Page:Pen And Pencil Sketches - Volume I.djvu/50

22 first week it was closed, and from that day to this I have never seen my thirty shillings.

Let us leave Langham Place and its attendant troubles, and turn to Newman Street at No. 79, where James Mathews Leigh kept his art school; open all day from 6 to 6, and again from 7 to 10 in the evening. I have already mentioned how I first met my art master and future friend at Maddox Street. Between then and the Newman Street period, I met him in another capacity. It was the year of the great Chartist scare, 1848. It was said that two hundred thousand men were to assemble on Kennington Common, march thence to West- minster, and present a monster petition, which was to be carried in cabs to the House of Commons. The Bank and other public establishments were occupied by the military, and one hundred and fifty thousand people of all ranks and conditions were enrolled as special constables. The late Em- peror of the French, Napoleon the Third, was one, and Leigh and I were enrolled. The head-quarters of the Marylebone division were at the National Schools in Riding- House Lane, by All Souls’ Church, and here I found Leigh, who must have been about forty years of age, looking smart in a tightly buttoned frock-coat, clean shaven, and very upright. He was a strongly built man, with good broad forehead, a piercing eye, square jaw, and