Romney inherited much of his father's ingenuity, and as a lad set about making a fiddle, which he completed in later years and retained all his life. It was a sound instrument of really good tone, and the artist himself played well upon it.
As a lad Romney was sent to a small local school; but he made very slight progress with his studies, and preferred to spend his time in sketching or in copying the pictures that he found in papers or books.
His father, finding that he was making so little progress, took him away from school before he was eleven, and placed him in his own workshop, where he soon began to learn how to ply the tools and to make a creditable use of his new accomplishment.
Still, however, his spare time was filled up by painting, and he made very careful copies of the illustrations in a monthly magazine which one of his father's workmen, who boarded in the house, lent him regularly as it appeared.
He was also asked by a person in the village to paint her portrait, and succeeded in performing the commission in so creditable a way, that it was quite clear to the elder Romney that his son was intended by nature to be an artist.
Accordingly, yielding to the persuasions of the lad himself, backed up as they were by those of many friends, he took steps to apprentice him to an itinerant painter, who was at that time in their neighbourhood, named Steele.
Here he was employed in the more menial work of the craft, grinding colours and preparing the palette; but Steele, although a poor painter himself, had been well trained in Paris, and was able to teach his young pupil much that was of the greatest use to him in his after career.
Steele afterwards eloped with a young lady who was one of his pupils, and Romney had to assist him in his arrangements. They were difficult, and involved a vast amount of trouble and exposure to night air at a time when the youth was far from strong; and after the gay couple had escaped to Gretna Green, Romney fell ill of a fever, and was nursed by a domestic servant named Mary Abbott. With this young person the artist fell violently in love, and on recovering from his illness married her on October 14th, 1756, when only twenty-two years old, and without any means of his own on which to live.
He had to leave his wife very soon after marriage, as Steele had gone to York, where he expected Romney to join him; but after a while the roving life that his master led, and his improvident habits and constant difficulties as to money, disheartened Romney, and he agreed with Steele that, if he would cancel his indenture, Romney would forgive him a debt that he had incurred of £10 from the young apprentice.
This course was adopted, and Romney returned to Kendal, where his wife had been residing.