Certainly Mr. Richard Lightmark, a young artist, in whose work some
excellent judges were beginning already to discern, if not the hand
of the master, at least a touch remarkably happy, was inclined to
plume himself on having discovered, in his search after originality,
the artistic points of a dockyard.

It was on his first visit to Rainham, whom he had met abroad some
years before, and with whom he had contracted an alliance that
promised to be permanent, that Lightmark had decided his study
should certainly be the river. Rainham had a set of rooms in the
house of his foreman, an eighteenth-century house, full of carved
oak mantels and curious alcoves, a ramshackle structure within the
dock-gates, with a quaint balcony staircase, like the approach to a
Swiss chalet, leading down into the yard. In London these apartments
were his sole domicile; though, to his friends, none of whom lived
nearer to him than Bloomsbury, this seemed a piece of conduct too
flagrantly eccentric--on a parity with his explanation of it,
alleging necessity of living on the spot: an explanation somewhat
droll, in the face of his constant lengthy absence, during the whole
of the winter, when he handed the reins of government to his
manager, and took care of a diseased lung in a warmer climate. To
Lightmark, however, dining with his friend for the first time on
chops burnt barbarously and an inferior pudding, residence even in a
less salubrious quarter than Blackpool would have been amply
justified, in view of the many charming effects--for the most part
coldly sad and white--which the river offered, towards evening, from
the window of his friend's dining-room.

After his first visit, he availed himself eagerly of Rainham's