Prince Hoare introduced Haydon to Fuseli, who was so struck with his
close attendance at the Royal Academy, that he one day said, “Why, when
do you dine?” The account of his introduction is very characteristic.
“Such was the horror connected with Fuseli’s name, (says Haydon,) that I
remember perfectly well the day before I was to go to him, a letter from
my father concluded in these words: ‘God speed you with the terrible
Fuseli.’ Awaking from a night of awful dreaming, the awful morning
came. I took my sketch-book and drawings,--invoking the protection of my
good genius to bring me back alive, and sallied forth to meet the
enchanter in his den! After an abstracted walk of perpetual musing, on
what I should say, how I should look, and what I should do, I found
myself before his door in Berners-street----1805.” Haydon was shown into
his painting-room, full of Fuseli’s hideous conceptions. He adds:--“At
last, when I was wondering what metamorphosis I was to undergo, the door
slowly opened, and I saw a little hand come slowly round the edge of it,
which did not look very gigantic, or belonging to a very powerful
figure, and round came a little white-faced lion-headed man, dressed in
an old flannel dressing-gown, tied by a rope, and the bottom of Mrs.
Fuseli’s work-basket on his head for a cap. I was perfectly amazed!
there stood the designer of Satan in many an airy whirl plunging to the
earth; and was this the painter himself?--Certainly. Not such as I had
imagined when enjoying his inventions. I did not know whether to laugh
or cry, but at any rate I felt that I was his match if he attempted the
supernatural. We quietly stared at each other, and Fuseli kindly
understanding my astonishment and inexperience, asked in the mildest
voice for my drawings. Here my evil genius took the lead, and instead of
showing him my studies from the antique, which I had brought, and had
meant to have shown him, I showed him my sketch-book I did not mean to
show him, with a sketch I had made coming along, of a man pushing a
sugar-cask into a grocer’s shop. Fuseli seeing my fright, said, by way
of encouragement, ‘At least the fellow does his business with
energy.’ ” From that hour commenced a friendship which lasted till
his death.