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This little boy had been born on the 2nd April 1827, in Wood Street, Cheapside, and was christened William Holman at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate. From the time that he could hold anything he held a pencil. When he was about four years old he begged for a brush and some paints, and his joy is thus described:

“How I idolised the implements when they were in my possession! The camel-hair pencil, with its translucent quill, rosy-coloured silk binding up its delicate hair at the base, all embedded together as in amber, was an equal joy with the gem-like cakes of paint. I carried them about with me in untiring love. A day or two of this joy had not exhausted it, when, alas, alas, the brush was lost! Search proved to be all in vain. I remember going around and over every track about the house and garden. Waking up from sorrowing sleep, in which my continuing pain had been finally relieved by a dream of the lost treasure lying ensconced in some quiet corner, I hurried to the spot, only to find it vacant. The loss was the greater trouble because it was my first terrible secret. That my father should ever forgive me for losing so beautiful an object was to my distracted mind impossible. What could be done? My hair was straight, fine, and of camel brush hue. I cut off pieces to test its fitness for the office of paint-brush, and as I held a little lock I found that it would spread the tints fairly well; but what to do for a handle? Quill pens were too big, and I could not see how they could be neatly shortened. A piece of firewood carefully cut promised to make a more manageable stick. With my utmost skill I shaped this, and with a little length of coloured cotton I bound a stubborn sprout of hair upon the splint. I was disconcerted to find that it formed a hollow tube. It seemed perverse of fate to ordain that just in the handle where it was needed to be hollow it should be solid, and that the hair which should be solid would form an empty pipe. Attempts to drill the stick into a tube failed, but there was an expedient for making the tuft fuller. Cutting a cross cleft in the bottom of the wood, I inserted a straight length of hair, which I then rebound with its crimson thread. With gum I managed patiently to bind down loose ends and to give an improving gloss to the whole. My fears grew apace, since every hour there was a danger of inquiry for the lost pencil. I summoned up, therefore, an assumption of assurance, trusting that my father would see no difference between my brush and his. I went forward to him, holding the trophy very tenderly lest it should fall to pieces. He turned his eyes, they became bewildered, his usual loving look made a frown from him the more to be dreaded. I fortified my spirit, saying, ‘Thank you very much, father, for your brush.’ He took it with, ‘What’s this?’ and turned it over. Breathless I sobbed; he burst out laughing, and so brought a torrent of tears to my eyes. He exclaimed, ‘Oh, I see, it’s my brush, is it?’ caught me up and tossed me aloft several times, ending with a scrubbing on my cheek from his close-shaven chin. This was the reception of my first work of art.”[1]

The warehouse was a mysterious place full of laughter and talk by day; empty, silent, and vast at night when the master went over it with a bull’s-eye lantern. A funny man called Henry Pinchers busied himself with velvet binding on the third floor. The jests of Henry Pinchers were of infinite charm. He had had to take two steps back for every step forward, he declared, one cold morning. “Then how did you get to the warehouse at all?” asked his delighted auditor. “Don’t you see, you silly boy, I turned round and walked backwards!” said Henry Pinchers.

Other people were not much more clear than he in their answers to questions. Temple Bar was so called “because there was no other name”; and the martyrs were burnt at Smithfield “because they were martyrs.” Whether the child found more satisfaction at the school to which, soon after, he was sent, does not appear. The lessons from the New Testament read to him there made a deep impression upon his mind, and were remembered in years to come. “The gain in thoughtfully-spent life is the continual disturbance of absolute convictions.” But there are certain convictions of childhood which are never effaced.

The choice of a profession was not left to the last moment in those days. He was but twelve when his father asked him what he would like to be. “A painter!” he said at once; and the sorrowful silence that followed told him what he knew already—that his choice was not looked on with approval.

His father had taken him away from school, and was about to find for him a situation in which he would have to go about with invoices for goods from nine in the morning till eight at night. No time for drawing; no time for painting in scarlet and gold! The idea did not harmonise with his presentiment of that which had to be. He set about to look for a place for himself, and explained the various qualifications that he possessed in the way of reading, writing, and arithmetic, to the master of a boy-friend who was leaving that gentleman’s office. After some friendly chaff as to why he had not thought of enlisting as a Grenadier, to which he replied in all good faith, “I really should like your place better,” his services were accepted, and his father—amused, and gratified, no doubt, by the master’s ready interest in the boy—consented that he should stay.

The master, Mr. James, drew and painted himself. Far from discouraging his apprentice, he gave him his own box of oil-colours with directions how to prepare them; draughtsmanship was studied at a night school for mechanics, and the little salary expended on weekly lessons from a portrait-painter who had learnt from a pupil of a pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His father, who had permitted this, was displeased, however, to find that on Mr. James’s retirement he had time to visit the National Gallery; and once again, to avoid more unendurable subjection, he secured a place at the London Agency of Richard Cobden’s Manchester business. Here he sat by himself in a little room that looked out on three blank walls, made entries in a ledger, pondered over the Bible stories heard at school, and the far-away land where they happened, drew pen-and-ink flies on the window with such accurate realism that his employer took out a handkerchief to brush them away, designed patterns for calicoes—taught by an occasional clerk. Here, too, he painted the portrait of an old orange-woman called Hannah, a Jewess, who came into the office and asked him to buy of her; “if only for a handsel to break her ill-luck of the morning.”

The portrait was such a good likeness that the employer laughed aloud when he saw it; the fame of the thing spread fast. One night his father told him of this remarkable picture, adding that he certainly ought to see it; but no sooner had he discovered the artist than he threatened to take him away altogether if stricter discipline were not observed. Hunt was now sixteen; he had borne with the city for four years; if he waited until he came of age it would be too late to think of art as a profession. He took his life into his own hands, and declared that he meant to become a student at the Royal Academy, that he must be allowed to draw at the British Museum that he might qualify himself to pass the entrance examination.