anniversary address 9 



Robert Frain. 



And now suppose we turn from Border writers to 

 Border artists. Robert Frain must .certainly have been 

 a " painter born"; for, though apparently living remote 

 from aught that could prompt or direct the graphic 

 impulse, he yet made up his mind to be an artist, and, 

 what was more, contrived to learn to draw and paint 

 in a thoroughly workmanlike style. Perhaps a strain 

 of foreign blood may help to account for the anomaly ; 

 for he claimed that the Frains were of French extraction, 

 and that the old form of the name was Le Frene, i.e. 

 the ash-tree. At some period towards the commencement 

 of last century, Frain, then a boy, was resident on 

 Blinkbonnie farm, in Eckford parish ; where the farmer, 

 who was his uncle, would sometimes set him to supervise 

 turnip-shawing. Instead of attending to his task, the 

 young jackanapes would be busy with a pencil, endeavouring 

 to catch and to reproduce, in black and white, the quaint 

 contours and physiognomies of the field-labourers. At 

 such times his uncle would steal unperceived behind 

 him, and recall his wandering attention by means of 

 buffets administered with a turnip-shaw. By hook or 

 by ci'ook, however, the lad overcame opposition, and won 

 his way to the studios of Paris. This must have been 

 about the year 1831, for in Paris he met with Thackeray, 

 then also an art-student,* with whom he became intimate. 

 " He had a notion of eendividuaality," he would say in 

 after-life, when appraising Pendennis's artistic (not his 

 literary) faculty ; and he would tell an anecdote (I 

 know not if biographers bear it out) of how the 

 distinguished novelist had made his first hit in letters 

 with a description of a public execution, published I 

 fancy in Frasers Magazine. 



Returning to his native county, Frain established 



* Tbackeray, EnsHsli I^en of Letters' Series, p. 7, 

 C 



