When Lord Levant quitted the country and this neighbourhood, in which the tradesmen still deplore him, No. 56, known as Levantine House, was let to the Pococurante Club, which was speedily bankrupt (for we are too far from the centre of town to support a club of our own); it was subsequently hired by the West Diddlesex Railroad; and is now divided into sets of Chambers, superintended by an acrimonious housekeeper, and by a porter in a sham livery, who, if you won’t find him at the door, you may as well seek at the Grapes public-house, in the little lane round the corner. He varnishes the japan-boots of the dandy lodgers; reads Mr. Pinkney’s Morning Post before he lets him have it; and neglects the letters of the inmates of the Chambers generally.

The great rooms, which were occupied as the salons of the noble Levant, the coffee-rooms of the Pococurante (a club where the play was furious, as I am told), and the board-room and manager’s-room of the West Diddlesex, are tenanted now by a couple of artists; young Pinkney the miniaturist, and George Rumbold the historical-painter. Miss Rumbold, his sister, lives with him, by the way; but with that young lady of course we have nothing to do.

I knew both these gentlemen at Rome, when George wore a velvet doublet and a beard down to his chest, and used to talk about high art at the CafÉ Greco. How it smelled of smoke, that velveteen doublet of his, with which his stringy red beard was likewise perfumed! It was in his studio that I had the honour to be introduced to his sister, the fair Miss Clara; she had a large casque with a red horse-hair plume (I thought it had been a wisp of her brother’s beard at first), and held a tin-headed spear in her hand, representing a Roman warrior in the great picture of Caractacus George was painting—a piece sixty-four feet by eighteen. The Roman warrior blushed to be discovered in that attitude: the tin-headed spear trembled in the whitest arm in the world. So she put it down, and taking off the helmet also, went and sat in a far corner of the studio, mending George’s stockings; whilst we smoked a couple of pipes, and talked about Raphael being a good deal overrated.

I think he is; and have never disguised my opinion about the “Transfiguration.” And all the time we talked, there were Clara’s eyes looking lucidly out from the dark corner in which she was sitting, working away at the stockings. The lucky fellow! They were in a dreadful state of bad repair when she came out to him at Rome, after the death of their father, the Reverend Miles Rumbold.

George while at Rome painted “Caractacus;” a picture of “Non Angli sed Angeli,” of course; a picture of “Alfred in the Neat-herd’s Cottage,” seventy-two feet by forty-eight; (an idea of the gigantic size and Michael-Angelesque proportions of this picture may be formed, when I state that the mere muffin, of which the outcast king is spoiling the baking, is two feet three in diameter); and the deaths of Socrates, of Remus, and of the Christians under Nero respectively. I shall never forget how lovely Clara looked in white muslin, with her hair down, in this latter picture, giving herself up to a ferocious Carnifex (for which Bob Gaunter the architect sat), and refusing to listen to the mild suggestions of an insinuating Flamen; which character was a gross caricature of myself.

None of George’s pictures sold. He has enough to tapestry Trafalgar Square. He has painted since he came back to England “The flaying of Marsyas;” “The smothering of the little boys in the Tower;” “A plague scene during the great pestilence;” “Ugolino on the seventh day after he was deprived of victuals,” &c. For although these pictures have great merit, and the writhings of Marsyas, the convulsions of the little prince, the look of agony of St. Lawrence on the gridiron, &c., are quite true to nature, yet the subjects somehow are not agreeable; and if he hadn’t a small patrimony, my friend George would starve.

Fondness for art leads me a great deal to this studio. George is a gentleman, and has very good friends, and good pluck too. When we were at Rome there was a great row between him and young Heeltap, Lord Boxmoor’s son, who was uncivil to Miss Rumbold; (the young scoundrel—had I been a fighting man I should like to have shot him myself!) Lady Betty Bulbul is very fond of Clara, and Tom Bulbul, who took George’s message to Heeltap, is always hanging about the studio. At least I know that I find the young jackanapes there almost every day; bringing a new novel, or some poisonous French poetry, or a basket of flowers, or grapes, with Lady Betty’s love to her dear Clara—a young rascal with white kids, and his hair curled every morning. What business has he to be dangling about George Rumbold’s premises, and sticking up his ugly pug-face as a model for all George’s pictures?

Miss Clapperclaw says Bulbul is evidently smitten, and Clara too. What! would she put up with such a little fribble as that, when there is a man of intellect and taste who—but I won’t believe it. It is all the jealousy of women.