Among the Irish members I caricatured Mr. Mitchell Henry who led the Home Rule Party in '79, but afterwards "ratted." He gave me three sittings, but was afterwards heard to say that he did not know "where the devil that fellow got hold of him!" I got to know him after extremely well, and accepted his hospitality on more than one occasion. He was very wealthy at one time, and up to the last collected every relic of Dr. Johnson he could lay hands on. My father had also taken a very great interest in anything connected with the great man and had painted several events in his life, of which I suppose the best known is "Dr. Johnson in the Anti-chamber of the Earl of Chesterfield," now in the Tate Gallery. At his death I sold to him a very interesting study from one of these pictures.
At the request of Mr. Bowles I went over to Dublin to make a special picture of Parnell and Dillon in Kilmainham Gaol. I had letters of introduction to both, and Parnell wrote to my hotel a very charming letter of acquiescence in answer to my request for an interview, which letter I greatly regret that I have had the misfortune to mislay. Then I received a second letter in which he informed me that he had heard that he would not be allowed to see me alone in prison, but that a warder would have to be present the whole time, and under the circumstance he was forced to decline my request. It was within the bond of my contract with Mr. Bowles that I should not be required to place the signature "Spy" on any drawing that was not the outcome of personal observation of the subject required, so I gave it up, and the Parnell-Dillon cartoon which appeared in _Vanity Fair_ was from the clever imagination of Harry Furniss. I remember Parnell as a carelessly dressed man with good features, a fine head with a high forehead and eyes both striking and piercing, but not altogether pleasant in expression. I was in the law-courts when the Piggott case was on, and opposite to me was the celebrated Royal Academician, Philip Calderon, who was studying him with the intention of making a large picture of the court commissioned by the _Graphic_, but it was never finished or produced as a sketch.
When the _Vanity Fair_ cartoons were put up for sale at Christie's the only one of my series (curiously enough) that failed to find a bidder was the drawing of Piggott, although it was one of my most successful studies, from a sketch as he stood in the witness-box.