Haydon had married a widow with children, and although this marriage added materially to his burdens, his diary is filled with praises of their loveliness. He wrote in the diary: “I sat all day and looked into the fire.... A man who has had so many misfortunes as I have had gets frightened at leaving his family for a day.” On Easter Monday, 1846, he wrote: “O God, bless my receipts this day, for the sake of my creditors, my family, and my art. Amen.” The receipts that day were only one pound, two shillings. Later he wrote: “Tom Thumb had 12,000 people last week. B. Haydon, 133½, the ½ a little girl. Exquisite taste of the English people.” The next entry reads: “They rush by thousands to see Tom Thumb. They push, they fight, they scream, they faint, they cry help and murder! and oh! and ah! They see my bills, my boards, my caravans and don’t read them. Their eyes are open, but their sense is shut. It is an insanity, a _rabies_, a madness, a _furor_, a dream. I would not have believed it of the English people.” Haydon’s exhibition brought in 17 pounds, 13 shillings after Tom Thumb came to Egyptian Hall, and Tom Thumb took in 600 pounds a day. The deadly contrast, coupled with his seemingly illimitable woe, caused Haydon to go home in despair. His diary reads: “Cleared out my exhibition. Next to victory is a skilful retreat, and I marched out before General Tom Thumb, a beaten, but not conquered exhibitor.” But he was also conquered, if not by Tom Thumb, then by circumstances. His wife was going to visit friends in the country, and he embraced her fervently. An hour later his daughter walked into the studio and found her father lying on the floor. There was a deep gash in his throat; a blood-stained razor and a small pistol, with which he had blown out his brains, lay beside his body. Above him was the easel with the unfinished “Alfred and the First Jury.” He had but a few minutes before written in his diary a will in which he appointed friendly administrators of his debts, and the journal of his life closed with the harrowing words, “Stretch me no longer on this rough world.” Tom Thumb cannot be said to have caused Haydon’s death, he was merely the last straw. A large conclave followed the body to its grave, and among the mourners were Wordsworth and Sir Robert Peel. III