d the
_vie intime_ of the House of Commons, not to be found elsewhere. No
doubt, here and there some offence was taken; and wives would at times
protest against the caricatures of husbands' figures, clothes, or faces;
but as a rule the "truthful falsehood" was appreciated by Mr. Furniss's
victims--many of whom would ask to be included in his pictures--and few
frequenters of the Lobby were more popular than he.

"Mr. Gladstone's collars" are a by-word in the land; and Mr. Furniss
made them. It is generally recognised that Mr. Gladstone wore no such
collars. Nevertheless, his favourite sitting attitude in the House was
one very low down, his chin buried in his chest; and the more tired or
depressed he was--the more weary or dejected at the course of the
debate--the more his head would sink within his collar, and the more the
linen rose. This fact gave Mr. Furniss the idea, in the course of a few
sessions, of his drawing of "Mr. Gladstone's Choler Getting Up;" and
thereon was based his popular fiction. Similarly, the representation of
Lord Randolph Churchill as a small boy of irrepressible "cheek" was at
first intended to typify the noble lord's irrepressible unimportance in
the Chamber (that was before he had risen from the Fourth Party
leadership to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer); while the creation
of the complacent, many-chinned descendant of the Plantagenets in "The
House of Harcourts"--a page imagined and drawn in greatest haste
straight on to the wood-block, to fill up--was received with uproarious
delight by the public as a true piece of satirical humour. But of all
his "types" the funniest, as well as the easiest, was the ungainly but
side-splitting caricature of Sir Richard Temple--which helped not a
little to spread his fame throughout the land. All these men took the
fun in the best of good part, Sir William Harcourt only protesting--not
when Harry Furniss endowed him with an extra chin, but when he did not
credit him with the full complement of hair.

[Illustration: A HURRIED NOTE.

(_By Harry Furniss._)]

To obtain his portraits Mr. Furniss would stalk his quarries unawares:
for self-consciousness in a sitter kills all character. A favourite ruse
was for him to tell Mr. A. that he wanted to sketch Mr. B., and that his
work would be greatly facilitated if the hon. member would keep the
other in conversation. Mr. A. would enter gleefully into the joke, and
then Harry Furniss would sketch _Mr. A!_ If n