The idea of a colour-book on Hadrian's Wall was suggested to me by friends in 1914. Then came the Great War, blotting out all thought of work of this kind.
But in 1920 I was taken by these friends along the line of the Wall, and I soon fell a victim to its many attractions. My friends went home; but I found hospitality at the farms and other houses in the neighbourhood, and began to paint at once.
Before long I decided to "walk the Wall" every foot of the way, 73½ miles, from sea to sea, being inspired thereto by the example and the record of William Hutton. Many of my readers will need an introduction to this delightful character, whose book—to which I shall often have occasion to refer—is now out of print.
William Hutton was an archæologist of Birmingham, who in 1801, at the age of seventy-eight, travelled alone and on foot "six hundred miles to see a shattered Wall."
He then published an account of the Wall and the walk, written in a very original and interesting style, although, as he tells us, "the Battledore, at an age not exceeding six, was the last book I used at school."
"The respectable and amiable Author" (to use the words of contemporary critics) started from Birmingham with his daughter; but since she rode on a pillion behind a servant, and he went on foot, they can hardly be said to have "accompanied" each other. They used to meet at the inns, for dinner, bed and breakfast; and at Penrith they parted, she making her way to Keswick and the Lakes, he to Carlisle and his beloved Wall.
He sent his daughter two notes during his Wall journey: the first from Carlisle, in which he said he was sound in body, shoe and stocking, and had just risen from a lodging among fleas; the second, from Newcastle, when he wrote (to quote her words) "that he had been at the Wall's End; that the weather was so hot he was obliged to repose under hedges; and that the country was infested with thieves: but, lest I should be under any apprehensions for his personal safety, he added they were only such as demolished his idol, the Wall, by stealing the stones of which it was composed."
