. With Coloured Illustrations by Margaret Gregory.

This play deals with the adventures of the King of Ireland's son,
who goes in search of the Golden Apple of Healing. The scenes are.
laid in the Witch's Garden, the Giant's House, the Wood of Wonders,
and the King of Ireland's Room. It is both humorous and lyrical
and should please children and their elders alike. The coloured
illustrations are by the same hand as" those in "The Kiltartan
Wonder-Book," and have the same old fairy-tale air as the play itself.

JOHN MURRAY. ALBEMARLE STREET, W. \.

WORKS BY ARTHUR C. BENSON

THE HOUSE OF QUIET. An Autobiography. 21// Impression.

THE THREAD OF GOLD. \6th Impression.

FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 20th Impression.

THE UPTON LETTERS. 18M Impression.

THE SILENT ISLE. 4M Impression.

ALONG THE ROAD.

THE ALTAR FIRE. Sth Impression.

BESIDE STILL WATERS. 4M Impression.

AT LARGE. 2nd Impression.

RUSKIN ; A Study in Personality.

JOYOUS GARD.

THE ORCHARD PAVILION.

FATHER PAYNE.

THE CHILD OF THE DAWN.

THE LEAVES OF THE TREE: Studies in Biography. 2nd
Edition.

THE GATE OF DEATH. A Diary. 3rd Edition.

THY ROD AND THY STAFF. 3rd Impression.

WHERE NO FEAR WAS.

ESCAPE, and other Essays.

WATERSPRINGS. A Novel. 3rd Impression.

PAUL THE MINSTREL, and other Stories. With a new Preface.

HUGH : MEMOIRS OF A BROTHER. With Portraits and

Illustrations.
LIFE AND LETTERS OF MAGGIE BENSON. With Portraits

and Illustrations.

THE LETTERS OF QUEEN VICTORIA. A Selection from
Her Majesty's Correspondence between the years 1837 and 1861.
Edited by Arthur C. Benson and Viscount Esher. With 16
Portraits. 3 vols.

POEMS : Selections from the Poetry of Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and
Branwell Bronte. Edited, with an Introduction, by Arthur C.
Benson. With Portraits.

WORKS OF ROBERT BROWNING

POETICAL WORKS

COMPLETE EDITION. Edited and Annotated by the Rt.
Hon. Augustine Birrell, K.C, and Sir Frederic G.
Kenyon, K.C.B. 2 volumes, with a Portrait in each.

INDIA PAPER EDITION. In 1 volume.

In 2 volumes.

POCKET EDITION. In 8 volumes (size 4 J by C J inches),

printed upon India Paper, with a Portrait in each volume.

Bound in Cloth or in Leather. The 8 volumes in gold

lettered case, in Cloth.
UNIFORM EDITION. Containing Portraits and Illustrations.

17 volumes.

SELECTIONS. Crown 8vo. and Pocket Edition. ,

THE BROWNING LOVE LETTERS. The Letters of
Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
2 volumes. Also New Edition on Thin Paper, 2 volumes.

LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING. By Mrs.
Sutherland Orr. Edited, with a Preface by Sir Frederic
G. Kenyon, K.C.B. With Portraits.

BROWNING : How to Know Him. By W. L. Phelps.

THE BROWNINGS FOR THE YOUNG. Edited by Sir
Frederic G. Kenyon, K.C.B.

WORKS OF
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNmG

POETICAL WORKS

COMPLETE in 1 volume, with Portrait.

UNIFORM EDITION. In 6 volumes.

POCKET EDITION. In 3 volumes. Printed upon India
Paper, with a Portrait in each. Cloth and Leather.

POEMS. Cloth and Leather.

THE LETTERS OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
Edited, with Biographical Additions by Sir Frederic G.
Kenyon, K.C.B. With Portraits. 2 volumes.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING IN HER LETTERS,
By Percy Lubbock. With Portrait.

Life and Works of

CHARLES DARWIN

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OFl

NATURAL SELECTION.

THE DESCENT OF MAN AND SELECTIONI

IN RELATION TO SEX. With Illustrations.

VARIATION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS]

UNDER DOMESTICATION. Woodcuts. 2 vols.

EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS IN MAN

AND ANIMALS. With Illustrations.

VARIOUS CONTRIVANCES BY WHICH OR-I

CHIOS ARE FERTILIZED BY INSECTS. Woodcuts.

MOVEMENTS AND HABITS OF CLIMBINGl

PLANTS. Woodcuts.

INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS.

FORMATION OF VEGETABLE MOULDi

THROUGH THE ACTION OF WORMS. Illustrated.

JOURNAL OF A NATURALIST DURING AJ

VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD IN H.M.S. "BEAGLE," With]
16 full-page Plates.

CHARLES DARWIN :

His Life told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series
of his published Letters. Edited by his Son, Sir Francis Darwin.

CROSS AND SELF-FERTILIZATION IN THE

VEGETABLE KINGDOM.

DIFFERENT FORMS OF FLOWERS ON

PLANTS OF THE SAME SPECIES.

MORE LETTERS OF CHARLES DARWIN.

A Record of his Work in a Series of hitherto Uiipubhshed Letters.
Edited by Francis Darwin and A. C. Seward. With Portraits. 2 vols.
Demy 8vo.

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON, W. 1.

THE

CORNHILL ls6rf.net
MAGAZINE '«°'*™''^

Edited by LEONARD HUXLEY, LL.D.

'• Can a magazine have a soul ? In turning over the pages of the
hundred volumes of the ' Cornhill,' I have been on the search, and
I believe I have found it. . . . The range of subjects is very
wide, the methods of treatment are infinitely various. Politics
and public affairs have for the most part been avoided, though the
fringe of them is often touched. . . . The 'note' of the 'Cornhill'
is the literary note, in the widest sense of the term ; its soul is the
spirit of that humane culture, as Matthew Arnold describes it in
the pages, reprinted from the ' Cornhill,' of ' Culture and Anarchy.' "

—SIR E. T. COOK.

OPINIONS OF LIBRARIANS,

" I find upon inquiry at our five Libraries that the 'Cornhill' is
well read, and certainly it appeals to a section of readers who can
appreciate better literary fare than is offered in most of the modern
monthlies. May I take this opportunity of expressing my own
admiration for the high literary tone which you preserve in the

* Cornhill.' "

" My Committee are of opinion that there is room for one of its
kind. (Personally, I think there is only one of the 'Cornhiir kind,
and that is the 'Cornhill' itself.) I may say at once that the

* Cornhill* exactly meets the wants of a select body of readers."

" It is one of the few magazines of which a complete set is kept in
stock for the benefit of borrowers."

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

<( (

Cornhill' is in a class by itself and is full of the most entertaining
reading with real literary flavour." — Liverpool Courier,
" The counsel of perfection is to purchase the 'Cornhill,' that you
may not only enjoy its contents but keep them to show a friend."

— Guardian.

" Those of us who are not in the habit of reading the magazine will
be well advised to repair the omission." — Oxford Magazine.

The Cornhill can he obtained of all Booksellers and Newsagents,
price Is. 6^. net monthly. The Subscription for a year, including
postage, is 205. C^.

LB

Three Fascinating
Books on Words

By ERNEST WEEKLEY

Professor of French and Head of the Modern
Language Department^ University College^ Nottingham

The Romance of Words

3rd Impression.

This work deals in a popular fashion with the latest results
of modern philology. The Author has aimed at selecting
especially the unexpected in the history of words, and,
while demolishing several of the fables wliich are usually found in
works of etymology, it shows that in word-life, as in human life,
truth is stranger than fiction. The reader will find the book rich
in " tilings not generally known." He will possibly be surprised
to learn that scullery Is not related to scullion, nor sentinel to
sentry, while cipher is the same word as zero.

The Romance of Names

2nd Impression.

The Author's aim has been to steer a clear course between a
too learned and a too superficial treatment, and rather to
show how surnames are formed than to adduce innumerable
examples which the reader should be able to solve for himself.
In the various classes and subdivisions into which surnames fall
and which form the chapters of the book all that is obvious has
intentionally been omitted except in the rather frequent case of
the obvious being wrong.

Surnames

2nd Edition.

The relation of this book to The Romance of Names is that
of a more or less erudite treatise to a primer, inasmuch that it
covers more completely the ground of certain chapters in the
former book. An extraordinary number of fantastic names,
which have never before been explained, except by wild guesses,
are dealt with ; while chapters on French and German surnames
will attract the reader who is not satisfied with regarding
Joffre, Foch, Poincare, Nietzsche, Mackenscn and Kliick as mere
accidental conglomerations of letters.

LONDON: JOHN MURRAY

/

/

/

/

^is

f

<*

r

^
^

r*

^

^-

o

o

n

o

Xi
W