MEN I HAVE PAINTED
watch-dog, Watts Dunton, is much more incomprehensible than that Meredith, who held the palm among contemporary English prose writers, should have hidden himself in a prosaic cottage at Box Hill.
Yet Burford Bridge has its associations; and here I was sent, by my friend Mr. Edward H. Coates, to paint a portrait of the novelist most beloved by the cognoscenti of America, for the portrait gallery of the Pennsylvania Academy. "We must have Meredith," wrote Mr. Coates, "for we all love his books."
Meredith was recovering from the shock of a fall that had broken his ankle, and I found him resting his foot upon a chair as he half reclined in another. He was not happy in his mind. The long convalescence and confinement in the house vexed him; the social conditions of the day—what would he have thought of this day?—the gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the growing unrest of the people, weighed upon him. He wrote letters to the newspapers about it all, but he offered no remedy. He talked about America, about Philadelphia, and recalled Weir Mitchell and his books. And as he talked, I studied him, his colour, his expression, and his general characteristics.
The inn where I stayed was bright and sunny, and the rooms very comfortable; so I lingered long to see more of the recluse, for so he seemed, shut in, as it were, behind the hedges that hid him from the road and the passing people—like Tennyson, in his later life, concealed from view in his hidden gardens at Freshwater. Meredith followed the example of other great thinkers who become shy in their old age and withdraw from the world. There are men who resent the change from strength to weakness, from
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