We were to be married at half-past ten on the following Saturday morning but one, at St. George's, Hart Street, Bloomsbury. We had chosen a Saturday because of our honeymoon, which was to be a steamboat trip either down the river to Greenwich or up the river to Hampton Court—we had not decided which. A good friend of mine, Sydney Pettinger, who had given me my start with F.B.C., had promised to give Evie away. Pepper would have done so, but Pepper always dazzled Evie a little. He was almost inhumanly never at a loss for a word.
Our little house was now quite ready. They had left me not so much as a chair in my room near the Cobden Statue. My pallet bed and my shaving-tackle were about all that remained within its walls, and I was on the point of disposing of the bed as it stood to a dealer in Queen's Crescent, when Billy Izzard proposed to me that he should take over the place.
Let me describe Billy Izzard as he was then—as he still to a great extent is for the matter of that, for his innumerable quarrels with dealers and intransigence on hanging committees have resulted in his being less well known than the high quality of his painting warrants. He was a tall, double-jointed, monkey-up-a-stick of a lad of twenty-four, with well-shaped features that always seemed a little larger than the ordinary (as if you saw them through a very weak lens), and two or three distinct voices, the most startling of which was the sudden, imperious tone into which he broke when he "saw" something—saw it absolute, in the flat, and as if it had never been seen before—but possibly you know his painting. He had exquisite manners, which he never used; he dressed in tweeds that made my own shaggy garments look like the finest broadcloth—they always seemed stuck over with fishing-flies; and, a sufficiently large studio being beyond his means until he should cease to quarrel with his bread and butter, he too had discovered the advantages of the large rooms that are to be found over shops.
He came up with his wedding present, yet another painting, just as I was contemplating the sale of my bed. The picture, wrapped in newspaper, was under his arm. He scratched his head under his porringer of a "sports" cap, looked round the big four-windowed room, and said, "Good light—south and east though—what?"
"South and east," I replied; and added, knowing Billy, "Rent paid monthly, in advance."
"How much?" he demanded.
"Twelve bob a week."
"Hm! Rather a lot for me," said the man whose practice (for his theory never amounted to much) has since been made the foundation of a whole school of modern painting. "Wish I hadn't brought you this now—I was offered three pounds for it—that would have paid for the first month——"
I hastened to grab the painting, to make sure of getting it. It was only a small flower group, a straggle of violets, a few white ones among them, in a lustre bowl, but the other day I refused sixty pounds for it.
"Too late, Billy," I said; "you know you can't fight me for it.... I'll throw you in my bed if you want the place, but you're not to give my name as a reference for your solvency."