WILLIAM ETTY. 
S3 
The last two years of Etty’s school-life were spent at 
Pocklington, at Mr. Hall’s school, where he was a weekly 
boarder, finding himself in food. His grandmother Calverley 
was still living at Hayton, and on his visits to her he had the 
opportunity of seeing and admiring the fine old Hall, which 
was pulled down about twenty years later. On leaving 
Pocklington, Etty went to Hull, to be apprenticed to Peck, the 
printer, on the 8th of October, 1798, at the age of eleven-and- 
a-half years, and entered upon what proved to be a seven 
years’ drudgery, even Sundays were in part work-days, for the 
“ Hull Packet” came out on Mondays. He seems to have 
made no opposition to the arrangement though the purpose of 
his life remained unchanged, and every spare moment he had 
was devoted to drawing. Sometimes he would make on the 
wall a hasty sketch of a printer’s bodkin, and then ask a 
fellow apprentice “ to reach him that bodkin from the mantel.” 
Before long, however, his elder brother, Walter, recognizing 
the genius in these rough sketches, arranged with Peck that 
the boy was to be free to follow his pursuit in his recreation 
time, and Etty was not slow to take advantage of such 
opportunities of self-culture as came within his reach. Though 
not yet free to practise himself seriously in his beloved art, the 
time of his apprenticeship was by no means wasted. The 
discipline alone was of immense advantage, and besides that 
he had the opportunity of gaining more book-knowledge than 
many painters ever possess, and this supplemented his scanty 
education, giving him that ease in writing and in speaking 
which in after life enabled him to write and lecture with much 
success. A collection of Etty’s drawings of this period has 
been preserved by the son of a journeyman in the same office, 
named Walker. The subjects are much varied —objects, such 
as a pistol, a drum, a palette, a pewter pot, an open knife, or 
book, parts of the human figure—then again scenes he had 
witnessed, two chimney sweeps fighting, a pan of milk spilled 
by a donkey that was carrying it; scenes at the office, or again 
fanciful sketches; a sailor in a blue jacket and pigtail capering 
on shore, holding aloft his cap and cutlass on occasion of the 
Peace (1801), another blue-jacket leaning against a tree looking 
on; the death of Bonaparte,” bayonetted by two English 
