adstone saw the paper, and was on the point of
taking it up. I handed it to him, but at the same moment slipped the
supplement out of the number and threw it under the table, for it
contained a caricature of Professor Herkomer's Academy portrait of Mrs.
Gladstone, objecting to being placed next to a lady by Mr. Val Prinsep
sitting for the "altogether." During dinner Mr. Gladstone mentioned this
portrait of Mrs. Gladstone, and expressed great delight with Herkomer's
work: it showed her mature age, he said, and as a portrait was very
happy and true--he did not say anything about the hanging of it!

Mr. Gladstone was the life and soul of a party, and seemed to enjoy
being the centre of attraction wherever he was.

[Illustration: THE GLADSTONE MATCHBOX.]

Mr. Gladstone's portrait has been adopted by others besides
caricaturists. It is carved as a gargoyle in the stone-work of a church,
and the head of the Grand Old Man has been turned into a match-box. The
latter I here reproduce. It was shown to me one evening when I was the
guest at the Guard Mess at St. James's Palace. A clever young Guardsman,
who had a taste for turning, worked this out in wood from my caricatures
of Mr. Gladstone, and I advised his having it reproduced in pottery. The
suggestion was carried out by the late Mr. Woodall, the Member for the
Potteries, and was largely distributed at the time the G.O.M. was
politically meeting his match and thought by some to be a little
light-headed.

In being shown round the beautiful municipal buildings in Glasgow I
found my caricature there accidentally figuring in the marble-work; and
the guides at Antwerp Cathedral (as I have mentioned in the first
chapter) point out a grotesque figure in the wood carving of the choir
stalls which resembles almost exactly Mr. Gladstone's head as depicted
by me.

I find a note which I introduce here, as I hardly know where to place it
in this hotch-potch of confessions. Is it a fact that Mr. Gladstone
once signed a caricature of himself? In 1896 a Mr. J. T. Cox, of the
"Norwich school" of amateurs, procured a slab of a sycamore tree felled
by Mr. Gladstone, and on it reproduced in pencil my _Punch_ cartoon
depicting a visit of the "Grand Old Undergrad" to his Alma Mater,
Oxford. This was sent to Hawarden, and returned signed with the
following note:

"HAWARDEN CASTLE.

"Mr. Gladstone is obliged to refuse his signature, bu