John Leech and other papers

68 Horce Subsecivcz.
No one was more amused than she, when Leech
'had just seen the most fascinating creature, most
probably a " female marquis," with whom he was
devotedly in love, and who, he had occasion to
believe, was not indifferent, etc. etc. etc.' Semper
fidelis, nevertheless, was on John Leech's shield.
His boy, John George Warrington Leech, was in a
double sense his son, for he was the main warmth
and brightness of his life. 1 And how the child re-
turned his love ! I have mentioned his ambition for
the tonsure, that he might be like his father ; and he
was ever trying to imitate him. He wore a little coat
of velvet, made exactly like that in which Leech
generally did his work, and he stood before a minia-
ture easel (est. 5), painting the engravings of the
Illustrated London News with an air of profound
interest. Even then he had, like his father in his
childhood, a marvellous notion of drawing. Nor was
that his only development in art. I was in the house
when he said to a new nurse-maid, who had just
appeared in his nursery, ' Nurse, papa says that I
am one of those children that can only be managed
by kindness, and I '11 trouble you to fetch some
sponge-cakes and oranges !' 2
1 He was drowned at South Adelaide in the year 1876.
' The spoiler came, and all his promise fair
Hath sought the grave, to sleep for ever there.' [1881.]
a I recall another occasion in which this clever little man was
master of the position. My wife's maid had paid a long visit