Days Like These

21 November 1864

GEN WILLIAM SHERMAN

(pictured), in command of Union forces in Georgia, records in his memoirs:

"After supper I sat on a chair astride, with my back to a good fire, musing, and became conscious that an old negro, with a tallow-candle in his hand, was scanning my face closely. I inquired, `What do you want, old man?' He answered, `Dey say you is Massa Sherman.' ... I asked him why he trembled so, and he said that he wanted to be sure that we were in fact `Yankees', for on a former occasion some rebel cavalry had put on light-blue overcoats, personating Yankee troops, and many of the negroes were deceived thereby, himself among the number - had shown them sympathy, and had in consequence been unmercifully beaten therefor. ... I told him to go out on the porch, from which he could see the whole horizon lit up with camp-fires, and he could then judge whether he had ever seen any thing like it before. The old man became convinced that the `Yankees' had come at last, about whom he had been dreaming all his life. Lieutenant Snelling, who commanded my escort, was a Georgian, and recognised in this old negro a favourite slave of his uncle, who resided six miles off; but the old slave did not at first recognize his young master in our uniform. One of my staff-officers asked him what had become of his young master, George. He did not know, only that he had gone off to the war, and he supposed him killed, as a matter of course. His attention was then drawn to Snelling's face, when he fell on his knees and thanked God that he had found his young master alive and along with the Yankees."

27 November 1897

ARNOLD BENNETT,

novelist, writes in

his journal:

"Indirectly I heard news of Simeon Solomon through a picture dealer in Regent Street, via Marriott. Simeon Solomon was one of the lights of the Pre-Raphaelite School, the friend of Rossetti and of Burne-Jones, who both had a sincere admiration for his work. The dealer said that he was now in a lunatic asylum. `At one time,' he said, `I gave him pounds 2 a week and took his sketches. The money was always paid daily for he was always penniless.' Marriott asked where Solomon lived in those days. `He didn't live anywhere,' the dealer said, `he had no home. If he could afford it, he slept at a common lodging house. If not, on the Embankment.'