Note 71 — Chapter V · ToC

Leighton kept these precious studies he made for his pictures in a drawer where I was often invited, rather apologetically, to turn them over as if they were absolutely of no importance. I protested against the cursory treatment they received at the hand of their creator; and on seeing one superlatively beautiful study of drapery pinned on his easel one day, I implored him to have it glazed and framed before it ran any danger of being rubbed. He did so, and always alluded to it after as "that sketch you lost for me," because, being framed, he lent it to some one—he did not remember to whom—and it never came back. Periodically I asked if it had returned; "No—some one, I suppose, has taken a fancy to it," Leighton would reply. The pace at which he had to live in order to fulfil the work he had set himself, enforced great carelessness about his own interests in such matters. Unfortunately, after Leighton's death, the sketches were exposed to much defacement, a natural consequence of their being moved before being secured under glass.