Stuart, however, forgot about King when Cosmo Alexander turned up in Newport. An elegant Scotsman, Alexander had taken part in Prince Charlie's rebellion but was not an exile; it was ru­moured he was a spy sent by the British to keep an eye' on the obstreperous Colonials. Be that as it may, he declared he was travelling for his health and to recover some lost lands belonging to his family. He admitted in the parlours of the Scottish colony that he was an expert painter, that he had studied in Italy and was-a member of the London Society of Artists', but added that he was too much of a gentleman to follow the low profession of artist; he sketched merely for his own amusement. However, he set up a painting room provided with cameras obscura and "optical glasses for taking perspective views." Although an obscure and inferior craftsman in the English face painting tradition that had preceded the era of Reynolds, he was the most expert portraitist who had practised in Newport for years; the Scottish colony flocked to have their effigies taken, and he was soon making a large income. We can imagine Stuart's, delight when Alexander took him on as an ap­prentice. '

The Scottish artist must have reached Newport before 1770, the date usually given, for his canvases of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dudley, the Newport collector of customs and his wife, are both inscribed 1769. But even.this year may not have been his first in Rhode Is­land; a hitherto unnoticed letter from William Hunter* states in a passage concerning Stuart that his genius was first discovered by the writer's father, Dr. William Hunter, who in 1768 persuaded Alexander to take him on as an apprentice.

Thus Stuart was thirteen or fourteen when the Scotsman ap­peared and became his instructor. After several years of study in Newport, probably late in 1770 or early in 1771, he accompanied his master on a painting tour through the South, and then destiny presented him with the ultimate favour, a trip to the almost fabu­lous land across the ocean whence art came. Alexander took Stuart to Scotland. For a while the young man prospered in Glasgow and Edinburgh, following in the wake of his elegant master, who may even have sent him to school for short periods of time. But on Au­gust 25, 1772, Alexander died. As he felt himself failing, he begged one of his friends to take care of Stuart, but this gentleman, who has never been definitely identified, was either too poor or too cal­lous to help the sixteen-year-old apprentice. Stuart found himself destitute in a strange city.

Penniless, many months' sailing from home, he had no means of livelihood except his very inexpert brush. He signed himself "Charles Stuart," appealing to Scottish patriotism, and does seem to have obtained a commission or two, but probably he was paid very little. The gay youngster who had been the darling of his fam­ily, the prodigy whom the Scottish colony of Newport had admired and caressed, now walked the streets of a strange and hostile city, his pockets and his belly empty, his feet sore. Never during the hours and hours of autobiographical conversation with which he

•This letter, addressed to Charles C. Bogart and dated Newport, July 22, 1811, may be found among the papers of the American Academy of Fine Arts in the library of the New York Historical Society.

filled his later years did he refer to those months of abject misery, and his daughter tried to gloss them over by saying that he spent two years at the University of Glasgow, long enough to acquire "a classical taste." But the records of that institution are innocent of his name, and an almost illiterate letter he wrote several years later shows that little education had come his way.

Hungry, footsore days massed into months, the months ran on toward years, and still there seemed no way out for the lonely boy: no money to go home with, nothing to eat if he stayed. Finally he seized a desperate expedient; he enlisted before the mast on a collier bound for Nova Scotia. The sea was a brutal mistress in those days. Men were beaten and starved and worked to the limit of endurance. We can see the young painter clinging to a-yardarm over the black sea, a month of terrible sailing behind him, months more ahead, his thoughts tumbling sickishly to the unremitting beat of waves and to the curses of the boatswain coming up from below.