A Biographical Sketch 



children, playing with them in his alluring old way, like the child that 

 he himself was at the bottom of his heart. Sometimes, as one 

 thinks of him playing at blind-man's-buff, or crawling on all fours 

 with a crowd of youngsters swarming upon him, one is apt to regret 

 that Mrs. Morland did not have children, and to imagine that, if so, 

 Morland would have been a happier and better man. But, on the 

 other hand, the tragedy of his drinking habits might have been more 

 of a curse if he had been given a family. 



Like all men of highly-strung temperament, especially when 

 their will-power is weakened by self-indulgence, Morland sometimes 

 fell from excess of gaiety into blank despair, and at such times he 

 would burst into tears, bemoaning that such a wretch as he had 

 ever been born into the world to bring wretchedness into other 

 people's lives, and to be a curse to himself. At these times of 

 melancholia he sometimes allowed the awful thought of suicide to 

 obscure his brain, and once at least he walked round and round a 

 piece of water with the idea of throwing himself in and putting an 

 end to his ti'ouble on this earth. Fortunately, however, " the still 

 small voice of conscience," or if not that, the thought that life still 

 had some charms for him, saved him from the last temptation of 

 despair. 



While he was inthecountry his pictures were smuggled up to town 

 by his two companions, who sold them easily enough to connoisseurs, 

 who were always ready for a " Morland." Then, when the hue and 

 cry for him had slackened off when his whereabouts could not be 

 discovered, Morland would slink back to Charlotte Street, to live 

 solitary and miserable if his wife still remained away. He generally 

 had no difficulty in making his escape when arrest was again 

 imminent, for he had adopted a device which made it extremely 

 difficult for his creditors to catch him. This was to buy over the 

 "myrmidons of the law," as they are called in melodrama. It is, 

 indeed, a diverting thing, apart from high ethics, to read of our friend 

 Morland calmly sitting in his studio with the bailiffs who had been 

 sent to arrest him, filling them with liquor, and fascinating them out 

 of all remembrance of their duty by his bonhomie and drollery. 

 These men often gave him a timely warning when a warrant was 

 out, or let him shp through their fingers after a convivial evening. 



37 



