[Illustration:  HAVING THE TIME OF HER LIFE. Sketched in a Paris Cafe]

Allusion has already been made to the progressive method by which Frank Reynolds evolves a finished drawing, step by step, from an initial idea roughly jotted down with a few strokes of the pencil.  His draughtsmanship depends, as must of course all draughtsmanship, very largely upon memory.  But it is his practice, whenever possible, to obtain notes on the spot for later use.  This was especially the case with his work in Paris, where a pocket sketch-book was his inseparable companion.  A few pages of the latter are reproduced here, illustrating the artist’s quick perception and the instant sureness with which, notwithstanding the leisurely pace of his work under normal conditions, he conveys the spirit of his subject by means of a few lines.  An excellent example of this faculty is the sketch of the fat priest (page 53) and his hirsute companion, admirable in the spontaneity of expression with which the fleeting impression of a moment has been set down on paper.  Equally vivid is the impression conveyed by the hurried sketch of an old woman (page 22) made at the stage door of a theatre.  The boulevards of Paris are excellent places from which to study the comedy of life:  and as an example of the peculiar flavour of Frank Reynolds’ humour, it would be hardly possible to better the irresistible sketch from life, furtively made whilst sitting amongst the audience at a cafe chantant, which, with a nice sense of the absurd, is labelled in the sketch-book “Having the Time of her Life.”

[Illustration]

Montmartre, as might be expected, yielded excellent “copy,” to employ a journalistic phrase.  In the cafes and cabarets artistiques were made some of the portraits from life already referred to.  But though portraits of actual individuals, the models from which they were made are in every case so characteristic, so closely in keeping with their surroundings, that they serve nevertheless as types, and the drawings in consequence make as direct an appeal to the stranger as to one who might happen to be familiar with the originals of them.  In the famous Cabaret des Quat’-z-Arts was drawn the exquisite pen-and-ink portrait on page 32, previously alluded to, of “Georgette de Bertigny”:  under which name, for the purposes of the sketch, the identity of a figure at one time very familiar to habitues of the Quat’-z-Arts is concealed.  As comment upon the depth of feeling which the drawing reveals, one may read the pen picture which accompanied it: 

Then Georgette de Bertigny steps out through the haze, and stands, a tragic little figure, on the platform by the piano.  Her hair and eyes are ebon black; her face, thin lipped and pale, is like a mask of ivory.  There is no life whatever in it.  She stands there like a tragedy in miniature, her hands behind her back, unseeing, motionless.  Then, to a low, monotonously modulated melody, she sings a song of utter misery and passion, and, as she sings, her eyes and face light up.  The mask of ivory gleams as though there were living light behind it, and the sweet, low voice stirs us as but few singers can.  The music ceases.  And the light behind the ivory goes out again as Georgette bows her thanks for our enthusiasm.