Page:Pen And Pencil Sketches - Volume I.djvu/124

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PEN AND PENCIL SKETCHES

both having human heads, running their hardest from the South of France. A Frenchman in an attitude of astonishment, standing by a sign-post marked "Boulogne,” showed that the pair were well on their way home. The poodle was Calderon, with a tin saucepan tied to his tail labelled “Hampden,” a picture he had begun that year; the “cat,” with eye-glass flying in the wind, was of course the writer. The remainder of the evening was merrily spent, with pipes, cigarettes, and the social glass, or “mallet,” as whisky-and- water was known among the clique. This term originated from a visit Walker and I paid to a hostelry close by Langham Chambers, in the bar of which was hung a painting of a dead dog with the following inscription in gold letters underneath : —

“Poor Trust is dead and cold, you see;
Bad pay the deed has done.
No mallet you’ll expect of me;
’Tis up with that 'ere fun."

Walker is known most widely by his woodcuts in Once a Week, The Cornhill Magazine, Good Words, Sunday at Home, &c. Influenced in some measure by the drawing of Menzel and the Tennyson illustrations by the Pre-Raphaelites, he eventually formed a style of his own. He may be said to have founded, or to have assisted in