Mr. Graham Robertson has a great deal of new gossip
to tell about old times. There is a particularly appetising flavour about his frank gaiety, sly humour, common-sense criticism and occasional sentimentality. Time Was (Hamish Hamilton, 15s.) when all these things were common enough, but the quality of Mr. Robertson's style was never anything but rare and will never be out of date. He has known the greater number of later -Victorian and Edwardian artists and actors ; has watched their pictures on the easel ancron the wall ; has seen them rehearsing, acting and sitting at home. Their achievements delight and their failures amuse him as he passes in and out among thein in entire unselfconsciousness. Here is the story of a lost " Sargent." It was, as we know, a dangerous thing to sit to Sargent. The sitter " took his face in his hand." Irving ventured—his valour was not rewarded. There is now no portrait of Irving by Sargent. The actor destroyed it with " a breakfast knife." The great painter had painted him " with the flame of his genius blown out." It was not Irving, but " the dreadful thing abdut it was that it might have been."
Previous page
