Bale the arts were chilled; which might well be true of a
place where so much ado was made about the painting of a fly.

In England, Holbein found a friend and patron in Sir Thomas More,--Henry
the Eighth's great Lord Chancellor; and a sight of some of his works won
him, ere long, the favor of the King himself. He was appointed Court
Painter, with apartments at the palace, and a yearly salary of two
hundred florins, (or thirty pounds, equal to about two hundred pounds
now,) which he received in addition to the price of his pictures. After
about three years of prosperity he went home to his wife and children;
but as he soon returned to England, we may safely conclude that his
visit was to provide for the latter, and with no hope of living with the
former. Some years after, in 1538, when his fame was still increasing,
the city of Bale, proud of its son, offered him a handsome annuity,
in the hope that that might induce him to return to his country, his
children, and his wife. But he could not be tempted. Though not the
wisest of men, he was Solomon enough to know that "it is better to dwell
in a corner of the house-top than with a brawling woman and in a wide
house"; and as he was successful and held in honor in England as well as
Bale, he contented himself with a corner of King Henry's palace.

But although he fled from his wife, he painted her portrait; and we need
no testimony to warrant the likeness. She is the very type of one of
those meek shrews, alternately a martyr and a fury, that drive a man to
madness when they speak and to despair when they are silent. We might
reasonably wonder that he would paint so vivid a representation of that
which he so sedulously shunned. But poor Hans, who probably had some
lingering remains of his early love, knew, that, although he should
make a speaking likeness, it would be a silent one, and that this Frau
Holbein must keep the look which he chose to summon to her face. That,
indeed, was knowledge that was power! How he must have chuckled as he
saw his wife looking at him more natural than life and yet without the
power to worry him! His own portrait shows us a broad, good-natured,
ruddy face, in which we see marks of talent when we know that it is
Holbein's. But in spite of its strength, its bronze, and its beard, it
has a somewhat sad and subdued air; and its heavy-lidded, pensive eyes
look deprecatingly at a Frau Holbein in the distance.

While he lived at Greenwich palace, a