Page:Pen And Pencil Sketches - Volume I.djvu/49

Rh 1851 I succeeded in becoming a student of the Royal Academy.

Affairs had not been going well lately — indeed, for some time past. I feel, not without a twinge of sadness, that my father, with much shrewdness and common-sense in most matters, had not the faculty for business. He might perhaps have prospered in the law, for he had, as it seemed to me, many qualifications of the legal mind. Be that as it may, he came to grief, and the carriage repository, which had been for some time in rhe market, was finally sold. I was now — February 1852 — free, and worked each day at the Academy schools, going to Leigh’s of an evening. Before my father’s affairs became so much involved, he would talk of allowing me fifty guineas a year to start me on my own account, but this never came off.

Mr. Fergusson had commissioned Mr. Dibdin, a clever scene-painter and water-colourist, to paint a panorama of the Ganges for him. This was exhibited for a while in Regent Street, opposite the Polytechnic, but removed subsequently to Leicester Square, where Mr. Fergusson engaged me (through my father) as checktaker for four hours a day at thirty shillings a week. But the panorama did not catch on; “’twas caviare to the general.” “Paper” was plentiful, but money scarce. The panorama ceased to draw. At the end of the