Dog portrait in ornate frame

You will not believe the commission I finished this week. Mrs Lavinia Crane came up the stairs at my workroom in Clerkenwell with a fur muff under one arm, and when she set it on my table the muff opened its eyes and sneezed. It was a Pomeranian called Bishop, no bigger than a loaf, wearing a silk bow tie the colour of claret. She wanted him painted in miniature, oval, held in a frame as heavy with scrollwork as the ones in the shop windows on Cowcross Street, so thick that the glass would have to be cut round it.

I worked three weeks on the fur alone. Every hair needed a stroke of grey laid over the ochre, and the bow tie cost me an entire afternoon because Bishop would not hold still for it. He kept turning to the window to bark at a carter. In the end I left a bit of cheese on the sill, and he sat like a magistrate while I laid the shadows under his chin.

Mrs Crane paid in full on Tuesday, though she had been arguing the price since August. On Wednesday a boy came with a note. Bishop had died in his basket that morning, quite peacefully, and she asked me to keep the portrait until she could bear to collect it. I have it here on the bench now. The dog's black eyes seem to watch the door rather than the viewer, as if he is still waiting for the cheese.

Write soon, and tell Father I have not spent the money on gin.

Yours, Walter