CHAPTER XI

The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne,Th’ assay so hard, so sharpe the conquering.

The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne,

Th’ assay so hard, so sharpe the conquering.

chaucer.

“WHETHER you like it or not, depends on what you require in a picture.” Robert Mayne was speaking to a circle of friends. “If you like narrative in a picture, then you will like the pictures by David Wilkie, which tell a story, or rehearse a scene. They have life-like imagery, and humour, and a master’s knowledge of composition, in the sense of grouping effects. But poetry? None. I ask for poetry in a picture, just as I require painting in a poem. But of narrative I desire none. Let narrative be for prose.”

At this there was an outcry, for Wilkie was a great favourite with his contemporaries. And Robert Mayne was called on to cite instances that illustrated his contention, that poetry should be in picture, and painting be found in verse.

“I do not say there should be; this is what I ask.”

“But you must define poetry, Sir,” said Miss Ridge, “or, at least, what it means to you.”

“Poetry, Madam, is the perception of what is beautiful, not the perception of what is humorous or sad. And I find this poetry in the pictures by Cotman, because he shows the wide sky, and the warm red earth, and poplars topping the horizon. The limbs of trees, and the flight of clouds, and quiet field labour. Such pictures give a ‘temperate show of objects that endure.’ And this must please those who seek the perception of the beautiful. Can you compare such a picture to one that shows a village tavern, a debtor’s prison, or an errand-boy? Equally true, you may reason. It may be. But beautiful—no.

“Look at the pictures by Bonington; cannot you see the sands glisten, and hear the waves? And the fishwife who is walking there, do we not know that as she steps the sands press white beneath her, to darken as the moisture re-asserts itself beneath her footfall, by the margin of the sea? And the sea-piece by Turner. There is the sting of the brine in it, the very sound of the wind in the rigging. And the picture by Constable. Isn’t Fuseli right when he exclaims, ‘Come, let me fetch my umbrella; I’moff to see the Constables,’ for isn’t the rain just about to be freed from that sagging cloud, that has those planes of blue behind it?

Turner.APPROACH TO VENICE.

APPROACH TO VENICE.

“And then the pictures by De Wint and Turner. So huge in design, so simple in mass, yet if one looks into them, one finds sheep, and cows, and tiny horses in the distance, towing barges along canals. And in some corner of foreground, deep woods, and white doves, simply swinging through the air. Or, perhaps, a man on a horse riding up a lawn, with greyhounds at his heels, or tall foxgloves in deep shadow. Then in Turner’s pictures, his Venice scenes; small figures getting into barges—just a dab of the brush, and a dot of pink for the head—and all the vast canal with the sun dipping into it. And towering ships, away in the haze.

“Or, again, early morning, and a fisherman putting out on a lake to fish. The sun is just getting up over the hills, where you know the deer are feeding, and everything is grey, and drowsy with dew. The men are so quiet, you can hear the dip of an oar, a murmur of voices, perhaps the clank of a can at the bottom of the boat, or a chain running out. Only these men are about, and a coot or two. The cottages on the hill are still asleep; they have all the quietness of early morning. And these men,they are two dots of black paint! These are the pictures with poetry in them. Yes, these—and one other.”

“Which is that?” asked Miss Ridge, listening prettily, but with her charming eyes roving the room.

“It is a picture by a man named Watts, after our time, doubtless,” said Robert Mayne; “it has its place here on these walls. It shows the descent of Diana to the sleeping Endymion. The lovely form conveys the arch of the crescent, the silver moon, and the brown earth.”

It is true Miss Ridge was interested; she was a woman who might coo soft, understanding little noises about a picture, but all the time be arranging her hair by the reflection in its glass. So Robert Mayne’s conversation was not altogether understood by her. Yet in herself, she was so entirely satisfactory, there was no immediate need for her to be anything else.

“It is for homely features to keep home;They have their name thence, coarse complexionsAnd cheeks of sorry grain have leave to plyThe sampler, and to tease the housewife’s wool.What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that,Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn?”

“It is for homely features to keep home;

They have their name thence, coarse complexions

And cheeks of sorry grain have leave to ply

The sampler, and to tease the housewife’s wool.

What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that,

Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn?”

Reynolds.MISS RIDGE.

MISS RIDGE.

But now there was a stir and a re-grouping at the far end of the room, and Clare saw a remarkable figure enter. It was that of an elderly man of great bulk, but the character of whose head and countenance was such, as to make you oblivious of his corpulence. He wore a brown suit of clothes and black worsted stockings, ill drawn up, and an unpowdered wig, slightly too small for him. You must ask your Mother to take you to see his picture in the National Portrait Gallery; it gives the forceful expression so well. This person was none other than Doctor Johnson, who made the Dictionary, wrote the “Lives of the Poets,” and “Rasselas,” famous in his own day, and ours, for the extraordinary power and precision of his speech.

He was followed by a gentleman to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude, for he kept a faithful, and painstaking diary, in which he recorded the sayings of Doctor Johnson. And this is one of the books you will learn to treasure when you are older, nor find its six volumes a word too long. This man’s name was James Boswell, of Auchinlech.

The entry of the distinguished guest caused a general rearrangement; the company fell into new groups and knots of talkers, just as the kaleidoscope will scatter its fragments, to re-form intosome fresh design. Mr. Mayne walked forward to receive him, for the Doctor was here at his invitation, and then Clare saw Sir Joshua Reynolds in his wake. The actors and actresses closed round Doctor Johnson, for he was a great favourite with them, often frequenting the Green Room, being very easy and facetious, in their company. So for a time the ungainly figure, moving with a constant roll of the head, was hid from Clare’s view; but she heard his voice uttering characteristic phrases of astonishing finality. When he spoke, you wondered if there could be anything more to be said on that subject, ever again, by anybody. There dwelt the apotheosis of thepûnkt finalein his speech. Oliver Goldsmith said of him, “It is ill arguing with Doctor Johnson; though you may be in the right, he worsts you. If his pistol misses fire, he clubs his opponent over the head with the butt-end of it.”

Here are only some of his many utterances recorded for us by Boswell. I will tell you a few.

His profound reverence for the hierarchy made him expect from Bishops the highest degree of decorum. He was offended even at their going to restaurants, or taverns, as they were then called.

Reynolds.SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

“A Bishop, Sir, has nothing to do at a tippling-house. It is not, indeed, immoral in him to go toa tavern, neither would it be immoral in him to whip a top in Grosvenor Square.”

Mrs. Thrale, a friend of his, once gave high praise to an acquaintance.

“Nay, my dear lady, don’t talk so. Mr. Long’s character is very short. He is a man of genteel appearance. He fills a chair. That is all.”

He was chilled by wordy enthusiasm. He knew it to be possible to blast by praise.

“Where there is exaggerated praise every one is set against the character.”

This, I think, would fit some of the exponents of the gushing speech of our modern social day.

“Sir, these are enthusiasts, by rule.”

Yet, very near the time of his decease, how humbly did this great man receive the diffident expression of regard from some person unknown to him, in which he found the sincerity he prized. “Sir, the applause of a single human being is of great consequence.”

“Depend upon it,” said he on one occasion, “if a man talks of his misfortunes, there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him. Where there is pure misery, there is no recourse to the mention of it.”

He must have loved folk of simple bearing: “Sir, he has no grimace, no gesticulation, no burst of admiration on trivial occasions. He never embraces you with an over-acted cordiality.”

Once, on hearing it observed of one of their friends that he was awkward at counting money, “Why, Sir,” he said, “I am likewise awkward at counting money; but then, Sir, the reason is plain: I have had very little money to count.”

Though he used to censure carelessness very strongly, he once owned to Boswell that, just to avoid the trouble of locking up five guineas, he had hid them so well that he had never found them since.

Talking of Gray’s Odes, which he did not care for, he said, “They are forced plants, raised in a hot-bed; they are but cucumbers, after all.” A gentleman present, unluckily for himself said, “Had they been literally cucumbers, they had been better things than odes.”

“Yes, Sir,” said Johnson, “for a hog.”

Once Johnson was in company with several clergymen, who, starting a war of wits, carried the conversation to an excess of conviviality. Johnson, whom they thought to entertain, sat moodily silent. Then bending to a friend, he said, by no meansin a whisper: “This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.”

Talking of a point of delicate scrupulosity of moral conduct, he said: “Men of harder minds than ours will do many things from which you and I would shrink. Yet, Sir, they will perhaps do more good in life than we. But let us help one another.”

Clare’s eyes were now attracted to the animated group of players, at the far end of the room. Barry, the actor, was standing in a fine attitude, dressed in his brown velvet suit. The calves of his legs were resplendent in silk stockings, and he was repeating lines from the part of Romeo to his listening friends. Now and again a little ripple of applause rose and spread among the group, but the gentlemen did not seem so enthusiastic as the ladies. Old Quin was distinctly adverse, and sat, with quite three dissenting chins, rolling his eyes in a ferocious manner. There sat Fielding, the writer. Clare had often heard her Mother read his name aloud from the frame, and say how much she liked the shape of his nose. So she looked at this feature particularly. It was certainly a very long nose, and aquiline; what physiognomy books speak of as the “cogitative nose.”

“Some day I shall read ‘Tom Jones,’” said Clare to herself, “and I expect I shall like it as much as Mother does. But I shall read it in comfortable print, not in the edition that makes one say fowls for souls all through. O, there’s Miss Ridge.Isee her.” She threaded her way in and out of the company till she came to that bird-like person, Miss Ridge. She had the pale ribbon in her fawn-coloured hair, and the little shadows round her nose and the corners of her mouth, were just as exquisite in real life, as in the picture.

“Ring-a-ring a-rosesA pocket full of posies,”

“Ring-a-ring a-roses

A pocket full of posies,”

she was saying, holding Christopher and Bim by the hands. But Bim thought this childish, and asked her if she couldn’t sing “Bonnie Dundee.” “Sing ‘Bonnie Dundee’? I should think so; I can sing twenty ‘Bonnie Dundees.’ But what’s this caravan expedition on which you say you are going with your Mother? I’ll tell you! we’ll go for a walk one morning. I’ll take you to the Lock on the Stour, and we’ll have a pocket-lunch on the bit of green field where the big burdock-leaves grow. We’ll watch the boyopening the lock, and we’ll go and see Dedham Church, and pay a visit at the cottage, for I know the people, and you’ll be able to climb into the large pollards.”

Hogarth.MISS PRITCHARD.MRS. PRITCHARD.BARRY.FIELDING.QUIN.LAVINIA FENTON.THE GREEN ROOM AT DRURY LANE.

MISS PRITCHARD.MRS. PRITCHARD.BARRY.FIELDING.QUIN.LAVINIA FENTON.THE GREEN ROOM AT DRURY LANE.

“O, that would be lovely,” cried the children. They are not the sort of children who look you up and down, when you suggest a plan, but they are down your throat in a minute, so to say, and you are lucky if you can finish your sentence.

“Oh, yes.” “When?” “Let’s do it to-morrow!” “Can I take Pont?” “We’ll bathe, won’t we?” “Oh come and sit down.” “What are the people called who live in the cottage?” and so on, and so on—you can imagine it.

But Miss Ridge reverted to the caravan.

“Well, we’re going to start about the 15th of April,” said Bim in reply, “and Mummie and Clare are going to cook, and Christopher and I shall be armed, of course—two petronels, a pocket-knife, a musket, and bows and arrows.”

“I’ll come too,” said Miss Ridge. “I could sweep the van out. I shall be in nobody’s way, and whenever your Mother comes round the corner, I’ll jump into the nosebag.”

But now there was a general movement towardsthe door, and from among many people across the room, Mrs. Inchbald beckoned.

“You must go across to the schoolroom,” she said, “the others have been in bed sometime now.”

Just at that moment a vision of Lady Crosbie flitted across the open doorway, the very incarnation of flying movement, and grace.

But Mrs. Inchbald looked only one word, and that was “bed.” It was written all over her face, and up and down it, and Clare knew quite well there was to be no story that night, and certainly no reprieve.

“You shall hear it to-morrow evening when we have a quiet time to ourselves,” said Mrs. Inchbald. And she bundled them all three, through the swing-doors, and up the stairs, and into their rooms, in a moment.

Clare crept into her bed; she felt tired all over. Passing before her eyes in charm and beauty, she saw again in recollection, Miss Hippesley, Mrs. Billington, Lady Crosbie, and Miss Ridge. Barry strutted before her, chatting in brisk self-satisfaction, and once more Miss Lavinia Fenton raised her hands and eyes.

“I wonder why Peg Woffington said DoctorJohnson had snuff on his shirt-front,” she said to herself, sleepily, “and that his linen wasn’t——” But she didn’t finish the sentence even to herself. She knew it was but a poor mind that dwells upon the weaknesses of great men.

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