alt for
fifteen years,' and in November of the same year he is arrested again at
the instance of 'a miserable apothecary.' In April 1823 we find him in
the King's Bench Prison, from which he was released in July. _The
Raising of Lazarus_ meanwhile had gone to pay his upholsterer L300, and
his _Christ's Entry into Jerusalem_ had been sold for L240, although it
had brought him L3000 in receipts at exhibitions. Clearly heroic
pictures did not pay, and Haydon here took up 'the torment of
portrait-painting' as he called it.

[Illustration: ROBERT HAWKES, MAYOR OF NORWICH IN 1824

From the painting by Benjamin Haydon in St. Andrew's Hall, Norwich. This
portrait has its association with Borrow in that his brother John was
sent to London to request Haydon to paint it, and Borrow describes the
picture in _Lavengro_.]

'Can you wonder,' he wrote in July 1825, 'that I nauseate
portraits, except portraits of clever people. I feel quite
convinced that every portrait-painter, if there be purgatory,
will leap at once to heaven, without this previous
purification.'

Perhaps it was Mayor Hawkes who helped to inspire this feeling.[18] Yet
the hundred pounds that John Borrow was able to procure must have been a
godsend, for shortly before this we find him writing in his diary of the
desperation that caused him to sell his books. 'Books that had cost me
L20 I got only L3 for. But it was better than starvation.' Indeed it was
in April of this year that the very baker was 'insolent,' and so in May
1824, as we learn from Tom Taylor's _Life_, he produced 'a full-length
portrait of Mr. Hawkes, a late Mayor of Norwich, painted for St.
Andrew's Hall in that city.' But I must leave Haydon's troubled career,
which closes so far as the two brothers are concerned with a letter from
George to Haydon written the following year from 26 Bryanston Street,
Portman Square:

DEAR SIR,--I should feel extremely obliged if you would allow
me to sit to you as soon as possible. I am going to the south
of France in little better than a fortnight, and I would sooner
lose a thousand pounds than not have the honour of appearing in
the picture.--Yours sincerely,

GEORGE BORROW.[19]

As Borrow was at the time in a most impoverished condition, it is not
easy to believe that he would have wished to be taken at his word. He
certainly had not a thousand pounds to lose. But he did undoubtedly, as
we