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.