“Well, Dicky Dalton, what says his Majesty?”
Dalton replied hesitatingly, and with confusion, “Why—a—with—a—regard to the picture—a—As for my—a—own opinion—why—a—you know, Mr. Wilson, that—a—indeed——”
Wilson interrupted him with an oath. He saw his friend’s perplexity, and said at once, “His Majesty don’t approve—but I know your friendly zeal—go on.”
“Why in truth, my dear friend, I venture to think the a—the finishing is—not altogether answerable to His Majesty’s anticipations.”
“Humph! Not every leaf made out, hey?—not every blade of grass? What else? Out with it, man.”
“Why then—a—His—His Majesty thinks—a—that the price is—is—is a great deal of money.”
Wilson took him by the button-hole, looked cautiously round, and in a comical whisper said,—
“Tell His Majesty I do not wish to distress him, I will take it by instalments—say a guinea a week.”
Neglect and disappointment soured Wilson’s temper, and made him a very surly, irritable man, sometimes quite misanthropical; as well they might, considering his great talents and his extreme poverty. It is said that one of his most famous historical paintings, on which he had expended many months of thought and labour, was sold under the influence of absolute necessity for a pot of beer, and the remains of a Stilton cheese!
Mortimer, an artist who used to sometimes occupy an armchair by Wilson’s fireside, and there hear him in splenetic humour moralise like another melancholy Jaques, making cynical strictures upon that scoundrel man, would say, “Come, come, my old Trojan—come, old boy—I wish I could set you purring like old puss there.”