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By the advice of Wehnert, I applied to Charles Davidson, a member of the New Water-Color Society, for instruction, and went down into Surrey, where he lived, to be able to follow him in his work from nature. He lived at Red Hill, and in the immediate vicinity John Linnell had built his then new home.
Wehnert had several sisters, who had been accustomed to a certain ease in life, and to maintain this all his efforts and those of a bachelor brother were devoted, to the sacrifice of his legitimate ambitions; he was overworked with the veriest hack-work of his profession, and I never knew him but as a jaded man.
A painter who taught me more than any other at that time was Edward Wehnert, mainly known then as an illustrator, and hardly remembered now even in that capacity. Attracted by one of his water-colors, I went to him for lessons, which he declined to give, while really giving me instructions informally and in the most kindly and generous way, during the entire stay I made in London.
I left England with a fermentation of art ideas in my brain, in which the influence of Turner and Pyne, the teachings of Wehnert, and the work of the Pre-Raphaelites mingled with the influence of Ruskin, and especially the preconception of art work derived from the descriptions, often strangely misleading, of the "Modern Painters."
It had been one of those terrible winters which have helped make the British sailor the sea dog he is. I took lodgings in Charles Street, Middlesex Hospital, near Wehnert, and worked hard. I had brought my "Bed of Ferns," a large study from nature on Saranac Lake, and one or two smaller studies.
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