Unfortunately, Haydon's self-denial in painting portraits was not well rewarded, for commissions were few, and the clouds began to gather again. One of his sitters had to be appealed to for money for coals, and if such appeals were frequent, the scarcity of sitters was hardly surprising. On one occasion he pawned all his books, except a few old favourites, for three pounds, and entries like the following are of almost daily occurrence in the Journal:--'Obliged to go out in the rain, I left my room with no coals in it, and no money to buy any.... Not a shilling in the world. Sold nothing, and not likely to. Baker called, and was insolent. If he were to stop the supplies, God knows what would become of my children! Landlord called--kind and sorry. Butcher called, respectful, but disappointed. Tailor good--humoured, and willing to wait.... Walked about the town. I was so full of grief, I could not have concealed it at home.'
In the midst of all his harassing anxieties, Haydon was untiring in his efforts to obtain employment of the heroic kind that his soul craved. He had begun to realise that he had small chance of disposing of huge historical pictures to private patrons, and that his only hope rested with the Government. Even while confined in prison he had persuaded Brougham to present a petition to the House of Commons setting forth the desirability of appointing a Committee to inquire into the state of national art, and by a regular distribution of a small portion of the public funds, to give public encouragement to the professors of historical painting. No sooner did he regain his freedom than Haydon attacked Sir Charles Long with a plan for the decoration of the great room of the Admiralty, to be followed by the decoration of the House of Lords and St. Paul's Cathedral. This was but the beginning of a long series of impassioned pleadings with public men in favour of national employment for historical painters. Silence, snubs, formal acknowledgments, curt refusals, all were lost upon Haydon, who kept pouring in page after page of agonised petition on Sir Charles Long, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Grey, Lord Melbourne, and Sir Robert Peel, and seemed to be making no way with any of them.
Haydon thought himself ill-used, throughout his life, by statesmen and patrons, and many of his friends were of the same opinion. But both he and they ignored the fact that it is impossible to create an artificial market for works of art for which there is no spontaneous popular demand. A despotic prince may, if he chooses, give his court paintercarte blanchefor the decorations of national buildings, and gain nothing but glory for his liberality, even when it is exercised at the expense of his people. But in a country that possesses a constitutional government, more especially when that country has been impoverished by long and costly wars, the minister who devotes large sums to the encouragement of national art has the indignation of an over-taxed populace to reckon with. It is little short of an insult to offer men historic frescoes when they are clamouring for bread. Haydon was unfortunate in his period, which was not favourable for a crusade on behalf of high art. The recent pacification of the Continent, and the opening up of its treasures, tempted English noblemen and plutocrats to invest their money in old masters to the neglect of native artists, who were only thought worthy to paint portraits of their patrons' wives and children. We who have inherited the Peel, the Angerstein, and the Hertford collections, can scarcely bring ourselves to regret the sums that were lavished on Flemish and Italian masterpieces, sums that might have kept our Barrys and Haydons from bankruptcy.
In January 1824 Haydon left his lodgings, and took the lease of a house in Connaught Terrace, for which he paid, or promised to pay, a hundred and twenty pounds a year, a heavy rent for a recently insolvent artist. Fortunately, he acquired with the house a landlord of amazing benevolence, who took pot-boilers in lieu of rent, and meekly submitted to abuse when nothing else was forthcoming. As soon as he was fairly settled, Haydon arranged the composition of a large picture of 'Pharaoh dismissing Moses,' upon which he worked in the intervals of portrait-painting. A curious and obviously impartial sketch of him, as he appeared at this time, is drawn by Borrow in hisLavengro. The hero's elder brother comes up to town, it may be remembered, to commission a certain heroic artist to paint an heroic picture of a very unheroic mayor of Norwich. The two brothers go together to the painter of Lazarus, and have some difficulty in obtaining admission to his studio, being mistaken by the servant for duns. They found a man of about thirty-five, with a clever, intelligent countenance, sharp grey eyes, and hair cutà laRaphael. He possessed, moreover, a broad chest, and would have been a very fine figure if his legs had not been too short. He was then engaged upon his Moses, whose legs, in Lavengro's opinion, were also too short. His eyes glistened at the mention of a hundred pounds for the mayor's portrait, and he admitted that he was confoundedly short of money. The painter was anxious that Lavengro should sit to him for his Plutarch, which honour that gentleman firmly declined. Years afterwards he saw the portrait of the mayor, a 'mighty portly man, with a bull's head, black hair, a body like a dray horse, and legs and thighs corresponding; a man six foot high at the least. To his bull's head, black hair and body, the painter had done justice; there was one point, however, in which the portrait did not correspond with the original--the legs were disproportionately short, the painter having substituted his own legs for those of the mayor, which, when I perceived, I rejoiced that I had not consented to be painted as Pharaoh, for if I had, the chances are that he would have served me in exactly the same way as he had served Moses and the mayor.'
The painting of provincial mayors was so little to Haydon's taste that by the close of this year we find him in deep depression of spirits, unrelieved by even a spark of his old sanguine buoyancy. 'I candidly confess,' he writes, 'I find my glorious art a bore. I cannot with pleasure paint any individual head for the mere purpose of domestic gratification. I must have a great subject to excite public feeling.... Alas! I have no object in life now but my wife and children, and almost wish I had not them, that I might sit still and meditate on human grandeur and human ambition till I died.... I am not yet forty, and can tell of a destiny melancholy and rapturous, bitter beyond all bitterness, cursed, heart-breaking, maddening. But I dare not write now. The melancholy demon has grappled my heart, and crushed its turbulent beatings in his black, bony, clammy, clenching fingers.'
It was just when things seemed at their darkest, when the waters threatened to overwhelm the unfortunate artist, that a rope was thrown to him. His legal adviser, Mr. Kearsley, a practical and prosperous man, came forward with an offer of help. He agreed to provide £300 for one year on certain conditions, in order that Haydon might be freed from pressure for that period, and be in a position to ask a fair price for his work. When not engaged on portraits, he was to paint historical pictures of a saleable size. The advance was to be secured on a life insurance, and to be repaid out of the sale of the pictures, with interest at four per cent. This offer was accepted with some reluctance, and the following year was one of comparative peace and quiet. The Journal gives evidence of greater ease of mind, and renewed pleasure in work. Haydon's love for his wife waxed rather than waned with the passing of the years, and his children, of whom he too soon had the poor man's quiverful, were an ever-present delight. 'My domestic happiness is doubled,' he writes about this time. 'Daily and hourly my sweet Mary proves the justice of my choice. My boy Frank gives tokens of being gifted at two years old, God bless him! My ambition would be to make him a public man.... I have got into my old delightful habits of study again. The mixture of literature and painting I really think the perfection of human happiness. I paint a head, revel in colour, hit an expression, sit down fatigued, take up a poet or historian, write my own thoughts, muse on the thoughts of others, and hours, troubles, and the tortures of disappointed ambition pass and are forgotten.'
Portraits, and one or two commissions for small pictures, kept Haydon afloat throughout this year, but a widespread commercial distress in the early part of 1826 affected his gains, and in February he records that for the last five weeks he has been suffering the tortures of the Inferno. He was persuaded, much against his will, to send his pictures to the Academy, and he was proportionately annoyed at the adverse criticism that greeted his attempts at portraiture. This attack he regarded as the result of a deep-laid plot to injure him in a lucrative branch of his art. He consoled himself by beginning a large picture of 'Alexander taming Bucephalus,' the 'finest subject on earth.' Through his friend and opposite neighbour, Carew the sculptor, Haydon made an appeal to Lord Egremont, that generous patron of the arts, for help or employment, in response to which Lord Egremont promised to call and see the Alexander. There is a pathetic touch in the account of this visit, on which so much depended. Lord Egremont called at Carew's house on his way, and Haydon, who saw him go in, relates that 'Dear Mary and I were walking on the leads, and agreed that it would not be quite right to look too happy, being without a sixpence; so we came in, I to the parlour to look through the blinds, and she to the nursery.' Happily, the patron was favourably impressed by the picture, and promised to give £600 for it when it was finished. In order to pay his models Haydon was obliged to pawn one of his two lay-figures, since he could not bring himself to part with any more books. 'I may do without a lay-figure for a time,' he writes, 'but not without old Homer. The truth is I am fonder of books than of anything on earth. I consider myself a man of great powers, excited to an art which limits their exercise. In politics, law, or literature they would have had a full and glorious swing, and I should have secured a competence.'
The fact that Haydon was more at home among the literary men of his acquaintance than among his fellow-artists was a natural result of his intense love of books, and his keen interest in contemporary history. And it is evident that his own character and work impressed his poetical friends, for we find that not only Wordsworth and Keats, but Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, Miss Mitford, and Miss Barrett addressed to him admiring verses. For Byron, whom he never knew, Haydon cherished an ardent admiration, and the following interesting passage, comparing that poet with Wordsworth, occurs in one of his letters to Miss Mitford, who had criticised Byron's taste:--
'You are unjust, depend upon it,' he writes, 'in your estimate of Byron's poetry, and wrong in ranking Wordsworth beyond him. There are things in Byron's poetry so exquisite that fifty or five hundred years hence they will be read, felt, and adored throughout the world. I grant that Wordsworth is very pure, very holy, very orthodox, and occasionally very elevated, highly poetical, and oftener insufferably obscure, starched, dowdy, anti-human, and anti-sympathetic, but he never will be ranked above Byron, nor classed with Milton.... I dislike his selfish Quakerism, his affectation of superior virtue, his utter insensibility to the frailties, the beautiful frailties of passion. I was walking with him once in Pall Mall; we darted into Christie's. In the corner of the room was a beautiful copy of the "Cupid and Psyche" (statues) kissing. Cupid is taking her lovely chin, and turning her pouting mouth to meet his, while he archly bends down, as if saying, "Pretty dear!"... Catching sight of the Cupid as he and I were coming out, Wordsworth's face reddened, he showed his teeth, and then said in a loud voice, "The Dev-v-vils!" There's a mind! Ought not this exquisite group to have softened his heart as much as his old, grey-mossed rocks, his withered thorn, and his dribbling mountain streams? I am altered very much about Wordsworth from finding him too hard, too elevated, to attend to the voice of humanity. No, give me Byron with all his spite, hatred, depravity, dandyism, vanity, frankness, passion, and idleness, rather than Wordsworth with all his heartless communion with woods and grass.'
An attempt on Haydon's part to reconcile himself with his old enemies, the Academicians, ended in failure. He heads his account of the transaction, 'The disgrace of my life.' He was received with cold civility by the majority of the artists to whom he paid conciliatory visits, and when he put his name down for election, he received not a single vote. A more agreeable memory of this year was a visit to Petworth, where, as he records, with Pepysiannaiveté, 'Lord Egremont has placed me in one of the most magnificent bedrooms I ever saw. It speaks more of what he thinks of my talents than anything that ever happened to me.... What a destiny is mine! One year in the King's Bench, the companion of gamblers and scoundrels--sleeping in wretchedness and dirt on a flock-bed--another reposing in down and velvet in a splendid apartment in a splendid house, the guest of rank, fashion, and beauty.' Haydon's painting-room was now, as he loved to see it, crowded with distinguished visitors, who were anxious to inspect the picture of Alexander before it was sent to the Exhibition. Among them came Charles Lamb, who afterwards set down some impressions and suggestions in the following characteristic fashion:--
'DEAR RAFFAELE HAYDON,
'Did the maid tell you I came to see your picture? I think the face and bearing of the Bucephalus-tamer very noble, his flesh too effeminate or painty.... I had small time to pick out praise or blame, for two lord-like Bucks came in, upon whose strictures my presence seemed to impose restraint; I plebeian'd off therefore.
'I think I have hit on a subject for you, but can't swear it was never executed--I never heard of its being--"Chaucer beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street." Think of the old dresses, houses, etc. "It seemeth that both these learned men (Gower and Chaucer) were of the Inner Temple; for not many years since Master Buckley did see a record in the same house where Geoffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street."--Chaucer's Life, by T. Speght.--Yours in haste (salt fish waiting).
'C. LAMB.'
In June Haydon was again arrested, and imprisoned in the King's Bench. Once more he appealed to Parliament by a petition presented by Brougham, and to the public through letters to the newspapers. Parliament and the larger public turned a deaf ear, but private friends rallied to his support. Scott, himself a ruined man, sent a cheque and a charming letter of sympathy, while Lockhart suggested that a subscription should be raised to buy one or more pictures. A public meeting of sympathisers was convened, at which it was stated that Haydon's debts amounted to £1767, while his only available asset was an unfinished picture of the 'Death of Eucles.' Over a hundred pounds was subscribed in the room, and it was decided that the Eucles should be raffled in ten-pound shares. The result of these efforts was the release of the prisoner at the end of July.
During this last term of imprisonment Haydon witnessed the masquerade, or mock election by his fellow-prisoners, and instantly decided that he would paint the scene, which offered unique opportunities for both humour and pathos. This picture, Hogarthian in type, was finished and exhibited before the close of the year. The exhibition was moderately successful, but the picture did not sell, and Haydon was once more sinking into despair, when the king expressed a desire to have the work sent down to Windsor for his inspection. Hopes were raised high once more, and this time were not disappointed. George IV. bought the 'Mock Election,' and promptly paid the price of five hundred guineas. Thus encouraged, Haydon set to work with renewed spirit on a companion picture, 'Chairing the Member,' which was finished and exhibited, with some earlier works, in the course of the summer. The king refused to buy the new work, but it found a purchaser at £300, and the net receipts from the two pictures and their exhibition amounted to close upon £1400, a sum which, observes Haydon, in better circumstances and with less expense, would have afforded a comfortable independence for the year!
The Eucles occupied the artist during the remainder of 1828, and early in 1829 he began a new Hogarthian subject, a Punch and Judy show. He was still painting portraits when he could get sitters, and on April 15, he notes: 'Finished one cursed portrait--have only one more to touch, and then I shall be free. I have an exquisite gratification in painting portraits wretchedly. I love to see the sitters look as if they thought, "Can this be Haydon's--the great Haydon's painting?" I chuckle. I am rascal enough to take their money, and chuckle more.' It must be owned that Haydon thoroughly deserved his ill-success in this branch of his art. When 'Punch' was finished the king sent for it to Windsor, but though he admired, he did not buy, and the picture eventually passed into the possession of Haydon's old friend, Dr. Darling, who had helped him out of more than one difficulty. A large representation of 'Xenophon and the Retreat of the Ten Thousand' was now begun, but before it was finished the painter was once more in desperate straits. In vain he sent up urgent petitions to his Maker that he might be enabled to go through with this great work, explaining in a parenthesis, 'It will be my greatest,' and concluding, 'Bless its commencement, its progress, its conclusion, and its effect, for the sake of the intellectual elevation of my great and glorious country.'
In May 1830, Haydon was back again in the King's Bench, where he had begun to feel quite at home. He presented yet another of his innumerable petitions to Parliament in favour of Government encouragement of historical painting, through Mr. Agar Ellis, but as the ministry showed no desire to encourage this particular historical painter, he passed through the Bankruptcy Court, and returned to his family on the 20th of July. During his period of detention, George IV. had died, and Haydon has the following comment on the event:--'Thus died as thoroughbred an Englishman as ever existed in this country. He admired her sports, gloried in her prejudices, had confidence in her bottom and spirit, and to him alone is the destruction of Napoleon owing. I have lost in him my sincere admirer; and had not his wishes been continually thwarted, he would have given me ample and adequate employment.'
Although Haydon had regained his freedom, his chance of maintaining himself and his rapidly increasing family by his art seemed as far away as ever. By October 15th he is at his wits' end again, and writes in his Journal: 'The harassings of a family are really dreadful. Two of my children are ill, and Mary is nursing. All night she was attending to the sick and hushing the suckling, with a consciousness that our last shilling was going. I got up in the morning bewildered--Xenophon hardly touched--no money--butcher impudent--all tradesmen insulting. I took up my private sketch-book and two prints of Napoleon (from a small picture of 'Napoleon musing at St. Helena') and walked into the city. Hughes advanced me five guineas on the sketch-book; I sold my prints, and returned home happy with £8, 4s. in my pocket.... (25th) Out selling my prints. Sold enough for maintenance for the week. Several people looked hard at me with my roll of prints, but I feel more ashamed in borrowing money than in honestly selling my labours. It is a pity the nobility drive me to this by their neglect.'
In December came another stroke of good-luck. Sir Robert Peel called at the studio, and gave the artist a commission to paint, on a larger scale, a replica of his small sketch of 'Napoleon at St. Helena.' Unluckily, there was a misunderstanding about the price. Peel asked how much Haydon charged for a whole length figure, and was told a hundred pounds, which was the price of an ordinary portrait. Taking this to be the charge for the Napoleon, he paid no more. Haydon, who considered the picture well worth £500, was bitterly disappointed, and took no pains to conceal his feelings. Peel afterwards sent him an extra thirty pounds, but the subject remained a grievance to Haydon for the rest of his life, and Peel, who had intended to do the artist a good turn, was so annoyed by his complaints, that he never gave him another commission. The Napoleon, though its exhibition was not a success, was one of Haydon's most popular pictures, and the engraving is well known. Wordsworth admired it exceedingly, and on June 12, sent the artist the 'Sonnet to B. R. Haydon, composed on seeing his picture of Napoleon in the island of St. Helena,' beginning:
'Haydon! let worthier judges praise the skill.'
The close of this year was a melancholy period to poor Haydon. He lost his little daughter, Fanny, and his third son, Alfred, was gradually fading away. Out of eight children born to this most affectionate of fathers, no fewer than five died in infancy from suffusion of the brain, due, it was supposed, to the terrible mental distresses of their mother. 'I can remember,' writes Frederick Haydon, one of the three survivors, 'the roses of her sunken cheeks fading away daily with anxiety and grief. My father, who was passionately attached to both wife and children, suffered the tortures of the damned at the sight before him. His sorrow over the deaths of his children was something more than human. I remember watching him as he hung over his daughter Georgiana, and over his dying boy Harry, the pride and delight of his life. Poor fellow, how he cried! and he went into the next room, and beating his head passionately on the bed, called upon God to take him and all of us from this dreadful world. The earliest and most painful death was to be preferred to our life at that time.'
By dint of borrowing in every possible quarter, generally at forty per cent. interest, and inducing his patrons to take shares in his Xenophon, Haydon managed to get through the winter, though his children were often without stockings. William IV. consented to place his name at the head of the subscribers' list, and Goethe wrote a flattering letter, expressing his desire to take a ticket for the 'very valuable painting,' and assuring the artist that 'my soul has been elevated for many years by the contemplation of the important pictures (the cartoons from the Elgin Marbles) formerly sent to me, which occupy an honourable station in my house.' Xenophon was exhibited in the spring of 1832 without attracting much attention, the whole nation being engrossed with the subject of Reform. Haydon, though a high Tory by birth and inclination, was an ardent champion of the Bill, as he had been for that of Catholic Emancipation. His brush was once more exchanged for the pen, and he not only poured out his thoughts upon Reform in his Journal, but wrote several letters on the subject to theTimes, which he considered the most wonderful compositions of the kind that had ever been penned. After the passing of the Bill he congratulates himself upon having contributed to the grand result, and adds: 'When my colours have faded, my canvas decayed, and my body has mingled with the earth, these glorious letters, the best things I ever wrote, will awaken the enthusiasm of my countrymen. I thanked God I lived in such a time, and that he gifted me with talent to serve the great cause.'
On reading the account of the monster meeting of the Trades Unions at Newhall Hill, Birmingham, it occurred to Haydon that the moment when the vast concourse joined in the sudden prayer offered up by Hugh Hutton, would make a fine subject for a picture. Accordingly, he wrote to Hutton, and laid the suggestion before him. The Birmingham leaders were attracted by the idea, and the picture was begun, but support of a material kind was not forthcoming, and the scheme had to be abandoned. Lord Grey then suggested that Haydon should paint a picture of the great Reform Banquet, which was to be held in the Guildhall on July 11. The proposal was exactly to the taste of the public-spirited artist, who saw fame and fortune beckoning to him once more, and fancied that his future was assured. He was allowed every facility on the great day, breakfasted and dined with the Committee at the Guildhall, was treated with distinction by the noble guests, many of whom sent to take wine with him as he sat at work, and in short, to quote his own words, 'I was an object of great distinction without five shillings in my pocket--and this is life!'
Lord Grey, on seeing Haydon's sketches of the Banquet, gave him a commission for the picture at a price of £500, half of which he paid down at once, and thus saved the painter from the ruin that was again impending. Then followed a period of triumphant happiness. The leading men of the Liberal party sat for their heads, and Haydon had the longed-for opportunity of pressing upon them his views about the public encouragement of art by means of grants for the decoration of national buildings. Although it does not appear that he made a single convert, he was quite contented for the time being with the ready access to ministers and noblemen that the occasion afforded him, and his Journal is filled with expressions of his satisfaction. We hear of Lord Palmerston's good-humoured elegance, Lord Lansdowne's amiability, Lord Jeffrey's brilliant conversation, and, most delightful of all, Lord Melbourne's frank, unaffected cordiality. Melbourne, it appears, enjoyed his sittings, for he asked many questions about Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Keats, and Shelley, and highly appreciated Haydon's anecdotes. Needless to add, he did not allow himself to be bored by the artist's theories.
The sittings for the Reform picture continued through 1833, and the early part of 1834. Haydon was kept in full employment, but domestic sorrows marred his satisfaction in his interesting work. In less than twelve months, he lost two sons, Alfred and Harry, the latter a child of extraordinary promise. 'The death of this beautiful boy,' he writes, 'has given my mind a blow I shall never effectually recover. I saw him buried to-day, after passing four days sketching his dear head in his coffin--his beautiful head. What a creature! With a brow like an ancient god!' In August Haydon was arrested again, and hurried away for a day and night of torture, during which, he confesses, he was very near putting an end to himself; but advances from the Duke of Cleveland and Mr. Ellice brought him release, and in a few hours he was at home again, 'as happy and as hard at work as ever.'
In April 1834, the Reform picture was exhibited, but the public was not interested, and Haydon lost a considerable sum over the exhibition. The price of the commission had long since gone to quiet the clamours of his creditors. On May 12 he writes: 'It is really lamentable to see the effect of success and failure on people of fashion. Last year, all was hope, exultation, and promise with me. My door was beset, my house besieged, my room inundated. It was an absolute fight to get in to see me paint. Well, out came the work--the public felt no curiosity--it failed, and my door is deserted, no horses, no carriages. Now for executions, insults, misery, and wretchedness.' Then follows the old story. 'June 7.--Mary and I in agony of mind. All my Italian books, and some of my best historical designs, are gone to a pawnbroker's. She packed up her best gowns and the children's, and I drove away with what cost me £40, and got £4. The state of degradation, humiliation, and pain of mind in which I sat in that dingy back-room is not to be described.'
Haydon now began a picture of 'Cassandra and Agamemnon,' and in July he received a commission to finish it for the Duke of Sutherland, who had more than once saved him from ruin. On this occasion the Duke's advances barely sufficed to stave off disaster. Studies, prints, clothes, and lay-figures were pawned to pay for the expenses of the work, and on October comes the entry: 'Directly after the Duke's letter came with its enclosed cheque, an execution was put in for the taxes. I made the man sit for Cassandra's hand, and put on a Persian bracelet. When the broker came for his money, he burst out laughing. There was the fellow, an old soldier, pointing in the attitude of Cassandra--up right and steady as if on guard. Lazarus' head was painted just after an arrest; Eucles was finished from a man in possession; the beautiful face in Xenophon, after a morning spent in begging mercy of lawyers; and now Cassandra's head was finished in an agony not to be described, and her hand completed from a broker's man.'
PART III
On October 16, 1884, the Houses of Parliament were burned down. 'Good God!' writes Haydon, 'I am just returned from the terrific burning of the Houses of Parliament. Mary and I went in a cab, and drove over the bridge. From the bridge it was sublime. We alighted, and went into a public-house, which was full. The feeling among the people was extraordinary--jokes and radicalism universal.... The comfort is that there is now a better prospect of painting the House of Lords. Lord Grey said there was no intention of taking the tapestry down; little did he think how soon it would go.' Haydon's hopes now rose high. For many years, as we have seen, he had been advocating, in season and out of season, the desirability of decorating national buildings with heroic paintings by native artists, and, with the need for new Houses of Parliament, it seemed as if at last his cause might triumph. Once more he attacked the good-humoured but unimpressionable Lord Melbourne, and presented another petition to Parliament through Lord Morpeth. But in any case it would be years before the new buildings were ready for decoration, and in the meantime he would have been entirely out of employment if his long-suffering landlord had not allowed him to paint off a debt with a picture of 'Achilles at the Court of Lycomedes.'
In the summer of this year Mr. Ewart obtained his Select Committee to inquire into the best means of extending a knowledge of the arts and the principles of design among the people; and further, to inquire into the constitution of the Royal Academy, and the effects produced thereby. Haydon, overjoyed at such a sign of progress, determined to aid the inquiry by giving a lecture on the subject at the London Mechanics' Institute, under the auspices of Dr. Birkbeck. The lecture was a success, for Haydon's natural earnestness and enthusiasm enabled him to interest and impress an audience, and Dr. Birkbeck assured him that he had made a 'hit.' This was the beginning of his career as a lecturer, by which for several years he earned a small but regular income. But meanwhile ruin was again staring him in the face. On September 26 he writes: 'The agony of my necessities is really dreadful. For this year I have principally supported myself by the help of my landlord, and by pawning everything of value I have left.... Lay awake in misery. Threatened on all sides. Doubtful whether to apply to the Insolvent Court to protect me, or let ruin come. Improved the picture, and not having a shilling, sent out a pair of my spectacles, and got five shillings for the day. (29th) Sent the tea-urn off the table, and got ten shillings for the day. Shall call my creditors together. In God I trust.'
The meeting of the creditors took place, and Haydon persuaded them to grant him an extension of time until June, 1836. Thus relieved from immediate anxiety he set to work on his picture with renewed zest. The most remarkable trait about him, observes his son Frederick, was his sanguine buoyancy of spirits. 'Nothing ever depressed him long. He was the most persevering, indomitable man I ever met. With us at home he was always confident of doing better next year. But that next year never came.... Blest as he was with that peculiar faculty of genius for overcoming difficulties, he might have found life tame without them. I remember his saying once, he was not sure he did not relish ruin as a source of increased activity of mind.' But the struggle had begun to tell upon his powers, if not upon his spirits, and he was now painting pictures for bread; repeating himself; despatching a work in a few days that in better times he would have spent months over; ready to paint small things, since great ones would not sell; fighting misery at the point of his brush, and obliged to eke out a livelihood by begging and borrowing, in default of worse expedients such as bills and cognovits. A less elastic temperament and a less vigorous constitution would have broken down in one year of such a fight. Haydon kept it up for ten.'
The first half of 1836 went by in the usual struggle, and in September Haydon was thrown into prison for the fourth time. On November 17 he passed through the Insolvency Court, and on the following Sunday he records: 'Went to church, and returned thanks with all my heart and soul for the great mercies of God to me and my family during my imprisonment.... (29th) Set my palette to-day, the first time these eleven weeks and three days. I relished the oil; could have tasted the colour; rubbed my cheeks with the brushes, and kissed the palette. Ah, could I be let loose in the House of Lords!' In the absence of commissions, he now turned to lecturing as a means of support. He lectured in Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham, as well as in London, and did good service by agitating for the establishment of local schools of design, and by arousing in the minds of the wealthy middle classes some faint appreciation of the claims of art.
A valuable result of these lectures was the extension of Haydon's acquaintance among the shrewd merchant princes of the north, who recognised his artistic sincerity, and were inclined to hold out to him a helping hand. Through the influence of Mr. Lowndes, a Liverpool art-patron, Haydon received a commission to paint a picture of 'Christ blessing Little Children,' for the Blind Asylum at Liverpool, at a price of £400. So elated was he at this unexpected piece of good fortune that, with characteristic sanguineness, he seems to have thought that all his troubles were at an end for ever. Even his pious dependence on heavenly support diminished with his freedom from care, and he notes in a Sunday entry: 'Went to church, but prosperity, though it makes me grateful, does not cause me such perpetual religious musings as adversity. When on a precipice, where nothing but God's protection can save me, I delight in religious hope, but I am sorry to say my religion ever dwindles unless kept alive by risk of ruin. My piety is never so intense as when in a prison, and my gratitude never so much alive as when I have just escaped from one.'
The year 1838 passed in comparative peace and comfort. The picture for the asylum was finished about the end of August, when Haydon congratulated his Maker on the fact that he (Haydon) had paid his rent and taxes, laid in his coals for the winter, and enjoyed health, happiness, and freedom from debt--fresh debt, be it understood--ever since this commission. Going down to Liverpool to hang his work, it was proposed to him by Mr. Lowndes that he should paint a picture of the Duke of Wellington on the field of Waterloo, twenty years after the battle. This was a subject after Haydon's own heart, for the Duke had always been his ideal hero, his king among men. Overflowing with pride and delight, he prays that Providence will so bless this new commission that 'the glorious city of Liverpool may possess the best historical picture, and the grandest effort of my pencil in portraiture. Inspired by history, I fear not making it the grandest thing.'
The Liverpool committee wrote to the Duke, to ask if he would consent to give sittings to Haydon, and received a promise that he would sit for his head as soon as time could be found. Meanwhile, Haydon set to work upon the horse, which was copied from portraits of Copenhagen. While he was thus engaged, D'Orsay called at the studio, and bestowed advice and criticism upon the artist, which, for once, was thankfully received. Haydon relates how D'Orsay 'took my brush in his dandy glove, which made my heart ache, and lowered the hind-quarters by bringing over a bit of the sky. Such a dress! white greatcoat, blue satin cravat, hair oiled and curling, hat of the primest curve, gloves scented with eau-de-Cologne, primrose in tint, skin in tightness. In this prime of dandyism, he took up a nasty, oily, dirty hog-tool, and immortalised Copenhagen by touching the sky. I thought after he was gone, "This won't do--a Frenchman touch Copenhagen!" So out I rubbed all he had touched, and modified his hints myself.'
As there was no chance of the Duke's being able to sit at this time, owing to the pressure of public business, Haydon made a flying visit to Brussels, in order to get local colour for the field of Waterloo. A few weeks later he was overjoyed at receiving an invitation to spend a few days at Walmer, when the Duke promised to give the desired sittings. On October 11, 1839, he went down 'by steam' to Walmer, where he was heartily welcomed by his host. His Journal contains a long and minute account of his visit, from which one or two anecdotes may be quoted. Haydon's fellow-guests were Sir Astley Cooper, Mr. Arbuthnot, and Mr. Booth. The first evening the conversation turned, among other topics, upon the Peninsular War. 'The Duke talked of the want of fuel in Spain-of what the troops suffered, and how whole houses, so many to a division, were pulled down, and paid for, to serve as fuel. He said every Englishman who has a house goes to bed at night. He found bivouacking was not suitable to the character of the English soldier. He got drunk, and lay down under any hedge, and discipline was destroyed. But when he introduced tents, every soldier belonged to his tent, and, drunk or sober, he got to it before he went to sleep. I said, "Your grace, the French always bivouac." "Yes," he replied, "because French, Spanish, and all other nations lie anywhere. It is their habit. They have no homes."'
The next morning, after his return from hunting, the Duke gave a first sitting of an hour and a half. 'I hit his grand, manly, upright expression,' writes Haydon. 'He looked like an eagle of the gods who had put on human shape, and got silvery with age and service.... I found that to imagine he could not go through any duty raised the lion. "Does the light hurt your grace's eyes?" "Not at all," and he stared at the light as much as to say, "I'll see if you shall make me give in, Signor Light." 'Twas a noble head. I saw nothing of that peculiar expression of mouth the sculptors give him, bordering on simpering. His colour was beautiful and fleshy, his lips compressed and energetic.' The next day, being Sunday, there was no sitting, but Haydon was charmed at sharing a pew with his hero, and deeply moved by the simplicity and humility with which he followed the service. 'Arthur Wellesley in the village church of Walmer,' he writes, 'was more interesting to me than at the last charge of the Guards at Waterloo, or in all the glory and paraphernalia of his entry into Paris.'
It is probable that the Duke was afraid of being attacked by Haydon on the burning question of a State grant for the encouragement of historical painting, a subject about which he had received and answered many lengthy letters, for on each evening, when there was no party, he steadily read a newspaper, theStandardon Saturday, and theSpectatoron Sunday, while his guest watched him in silent admiration. On the Monday morning, the hero came in for another sitting, looking extremely worn, his skin drawn tight over his face, his eyes watery and aged, his head slightly nodding. 'How altered from the fresh old man after Saturday's hunting,' says Haydon. 'It affected me. He looked like an aged eagle beginning to totter from its perch.' A second sitting in the afternoon concluded the business, and early next morning Haydon left for town. 'It is curious,' he comments, 'to have known thus the two great heads of the two great parties, the Duke and Lord Grey. I prefer the Duke infinitely. He is more manly, has no vanity, is not deluded by any flattery or humbug, and is in every way a grander character, though Lord Grey is a fine, amiable, venerable, vain man.'
During the remainder of the year, Haydon worked steadily, and finished his picture. On December 2 he notes: 'It is now twenty-seven years since I ordered my Solomon canvas. I was young--twenty-six. The whole world was against me. I had not a farthing. Yet I remember the delight with which I mounted my deal table and dashed it in, singing and trusting in God, as I always do. When one is once imbued with that clear heavenly confidence, there is nothing like it. It has carried me through everything. I think my dearest Mary has not got it; I do not think women have in general. Two years ago I had not a farthing, having spent it all to recover her health. She said to me, "What are we to do, my dear?" I replied, "Trust in God." There was something like a smile on her face. The very next day came the order for £400 from Liverpool, and ever since I have been employed.' Alas, poor Mary! who had been chiefly occupied in bearing children and burying them, that must have been rather a melancholy smile upon her faded face.
During the first part of 1840, Haydon seems to have been chiefly engaged in lecturing, the only picture on the stocks being a small replica of his Napoleon Musing for the poet Rogers. In February he was enabled to carry out one of the dreams of his life, namely, the delivery of a series of lectures upon art in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, under the patronage of the Vice-Chancellor. The experiment was a triumphant success, and he exclaims, with his usual pious fervour, 'O God, how grateful ought I to be at being permitted the distinction of thus being the first to break down the barrier which has kept art begging to be heard at the Universities.' He describes the occasion as one of the four chief honours of his life, the other three being Wordsworth's sonnet, 'High is our calling,' the freedom of his native town, and a public dinner that was given in his honour at Edinburgh. On March 14 he arrived home, 'full of enthusiasm and expecting (like the Vicar of Wakefield) every blessing--expecting my dear Mary to hang about my neck, and welcome me after my victory; when I found her out, not calculating I should be home till dinner. I then walked into town, and when I returned she was at home, and hurt that I did not wait, so this begat mutual allusions which were anything but loving or happy. So much for anticipations of human happiness!'
On June 12,1840, Haydon notes: 'Excessively excited and exhausted. I attended the great Convention of the Anti-Slavery Society at Freemasons' Hall. Last Wednesday a deputation called on me from the Committee, saying they wished for a sketch of the scene. The meeting was very affecting. Poor old Clarkson was present, with delegates from America, and other parts of the world.' A few days later, Haydon breakfasted with Clarkson, and sketched him with 'an expression of indignant humanity.' In less than a week fifty heads were dashed in, the picture, when finished, containing no fewer than a hundred and thirty-eight; in fact, as the artist remarked, with a curious disregard of natural history, it was all heads, like a peacock's tail. Haydon took a malicious pleasure in suggesting to his sitters that he should place them beside the negro delegate; this being his test of their sincerity. Thus he notes on June 30: 'Scobell called. I said, "I shall place you, Thompson, and the negro together." Now an abolitionist, on thorough principle, would have gloried in being so placed. He sophisticated immediately on the propriety of placing the negro in the distance, as it would have much greater effect. Lloyd Garrison comes to-day. I'll try him, and this shall be my method of ascertaining the real heart.... Garrison met me directly. George Thompson said he saw no objection. But that was not enough. A man who wishes to place a negro on a level with himself must no longer regard him as having been a slave, and feel annoyed at sitting by his side.' A visit to Clarkson at Playford Hall, Ipswich, was an interesting experience. Clarkson told the story of his vision, and the midnight voice that said 'You have not done your work. There is America.' Haydon had been a believer all his life in such spiritual communications, and declares, 'I have been so acted on from seventeen to fifty-five, for the purpose of reforming and refining my great country in art.'
In 1841 the Fine Arts Committee appointed to consider the question of the decoration of the new Houses of Parliament, sat to examine witnesses, but Haydon was not summoned before them, a slight which he deeply felt. With an anxious heart he set about making experiments in fresco, and was astonished at what he regarded as his success in this new line of endeavour. During the past year, the Anti-Slavery Convention picture, and one or two small commissions, had kept his head above water, but now the clouds were beginning to gather again, his difficulties being greatly increased by the fact that he had two sons to start in the world. The eldest, Frank, had been apprenticed, at his own wish, to an engineering firm, but tiring of his chosen profession, he desired to take orders, and, as a university career was considered a necessary preliminary to this course, he was entered at Caius College, Cambridge. The second son, Frederick, Haydon fitted out for the navy, and in order to meet these heavy extra expenses, he was compelled to part with his copyright of the 'Duke at Waterloo' for a wholly inadequate sum.
In the spring of 1842 the Fine Arts Commission issued a notice of the conditions for the cartoon competition, intended to test the capacity of native artists for the decoration of the House of Lords. The joy with which Haydon welcomed this first step towards the object which he had been advocating throughout the whole of his working life, was marred by the painful misgiving that he would not be allowed to share the fruits of victory. When he had first begun his crusade, he had felt himself without a rival in his own branch of art, not one of his contemporaries being able to compete with him in a knowledge of anatomy, in strength of imagination, or in the power of working on a grand scale. But now he was fifty-six years old, there were younger men coming on who had been trained in the principles of his own school, and he was painfully aware that he had made many enemies in high places. Still, in spite of all forebodings, he continued his researches in fresco-painting, and wrote vehement letters to the papers, protesting against the threatened employment of Cornelius and other German artists.
During this year Haydon was working intermittently at two or three large pictures, 'Alexander conquering the Lion,' 'Curtius leaping into the Gulf,' and the 'Siege of Saragossa,' for the days were long past when one grand composition occupied him for six years. That the wolf was once again howling at the door is evidenced by the entry for February 6. 'I got up yesterday, after lying awake for several hours with all the old feelings of torture at want of money. A bill coming due of £44 for my boy Frank at Caius. Three commissions for £700 put off till next year. My dear Mary's health broken up.... I knew if my debt to the tutor of Caius was not paid, the mind of my son Frank would be destroyed, from his sensitiveness to honour and right. As he is now beating third-year men, I dreaded any check.' In these straits he hastily painted one or two small pot-boilers, borrowed, deferred, pawned his wife's watch, and had the satisfaction of bringing his son home 'crowned as first-prize man in mathematics.' For one who was in the toils of the money-lenders, who was only living from hand to mouth, and who had never made an investment in his life, to give his son a university career, must be regarded, according to individual feeling, either as a proof of presumptuous folly or of childlike trust in Providence.
As soon as his pictures were off his hands, Haydon began his competition cartoons of 'The Curse of Adam and Eve,' and 'The Entry of Edward the Black Prince and King John into London.' He felt that it was beneath his dignity as a painter of recognised standing to compete with young unknown men who had nothing to lose, but in his present necessities the chance of winning one of the money prizes was not to be neglected. In the absence of any lucrative employment he was only able to carry on his work by pawning his lay-figure, and borrowing off his butterman. Small wonder that he exclaims: 'The greatest curse that can befall a father in England is to have a son gifted with a passion and a genius for high art. Thank God with all my soul and all my nature, my children have witnessed the harrowing agonies under which I have ever painted, and the very name of painting, the very thought of a picture, gives them a hideous taste in their mouths. Thank God, not one of my boys, nor my girl, can draw a straight line, even with a ruler, much less without one.'
In the course of this year Haydon began a correspondence with Miss Barrett, afterwards Mrs. Browning, with whom he was never personally acquainted, though he knew her through her poems, and through the allusions to her in the letters of their common friend, Miss Mitford. The paper friendship flourished for a time, and Haydon, who was a keen judge of character, recognised that here was a little Donna Quixote whose chivalry could be depended on in time of trouble. More than once, when threatened with arrest, he sent her paintings and manuscripts, of which she took charge with sublime indifference to the fact that by so doing she might be placing herself within reach of the arm of the law. One of the pictures that were placed in her guardianship was an unfinished portrait of 'Wordsworth musing upon Helvellyn.' Miss Barrett was inspired by this work with the sonnet beginning:
'Wordsworth upon Helvellyn! Let the cloudEbb audibly along the mountain wind';
and concluding with the fine tribute:
'A vision freeAnd noble, Haydon, hath thine art released.No portrait this with academic air,This is the poet and his poetry.'
The year 1843 brought, as Haydon's biographer points out, 'the consummation of what he had so earnestly fought for, a competition of native artists to prove their capability for executing great monumental and decorative works; but with this came his own bitter disappointment at not being among the successful competitors. In all his struggles up to this point, Haydon had the consolation of hope that better times were coming. But now the good time for art was at hand, and he was passed over. The blow fell heavily--indeed, I may say, was mortal. He tried to cheat himself into the belief that the old hostile influences to which he attributed all his misfortunes, had been working here also, and that he should yet rise superior to their malice. He would not admit to himself that his powers were impaired--that he was less fit for great achievements in his art than he had been when he painted Solomon and Lazarus. But if he held this opinion, he held it alone. It was apparent to all, even to his warmest friends, that years of harass, humiliation, distraction, and conflict had enfeebled his energies, and led him to seek in exaggeration the effect he could no longer attain by well-measured force. His restless desire to have a hand in all that was projected for art, had wearied those in authority. He had shown himself too intractable to follow, and he had not inspired that confidence which might have given him a right to lead.'
Although Haydon loudly proclaimed his conviction that, in face of the hostility against him, his cartoons would not be successful, even though they were as perfect as Raphael's, yet it is obvious that he had not altogether relinquished hope. In a letter to his old pupil, Eastlake, who was secretary to the Fine Arts Commission, he says: 'I appeal to the Royal Commission, to the First Lord, to you the secretary, to Barry the architect, if I ought not to be indulged in my hereditary right to do this, viz., that when the houses are ready, cartoons done, colours mixed, and all at their posts, I shall be allowed,employedornot employed, to take the brush, and dip into thefirstcolour, and put thefirsttouch on thefirstintonaco. If that is not granted, I'll haunt every noble Lord and you, till you join my disturbed spirit on the banks of the Styx.'
On June 1, Haydon placed his two cartoons in Westminster Hall, and thanked his God that he had lived to see that day, adding with unconscious blasphemy, 'Spare my life, O Lord, until I have shown thy strength unto this generation, thy power unto that which is to come.' The miracle for which he had secretly hoped, while declaring his certainty of failure, did not happen. On June 27 he heard from Eastlake that his cartoons were not among those chosen for reward. Half stunned by the blow, anticipated though it had been, he makes but few comments on the news in his Journal, and those are written in a composed and reasonable tone. 'I went to bed last night in a decent state of anxiety,' he observes. 'It has given a great shock to my family, especially to my dear boy, Frank, and revived all the old horrors of arrest, execution, and debt. It is exactly what I expected, and is, I think, intentional.... I am wounded, and being ill from confinement, it shook me. (July 1st) A day of great misery. I said to my dear love, "I am not included." Her expression was a study. She said, "We shall be ruined." I looked up my letters, papers, and Journals, and sent them to my dear AEschylus Barrett. I burnt loads of private letters, and prepared for executions. Seven pounds was raised on my daughter's and Mary's dresses.'
The three money prizes were awarded to Armitage, Cope, and Watts, but it was announced that another competition, in fresco, would be held the following year, when the successful competitors would be intrusted with the decoration of the House of Lords. Haydon did not enter for this competition, but, as will presently appear, he refused to allow that he was beaten. On September 4 he removed his cartoons from Westminster Hall, with the comment: 'Thus ends the cartoon contest; and as the very first inventor and beginner of this mode of rousing the people when they were pronounced incapable of relishing refined works of art without colour, I am deeply wounded at the insult inflicted. These Journals witness under what trials I began them--how I called on my Creator for His blessing--how I trusted in Him, and how I have been degraded, insulted, and harassed. O Lord! Thou knowest best. I submit.'
During the year Haydon had finished his picture of 'Alexander and the Lion,' which he considered one of his finest works, though the British Gallery declined to hang it, and no patron offered to buy it. He had also painted for bread and cheese innumerable small replicas of 'Napoleon at St. Helena' and the 'Duke at Waterloo' for five guineas apiece. By the beginning of 1844 his spirits had outwardly revived, thanks to the anodyne of incessant labour, and he writes almost in the old buoyant vein: 'Another day of work, God be thanked! Put in the sea [in "Napoleon at St. Helena"]; a delicious tint. How exquisite is a bare canvas, sized alone, to work on; how the slightest colour, thin as water, tells; how it glitters in body; how the brush flies--now here--now there; it seems as if face, hands, sky, thought, poetry, and expression were hid in the handle, and streamed out as it touched the canvas. What magic! what fire! what unerring hand and eye! what power! what a gift of God! I bow, and am grateful.' On March 24 he came to the fatal decision to paint his own original designs for the House of Lords in a series of six large pictures, and exhibit them separately, a decision founded, as he believed, on supernatural inspiration. 'Awoke this morning,' he writes, 'with that sort of audible whisper Socrates, Columbus, and Tasso heard! "Why do you not paint your own designs for the House on your own foundation, and exhibit them?" I felt as if there was no chance of my ever being permitted to do them else, without control also. I knelt up in my bed, and prayed heartily to accomplish them, whatever might be the obstruction. I will begin them as my next great works; I feel as if they will be my last, and I think I shall then have done my duty. O God! bless the beginning, progression, and conclusion of these six great designs to illustrate the best government to regulate without cramping the energies of mankind.'
In July the frescoes sent in for competition were exhibited in Westminster Hall, and in the result six artists were commissioned to decorate the House of Lords, Maclise, Redgrave, Dyce, Cope, Horsley, and Thomas. 'I see,' writes Haydon, 'they are resolved that I, the originator of the whole scheme, shall have nothing to do with it; so I will (trusting in the great God who has brought me thus far) begin on my own inventions without employment.' The first of the series was 'Aristides hooted by the Populace,' and the conditions under which it was painted are described in his annual review of the year's work: 'I have painted a large Napoleon in four days and a half, six smaller different subjects, three Curtiuses, five Napoleons Musing, three Dukes and Copenhagens, George IV., and the Duke at Waterloo--half done Uriel--published my lectures--and settled composition of Aristides. I gave lectures at Liverpool, sometimes twice a day, and lectured at the Royal Institution. I have not been idle, but how much more I might have done!'
In 1845 Haydon exhibited his picture of 'Uriel and Satan' at the Academy, and 'after twenty-two years of abuse,' actually received a favourable notice in theTimes, For the Uriel he was paid £200, but five other pictures remained upon his hands, their estimated value amounting to nearly a thousand pounds, and he was left to work at hisAristideswith barely ten shillings for current expenses, and not a single commission in prospect. 'What a pity it is,' he observes, 'that a man of my order--sincerity, perhaps genius [in the Journal a private note is here inserted, "notperhaps"], is not employed. What honour, what distinction would I not confer on my great country! However, it is my destiny to perform great things, not in consequence of encouragement, but in spite of opposition, and so let it be.' In the latter part of the year came one or two minor pieces of good fortune for which Haydon professed the profoundest gratitude, declaring that he was not good enough to deserve such blessings. The King of Hanover bought a Napoleon for £200, and a pupil came, who paid a like sum as premium. His son, Frank, who had taken his degree, changed his mind again about his profession, and now 'shrank from the publicity of the pulpit.' Haydon applied to Sir Robert Peel for an appointment for the youth, and Peel, who seems to have shown the utmost patience and kindness in his relations with the unfortunate artist, at once offered a post in the Record Office at £80 a year, an offer which was gladly accepted.
Thus relieved of immediate care, Haydon set to work on the second picture of his series, 'Nero playing the Lyre while Rome was burning.' The effect of his conception, as he foresaw it in his mind's eye, was so terrific that he 'fluttered, trembled, and perspired like a woman, and was obliged to sit down.' Under all the anxiety, the pressure, and the disappointment of Haydon's life, it must be remembered that there were enormous compensations in the shape of days and hours of absorbed and satisfied employment, days and hours such as seldom fall to the lot of the average good citizen and solvent householder. The following entry alone is sufficient proof that Haydon, even in his worst straits, was almost as much an object of envy as of compassion: 'Worked with such intense abstraction and delight for eight hours, with five minutes only for lunch, that though living in the noisiest quarter of all London, I never remember hearing all day a single cart, carriage, knock, cry, bark of man, woman, dog, or child. When I came out into the sunshine I said to myself, "Why, what is all this driving about?" though it has always been so for the last twenty-two years, so perfectly, delightfully, and intensely had I been abstracted. If that be not happiness, what is?'
Haydon had now staked all his hopes upon the exhibition in the spring of 1846 of the first two pictures in his series, 'Aristides' and 'Nero.' If the public flocked to see them, if it accorded him, as he expected, its enthusiastic support, he hoped that the Commission would be shamed into offering him public employment. If, on the other hand, the exhibition failed, he must have realised that he would be irretrievably ruined, with all his hopes for the future slain. Everything was to be sacrificed to this last grand effort. 'If I lose this moment for showing all my works,' he writes, 'it can never occur again. My fate hangs on doing as I ought, and seizing moments with energy. I shall never again have the opportunity of connecting myself with a great public commission by opposition, and interesting the public by the contrast. If I miss it, it will be a tide not taken at the flood.'
By dint of begging and borrowing, the money was scraped together for the opening expenses of the exhibition, and Haydon composed a sensational descriptive advertisement in the hope of attracting the public. The private view was on April 4, when it rained all day, and only four old friends attended. On April 6, Easter Monday, the public was admitted, but only twenty-one availed themselves of the privilege. For a few days Haydon went on hoping against hope that matters would improve, and that John Bull, in whose support he had trusted, would rally round him at last. But Tom Thumb was exhibiting next door, and the historical painter had no chance against the pigmy. The people rushed by in their thousands to visit Tom Thumb, but few stopped to inspect 'Aristides' or 'Nero.' 'They push, they fight, they scream, they faint,' writes Haydon, '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. Tom Thumb had 12,000 people last week, B. R. Haydon 133 1/2 (the half a little girl). Exquisite taste of the English people!... (May,18th) I closed my exhibition this day, and lost £111, 8s. 10d. No man can accuse me of showing less energy, less spirit, less genius than I did twenty-six years ago. I have not decayed, but the people have been corrupted. I am the same, they are not; and I have suffered in consequence.'
In defiance of this shipwreck of all his hopes, and the heavy liabilities that hung about his neck, this indomitable spirit began the third picture of his unappreciated series, 'Alfred and the First British Jury.' He had large sums to pay in the coming month, and only a few shillings in the house, with no commissions in prospect. He sends up passionate and despairing petitions that God will help him in his dreadful necessities, will raise him friends from sources invisible, and enable him to finish his last and greatest works. Appeals for help to Lord Brougham, the Duke of Beaufort, and Sir Robert Peel brought only one response, a cheque for £50 from Peel, which was merely a drop in the ocean. Day by day went by, and still no commissions came in, no offers for any of the large pictures he had on hand. Haydon began to lose confidence in his ability to finish his series, and with him loss of self-confidence was a fatal sign. The June weather was hot, he was out of health, and unable to sleep at night, but he declined to send for a doctor. His brain grew confused, and at last even the power to work, that power which for him had spelt pride and happiness throughout his whole life, seemed to be leaving him.
On June 16 he writes: 'I sat from two till five staring at my picture like an idiot, my brain pressed down by anxiety, and the anxious looks of my dear Mary and the children.... Dearest Mary, with a woman's passion, wishes me at once to stop payment, and close the whole thing. I will not. I will finish my six under the blessing of God, reduce my expenses, and hope His mercy will not desert me, but bring me through in health and vigour, gratitude and grandeur of soul, to the end.' The end was nearer than he thought, for even Haydon's brave spirit could not battle for ever with adverse fate, and the collapse, when it came, was sudden. The last two or three entries in the Journal are melancholy reading.
'June18.--O God, bless me through the evils of this day. My landlord, Newton, called. I said, "I see a quarter's rent in thy face, but none from me." I appointed to-morrow night to see him, and lay before him every iota of my position. Good-hearted Newton! I said, "Don't put in an execution." "Nothing of the sort," he replied, half hurt. I sent the Duke, Wordsworth, dear Fred and Mary's heads to Miss Barrett to protect. I have the Duke's boots and hat, Lord Grey's coat, and some more heads.
'20th.--O God, bless us through all the evils of this day. Amen.
'21st,.--Slept horribly. Prayed in sorrow, and got up in agitation.
'22nd.--God forgive me. Amen.
FINIS OF B. R. HAYDON.
'"Stretch me no longer on this rough world"--Lear.'
This last entry was made between ten and eleven o'clock on the morning of June 22. Haydon had risen early, and gone out to a gunmaker's in Oxford Street, where he bought a pair of pistols. After breakfast, he asked his wife to go and spend the day with an old friend, and having affectionately embraced her, shut himself in his painting-room. Mrs. Haydon left the house, and an hour later Miss Haydon went down to the studio, intending to try and console her father in his anxieties. She found him stretched on the floor in front of his unfinished picture of 'Alfred and the First Jury,' a bullet-wound in his head, and a frightful gash across his throat. A razor and a small pistol lay by his side. On the table were his Journal, open at the last page, letters to his wife and children, his will, made that morning, and a paper headed: 'Last thoughts of B. R. Haydon; half-past ten.' These few lines, with their allusions to Wellington and Napoleon, are characteristic of the man who had painted the two great soldiers a score of times, and looked up to them as his heroes and exemplars.
'No man should use certain evil for probable good, however great the object,' so they run. 'Evil is the prerogative of the Deity. Wellington never used evil if the good was not certain. Napoleon had no such scruples, and I fear the glitter of his genius rather dazzled me. But had I been encouraged, nothing but good would have come from me, because when encouraged I paid everybody. God forgive me the evil for the sake of the good. Amen.'
This tragic conclusion to a still more tragic career created a profound sensation in society, and immense crowds followed the historical painter to his grave. Among all his friends, perhaps few were more affected by his death than one who had never looked upon his face--his 'dear Æschylus Barrett, 'as he called her. Certain it is that, with the intuition of genius, Elizabeth Barrett understood, appreciated, and made allowances for the unhappy man more completely than was possible to any other of his contemporaries. Clear-sighted to his faults and weaknesses, her chivalrous spirit took up arms in defence of his conduct, even against the strictures of her poet-lover. 'The dreadful death of poor Mr. Haydon the artist,' she wrote to her friend Mrs. Martin, a few days after the event, 'has quite upset me. I thank God that I never saw him--poor gifted Haydon.... No artist is left behind with equal largeness of poetical conception. If the hand had always obeyed the soul, he would have been a genius of the first order. As it is, he lived on the slope of genius, and could not be steadfast and calm. His life was one long agony of self-assertion. Poor, poor Haydon! See how the world treats those who try too openly for its gratitude. "Tom Thumb for ever" over the heads of its giants.'
'Could any one--could my own hand even have averted what has happened?' she wrote to Robert Browning on June 24, 1846. 'My head and heart have ached to-day over the inactive hand. But for the moment it was out of my power, and then I never fancied this case to be more than a piece of a continuous case, of a habit fixed. Two years ago he sent me boxes and pictures precisely so, and took them back again--poor, poor Haydon!--as he will not this time.... Also, I have been told again and again (oh, never byyou, my beloved) that to give moneythere, was to drop it into a hole in the ground. But if to have dropped it so, dust to dust, would have saved a living man--what then?... Some day, when I have the heart to look for it, you shall see his last note. I understand now that there are touches of desperate pathos--but never could he have meditated self-destruction while writing that note. He said he should write six more lectures--six more volumes. He said he was painting a new background to a picture which made him feel as if his soul had wings... and he repeated an old phrase of his, which I had heard from him often before, and which now rings hollowly to the ears of my memory--that hecouldn't and wouldn't die. Strange and dreadful!'
Directly after Haydon's death a public meeting of his friends and patrons was held, at which a considerable sum was subscribed for the benefit of his widow and daughter. Sir Robert Peel, besides sending immediate help, recommended the Queen to bestow a small pension on Mrs. Haydon. The dead man's debts amounted to £3000, and his assets consisted chiefly of unsaleable pictures, on most of which his creditors had liens. In his will was a clause to the effect that 'I have manuscripts and memoirs in the possession of Miss Barrett, of 50 Wimpole Street, in a chest, which I wish Longman to be consulted about. My memoirs are to 1820; my journals will supply the rest. The style, the individuality of Richardson, which I wish not curtailed by an editor.' Miss Mitford was asked to edit the Life, but felt herself unequal to the task, which was finally intrusted to Mr. Tom Taylor.
Haydon'sMemoirs, compiled from his autobiography, journals, and correspondence, appeared in 1853, the same year that saw the publication of Lord John Russell'sLife of Thomas Moore. To the great astonishment of both critics and public, Haydon's story proved the more interesting of the two. 'Haydon's book is the work of the year,' writes Miss Mitford. 'It has entirely stopped the sale of Moore's, which really might have been written by a Court newspaper or a Court milliner.' Again, theAthenæum, a more impartial witness, asks, 'Who would have thought that the Life of Haydon would turn out a more sterling and interesting addition to English biography than the Life of Moore?' But the highest testimony to the merits of the book as a human document comes from Mrs. Browning, who wrote to Miss Mitford on March 19, 1854, 'Oh, I have just been reading poor Haydon's biography. There is tragedy! The pain of it one can hardly shake off. Surely, surely, wrong was done somewhere, when the worst is admitted of Haydon. For himself, looking forward beyond the grave, I seem to understand that all things, when most bitter, worked ultimate good to him, for that sublime arrogance of his would have been fatal perhaps to the moral nature, if further developed by success. But for the nation we had our duties, and we should not suffer our teachers and originators to sink thus. It is a book written in blood of the heart. Poor Haydon!' Mr. Taylor's Life was supplemented in 1874 by Haydon'sCorrespondence and Table-talk, together with aMemoirwritten in a tone of querulous complaint, by his second son, Frederick, who, it may be noted, had been dismissed from the public service for publishing a letter to Mr. Gladstone, entitledOur Officials at the Home Office, and who died in the Bethlehem Hospital in 1886. His elder brother, Frank, committed suicide in 1887.
On the subject of Haydon's merits as a painter the opinion of his contemporaries swung from one extreme to another, while that of posterity perhaps has scarcely allowed him such credit as was his due. It is certain that he was considered a youth of extraordinary promise by his colleagues, Wilkie, Jackson, and Sir George Beaumont, yet there were not wanting critics who declared that his early picture, 'Dentatus,' was an absurd mass of vulgarity and distortion. Foreign artists who visited his studio urged him to go to Rome, where he was assured that patrons and pupils would flock round him; while, on the other hand, he was described by a native critic (in theQuarterly Review) as one of the most defective painters of the day, who had received more pecuniary assistance, more indulgence, more liberality, and more charity than any other artist ever heard of. But the best criticism of his powers, though it scarcely takes into account the gift of imagination which received so many tributes from the poets, is that contributed to Mr. Taylor's biography by Mr. Watts, R.A.
'The characteristics of Haydon's art,' he writes, 'appear to me to be great determination and power, knowledge, and effrontery... Haydon appears to have succeeded as often as he displays any real anxiety to do so; but one is struck with the extraordinary discrepancy of different parts of the work, as though, bored by a fixed attention that had taken him out of himself, yet highly applauding the result, he had scrawled and daubed his brush about in a sort of intoxication of self-glory... In Haydon's work there is not sufficient forgetfulness of self to disarm criticism of personality. His pictures are themselves autobiographical notes of the most interesting kind; but their want of beauty repels, and their want of modesty exasperates. Perhaps their principal characteristic is lack of delicacy and refinement of execution.' While describing Haydon's touch as woolly, his surfaces as disagreeable, and his draperies as deficient in dignity, Mr. Watts admits that his expression of anatomy and general perception of form are the best by far that can be found in the English school. Haydon had looked forward in full confidence to the favourable verdict of posterity, and to an honourable position in the National Gallery for the big canvases that had been neglected by his contemporaries. It is not the least of life's little ironies that while not a single work of his now hangs in the National Gallery, his large picture of Curtius leaping into the Gulf occupies a prominent position in one of Gatti's restaurants. [Footnote: Three of Haydon's pictures, however, are the property of the nation. Two, the 'Lazarus' and 'May-day,' belong to the National Gallery, but have been lent to provincial galleries. One, the 'Christ in the Garden,' belongs to the South Kensington Museum, but has been stored away.]
As a lecturer, a theoriser, and a populariser of his art, Haydon has just claims to grateful remembrance. Though driven to paint pot-boilers for the support of his family, he never ceased to preach the gospel of high art; he was among the first to recognise and acclaim the transcendent merits of the Elgin Marbles; he rejoiced with a personal joy in the purchase of the Angerstein collection as the nucleus of a National Gallery; he scorned the ignoble fears of some of his colleagues lest the newly-started winter exhibitions of old masters should injure their professional prospects; he used his interest at Court to have Raphael's cartoons brought up to London for the benefit of students and public; he advocated the establishment of local schools of design, and, through his lectures and writings, helped to raise and educate the taste of his country.
Haydon has painted his own character and temperament in such vivid colours, that scarcely a touch need be added to the portrait. He was an original thinker, a vigorous writer, a keen observer, but from his youth up a disproportion was evident in the structure of his mind, that pointed only too clearly to insanity. His judgment, as Mr. Taylor observes, was essentially unsound in all matters where he himself was personally interested. His vanity blinded him throughout to the quality of his own work, the amount of influence he could wield, and the extent of the public sympathy that he excited. He was essentially religious in temperament, though his religion was so assertive and egotistical in type that those who hold with Rosalba that where there is no modesty there can be no religion, [Footnote: Rosalba said of Sir Godfrey Kneller, 'This man can have no religion, for he has no modesty.'] might be inclined to deny its existence. From the very outset of his career Haydon took up the attitude of a missionary of high art in England--and therewith the expectation of being crowned and enriched as its Priest and King. He clung to the belief that a man who devoted himself to the practice of a high and ennobling art ought to be supported by a grateful country, or at least by generous patrons, and he could never be made to realise that Art is a stern and jealous mistress, who demands material sacrifices from her votaries in exchange for spiritual compensations. If a man desires to create a new era in the art of his country, he must be prepared to lead a monastic life in a garret; but if, like Haydon, he allows himself a wife and eight children, and professes to be unable to live on five hundred a year, he must condescend to the painting of portraits and pot-boilers. The public cannot be forced to support what it neither understands nor admires, and, in a democratic state, the Government is bound to consult the taste of its masters.