STUART AND WEST.

“I used often to provoke my good old master,” said Stuart to Dunlap, “though, heaven knows, without intending it. You remember the color closet at the bottom of his painting-room. One day, Trumbull and I came into his room, and little suspecting that he was within hearing, I began to lecture on his pictures, and particularly upon one then on his easel. I was a giddy, foolish fellow then. He had begun a portrait of a child, and he had a way of making curly hair by a flourish of his brush, thus, like a figure of three. “Here, Trumbull,” said I, “do you want to learn how to paint hair? There it is, my boy! Our master figures out a head of hair like a sum in arithmetic. Let us see—we may tell how many guineas he is to have for this head by simple addition,—three and three make six, and three are nine, and three are twelve—” How much the sum would have amounted to, I can’t tell, for just then in stalked the master, with palette-knife and palette, and put to flight my calculations. “Very well, Mr. Stuart”—he always mistered me when he was angry, as a man’s wife calls him my dear, when she wishes him to the d——l,—“Very well, Mr. Stuart! very well indeed!” You may believe that I looked foolish enough, and he gave me a pretty sharp lecture, without my making any reply. But when the head was finished, there were no figures of three in the hair.”

“Mr. West,” says Stuart, “treated me very cavalierly on one occasion: but I had my revenge. My old master, who was always called upon to paint a portrait of his majesty for every governor-general sent out to India, received an order for one for Lord ——. He was busily employed upon one of his ten-acre pictures, in company with prophets and apostles, and thought he could turn over the king to me. He could never paint a portrait.

“‘Stuart,’ said he, ‘it is a pity to make his majesty sit again for his picture; there is the portrait of him that you painted; let me have it for Lord ——. I will retouch it, and it will do well enough.’ ‘Well enough! very pretty,’ thought I; ‘you might be civil, when you ask a favor.’ So I thought; but I said, ‘Very well, sir.’ So the picture was carried down to his room, and at it he went. I saw he was puzzled. He worked at it all that day. The next morning, ‘Stuart,’ says he, ‘have you got your palette set?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Well, you can soon set another; let me have it; I can’t satisfy myself with that head.’

“I gave him my palette, and he worked the greater part of that day. In the afternoon I went into his room, and he was hard at it. I saw that he had got up to the knees in mud. ‘Stuart,’ says he, ‘I don’t know how it is, but you have a way of managing your tints unlike everybody else. Here, take the palette, and finish the head.’ ‘I can’t, sir,’ ‘You can’t?’ ‘I can’t indeed, sir, as it is; but let it stand till to-morrow morning and get dry, and I will go over it with all my heart.’ The picture was to go away the day after the morrow; so he made me promise to do it early next morning.

He never came down into the painting room until about ten o’clock, I went into his room bright and early, and by half past nine I had finished the head. That done, Rafe (Raphael West, the master’s son) and I began to fence; I with my maul-stick, and he with his father’s. I had just driven Rafe up to the wall, with his back to one of his father’s best pictures, when the old gentleman, as neat as a lad of wax, with his hair powdered, his white silk stockings and yellow morocco slippers, popped into the room, looking as if he had stepped out of a band-box. We had made so much noise that we did not hear him come down the gallery, or open the door. ‘There, you dog,’ says I to Rafe, ‘there I have you, and nothing but your back-ground relieves you.’

“The old gentleman could not help smiling at my technical joke, but soon, looking very stern, ‘Mr. Stuart,’ says he, ‘is this the way you use me?’ ‘Why! what’s the matter, sir? I have neither hurt the boy nor the background.’ ‘Sir, when you knew I had promised that the picture of his majesty should be finished to-day, ready to be sent away to-morrow, thus to be neglecting me and your promise! How can you answer it to me or to yourself?’

“‘Sir,’ said I, ‘do not condemn me without examining the easel. I have finished the picture: please to look at it.’ He did so, complimented me highly, and I had ample revenge for his, ‘It will do well enough.’”