Devonshire, but came to London while young, and did a fair business in the
Covent Garden district as a hair-dresser, wig-maker, and in shaving
people. The father was garrulous, like the traditional hair-dresser, with
a pleasant laugh, and a fresh, smiling face. He had a parrot nose and a
projecting chin. Turner's mother was a Miss Mallord (or Marshall), of good
family, but a violent-tempered woman, with a hawk nose and a fierce
visage. Her life ended in a lunatic asylum. The artist, who was always
impatient of inquiry into his domestic matters, resented any allusion to
his mother, and never spoke of her. The manifest peculiarities of his
parents had an impression upon Turner, and would have made him eccentric
had there been no other influences of a kindred nature. The parents were
under-sized, and of limited mental range; they were of very little
personal assistance to their gifted son, although the father in later
years busied himself in mixing colors, adjusting pictures to frames, and
sometimes he was entrusted with certain rough work at filling in
backgrounds. When Turner was but five years old he is said to have made,
from memory, a fair copy of a lion rampant engraved on a silver salver,
which he had seen while accompanying his father to the house of a
customer. Presently the boy began to copy pictures in water-colors, and
then to make sketches from nature of scenes along the river Thames. In his
ninth year he drew a picture of Margate Church. When he was ten years old
he was sent to school at Brentford-Butts, where he remained two years,
boarding with his uncle, the local butcher. His leisure hours were spent
in dreamy wanderings and in making countless sketches of birds, trees,
flowers, and domestic fowls. He acquired a smattering of the classics and
some knowledge of legends and ancient history. On his return to London he
received instruction from Palice in painting flowers, and, after a year or
two, was sent to Margate, in Kent, to Coleman's school. Here he had more
scope and a wider range, and made pictures of the sea, the chalk cliffs,
the undulations of the coast, and the glorious effects of cloud scenery.
On his return from Margate he began to earn money by coloring engravings
and by painting skies in amateurs' drawings and in architects' plans at
half a crown an evening. He always deemed this good practice, as he thus
acquired facility and skill in gradations. His father at one time thought
to make an archi