I have a letter to my grandmother, 1 June 1843, from a nephew who had gone out to Australia and settled at Sydney. “Our county, Cumberland, in which Sydney is placed, will next month be the arena of a very spirited contest. We send two members, and there are four candidates, one of whom (the most monied man, a large distiller) tho’ now Free, was sent a Convict. We immigrants think it impudence of him to offer as a candidate, and the other party are as strong in his favour. I really think he will be elected, tho’ the Press teems with his crimes, the number of lashes received, and so on: his five associates were hanged. These people have an hatred to immigrants, and will not support them if they can deal with one of their own sort, and so frequently we see them get on much better than if they had come to the colony of their own free will.”
In spite of Convict competition this relative of mine did pretty well out there. In a letter to my father, 9 July 1874, he says that he has managed to put by £100,000 in the course of thirty years: all of it made by steady work, and none by speculation.
In his letter of 1 June 1843 he says, “The colony is labouring under temporary difficulties, but altogether it is advancing most rapidly: every downfall drives people to some fresh resources. Keeping sheep used to be almost the only employment: now that does not pay, agriculture is gaining ground, and instead of sending our coin to America for wheat, we grow our own. Altho’ sprung up like a mushroom in relation to the older towns of England, Sydney is as large as Exeter, its market buildings as good, its streets wider and the houses (that is, those recently built) as good as any: our George Street is fully two miles long, with all the bustle of Exeter Fore Street.”
Another first-cousin of my father’s went out to the colonies in very different style. He was a Chancery barrister in London, and was so cantankerous that they made him Attorney General of a colony in order to get rid of him, and then made him Chief Justice there to prevent his coming back—at any rate, that is what ill-natured people said. He had plenty of ability, but little experience in criminal law. He felt that pirates wanted hanging, and he hanged them; but I fear that he was technically wrong.
There were three brothers at Moreton who went out to America. They were not relations of mine, but were connexions by the marriage of their eldest brother to one of my great-great-aunts, a sister of my father’s mother’s mother. So far as I know the family history, it begins with Clement Jackson of Moreton and Honor his wife, and goes on through their son Abraham, born 1678, their grandson Jabez, born 1700, and their great-grandson James, born 1730, to their great-great-grandsons Jabez, born 1756, James, born 1757, Abraham, born 1767, and Henry, born 1778. The last three went to America in 1772, 1783 and 1790, married there, and died there in 1806, 1809, and 1840. They all settled in Georgia. Their father had a friend out there, John Wereat; and Wereat looked after James, and James looked after his young brothers.
James sided with the colonists in the War of Independence. He was in a law-office at Savannah in the spring of 1776, when the British ships came down from Boston commandeering; and he joined in the resistance there and went on through the war, becoming a colonel then and a major-general ten years afterwards. He was in the House of Representatives in the first Congress of the United States, 1789 to 1791, and (after a disputed election) again till 1793, and then in the Senate from 1793 to 1795, when he resigned and went back to Georgia to attend to matters there. He was Governor of Georgia from 1798 to 1801, and a Senator again from 1801 until his death (at Washington) in 1806. It was a strange career for anybody born at Moreton.
His brothers Abraham and Henry did not go out to America until the war was over. Abraham became a colonel. He fought a dozen duels, and in the last one he and his opponent shot each other through the legs. They had no seconds and no doctor, and were fighting on a lonely island in a stream; and both were nearly dead when they were found. That was the story that my father always told me; but I see there is a similar story in Charlton’sLife of James Jackson, page 18—“They went upon the ground without seconds, and fought at the desperate distance of a few feet.... Mr Wells lost his life, and Major Jackson was badly wounded in both of his knees.” That was in 1780, and the Major was James, not Abraham, who was still in England then.
The youngest brother, Henry, came over to Paris in 1814 as secretary of legation under Crawford, the United States minister-plenipotentiary; and, when Crawford left, he stayed on as chargé d’affaires till a new minister came. And his son, Henry Rootes Jackson, came over to Vienna as chargé d’affaires in 1853, and was United States minister-resident there from 1854 till 1858. At that time Francis Joseph was quite young, and had not yet acquired the kindly dignity that graced his later years; and H. R. Jackson told my father how very difficult it was, in speaking to that great raw boy, to realize that one was speaking to an Apostolic Majesty.
He was staying in London with my father in July and August 1854, and was talking of coming down to stay here, but I am not certain that he ever came. In an undated letter from Vienna he says, “If you could get my father’s likeness for me, I should be most grateful.” And my grandfather writes to my father, 31 December 1854, “I have Mr Jackson’s picture and have paid a pound for it. It is a much better thing than I expected: it is very well done, and the colours are very good; but the paper is rotten. He has but one eye: his dress resembles more of the nobility than of the middle classes.” This suggests some earlier member of the Jackson family; but I do not know which one had lost an eye.
He wrote my father letters of rather ponderous jocosity: thus, Vienna, 8 December 1855, “I have determined, on the whole, not to take immediate notice of the aspersions which you have felt yourself called upon to launch at my country in general, and at the hogs of my native state in particular. If I recollect aright, there are certain points in the British Isles where persons, who raise hogs, are in the habit of tying knots in their tails to prevent them from getting entirely through such holes as may be accidentally left in barn walls. I leave it to be determined whether these would, or would not, be apt scholars in the art of snake killing.” On sending her one of these letters to read, 11 December 1856, my father remarks to my mother that it is “a strange contrast to the refined and classic taste of his poems.” His poems, I believe, were never much known in England; or even in America, outside the southern states. And the best of them,My wife and child, was attributed to T. J. Jackson, usually called ‘Stonewall.’
H. R. Jackson had been a colonel in the Mexican war, and was made a brigadier-general in the Confederate army at the beginning of the War of Secession; and he went through it all, surrendering at last at Nashville. He had a son whom I remember very well; and the boy went all through it too, from the beginning (when he was under sixteen) down to the bitter end. So late as 31 May 1864 he writes from Savannah, “I am confident of our ultimate success.” Thirty years afterwards, when he talked of it to me, he said the Southerners had not been beaten by the Northerners themselves, but by an alien force: there were comparatively few real Yankees amongst the prisoners and dead. No doubt, the South would have enlisted foreigners too, had not the blockade excluded them.
People in England mostly saw things from the Southern point of view; and when the Northern point of view was put before them, it was not always put persuasively. A certain Dr Jephson of Boston, U.S., delivered an address at the Athenæum at Exeter on 17 March 1863. “The present murderous and fratricidal war in the United States has been fomented by the American slave-holders and the cotton-brokers in England.... This plot on the part of the American slave-holders and the cotton fraternity in England conjointly, to destroy the American Union, has served to evoke such a bitter feeling on the part of the American people against England....” Here was a red rag for John Bull. What right had the Northerners to call themselves the American people? They were only part of it, and the Southerners were part as well. If this had been a cotton-spinning district, there would have been a riot. In those years I was often staying with an aunt of mine not far from Macclesfield and Bollington, where there were cotton mills; and I saw something of the misery and destitution there, when the mills ceased work for want of raw material. No one cared a bit about the merits of the quarrel between the North and South; but everyone could see it was the Northerners who caused all this distress—the supply of cotton was stopped by their blockade.
It usually was called a fratricidal war; but in many of the letters here I find it called ‘this stupid war,’ and perhaps that was the better epithet. Had the northern states said Go In Peace, the Wayward Sisters would have been home again by now.
My father writes to my grandfather, Basle, 8 August 1849, “Mr Elihu Burritt, the American writer, is travelling to get converts to the Peace Congress, who are going to hold their next meeting at Paris on the 22nd. I had several hours of conversation with him about America.... Four Americans arrived here with us last evening, for a rapid run thro’ the country and then on to attend the Peace Congress. They cannot speak anything but English, and I had to translate for them at the stations, else they would have got nothing to eat all day.”
My father always wrote home an account of little things to entertain the old folks here. Thus, he writes from Exeter, 30 October 1838, “I went to the Cathedral on Sunday morning: the Bishop seemed wonderfully devout. He always is so in appearance, but there was less parade of it on Sunday. I hope his sins, or at least a few of them, were wiped away by his humility.”
He writes to one of his aunts, 19 August 1839, that he had been to Windsor the day before (Sunday) and a friend at court had given him a seat in the inner part of St George’s Chapel, and the Queen “wore a white bonnet placed very far back over the head,” and “seemed tolerably attentive to the service.”... “Afterwards she came out to walk on the terrace, and walked all round amongst the people: we all made way, and divided into two rows to let her pass between: she bowed to the people as she passed, but walked through with a most royal air. She wore the same little bonnet, and a blue gown and shawl. The Duchess of Kent walked behind, occasionally by the side of her, but generally the Queen walked on in front, very boldly, and seemed not to mind going in amongst the crowd.”
He writes to my grandmother, 11 June 1840, “There has been a good deal of talk here today in consequence of a young fellow having last evening fired two pistols at the Queen as she was riding out: he was within eight yards of her carriage, which was a low open one: the bullets passed very near, but both missed her: he is in custody.... Last week I had a ticket given me and was at the great Slave Trade Abolition meeting at Exeter Hall. Prince Albert was in the chair: he looks at least 24 or 25, and has a regular German expression of face. He managed very well and was notat all puzzled or frightened at facing so large a meeting. He read his speech off his hat. There were some good speeches, Archdeacon Wilberforce, Dr Lushington, Sir Robert Peel, the latter much cheered, altho’ the applause to O’Connell beat everything else. It was tremendous. I met him walking in Fleet Street a day or two previously. He was then looking rather meanly dressed, but at the Meeting he was in prime order, his best wig all nicely curled, a new hat, good coat, and his face red and shining as a schoolboy’s.”
At that time of life my father thought a good deal of the way that people dressed. I have seen two letters of his to young men coming up to town: he tells them what things should be done and what things left undone; but, before all things, they must not fail to wear black satin stocks. The satin gleams in a daguerreotype of him, taken at Daguerre’s on 7 or 8 October 1842, “on the roof of a seven story house, whence there is a splendid view of Paris.” Later portraits of him show the gradual decline of the stock into a chequered neckerchief, and then into a lavender necktie taking only one turn round the neck.
He writes to one of his aunts, 9 May 1839, “We went to the National Gallery and saw all the new paintings of the year.” From 1838 to 1868 the Royal Academy exhibitions were held at the National Gallery—I went to several of them there—but they had previously been held at Somerset House. He notes in his diary, 13 July 1832, “Went to Somerset House, saw all the paintings,” and on 25 July, “Went to Angerstein’s paintings.” The present National Gallery was not built then, and the pictures were still at Angerstein’s in Pall Mall.—He also notes, 31 July, “Saw Perkins’ steam gun, which fired 78 bullets in one minute against some very thick iron plates at 30 yards distance, where the bullets were immediately flattened with the force.”
He writes to her again from the Belle Vue at Brussels, 27 July 1839, “The interior of the inn is all good, excepting as to carpets, which are scarce, being of English manufacture and a heavy duty paid on them.” Yet we talk of Brussels carpets: also of Vienna glass. I have a letter here that I wrote to my mother from Vienna, 15 August 1875, “Not a bit of Vienna glass to be seen anywhere.”
My father writes from Louvain, 11 October 1843, “We went out after the rain to see the most remarkable object in the town, the magnificent Hôtel de Ville: far surpassing the idea I had formed from the engravings of it. The whole of the exterior is most elaborately and finely carved, and delicate beyond description; and it is absolutely perfect as regards repair, not one inch of carving being broken.”—Happily it is quite perfect still, in spite of our great Propaganda lie of the Destruction of Louvain.
He writes from Braine-le-Comte, 3 August 1849, “I don’t notice the slightest difference in France caused by the Revolution: all seems just as it used to be.” And from Basle, 8 August, “All the Baden territory is under martial law and full of Prussian troops, but agriculture goes on just as if nothing had happened.”
He writes from Dinan to my grandfather on 12 August 1847, “This morning we went through the market and saw pigs there as tall and thin as greyhounds.” And to my grandmother on 15 August, “You would be surprised to see how exemplary the parish priests are here in their conduct: it beats everything I have ever seen in England. Their whole time is devoted to their flock. They have serviceeveryday, and spend the rest of it in calling on the different members of their congregation, the poorest as well as the richest.”
Though my father’s letters were pretty full, my grandmother detected gaps. She writes, 15 January 1840, “You don’t say who you were with at Covent Garden seeing out the old year and bringing in the new. I should like to know.” And then she gives him a little bit of good advice—“Youth passes rapidly away: therefore, my dear son, make the most and the best of it.” Later on she feared that he was making a little too much of it. She writes him, 20 November 1842, “I hope never to hear you express a wish to go on the Continent more. I recollect your saying when you came to Wreyland that you had not been in bed for two nights.” I see from his diary that it was three: one in the diligence, Paris to Boulogne, the next in the steamer, Boulogne to London, and the next in the train, London to Taunton, and in the coach from there. I see also from his diary that he was at Covent Garden with persons of complete respectability.
I have nearly a thousand letters that my grandfather and grandmother wrote to him from here, and I suppose he wrote as many in reply; but few of these survived. My grandfather writes to him, 29 October 1848, “I looked all the house over for your letter, but could not find it, your mother having destroyed lots of my papers, as she does when it takes her in head, without asking whether it is of importance or not: which very often inconveniences me.” I wish my grandfather had locked his papers up.
People have told me that they have destroyed old parchments, “as nobody could read such things.” And out of ignorance or wantonness people have been destroying things year after year. In 1837 my father was taking notes and copying documents, as if he meant to write a history of the neighbourhood. On coming to Wrey Barton he observes, “The late owner is said about fifteen years ago to have burnt all the deeds which were then more than sixty years old.” In the winter of 1838-39 he copied out a document of 20 August 1607 with a copy of a document of 21 September 1342 annexed to it, “which roll is now shewed forth to the said commissioners, and the copy thereof is filed unto these presentments.” The old roll sets out the customs of the manor of South Teign. That manor extended into the parishes of Chagford, Moreton and North Bovey, and first belonged to the Crown and then to the Duchy of Cornwall. Under an Act of 13 July 1863 (26 & 27 Victoria, cap. 49) the Duchy was empowered to sell the manor; and there is a letter from the Duchy office, 4 November 1863, asking my father for a copy of his copy. I suppose the original had disappeared since 1839.
My father once sent a friend a ‘short-copy’ of an article on the interaction of the Anglo-Saxon and the Celtic languages. A ‘short-copy’ is a reprint of such pages in a publication as make up an article; but the venerable man was not aware of this, and wrote back in a rage, Moreton, 28 July 1857, “Some confounded rascal has torn away 38 pages from the beginning of the work, and how many from the latter part I cannot say, it ends at 94. If I could get hold of the ears of the scoundrel, I would make them tingle. Such a gratuitous piece of mischief is enough to make a saint mad, for I dare say the fellow could make no more of his plunder than a pig.”
In the English edition of Hanotaux’sContemporary Francethere is a footnote, vol. 1, page 127—“Demander a Bertrand le text Billet.” Bertrand was the librarian at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and I suppose Hanotaux wanted to quote the document at first hand from the archives instead of quoting it at second hand as printed in Lamberty. And his editor did not understand.
The ancients also made mistakes like that. There is a Greek inscription at Stratoniceia, engraved in Fellows’Asia Minor, pages 255, 256. It looks just like a table of accounts—the words begin at the left end of the lines, and at the right end there are figures, with an interval of varying length between the figures and the words. It really is a set of verses, and the figures give the number of letters in each line. They probably were meant to guide the mason in his work, but he has carved it all up on the temple wall. On the temple wall at Denderah there is a long inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphics with portraits of the deities who are mentioned in the text. At the portrait of Isis the hieroglyphics say “wood: gold: eyes of precious stone: two cubits high,” at the portrait of Heqit (the frog goddess) they say “silver overlaid with gold: five spans high,” and so on—it is engraved in Mariette’sDenderah, vol.IV, plate 88. The mason has carved his instructions on the wall, not knowing the meaning of the hieroglyphs.
Goethe used often to dictate, but did not always look at what was written down; and years afterwards (Werke, vol.XLV, pp. 158 ff., ed. 1835) he found that Tugendfreund had been taken down as Kuchenfreund, John Hunter as Schon Hundert, and so on.
Printers sometimes make mistakes. In a proof that I was reading for a friend, the nomen and pre-nomen of RamesesIIhad become his women and pre-women. But very often it is not the printer’s fault. In my formerSmall TalkI wrote Anaxagoras for Aristagoras, and passed it in the proofs, page 76. Had it been anybody else’s work, I should have seen the error at once; but I suppose my mind was running on what I meant to say, and I thought I saw it there. And this may also be the reason why amateur artists very often fail to see the faults in their own work. They see the picture that they meant to paint, and not the daub that they have done.
Poets, I presume, use verse in preference to prose because it suits their thoughts; and yet they often sacrifice the substance to the form. InYe mariners of EnglandCampbell wants a rhyme for ‘seas,’ and therefore says their flag has braved ‘the battle and the breeze.’ It ought to be ‘the battle and the blast’—the breeze needs no more braving than sham-fights. InDies iræTommaso da Celano (or whoever it was) had to find a rhyme for ‘favilla’ and ‘sibylla,’ and thus came down to ‘dies illa,’ which is much too mild a term for Doomsday. Translators have avoided this by putting in some stronger term—Macaulay makes it “On that great, that awful day.” And in translations this is possible, though not in the original, as there is no fit word that rhymes.
According to Macaulay’sIvry, the knights had only one spur each, “a thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest, a thousand knights,” etc. Tennyson says Six Hundred inThe Charge of the Light Brigade, but that was not actually the strength. If I were editing him, I should put in a note in proper form—“six hundred: compare ‘sexcenta’ in Latin and ‘hexacosia’ in late Greek, a round number based on the Babylonian sexagesimal system and used indefinitely, like myriad.”
Annotations and translations may explain things, but are never so neat as emendations that make an author say just what you think he should have said. Why should Saint Paul want ladies to cover their heads, ‘dia tous aggelous,’ because of the angels? Listen to Jeremy Taylor, hisLiberty of Prophesying, section 3, “If it were read ‘dia tous agelous,’ that the sense be, women in public assemblies must wear a vail, by reason of the companies of young men there present, it would be no ill exchange for the loss of a letter, to make so probable, so clear a sense of the place.”
And very often emendations may be made without touching the letters at all, Shakespeare says in hisSonnets, 107, “The prophetic soul of the wide world, dreaming on things to come.” Homer might likewise say that the future is in the dreams of the gods, ‘theôn en g’ounasi,’ instead of saying that it is on their knees, ‘en gounasi.’ An apostrophe is all you want. Change the vowel-points, and you may connect Magdalene with ‘megaddela,’ and so get Mary the Masseuse.
When Aristotle’sConstitution of Athenswas brought to light and printed, I made some observations on it in theAthenæum, 7 February 1891, a few days after it came out. The editor had cited the passage in chapter 54 which shows that it was written after 329B.C., but had overlooked a passage in chapter 46 which shows that it was written before 325B.C.; and I cited this passage, and thereby limited the date. Amongst other things I proposed to readarchitheô... forarchiereô... in chapter 56, as I happened to remember thatarchitheôroiscame in the same context in an inscription of that period. I think my reading was right—all subsequent editions have adopted it—but I should very much like to know if the word went wrong in copying or dictation, or was a slip of Aristotle’s own pen.
I fancy that the Greek and Latin authors wrote the wrong word now and then, and never noticed it. That is not the view of textual critics and editors: they ascribe all errors to the men who copied out the manuscripts. But this limits them to errors that might arise in copying, and thus restricts the choice of emendations far too much. Take such an emendation asIsaraforArarin Livy, xxi. 31. This makes Livy say that the river was the Isère, not the Saône; but the context requires him to say it was the Durance, otherwise he would be saying ‘right’ instead of ‘left’ a few lines further on. A copyist might easily writeararforisara, so this emendation is accepted, although it does not suit.
Such emendations are deceitful things. In this case they make Livy say the Isère, and make Polybios say it also, iii. 49, though he says something else; and then Members of the Alpine Club go saying that the river must have been the Isère, since Livy and Polybios agree in saying that it was. Other folk may say it does not matter what the river was; but that is a reason for leaving the whole thing alone, not for getting it wrong. If you take it up at all, you should not risk the sort of snubbing that Westbury gave the herald after cross-examination—“Go away, you silly man: you don’t even understand your own silly science.”
My father used to tell me of Westbury’s methods at the Bar. A judge would put a question that seemed to be a poser. Westbury would pause, and then he would not only answer it convincingly, but would put the point with such lucidity that you could notunderstand how anyone had failed to see it. And the judge would turn quite red, feeling that he had asked a foolish question, and people in court would titter and guffaw, though half of them could never have answered it at all.
But gifts that help an advocate, may be a hindrance to an author. It does sometimes happen that a reviewer knows no more about a subject than he could gather from the book he is reviewing. An author collects materials till he is bewildered—“cannot see the wood for the trees”—and he makes a bulky book, putting all this material in, but doing nothing to clear the subject up. And the reviewer will praise him for his wealth of learning, and will say he has done all that is humanly possible towards the solution of a problem that really is insoluble. Another author sifts the materials and solves the problem. He makes a much smaller book, putting in nothing that is not essential, and stating his conclusions so effectively that they command assent. And the reviewer will dismiss it as a book of platitudes, which tells you nothing that is not obvious to the meanest comprehension.—These, of course, are extreme cases; but the reviewer often fails to see that mere pomposity is not a guarantee of solid learning, and that frivolity need not mean shallowness. There was an essay,The critic as artist, written by Wilde in 1891, and full of epigram and paradox; and the reviewers were so dazzled by his flippancy that hardly any of them saw how much sound sense there was beneath it all. A good judge told me that he considered it the best thing of its kind since Plato.
A friend of mine in the same house at Harrow went up to Oxford at the same time that I went up to Cambridge, October 1876. He came over to see me at Trinity, and I went over to see him at Magdalen. (It made me wish that I had gone there too.) On the Sunday evening the Lessons were read by one of the Demies. His reading was dramatically good, but his appearance was astonishing, with his long hair hanging down upon his surplice. I asked who on earth he was, and was told he was a man named Wilde, who could be awfully amusing, but dressed just like a guy. I never made his acquaintance; but, having once seen him, I knew him by sight for evermore. The last time I saw him was in September 1897. I was at Naples, and he was staying in the same hotel—under an assumed name.
My father was never a collector, but would sometimes buy a thing he liked. My grandfather did not approve, and used to write him letters about it, thus, 27 May 1855, “I should say your money might be more advantageously employed than with coins and pictures.” When my grandfather was eighty and my father fifty, this lecturing still went on: 27 July 1869, “You may say No business of mine. I am your father.” It was my turn next. I had a little money when I came of age, and I had a wish to buy a picture by Burne Jones,Laus Veneris. My elders looked askance, and talked about Consols; but I should have made a very much better investment than Consols, had I bought that picture then and sold it some years afterwards.
Amongst other presents when I came of age, I got a pair of old bronze busts of Roman emperors. They have been a source of pleasure to me now for forty years; but a dear old lady asked me on that festal day what comfort I should find in them upon my death-bed. There is a precept in the Talmud,Bâbâ Bathrâ, vol.VIII, page 60b—“If they are merry at a wedding-feast, cast ashes on the bridegroom’s head.” Happily, she did not know of that. She would have done it, if she had.
I began collecting Greek vases soon after I had come of age, and I found many pitfalls in the way. Thus, I bought three vases somewhere in Etruria in 1883, and the owner undertook to smuggle them out of Italy; but one of the three he sent me, was not one of the three I chose; and I had no redress. There was never much risk of buying a vase that was a downright sham. Plenty of ancient vases come to light in a dilapidated state, and the forgers fake these up in preference to making new ones. I got to know their tricks, but have not kept pace with them since I gave up collecting. In looking at a vase not long ago, I said I could not see the slightest difference between the new glaze and the old. A wiser man said, “Lick it,” and then I found the new glaze had a different taste.
I was at a sale of antiquities at Sotheby’s in 1890, and one of the lots consisted of two Greek vases which were so much alike in style and shape and size that they would make a pair. But one of them was obviously a modern copy of the Amymone vase in the Jatta collection at Ruvo; and people in the auction room resented this,and called out to the auctioneer to go on to the next lot. He said, “But really, gentlemen, are there no bids at all for this?” and I said, “Oh, ten shillings,” and he knocked it down to me. And thus I not only got the copy but got the other vase as well; and this is genuine enough and very interesting too, as it depicts the race in which a lighted torch was carried by runners in relays.
All these Greek vases here were made between 600 and 400B.C.or thereabouts. In the early style the figures are painted in black and purple on the pale yellow of the clay: in the next style the clay is orange and the painting is technically better, and large portions of the vases are painted black: in the next stage the process is reversed—instead of black figures on an orange or yellow background, there is now a black background with red figures, red being now the colour of the clay. These red-figured vases show Greek art at its very best, and the others mark the stages that led up to it. Personally, I do not care much for vases earlier than these. Very nice vases were found at Ialysos in the island of Rhodes, and Ruskin bought them for the British Museum; but they have none of those great qualities that make Greek art worth studying, nor even a foretaste of such qualities. In its maturity Greek art was far the greatest that the world has ever seen, but it was not so in its infancy or its senile decay.
Apart from any merit they may have as works of art, Greek vases often have a human interest, especially if they are inscribed. One vase here tells you as an interesting fact, “Tleson, the son of Nearchos, made me.” Another says, “Zephyria is a beauty”; and there is the lady herself, attired in a very big helmet and a little pair of drawers, wielding a shield and spear as she performs a Pyrrhic dance. (There is a picture of this vase in theRevue Archéologiquefor 1895, vol.XXVI, page 221.) Another depicts a man conversing with a youth, and the man has the features of Socrates and satyr’s ears as well. This vase came out of a tomb at Siana in the island of Rhodes, and is as fresh as when it left the potter’s hands at Athens: its only blemish is the imprint of his thumb, made by touching it before the clay was dry. Others are interesting for their former owners’ sake. One belonged to Fergusson, the historian of architecture, and another to Samuel Rogers, the poet, and others to great collectors of the Vulci period, such as Beugnot and Durand.
Being at Burgos, 3 September 1877, I went out to the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, the burial-place of the Cid. The monastery had been uninhabited for forty years: the keys were kept at a village some way off, and the man who kept them had gone out shooting. (Whilst waiting for his return, I saw a little of Spanish agriculture: the oxen treading out the corn, and the peasants winnowing it by throwing it up into the air and trusting to the wind to blow the chaff away.) When he returned, we went down to the monastery; and in the library he suggested that I might like to take away a book or two in remembrance of the place. I had scruples, but he really was considering the best interests of the books themselves. If I had taken them, they might be here in safety; and they have rotted away.
The museums at Athens were a sore temptation to collectors, when I first went there more than forty years ago. There were a dozen of these museums scattered about the town: some of them mere sheds, and hardly any with glass cases for the smaller things, but only wire netting. And there were such beautiful little things that would so easily come through the mesh and go into a collector’s pocket; and they could not possibly be reclaimed, as they were not marked or numbered, and the inventories were vague. In my innocence I bought a vase from a distinguished man (a Greek) and paid him rather a high price for it, forgetting that he probably had stolen it, and I might just as well have stolen it myself.
A very curious vase was discovered in Ægina and placed in one of these museums, a shed on the Acropolis. The vase had a globular body and a griffin’s neck and head above, with the griffin’s beak as spout. A long time afterwards the British Museum bought a vase exactly like it, discovered (it was said) in Thera. As there was one vase of this kind, there might very well be others; but the vase from Ægina was no longer to be found in any museum at Athens.
There was a good collection of ancient coins in one of these museums, and on the night of 10/11 November 1887 the best part of the collection disappeared. It was stolen by a well-known resident at Athens, Dr Pericles Raphtopoulos, who was afterwards unwise enough to go to Paris and steal a collection there, not realising that the French police-force was more efficient than the Greek. But the facts had not come out when I reached Athens in the early spring(1888) and everybody told me that the Keeper had been selling the finest specimens, one by one, and replacing them by imitations, until at last he saw the game was up, and sold off all the fine coins that remained. (In reality, the imitations had been bought to illustrate some lectures.) There is much public spirit in Greece; and many people were giving their private collections to the nation, to make good the loss. I fancied that the next Keeper might sell all these as well; but the answer was, “Oh, no, we will not have a Greek again,” and they appointed Dr Pick.
Accidents will happen in the very best museums. In 1845 the Portland vase was smashed in the British Museum, and in 1900 the François vase was smashed in the Museo Archeologico at Florence. The damage in London was done by an outsider: not so at Florence, if what I heard was true. I was told (at the time) that the Keeper was reprimanding a mutinous subordinate: the vase was on its pedestal in the centre of the room: the insubordinate person threw a heavy stool at his superior’s head, but unfortunately missed him and hit the vase instead. The bits were put together so very skilfully that, when I saw the vase again, I hardly noticed the repairs.
At the British Museum there used to be officials called Attendants. They were appointed by the Lord Chancellor, the Primate and the Speaker, and usually were men of whom they had some personal knowledge. One of these Attendants had been a servant of a former Primate, and he was like a father to the students, taking care of their drawings and easels, and giving them much good advice. I happened to be dining with some friends in Portland Place, and was amazed to see him officiating as butler there in his most archiepiscopal style. (The butler of the house had got the gout, and he had been called in.) When I saw him next, he spoke apologetically—“Not a very satisfactory dinner, sir, I fear, when I had the pleasure of meeting you last week. All aspics and jellies, sir, and there should have been lamb cutlets.”
One of my friends had a particularly pompous butler. A girl gave my friend a kitten, and he called it Cissy after her. Missing the kitten one morning, he inquired, “Where’s Cissy?” The butler bowed. “I beg your pardon, sir, you may not have observed it, but Cissy is a Lady’s name, and the cat is a Gentleman cat.”
At a sale at Christie’s in 1903 I saw a painting that attracted me, and I bought it, and hung it in the Tallet here. It was catalogued only as a portrait, 30 × 25, English School, and “the property of a gentleman”; but it appears to be a portrait of James Barry (1741-1806) painted by himself, when he was young. There are other portraits of him painted by himself at other times of life: one at the National Portrait Gallery, another at the South Kensington Museum, another at the Society of Arts, and probably others elsewhere. He also painted himself as Timanthes in theVictors at Olympia, one of his big pictures at the Society of Arts; and it seems clear to me (though Boswell did not see it) that Dr Johnson was thinking of Pliny’s criticism of Timanthes, when he made his celebrated criticism on Barry’s pictures there, 26 May 1783—“Whatever the hand may have done, the mind has done its part. There is a grasp of mind there which you will find nowhere else.” Pliny had said, “cum sit ars summa, ingenium tamen ultra artem est.”
In those six huge pictures he depicts the progress of the human race from the time of Orpheus onward till it comes to Navigation and Commerce and the Society of Arts, and thus into Elysium, with a glimpse of Tartarus beyond. This last bit was invidious, and he was asked for explanations “respecting the emaciated leg which belongs to the garter and star precipitating into Tartarus, which was said to be a portrait made out of resentment to a great nobleman.” Up in Elysium, Marcus Brutus is leaning on the shoulder of Sir Thomas More; Lycurgus is examining the laws of William Penn, who is supported by King Alfred; Annibale Carracci is talking to Pheidias, with Giles Hussey just behind him; and so on throughout a picture forty-two feet long. And all these people in Elysium wear the clothes they wore on earth. Barry had made progress since theDeath of Wolfe. West painted that exactly as it happened, with everyone in uniform. Most artists thought it should have been idealized; and, as a protest, Barry painted it with all the figures in the nude.
Barry was in Rome from 1766 to 1770, and Winckelmann was there till 1768; and Winckelmann irritated Barry. Amongst other things, “Abbé Wincleman, who has also passed a magisterial censure upon all the English poets, was, to my own knowledge ofhim, so little acquainted with the language they wrote in, that he was scarcely able to understand even an ordinary article of intelligence in one of our gazettes.” That comes in hisInquiry into the real and imaginary obstructions to the acquisition of the Arts in England, published in 1775. Speaking of this in 1798, he says—“My idea of writing on that subject arose from the ill-founded, scurrilous aspersions on the climate and on the genius and capacity of the people of our islands, which made part of the history of the art, written by the Abbé Wincleman, and (whilst I was at Rome) much read and talked of, to the great annoyance of our little colony at the English coffee-house.” The coffee-house was in the Piazza di Spagna, and the colony then numbered about thirty artists, English, Scotch and Irish.
He says in hisInquiry, “They ascribe the grand style of design of the Greeks and Italians to the frequent opportunities that occur in such warm climates of seeing the people naked.... In our countries the practice of boxing alone furnishes more frequent exhibitions of the naked, and of the best kind, than any that are now to be met with in Italy.” I fancy he was wrong about the quantity of nudity, but right about its quality. Better models could be found in England than anywhere abroad, if artists took the trouble to secure them.
Looking at their landscapes, I sometimes think that English artists care less for getting the finest point of view than getting the most comfortable place to pitch their easel and camp-stool. And usually they take professional models for the figure, as these are easiest to get. They have not the enterprise of Giovanni di Bologna in asking an entire stranger to be sculptured in the nude. TheRape of the Sabinesshows how wise he was in asking Ginori.
Winckelmann said that he saw people in real life, who were more beautiful than Guido’sArchangelor Raphael’sGalatea. And if our artists took the trouble, they might see people here in England, who are more beautiful than anything in modern art. One afternoon I saw a bather walking up the sands; and he caught sight of something in the distance, and stopped abruptly, putting up his hand to shade his eyes. If I could have fixed him there in gilded bronze, he might have faced theApoxyomenosor any other figure by Lysippos.
When artists find their models fall short of their ideals, they usually begin idealizing them. And when the models are Italians, this answers very well, as the Italians are not unlike the ancient Greeks in build, and the ancient Greeks have given most artists their ideals. But when the models are English, it does not do at all, the English being generally built another way. For one thing, the ilio-femoral ligament is not so short, and an Englishman can therefore straighten out his back to an extent that few Italians can, and no Greeks ever could. Think of theDoryphorosand theDiadumenosbeing measured for frock-coats, and the amount of padding that the tailor would have to put in the small of the back to make their coats look right.
The professional models in England used mostly to be Italians; but now there are many Jews among them, and a few of other races. A model once explained to me, “Here I am of the Latin race: there I am Slav,” first pointing towards the buttocks and then towards the chest. We must have thoroughbred English models, if we want real English art; but the right people are seldom willing to endure the strain of staying motionless for fifty minutes at a time, though some of the professional models can do that five or six times in a day. The only chance would be with snap-shots or time-studies, taking only a few minutes each.
In looking at the students’ work at the National Competitions of Art Schools, I always feel that some schools treat their students rather badly in giving them such wretched models. It must be discouraging to have to draw these people who are not worth drawing, though not so great a waste of time as drawing plaster casts and other easy things. You set beginners to shoot snipe, reckoning that this will teach them to shoot anything; and you should likewise start beginners at the life-class.
There is a prize for studies from life, given by the Society of Arts out of the income of a fund that was subscribed as a memorial to Mulready; and the studies are exhibited at these National Competitions. But the prize cannot now be given every year, as the income is too small. A patron of the Arts might well augment that fund.
When models sit for great artists, they will ask them now and then why they do this or that and why they do it one way rather than another. Thinking the answers over and comparing them, the models get an insight into things that few critics understand. I have generally found professional models acuter than professional critics in their judgments upon works of art.
In the days of the Pre-Raphaelites the professional critics did their best to crush the young men who could paint, and now-a-days they praise the young men who can neither paint nor draw. Both methods are annoying to real artists, though they will some day make their mark, whatever the critics may say. But the new method is more harmful, as it gives the scamps their chance. They see that critics can talk the public into giving 50 or 100 guineas for things that would not otherwise fetch more than 18 pence; and they can easily hoax the critics.
I believe that public taste is guided more by Baedeker than by any other man or body of men or books. When I go sightseeing abroad, I see people of all nations relying on his Guides. They hardly look at anything unless it has a star *, and when there is a double star **, their admiration knows no bounds. Stars, however, rise and set, and single and double sometimes interchange. I have compared his treatment of the Brera at Milan in hisNorthern Italyin the first English edition, 1868, and in the fourteenth, 1913. (I had these with me on the earliest and the latest of my visits there.) In 1868 six pictures have a star, and one has a double star. In 1913 the double star remains, and two of the single stars, but the other four have disappeared; and there now are stars to seven pictures that had none in 1868. And people go star-gazing just the same.
My father made old Baedeker’s acquaintance in 1839 or ’40, and formed a very high opinion of him. At that time he was a bookseller in Coblence, and little known outside the Rhineland, the subject of his earliest Guide. Thirty years ago I thought that Hendschel would oust Bradshaw just as Baedeker had ousted Murray; but the Continental Bradshaw was afterwards brought up to date, and Murray’s Guides were not.
There was a big statue of Wellington at Hyde Park Corner, where there is a little statue of him now; and the big statue stood upon the Arch until the Arch was taken down and set up further back in 1883. A great-uncle of mine writes to my maternal grandmother, 23 March 1847, “I have seen the Wellington Statue. It is not at all too large for the Arch, and is a noble thing indeed.” It was new then, and everyone was finding fault with it. It was much too big for the Arch, and it was not a noble thing; but the present statue of the Duke is an ignoble thing. If things are bad, by all means do away with them; but do not replace them by things that may be just as bad, though with another kind of badness. Look at the great west window in Exeter Cathedral: the new glass has not the same demerits as the old, but as a work of art it is every bit as bad, and it is much less interesting.
While the new Cathedral at Westminster was being built, I went in several times to see it, and once I tested its acoustics very unexpectedly. The chancel steps had not been built, so I walked up a plank; and the plank came up like a see-saw when I reached the higher end. It jerked me off, and I said something suitable. And then my words ascended to the apse, and were rolled back along the nave and aisles like a thunderous Amen.—I remember three designs for that Cathedral. First it was to be a Gothic building, rivalling the Abbey. Then it was designed as a Basilica, rather like St Paul’s at Rome as rebuilt since the fire. And then came the Byzantine thing we know: like all Byzantine things, far better inside than out.
An architect in London designed a house near here, and a specification was sent down from town: all walls to rest upon a concrete bed of specified size. The site was solid rock; and tons of granite were blasted out to make way for the concrete bed.—I happened to tell this to a ship-owner, and he remarked with some surprise, “I thought it was only Government officials who did that kind of thing.” And he told me of a ship of his that was employed in carrying troops. The regulations said that there must be (I think) eight feet clear height between the decks, and this ship of his had more, say ten. And temporary decks were built two feet above the permanent decks in order to reduce the height to eight.
There is a letter to my mother from one of her aunts, Southsea, 4 October 1861, “We went to see ‘the Warrior’ in dock, and a most beautiful sight she is. We went all over her, she is immense! It is thought she must roll much in anything of a heavy sea, and Kit and other Naval men think she ought not to be sent into danger, such ships being fitter to defend the coasts instead of new batteries. That unhappy ‘Great Eastern’! Will anyone ever venture in her again?” The Great Eastern had been caught in an Atlantic gale three weeks before, and the passengers found it very uncomfortable—“The two cows that fell with their cowshed down into the ladies’ cabin were killed by the violence of the shock.” I remember the Great Eastern very well, and also the Warrior—I saw her first in 1864, in Torbay. She was the earliest of our ironclads, and was completed in 1861.
In the old days of little wooden ships this part of England had a much larger share in shipping. BeforeLloyd’s Registerbegan, there were two rival registers of shipping—the shipowners’ red book, which began in 1799, and the underwriters’ green book, which began some years before, but lost many of its supporters by changing its system of classification in 1797. The underwriters had kept surveyors at twenty-four ports in Great Britain and Ireland; and six of the twenty-four were less than twenty miles from here—Dartmouth, Teignmouth, Exmouth, Starcross, Topsham and Exeter. And in 1799 the shipowners put surveyors at twenty-two of these, omitting Exmouth and Starcross, and adding six other ports, making twenty-eight in all. There were eighty-eight surveying ports in 1834, whenLloyd’s Registerwas started; and these included Dartmouth, Teignmouth, Topsham and Exeter, but the two last had only one surveyor between them. In another fifty years all four had ceased to be surveying ports, and the nearest surveyor was at Plymouth.
I wrote the article on Ships in the greatDictionnaire des Antiquitésedited by Daremberg and Saglio; and while at work on it, I found that I was cramped for space, and therefore asked for more. But the answer was that they had given me as much space for ‘Navis’ as they had given Navarre for ‘Meretrices,’ and my subject could not possibly require more space than his.
There is an old cottage here called Bowhouse, one of the six old dwellings that form the hamlet here. I repaired it in 1919 and cut a window through the west wall, as it was rather dark inside; and three old coins were found there while the work was going on, one of George the Third, one of William the Third, and one of Henry the Third. The GeorgeIIIwas underneath the staircase, and might have slipped down through a crack. The WilliamIIIwas found in sweeping up a floor, but there was no knowing how it came to be amongst the rubbish there. The HenryIIIwas embedded in the west wall where the window was cut through. That is a very thick wall, built of cob, and was found to be ‘as hard as brass’ for cutting. The coin was in the middle of the cob, and certainly had been there ever since the wall was built.
The coin is one of the ‘short cross’ pennies that were superseded by the ‘long cross’ pennies in 1249. It has the names of Henry as the king, Adam as the moneyer and London as the mint; and Adam was moneyer there from 1205 to 1237. Henry the Third did not become king until 1216; but the coin may perhaps be earlier than that, as Henry the Second put the name of Henry on these pennies in 1180, and his successors never altered it. The coin is much the worse for wear, and may have been in use for many years before it found its way into the wall.
These silver pennies were worth a good deal then. There was an Inquiry on 20 May 1316 after the death of William le Pruz—the old knight whose effigy is now in Lustleigh church at the south end of the transept—and his meadows at Lustleigh were valued at 3d.a year an acre, against £5 now, or just 400 times as many pence. But the real value of the meadows must be pretty much the same.
Under the Corn Production Act of 1917 the Wages Board not only fixed a minimum wage for agricultural work, but also fixed a maximum for the deduction from the wage when the worker is provided with a cottage. In this district the maximum is 3s.a week; and I am now paying 3s.5d.a week on a cottage in rates and taxes and fire-insurance. I get nothing for the cottage, but only lose by it, and therefore am not eager to build more.
In this district the old cottages are relatively better than the new, judging them by the general standard of comfort at the time when they were built; and some of them are absolutely better, as they have more spacious rooms. My grandfather writes from here, 1 June 1851, “Prince Albert must not think of putting labouring men in parlours, if he expects good hardy soldiers and sailors.” The modern cottages have parlours, seldom used, and bedrooms that will hardly hold a bed.
Innovations have seldom been improvements here. There are very many new things that are better than the old; but here one chiefly sees the new things that are cheaper than the old, and these are not always better. Many of them are not really cheaper. I have just given the roof of this house a new coat of thatch that ought to last for twenty years or more. The thatching here is done with wheat straw; so I grew a crop close by, and sold the grain and kept the straw. Slate or tile costs more; and with such roofing I should have to spend a great deal more on fuel, to keep the house as warm in winter time.
In some ways a thatched roof is better than a cellar as a place for storing wine: the temperature just suits the wine, and there is not any damp. My grandfather tried keeping some above his bedroom ceiling; but it was an inconvenient place for fetching bottles down, and accidents may happen when thatchers are about.
After looking at my vases here, a foreigner made me a little speech. “Oh, your country, how wonderful it is. Who should think to find choice works of ancient Greece with a roof of what you call the Thetch. In another house I find antiquities of Egypt, in another the Oriental porcelain and the lacquer, in another I find pictures most superb. Where originals do not exist, I find reproductions of the greatest works. Surely your England is the most artistic country in the world.”—I fear that England is Artistic in another sense. One day a shopman was showing me things all covered with clumsy ornament, and I asked if there was nothing of good design, without all these excrescences. He seemed puzzled at this, and then it dawned upon him, “Oh, I see, sir. You want something less Artistic.”
This was a secluded place until the railway came. My grandfather writes on 23 September 1849, “I find most people like Wreyland, that is, those advancing in years: so quiet and so sheltered.” And then on 3 January 1864, “I cannot fancy that any railway improves scenery, but this will not so disturb it as one might imagine.... They fancy it is cutting up the country and letting in more people, which will destroy the scenery and the quiet of the neighbourhood; but they think more of its introducing new society than destroying the scenery.”
People who live amidst fine scenery are apt to treat it with contempt, partly from familiarity and partly (I think) because they do not see the scenery as other people see it. You form a higher opinion of a man if you have only seen him at his best, than if you have also seen him at his worst and in all intermediate states. It is the same with scenery. Most strangers see this district in the height of summer, whereas the natives see it in the winter time as well, and have both aspects of it in their mind when they are looking at it; and they sometimes show impatience when strangers praise it overmuch. A farmer here was leaning over a gate from which there is a glorious view. Seeing the view, a passer-by remarked to him how glorious it was. The farmer answered, “Durn the view. I bain’t lookin’ at no view. I be lookin’ how they dratted rabbits ’as ated up my tunnips.”
When the railway came, a plan was drawn up showing how the hillsides were to be laid out with winding roads and villas in the accepted Torquay style; and two such villas were built, but happily no further harm was done.—Torquay had spread out with its winding roads all over the unsheltered hills, and was trading on the reputation it had gained when it was all in shelter. After wintering there, a lady told me it was the first time she had wintered in a place where the ink froze on her writing table.
The old houses here are generally down in hollows, as the old people thought more of shelter than of anything else: they never dreamt of building houses in unsheltered places for the sake of views. In 1849-50 a house was built on the hill behind Lustleigh, facing Lustleigh Cleave. My grandfather writes, 5 January 1851, “I toldthem last summer, when they were talking of their view, that they had not yet experienced a South Wester. Now they have experienced one, they have packed off, bag and baggage: one window blown in and smashed to pieces, wood and all, and others damaged.”
Since then that house has been much altered and enlarged, and now has a set of turrets. Turrets were a novelty here; and, looking at it, someone said to me, “Bain’t shaped proper, like a house: more like a cruet, I call’n.” Architects so often spoil their work by thinking only of design, without considering whether it will suit the district and the site. Two great houses have been built within ten miles of here in recent years. One is by an Oxford architect—now dead—and would look very well in Oxford, in the Broad, or even in the country, if it stood on level ground and had big trees behind. Half-way up a steep hill-side, it is hardly a success. The other is by Lutyens. It stands on a hill-top that was better without it; but, if there had to be a house there, this was the very thing.
Another edifice is by a man I cannot call an Architect: a simple Tect, and nothing more. There happened to be a corrugated iron shed close by; and a man remarked to me, “That is one of the few buildings of which I can conscientiously say that its appearance is improved by having a corrugated iron shed in front of it.”
All over Devon ourA1 villages are being converted intoC3 towns; but this is being done by people who have onlyC3 minds and little experience of anything aboveC3. I hate their works, but resent their want of culture far less than I resent the want of breeding in the people who appreciate a view and build a house where they can see it, well knowing that their house will spoil the view for everybody else.
There was a copse of nut-bushes growing wild amongst the rocks on the way to Lustleigh Cleave. In early years I felt quite sure that Providence had put it there to give us a supply of nuts to take to the Nut Cracker—a logan-stone at the top of the Cleave, so delicately poised that it just cracked the nuts and did not crush them. And now the bushes are cut down and the rocks rolled over, and in their place there is a cluster of corrugated iron huts.
When a War Memorial was projected here, I thought that the names of the dead might be carved on one of the great rocks on Lustleigh Cleave, with the date and nothing more. As it is, they have been carved on a neat little wooden tablet with an inscription of the usual kind, and put up in the church. I fancy our memorial might have been more worthy of them, had their names been on the granite in the solitude up there with that wild ravine below.
We have another memorial here, of which we all are proud. It is at the railway station. “Beneath this slab, and stretched out flat, lies Jumbo, once our station cat.” That cat had many lives: jumped in and out between the wheels of trains, and yet died in its bed.
A tombstone is primarily a label for identifying what is down below; but survivors will not always face that brutal fact. They merely give the name and age; and in after years this may not be enough. I had to find the next-of-kin to an old servant of ours who was over ninety when she died. (She had always kept them at a distance, as they often wished to borrow money that she did not wish to lend.) There was an entry in a Family Bible, say, A.B. born 1 January 1820; and there were tombstones of three persons named A.B. who died at ages answering to that.—They ought to give the birthday and the parents’ Christian names, to show exactly who is there. Instead of that, they usually give texts and verses out of hymns.
This has always been a healthy district, and so very quiet that people had no worries; and they usually lived on till a great age. I have heard it said regretfully, “Ah, her died young,” and then heard it explained, “Her ne’er saw sixty.” Times are changing now. Looking at the tombstones of some kindred of my own, I was observing how the ages fell from nineties and eighties to seventies and sixties. I said nothing aloud, but the sexton read my thoughts and put them into words, “Aye, zir, they do say as each generation be weaker and wiser than the last.”
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
SMALL TALK AT WREYLAND
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