John Singer Sargent: At His Sister's Home

"Miss Eliza Wedgwood and Miss Sargent
Sketching" by John Singer Sargent

"As the years went by, work during seven whole days of the week made it difficult and physically irksome for John Singer Sargent to leave London. He stayed, too, at Lympne, Houghton and Panshanger, but his real home was the house of his sister Emily. He talked to her every morning on the telephone, and when not dining out he dined with her in her room looking over the Thames.

This was hung with the red damask that he had bought for her in Venice and, like her other rooms, with the pictures he had painted for her. Most evenings they had guests. Henry James, Mrs. Curtis, Professor Tonks, Wilson Steer, de Glehns, Nelson Ward, the Harrisons, Barnards, Alfred Parsons, Joseph Farquharson, R.A., Erskine Childers, and a few Academicians formed the nucleus of their society.

Professor Tonks writes: 

'I was introduced to his mother and sister by Steer, and was invited to Mrs. Sargent's flat in Carlyle Mansions to dinner, very often now it seems to me, looking back, where I spent some of the happiest evenings of my life. Sargent was generally there, and I have a feeling that those who were not fortunate enough to meet him at those dinner missed the best of him. 

The evenings were very informal. We generally went in our ordinary clothes, and there was a sense of freedom which encouraged everyone to speak at his best. Sargent was on these occasions decidedly a good talker. As a public speaker he was a complete failure. At a dinner given to him by the Chelsea Arts Club he could do little else than hang on to the table, but at the table in Carlyle Mansions he made an admirable host, enjoyed talking himself and listening to others. He had a very accurate memory, disconcerting at times, as he had a way of correcting careless quotations. He was a most honest and fearless expresser of his views, perhaps a little irritable on contradiction, more so as time went on.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)