In the following year he removed to Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields; and somewhere about this time became infatuated with the black eyes and arch smiles of a City solicitor's daughter, one Mary Bunn, of St. Botolph's, Aldgate, who brought him some money on his marriage with her at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, 4th December, 1782. It was a foolish union--she, pretty and giddy, and her husband a blunt, strong-minded, hard-working artist. He tried to gloss over her follies, being placable to a degree; but in vain. She at last crowned her faithless career by eloping with a Mr. John Edwards in 1795, and an Act of divorce left Opie a free and a happier man. It was _à propos_ of this miserable affair that Opie once uttered the following grim _bon-mot_. He was passing the above-named church one day with his quondam friend Godwin, who was an infidel, when Godwin exclaimed: 'Ah! I was christened at that church.' 'And I was married in it,' replied Opie; 'they make unsure work there, for it neither holds in wedlock nor in baptism.' But at length the crowds of sitters and callers who used to annoy both Opie and his neighbours began to dwindle away, as the novelty of seeing that 'nine days' wonder'--a great artist--in 'The Cornish boy in tin-mines bred Whose genius, like his native diamonds, shone In secret, till chance gave them to the sun,' began to wear off; and gave Opie the much-desired opportunity of pursuing the higher branches of his art. Henceforth he painted less portraits and more historical compositions; but amongst the former, even up to the end of his career, we still find some notable subjects, such as a whole-length of Charles James Fox (which West thought his best), William Siddons (the husband of the great actress), Fuseli, Southey, the Poet Laureate,[117] and many others. In 1784 he exhibited his 'School,' of which Horace Walpole remarked that it was 'Great nature--the best of his works yet.'