No. 4 Marlow Steps, Tuesday, 19 March 1867

Dear Henry,

You will want to know how the Pennyfeather portrait progresses, and I am sorry to tell you it progresses splendidly for everyone in the room except the one holding the brush.

You have not met Mrs. Hester Pennyfeather. She is the wife of a tea-and-sugar man grown very rich and very pleased about it, and she arrived this morning in a quantity of plum-coloured silk that would have clothed a small congregation, with a King Charles spaniel under one arm. The dog is called Admiral. I record the name so that you may share in my suffering, which I consider only fair, as you are the one who recommended me to her cousin in the first place.

I had her settled by eleven — three-quarter face, the north light falling just so along the silk, her chin tipped to the angle she believes does her credit, and which, I will allow, does her no actual harm. The difficulty is that Mrs. Pennyfeather cannot hold still for the space of a breath. She wished to converse. She wished my opinion on whether the plum silk wanted a touch more lavender, and whether Admiral's likeness oughtn't to be the more flattering of the two. She wished Admiral in the picture, then out of it, then in it again upon her lap — and Admiral, who had been a model of repose throughout the whole long deliberation, chose the very instant of her decision to express an opinion of his own. He came off the lap, took the length of the loft at a flat gallop, and flung his entire foolish weight against the stool where I keep the turpentine.

I will spare you the worst. The jar went over. A good morning's work went grey beneath it before I could get the canvas up and clear of it, the rug is past saving, Admiral is a richer animal about the paws than nature ever intended, and the loft now smells as though an apothecary had come to blows with a tavern. Mrs. Pennyfeather wept, then laughed, then pressed an extra crown on me for my "forbearance," which I took — for I am a working woman and not a plaster saint, and forbearance that is paid for is at least forbearance turned to some account. I shall have the silk right again by Friday and she will never know it was ever wrong, and Mr. Pennyfeather will hang her over the chimney-piece and tell his table she sat for me as still as a duchess.

I tell you this so you will not picture my days more romantic than they are. People speak of the painter's life as though it were all high windows and high feeling. It is, for the most part, a great deal of sitting still on behalf of those who cannot, and being thankful for the privilege of the fee. I do not say it sourly. The fees keep the loft, and the loft is the thing.

You know the place — but I never weary of it. The long room under the slates, the cold honest light all the forenoon, the smell that has been in these walls a good deal longer than I have. Father's easel is still standing in the corner. I am forever resolving to break it up for kindling, it being heavy and obsolete and I with my own, and I never do, and we both know I never shall. His palette knives are still in the second drawer of the press, among the other tools I work with. You will think me sentimental. I am — about precisely two things, and I shall not tell you the second.