I have already given
the copper 101/2 hours, so that I have 691/2 to devote to it yet. I
shall also give 40 hours to Kreutzer's violin studies, and have already
practised them 24, which leaves 16. I shall now commence a course of
poetical reading, beginning with 50 hours of Chaucer, and as I gave him
11/2 last night it leaves me exactly 481/2."
This is carrying exactness to excess, and it is not given as an example
to be followed, but it had the advantage of letting me know how my time
expenditure was running. In this way it became clear that if I intended
to be an artist the time given to practical work was insufficient. As no
painter of eminence would take a pupil I bethought me of Mr. Pettitt,
who had given me lessons at Keswick. He consented to take me, but said
that he had left the north of England for London. In the Lake District
he had been earning a small income; in London he earned twice as much,
but his expenses increased in proportion. The change, however, was a
disappointment to me, as it would have been more profitable to study
from nature under my master's direction, than to copy pictures in a
London studio.
My new London life began at the end of December, 1853. It has always
been, in my case, an effort little short of heroic to go and stay in a
town at all. My dislike to towns increases in exact mathematical
proportion to their size. The notion of going to London to study
landscape-painting seemed against nature.
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