It was much easier to resolve on doing this than really to do it. In
the first place, my hand would relapse into its wicked old caricaturing
habits. In the second place, my brother-in-law's face was so
inveterately and completely ugly as to set every artifice of pictorial
improvement at flat defiance. When a man has a nose an inch long, with
the nostrils set perpendicularly, it is impossible to flatter it--you
must either change it into a fancy nose, or resignedly acquiesce in
it. When a man has no perceptible eyelids, and when his eyes globularly
project so far out of his head, that you expect to have to pick them up
for him whenever you see him lean forward, how are mortal fingers and
bushes to diffuse the right complimentary expression over them? You must
either do them the most hideous and complete justice, or give them up
altogether. The late Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., was undoubtedly the
most artful and uncompromising flatterer that ever smoothed out all the
natural characteristic blemishes from a sitter's face; but even that
accomplished parasite would have found Mr. Batterbury too much for him,
and would have been driven, for the first time in his practice of art,
to the uncustomary and uncourtly resource of absolutely painting a
genuine likeness.

As for me, I put my trust in Lady Malkinshaw's power of living, and
portrayed the face of Mr. Batterbury in all its native horror. At
the same time, I sensibly guarded against even the most improbable
accidents, by making him pay me the fifty pounds as we went on, by
installments. We had ten sittings. Each one of them began with a message
from Mr. Batterbury, giving me Annabella's love and apologies for not
being able to come and see me. Each one of them ended with an argument
between Mr. Batterbury and me relative to the transfer of five pounds
from his pocket to mine. I came off victorious on every occasion--being
backed by the noble behavior of Lady Malkinshaw, who abstained from
tumbling down, and who ate and drank, and slept and grew lusty, for
three weeks together. Venerable woman! She put fifty pounds into my
pocket. I shall think of her with gratitude and respect to the end of
my days.