After leaving his father, Morland plunged into a career of wildness and
dissipation, amidst which, however, his extraordinary talents kept his
name still rising. While residing at Kensall Green, he was frequently
thrown in the company of Ward, the painter, whose example of moral
steadiness was exhibited to him in vain. At length, however, he fell in
love with Miss Ward, a young lady of beauty and modesty, and the sister
of his friend. Succeeding in gaining her affections, he soon afterwards
married her; and to make the family union stronger, Ward sued for the
hand of Maria Morland, and in about a month after his sister's marriage,
obtained it. In the joy of this double union, the brother artists took
joint possession of a good house in High Street, Marylebone. Morland
suspended for a time his habit of insobriety, discarded the social
comrades of his laxer hours, and imagined himself reformed. But discord
broke out between the sisters concerning the proper division of rule and
authority in the house; and Morland, whose partner's claim perhaps was
the weaker, took refuge in lodgings in Great Portland Street. His
passion for late hours and low company, restrained through courtship and
the honey-moon, now broke out with the violence of a stream which had
been dammed, rather than dried up. It was in vain that his wife
entreated and remonstrated--his old propensities prevailed, and the
post-boy, the pawnbroker, and the pugilist, were summoned again to his
side, no more to be separated.