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INTRODUCTION xlv
" I spent all yesterday in great delectation and rest of mind,"
my father wrote, " making a very bad drawing. Young Walker,
who is twenty, does twice as well ; and at twenty, you know, we
all thought I was a genius at drawing. Oh, the mistakes people
make about themselves !"
He drew designs on paper, and they were sent to Mr. Walker
to put upon the wood, and to improve if necessary. But this was
not the work the young man wanted to do, and he said so. My
father, in reply, dictated the following letter. It is given in the life
of Walker :—
" DEAR SIR,—The blocks you have executed for The Cornhill
Magazine have given so much satisfaction that I hope we may look
for more from the same hand. You told me that the early days of
the week were most convenient for you, and accordingly I sent last
Monday or Tuesday a couple of designs, which, as you would not do
them, I was obliged to confide to an older, and I grieve to own,
much inferior artist. Pray let me know if I may count upon you
for ray large cut for March.—Believe me, very faithfully yours,
"W. M. THACKERAY."
The older and inferior artist, it may be mentioned, was my
father himself.
Mr. Walker's answer, as his biographer says, shows the struggle
" between his wish not to offend one whom he so greatly respected
and his feeling of what was due to his art." But both these ends
were happily attained in the beautiful illustrations to "Philip."
One of them, perhaps, is among the most charming designs Walker
ever drew. A letter is given in facsimile in the artist's life in which
my father suggests a subject: "Philip, the Little Sister, and the
two little children saying their prayers in an old-fashioned churchpew;
not Gothic. The church is the one in Queen's Square,
Bloomsbury, if you are curious to be exact. The motto Pro
concessis beneficiis. And that will bring the story to an end. I
am sorry it's over. And you?—Yours, W. M. T."
The most delightful of all the wood-blocks is undoubtedly this
drawing of Philip in church. My father, when we were children,