I have a fancy that we lived in Blackmoor Street, off
Drury Lane. My father, when first I knew of his doing anything at all,
supported my mother and myself by drawing pictures with coloured chalks
upon the pavement; I used sometimes to watch him, and marvel at the skill
with which he represented fogs, floods, and fires. These three "f's," he
would say, were his three best friends, for they were easy to do and
brought in halfpence freely. The return of the dove to the ark was his
favourite subject. Such a little ark, on such a hazy morning, and such a
little pigeon--the rest of the picture being cheap sky, and still cheaper
sea; nothing, I have often heard him say, was more popular than this with
his clients. He held it to be his masterpiece, but would add with some
naivete that he considered himself a public benefactor for carrying it
out in such perishable fashion. "At any rate," he would say, "no one can
bequeath one of my many replicas to the nation."
I never learned how much my father earned by his profession, but it must
have been something considerable, for we always had enough to eat and
drink; I imagine that he did better than many a struggling artist with
more ambitious aims. He was strictly temperate during all the time that
I knew anything about him, but he was not a teetotaler; I never saw any
of the fits of nervous excitement which in his earlier years had done so
much to wreck him.
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