“_April 30th._--The private view, to which Papa and I went. It is very seldom that an ‘outsider’ gets invited, but they make a pet of me at the Academy. Again this day contrasted very soberly with the dazzling P.V. of ‘74. There were fewer great guns, and I was not torn to pieces to be introduced here, there, and everywhere, most of the people being the same as last year, and knowing me already. The same _furore_ cannot be repeated; the first time, as I said, can never be a second. Papa and I and lots of others lunched over the way at the Penders’ in Arlington Street, our hosts of last night, and it was all very friendly and nice, and we returned in a body to the R.A. afterwards. I was surprised, at the big ‘At Home’ last night, to find myself a centre again, and people all so anxious to hear my answers to their questions. Last year I felt all this more keenly, as it had all the fascination of novelty. This year just the faintest atom of zest is gone.
“_May 3rd._--To the Academy on this, the opening day. A dense, surging multitude before my picture. The whole place was crowded so that before ‘Quatre Bras’ the jammed people numbered in dozens and the picture was most completely and satisfactorily rendered invisible. It was chaos, for there was no policeman, as last year, to make people move one way. They clashed in front of that canvas and, in struggling to wriggle out, lunged right against it. Dear little Mamma, who was there nearly all the time of our visit, told me this, for I could not stay there as, to my regret, I find I get recognised (I suppose from my latest photos, which are more like me than the first horror) and the report soon spreads that I am present. So I wander about in other rooms. I don’t know why I feel so irritated at starers. One can have a little too much popularity. Not one single thing in this world is without its drawbacks. I see I am in for minute and severe criticism in the papers, which actually give me their first notices of the R.A. The _Telegraph_ gives me its entire article. _The Times_ leads off with me because it says ‘Quatre Bras’ will be the picture the public will want to hear about most. It seems to be discussed from every point of view in a way not usual with battle pieces. But that is as it should be, for I hope my military pictures will have moral and artistic qualities not generally thought necessary to military _genre_.