s Ruskin, Watts was beginning to make other friends, and
was a member of the Cosmopolitan Club, which counted among its members
Sir Robert Morier, Sir Henry Layard, FitzGerald, Palgrave, and Spedding.
The large painting of the 'Story from Boccaccio', which now hangs in the
Watts room of the Tate Gallery, hung for many years on the walls of this
club and was presented to the nation in 1902. How frequently Watts
attended the club or other social gatherings at this time we do not
know. His name figures little in the biographies and memoirs of
Londoners, and he himself would not have wished the record of his daily
life to be preserved. His modesty in all personal matters is
uncontested, and even if his subsequent offer of his pictures to the
nation smacks somewhat of presumption, his motive was something other
than conceit. His portraits were an historical record of the worthiest
men of his own time: his allegories were of value, so he felt, not for
their technical accomplishments, but for the high moral lessons which
they tried to convey. The artist himself was at ease only in retirement
and privacy. Yet complete isolation was not good for him. Ill-health
still dogged his steps, and the dejection which came over him in the
years 1849 and 1850 is to be seen in the gloomiest pictures which he
ever painted. Their titles and subjects alike recall the more tragic
poems of Thomas Hood. But the eclipse was not to last for long, and in
1850 Watts owed his recovery to a happy chance encounter with friends
who were to give him a new haven of refuge and gladden his life for
thirty years to come.

A high Indian official, James Pattle, had been the father of five
daughters who were famous for their beauty, and from their tastes and
character were particularly fitted to be the friends of artists and
poets. If Lady Somers was the most beautiful of the sisters and Mrs.
Cameron the most artistic, their elder sister Mrs. Prinsep proved to be
Watts's surest friend. Her husband, Thoby Prinsep, was a member of the
India Council in Whitehall, a large-hearted man, full of knowledge and
full of kindliness. Mrs. Prinsep herself was mistress of the domestic
arts in no common degree, from skilful cookery to the holding of a
literary _salon_. She and her husband realized what friendship could do
for a nature like that of Watts, and they provided him with an ideal
home, where he was nursed back to health, relieved of care, and cheered
by constant symp