Forty Years of 'Spy‪'‬

Excerpt: At a garden party at Lord Leven''s, in Roehampton Lane, I saw Professor Owen or Old Bones (as he was irreverently nicknamed), and, struck with his antediluvian incongruity amidst the beautiful surroundings of the garden, and the children there, I resolved to caricature him. Impressing his strange and whimsical face upon my memory, I returned home and at once conveyed my impressions to paper. I caught him in his best clothes, with the tall white hat, which made a contrast to his florid face; it is hardly one''s idea of a garden party get up as will be seen by the boots. I suppose some eccentricity must be forgiven in the light of his genius, for Old Bones was a man, and a scientist, of prodigious activity. There was no end to his works—especially their titles, of which,[93] for instance, On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Animals, is a fair example; while Memoir on a Gigantic Sloth, has possibilities. He belonged to innumerable societies, geological, zoological, chirurgical, and so forth; and he was, as Vanity Fair described him, a simple-minded creature, although a bit of a dandy.