Note 487 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY (continued 4)

Etty removed to Buckingham Street in the summer of 1824, from Stangate Walk, Lambeth. At first he took the “lower floor,” but, says Gilchrist, “the top floor was the watch-tower for which our artist sighed,” and he soon obtained it. Here, “having above him,” as he said, “none but the Angels, and the Catholics who had gone before him,” he lived for twenty-three years, finding an excellent housekeeper in his niece. The house stands unaltered, presenting five storeys to the river just behind the Water Gate. Etty’s last years (he died in 1849) were given to his birth-place, York, where his tomb is an object of interest in the grounds of St. Mary’s Abbey.