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Finally they settled down to work–Seventeenth-Century models were all around, and a look up the single street would do for a picture. Parsons painted what he saw; Abbey painted what he saw plus what he imagined.

Six months went by, and the growls of the Managing Editor back in New York were quieted with a few sketches. Parsons had tried water- color with good results; and Abbey followed with an Arthurian sketch–a local swain as model.

Several pictures had been sent down to London–which is up–and London approved. Abbey was elected a member of “The Aquarellists,” just as a little later the Royal Academy was to open its doors, unsolicited, for him.

Two years had gone, and new arrangements must be made with Harper’s. Abbey returned to America with a trunkful of sketches–enough good stuff to illustrate several “Herricks.” He remained in New York eight months, long enough to see the book safely launched, and to close up his business affairs in Philadelphia.

And the Shakespeare country has been his home ever since.

An artist’s work is his life–where he can work best is his home. Patriotism isn’t quite so bad as old Ursa Major said, but the word is not to be found in the bright lexicon of Art. The artist knows no country. His home is the world, and those who love the beautiful are his brethren.

Abbey has remained in England, not that he loves America less, nor England more, but because the Shakespeare country has a flavor of antiquity about it that fits his artistic mood–it is a good place to work. An artist’s work is his life.

At “Morgan Hall,” Fairford, only a few miles from where Abbey first made his home in England, he now lives and works. Near by lives Mary Anderson, excellent and gentle woman, wife and mother, who used to storm the one-night stands most successfully. The place is old, vine-clad, built in sections running over a space of three hundred years. So lost is it amid the great spreading beeches that you have to look twice before you see the house from the road.

Happily married to a most worthy woman whose only thought is to minister to her household, the days pass. That Mrs. Abbey never doubts her liege is not only the greatest artist, but the greatest man in all England, is a most pleasing fact. She believes in him, and she gives him peace. The Kansas Contingent may question whether a woman’s career is complete who thus lives within her home, and for her household, but to me the old-fashioned virtues seem very hard to improve upon. Industry, truth, trust and abiding loyalty–what a bulwark of defense for a man who has a message for the world!

There is a goodly brood of little Abbeys–I dare not say how many. I believe it was nine a year ago, with an addition since. They run wild and free along the hedgerows and under the beeches, and if it rains there are the stables, kennels and the finest attic that ever was.

Back of the house and attached to it Mr. Abbey has built a studio forty feet wide by seventy-five long, and twenty feet high. It is more than a studio–it is a royal workshop such as Michelangelo might have used for equestrian statues, or cartoons to decorate a palace for the Pope. Dozens of pictures, large and small, are upon the easels. Arms, armor, furniture, are all about, while on the shelves are vases and old china enough to fill the heart of a collector to surfeit. In chests and wardrobes are velvets, brocades and antique stuffs and costumes, all labeled, numbered and catalogued, so as to be had when wanted.

This studio was built especially to accommodate the paintings for the Boston Public Library. The commission was given in Eighteen Hundred Ninety, and the last of the decorations has just been put in place, in this year of grace, Nineteen Hundred One. Abbey’s paintings in the Boston Public Library cover in all something over a thousand square feet of space, and form quite the noblest specimen of mural decoration in America.