| Description | 20 May 1889
Dictated
Dear Sir
I should have answered your letter sooner, but that I have been absent on the Continent for the last week.
I think you are under some misapprehension about the new National Portrait Gallery. I have no reason to suppose that any alteration is contemplated in the staff or organization of that Gallery, of which I am a trustee. The only change for which I look - and that is one very much for the better, no doubt - is in the housing of the precious, and at present homeless, works, which are under our charge.
On another matter, also, you have, I think, been misinformed. I take very great interest in every movement for the spread of music amongst the masses, and in everything which tends to facilitate their access to the best art of whatever kind; the effects of the Popular Musical Union, therefore, have of course my most cordial sympathy. I have, however, not on any occasion addressed a meeting on the subject, as you seem to have been informed. I did not attend the meeting of which you speak. I have been forced for some years to make it a general rule never to attend or speak at any public meeting of any kind outside Burlington House; the only exception which I have made for many years being my acceptance of the active chairmanship of the Liverpool Congress, which was a national and not a local undertaking, which it seemed to me to be my duty to head at the outset, and which opens up no precedents. My only alternative to the rule which I have had to lay down would have been virtual cessation from work as a practical artist - for which, you will not be surprised to hear that I am not prepared.
I am faithfully yours
Fred Leighton
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