Word: morland
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Although the theme of the book is imaginative, author Morland Cary unfortunately does not come up with ample funny dialogue. But where the script fails, director James Paul has not, for he exploits each situation for every laugh possible...
...Morland got his first real look at the sea when he ran off to Margate and stayed with a rich lady of easy virtue. Though he finally settled down long enough to get married (showing up for the wedding wearing two huge pistols), his chosen companions remained the ostlers, potboys, horse jockeys, moneylenders, pawnbrokers, punks and pugilists who often served as his models. They shared Morland's love of gin and practical jokes. Once Morland stuffed the chairs of a public house with mackerel, returned with his cronies to complain to the frantic landlord of the frightful stench...
...need for live models was Morland's excuse for every sort of extravagance. He kept a menagerie which included foxes, goats, hogs, monkeys and dormice. To get material for The Deserter, he commandeered a sergeant, drummer and soldier, plied them with ale and tobacco for two days. Morland sold well, but often he could not wait for purchasers to leave his studio before uttering three loud "huzzahs" and heading straight for the nearest pub. At the peak "of his career, Morland, only 28, found himself ?4,000 in debt. Morland's life became an unending struggle to keep...
Only occasionally did Morland take pains to work out a painting carefully. One of his last and best canvases was painted while Morland was visiting his sick wife in Paddington two years before his death. Just released from prison, Morland painted himself, attended by his manservant Gibbs frying sausages. From his self-portrait Morland looks out with watery, disconsolate eyes. At his feet Morland painted what might well have been his own grim epitaph, an overturned glass and bottle, both empty...
...Morland recounted a day's drinking at Brighton: beginning with Hollands gin and rum and milk before breakfast, it went on through nine different beverages, including opium and water, topped off with gin, shrub and rum before...