36 



THOMAS BEWICK. 



engraving, done nearly fifty years ago by John Jackson, a pupil of the 

 Newcastle engraver, gives a fair idea of what the house was then and is now. 

 It is, indeed, so slightly changed that one can easily fancy Bewick sitting in 

 his little room on the floor above the doorway, ready to receive a visitor 

 if necessary, but busy in the meantime in cutting the block of a bird, a 

 quadruped, or a fable, or thinking out a quaint design for a tail-piece, or 

 perhaps guiding the talent of his apprentice pupils, or writing or dictating to 

 his son or daughter an important business epistle. 



Although Bewick had a choice of ways for his morning walk to business, 

 it is not to be thought that the distance was a great one ; even at the leisurely 

 pace the artist was wont to employ at such times, he could arrive at the shop 

 in a quarter of an hour after leaving home, and had there been reason to 

 hasten, something under ten minutes would have given him time to cover the 

 ground. Punctuality, however, was one of Bewick's characteristics, and in 

 those good old days, when people were content to take things easily, he was 

 seldom seen in a hurry, but walking quietly along, carrying a silver-headed stick, 

 after the prevailing fashion, and dressed in the knee breeches and buckled 

 gaiters, which showed to so much advantage his stalwart figure. " By 

 general repute" he was " 'a canny man,' respected for his ability and moral 

 worth, but with decidedly a country stamp on his features and attire, 

 reminding the beholder of a better sort of gardener or small farmer." 



In 1790 Bewick joined " Swarley's Club," which met in a noted public- 

 house in Newcastle, and he spent many happy evenings with the cronies who 

 congregated there regularly. Unfortunately, after the publication of the 

 " History of Quadrupeds," he was obliged to shun it for a time, because 

 the praises it received excited the jealousy of some people in the town. 

 " They raked together and blew up," as he relates, " the embers of envy into 

 a transient blaze ; but the motives by which I was actuated stood out of the 

 reach of its sparks, and they returned into the heap whence they came and fell 

 into the dust." The stories that these unfriendly acquaintances listened to 



