With regard to Leighton's acute artistic sense of fitness when it was a matter of chosing a site for buildings or monuments, so that such placing should give them their full value of effect, I remember, after a site had been decided on for Cleopatra's Needle in London, Leighton vehemently denouncing the idea of placing it where it now stands. The conversation we had respecting it was recalled by finding the following letter:--
DEAR SIR,--It is a source of regret to me that I am unable to be present as a listener at the discussion to-morrow. Meanwhile the question of the base, though a very important one, is in my mind very secondary to that of the site, and the (in my poor opinion) radical wrongness of the present selection much mars my interest in the whole affair. A monument which, intended to be conspicuous, is not the _focus_ of the avenues that lead to it, I think against the most primary perceptions of effect. Two magnificent avenues give access to Cleopatra's Needle, the finest river and the finest embankment in Europe; _both of these run past it_ as if they had forgotten it. I may add that what would only have been feeble is rendered worse than feeble by the (of course accidental) semblance of matching with the short tower over the way.
Pray excuse the great haste in which I write and the consequent abruptness of my expressions, and believe me, yours very truly,
Mr. J. Goodall, in his Reminiscences, says: "Many years before it was removed from Egypt I used to see it lying on the seashore near Alexandria. I agree with Lord Leighton's opinion that it was not erected on a suitable site. It is a pity it was not put up in front of the British Museum."
Leighton, needless to say, took infinite interest in Sir Henry Tate's splendid scheme for memorialising the success of a commercial life, by presenting to his nation a gallery in which the best British works of art might find a home, and, moreover, by the gift to the public of the nucleus of such a collection. It was truly amazing to see the amount of time and trouble which Leighton devoted to this scheme, considering how full to overflowing his life already appeared to be. But, whether it was a question of a splendid enterprise, or a struggling artist of whom the world had never heard, or even an earnest amateur, once his sense aroused that he could be of help, Leighton manufactured time somehow to give that help.[78] But the high-minded, public-spirited view Sir Henry Tate took of the responsibilities of wealth specially enlisted Leighton's sympathies, and he evinced an intense interest in helping to work out the great idea.