Drawing, in fact, seemed to come to me naturally and intuitively. This was well for me, for small indeed was the instruction I received. I recollect that a German governess, who professed, among other things, to teach drawing, undertook to cultivate my genius; but I derived little benefit from her unique system, as it consisted in placing over the paper the drawing to be copied, and pricking the leading points with a pin, after which, the copy being removed, the lines were drawn from one point to another. The copies were of course soon perforated beyond recognition, and, although I warmly protested against this sacrilege of art, she explained that it was by that system that Albert Dürer had been taught. This, of course, accounts for our having infant prodigies in art, as well as music and the drama. The rapidity with which Master Hoffmann was followed by infantile Lizsts and little Otto Hegner as soon as it became apparent that there was a demand for such phenomena, seems to indicate that in music at all events supply will follow demand as a matter of course, and if the infant artist can only be "crammed" in daubing on canvas as youthful musicians are in playing on the piano, then perhaps a new sensation is in store for the artistic world, and we shall see babies executing replicas of the old masters, and the Infant Slapdash painter painting the portraits of Society beauties. As a welcome relief to Chopin's Nocturne in D flat, played by Baby Hegner at St. James's Hall, we shall step across to Bond Street and behold "Le Petit Américain" dashing off his "Nocturne" on canvas. I sometimes wonder if I might have been made such an infant art prodigy, but when I was a lad public taste was not in its second childhood in matters of art patronage, nor was the forcing of children practised in the same manner as it is nowadays.
Naturally enough I did not altogether escape the thraldom of the drawing-master, and as years went on I made a really serious effort to study at an art school under the Kensington system, which I must confess I believe to be positively prejudicial to a young artist possessing imagination and originality. The late Lord Beaconsfield made one of his characters in "Lothair" declare that "critics are those who have failed in literature and art." Whether this is true as to the art critics, or that the dramatic critic is generally a disappointed playwright, it must in truth be said that drawing-masters are nearly always those who have failed in art. I can remember one gentleman who was the especial terror of my youth. I can see him now going his rounds along the chilly corridor, where, perhaps, one had been placed to draw something "from the flat." After years and years of practice at this rubbish, he would halt beside you, look at your work in a perfunctory manner, and with a dexterity which appalled you until you reflected that he had been doing the same thing exactly, and nothing else, for perhaps a decade, he would draw in a section of a leaf, and if, as in my case, you happened to have a pretty sister attending the ladies' class in the school, he would add leaf to leaf until your whole paper was covered with his mechanical handiwork, in order to have a little extra conversation with you, although, I need scarcely add, it was not exclusively confined to the subject of art.