[Illustration: LEWIS WINGFIELD AS A STREET NIGGER HOME FROM THE DERBY.]
As an artist Wingfield was ambitious. Finding, as he told me, that he could never be a great artist, he preferred not to be one at all. On his walls were large classic paintings, not likely ever to find their way to the walls of anyone else. But he tried his hand at popular art as well. A scene in a circus, for instance, was one subject. A pretty little child was engaged to sit in his studio, but as that day he was going to Hengler's Circus to paint the background he, to the delight of the child, took her with him. The little girl played about in the ring, and was noticed by Mr. Hengler, who asked her if she would like to be dressed up and play in the same ring at night. This led to the child becoming a professional. She enchanted everyone as Cinderella. Her name was Connie Gilchrist. I fell in love with her myself when I was in my teens and first saw her as Cinderella. Afterwards when I came to London I was as ignorant as a Lord Chief Justice as to who Connie Gilchrist was; but I recollect a model sitting to me recommending my writing to her younger sister for some figures she thought her sister would suit. The day was fixed, but by the morning's post I received a letter from the young lady to say that Mr. Hollingshead, of the Gaiety Theatre, had sent for her, and she could not sit to me. She was Connie Gilchrist, and I believe this was the last engagement she had accepted as a professional model.
Telegram from the editor of the _Illustrated London News_:--"Election, Liverpool, see to it at once." So I did. On arriving in the evening, I rushed off to a "ward meeting," To my surprise the artist of a rival paper sat down beside me. He did not frighten me away, but candidly confessed that he had seen a private telegram of mine saying I was starting, and his editor packed him off by the same train. Ha! I must be equal to him! I sat up all night and drew a page on wood, ready for engraving, and sent it off by the first train in the morning. It was in the press before my rival's rough notes left Liverpool. One would hardly think, to see candles stuck in my boots, that the hotel was the Old Adelphi. I trust the "special" of the future will find the electric light, or a better supply of bedroom candlesticks. All day again sketching, and all night hard at work, burning the midnight oil (I was nearly writing boots). A slice of luck kept me awake in the early morning. A knock at my door, and to my surprise a friend walked in who had come down by a night train for a "daily" and seeing my name in the visitors' book had looked me up, thinking I could give him some "tips." "All right," I said; "a bargain: you sit for me and I'll talk. Here, stand like this"--the Liberal candidate. "Capital! Now round like this"--the Conservative. "Drawn from life! And after another day of this kind of thing, I reached home without having had an hour's sleep. Oh! a "special's" life is not a happy one.