JR, B-P, MB

In Eminent Edwardians (which I'm still reading, with great enjoyment), Piers Brendon tells of a curious connection between John Ruskin and the young Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, known to his family as 'Stephe'. B-P's formidably well connected mother consulted Ruskin about 'Stephe's vexatious habit of painting with both hands (on occasion with both feet)'. Happily the great man approved of the boy's ambidexterity and encouraged it, and B-P was to put it to good use in his military career, taking notes with either hand and making sketches with both simultaneously, drawing with one hand while shading with the other. Brendon also tells of an occasion when Thackeray came to dinner with the Baden-Powells and, 'when young Stephe attempted to join the party, paid him a shilling to go away – the earliest recorded instance of bob-a-jobbery.' There is also one thing – and surely only one – the B-P had in common with Max Beerbohm: they were both educated at Charterhouse under Dr William…