"In the Hunting Field."
There was no restraining Caldecott now, his artistic bent and his delightful humour were finding expression in sketches in odd hours and minutes, on bits of note paper, on old envelopes, and on the blotting paper before him at his desk, until everybody about him must have been alive to his talent. He might no doubt have eventually attained a good position in the bank, for, as one of his friends writes of him very truly,
"Caldecott's ability was general, not special. It found its natural and most agreeable outlet in art and humour, but everybody who knew him, and those who received his letters, saw that there were perhaps a dozen ways in which he would have distinguished himself had he been drawn to them."
The unpublished sketches dispersed through this chapter indicate but slightly the originality and fecundity of Caldecott's genius at this time.
"This is not a Culprit going to gaol—it is only a Gentleman in love who happens to be walking before a Policeman!"
There was clearly but one course to pursue—to give up commercial pursuits and go to London—if such sketches as these were to be found scattered amongst bank papers!