Norfolk Street, King’s Road — jocularly known among Mr Pitman’s lodgers¹ as ‘Norfolk Island’— is neither a long, a handsome, nor a pleasing thoroughfare. Dirty, undersized maids-of-all-work issue from it in pursuit of beer, or linger on its sidewalk listening to the voice of love. The cat’s-meat man passes twice a day. An occasional organ-grinder wanders in and wanders out again, disgusted. In holiday-time the street is the arena² of the young bloods of the neighbourhood, and the householders have an opportunity of studying the manly³ art of self-defence. And yet Norfolk Street has one claim to be respectable, for it contains not a single shop — unless you count the public-house at the corner, which is really in the King’s Road.

The door of No. 7 bore a brass⁴ plate inscribed⁵ with the legend ‘W. D. Pitman, Artist’. It was not a particularly clean brass plate, nor was No. 7 itself a particularly inviting⁶ place of residence. And yet it had a character of its own, such as may well quicken the pulse of the reader’s curiosity. For here was the home of an artist — and a distinguished⁸ artist too, highly distinguished by his ill-success — which had never been made the subject of an article in the illustrated⁹ magazines. No wood-engraver had ever reproduced ‘a corner in the back drawing-room’ or ‘the studio mantelpiece’ of No. 7; no young lady author had ever commented on ‘the unaffected simplicity’ with which Mr Pitman received her in the midst of his ‘treasures’. It is an omission¹⁰ I would gladly supply, but our business is only with the backward parts and ‘abject rear’ of this

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