CHAPTER VI.HARLEY STREET, DEVONSHIRE, HAMMERSMITH, AND TWICKENHAM.1800 TO 1820.

“Craft, treachery, and fraud—Salassian forceHung on the fainting rear! then Plunder seiz’dThe victor and the captive—Saguntum’s spoil,Alike became their prey; still the chief advanc’d,Look’d on the sun with hope;—low, broad, and wan.While the fierce archer of the downward yearStains Italy’s blanch’d barrier with storms.In vain each pass, ensanguin’d deep with dead,Or rocky fragments, wide destruction roll’d.Still on Campania’s fertile plains—he thoughtBut the loud breeze sob’d, Capua’s joys beware.”

This is nearer to poetry than Turner ever got again. The picture is well-known, and was suggested partly by a storm observed at Farnley, partly by a picture by J. Cozens,[27]of the same subject, from which Turner is reported to have said that he learnt more than from any other.

Turner’s love of poetry was shown from the first possible moment. The first pictures to which he appended poetical mottoes were those of 1798, but he could not have used them before, as quotations were never published in the Academy Catalogue prior to that year. When his first original verses were published we cannot tell, but there is little doubt that the lines to hisApollo and the Python, inthe Catalogue of 1811, were of his own fabrication. They are not from Callimachus, as asserted in the catalogue, but a jumble of the descriptions of two of Ovid’s dragons, the Python, and Cadmus’s tremendous worm, and are just the peculiar mixture of Ovid, Milton, Thomson, Pope, and the quotations in Royal Academy Catalogues, out of which he formed his poetical style. The Turneresque style of poetry is in fact formed very much in the same way as the Turneresque style of landscape, but the result is not so satisfactory. It required a totally different kind of brain machinery from that which Turner possessed. He may have had a good ear for the music of tones, for he used to play the flute, but he had none for the music of words. Coleridge was an instance of how distinct these two faculties are, as he, whose verses exceed almost all other English verses in beauty of sound, could not tell one note of music from another. Turner lived in a world of light and colour, and beautiful changeful indefinite forms; his thought had visions in place of words; his mind communed with itself in sights and symbols; the procession of his ideas was a panorama. So, where a poet would jot down lines and thoughts, he would print off the impressions on his mental retina; his true poetry was drawn not written—the poetry of instant act, not of laboured thought. How sensible he himself was of the difference, is shown in his clumsy lines:—

“Perception, reasoning,action’s slow ally,Thoughts that in the mind awakened lie—Kindly expand the monumental stoneAnd as the ... continue power.”

This is Mr. Thornbury’s reading of part of the longest piece of poetry by Turner yet published, which he hasprinted without any care, making greater nonsense than even Turner ever wrote, which is saying a great deal. “Awakened” for instance is probably “unwakened,” and “monumental stone” is probably “mental store” with another word at the commencement, the word “power” is possibly “pours,” as the next line goes on, “a steady current, nor with headlong force,” &c. We quite agree with Mr. W. M. Rossetti, that these extracts are not made the best of, though it is doubtful whether the result of more careful editing would be worth the trouble.

There is no picture which better shows the greatness of Turner’s power of pictorial imagination than theApollo and Python. We have said that nature was almost Turner’s only book. The only written book which there is evidence that he really studied—read through, probably, again and again—is Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” That he was fond of poetry there is no doubt, but the sparks that lit his imagination for nearly all his best classical compositions came from this book. This is the only poem which he reallyillustrated, and an edition of Ovid, with engravings from all the scenes which he drew from this source, would make one of the best illustrated books in the world. It would containJason,Narcissus and Echo,Mercury and Herse,Apollo and Python,Apuleia in search of Apuleius(which is really the story of Appulus, who was turned into a wild olive-tree, Apuleia being a characteristic mistake of Turner’s for Apulia. He is sometimes called “a shepherd of Apulia,” in notes and translations, and Turner evidently took the name of the country for the name of a woman),Apollo and the Sibyl,The Vision of Medea,The Golden Bough,Mercury and Argus,Pluto and Proserpine,Glaucus and Scylla,Pan and Syrinx,Ulyssesand Polyphemus. Of all these pictures and designs we have no doubt that, though he referred to other poets in the catalogues and got the idea of some part of the composition from other poets, the original germs are to be found in no other book than Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” We have not exhausted the list of his debts to this poet, for it is probable that the first ideas of his Carthage pictures, and all that deal with the history of Æneas, came from the same source, assisted by references to Vergil.

ALLEGORY. From Rogers’s “Voyage of Columbus.”ALLEGORY.From Rogers’s “Voyage of Columbus.”

Of all these, excepting theUlysses and Polyphemus, there is none greater than theApollo and Python. Although the figure of Apollo is not satisfactory, it gives an adequate impression of the small size of the boy-god, the radiating glory of his presence, the keen enjoyment of his struggle with the monster, and the triumph of “mind over matter.” Of the landscape and the dragon it is difficult to exaggerate the grandeur of the conception; the rocks and trees convulsed with the dying struggles of the gigantic worm, the agony of the brute himself, expressed in the distorted jaws and the twisted tail, the awful dark pool of blood below, the seams in its terrible riven side, studded with a thousand little shafts from Apollo’s bow, and the fragments of rock flying in the air above the griffin-like head and noisome steam of breath, make a picture without any rival of its kind in ancient or modern art. It is, as we have said, taken from two dragons of Ovid. Turner seems to have been of the same opinion about books as about nature, and if he wanted anything to complete his picture, went on a few pages and found it. The idea of the god and his bow and arrows is taken from the account of the combat in the first book of the “Metamorphoses,” and the idea of the huge dragon with his “poyson-paunch,” comesfrom the same place; but the ruin of the woodland, the flying stones, and the earth blackened with the dragon’s gore, come from the description of the combat of Cadmus and his dragon in the third. The larger stone is too huge indeed to be that which Cadmus flung, it has been either, as Mr. Ruskin thinks, lashed into the air by his tail, or, as we think, torn off the rock and vomited into the air; but there is the tree, which the “serpent’s weight” did make to bend, and which was “grieved his body of the serpent’s tail thus scourged for to be,” there is “the stinking breath that goth out from his black and hellish mouth,” there is the blood which “did die the green grass black,” an idea not in Callimachus nor in Ovid’s description of the Python, but which occurs both in the lines appended to the picture and in Ovid’s description of Cadmus’s serpent. If there were any doubt left as to the influence of this dragon on the picture, there is still another piece of evidence, viz., something very like a javelin, Cadmus’s weapon, which is sticking in the dragon, and has reappeared after being painted out, so that it is possible that Turner meant the hero of the picture, in the first instance, to be Cadmus and not Apollo.

The two great dragons of Turner, that which guards the Garden of the Hesperides, and the Python, are specially interesting as the greatest efforts made by Turner’s imagination in the creation of living forms, excepting, perhaps, the cloud figure of Polyphemus. They are perhaps the only monsters of the kind created by an artist’s fancy, which are credible even for a moment. They will not stand analysis any more than any other painters’ monsters, but you can enjoy the pictures without being disturbed by palpable impossibilities. The distance at which we seeLadon helps the illusion; with his fiery eyes and smoking jaws, his spiny back and terrible tail, no one could wish for a more probable reptile. The only objection that has been made to him is that his jaws are too thin and brittle, while Mr. Buskin is extravagant in his praise. It is wonderful to him—

“This anticipation, by Turner, of the grandest reaches of recent inquiry into the form of the dragons of the old earth ... this saurian of Turner’s is very nearly an exact counterpart of the model of the iguanodon, now the guardian of the Hesperian Garden of the Crystal Palace, wings only excepted, which are, here, almost accurately, those of the pterodactyle. The instinctive grasp which a healthy imagination takes ofpossibletruth, even in its wildest flights, was never more marvellously demonstrated.”

Mr. Ruskin then goes on to call attention to—

“The mighty articulations of his body, rolling in great iron waves, a cataract of coiling strength and crashing armour, down amongst the mountain rents. Fancy him moving, and the roaring of the ground under his rings; the grinding down of the rocks by his toothed whorls; the skeleton glacier of him in thunderous march, and the ashes of the hills rising round him like smoke, and encompassing him like a curtain.”

The description, fine as it is, seems to us to destroy all belief in Turner’s dragon. The wings of a pterodactyle would never lift the body of an iguanodon, and Turner’s dragon could not even walk, his comparatively puny body could never even move his miles of tail, let alone lift them. It is far better to leave him where he is; the fact that he is at the top of that rock is sufficient evidence that he got there somehow; how he got there, and how he will get down again, are questions which we had better not ask if we wish to keep our faith in him. Nor can anything be more confused than the notion of a “saurian” with“coiling strength and crashing armour,” making the ground “roar under his rings.” This might be well enough of a fabulous monster made of iron, but quite inappropriate when applied to a saurian, like the alligator, for instance, with its soft, slow movements, and its bony, skin-padded, noiseless armour.

The Python will stand still less an attempt to define in words what Turner has purposely left mysterious. Not even Mr. Ruskin, we fancy, would dare to pull him out straight from amongst his rocks and trees, and put his griffin’s head and talons on to that marvellous body, half worm, half caterpillar. But he is grand, and believable as he is. More simple than either of the other monsters is the single wave of Jason’s dragon in his den. This is a mere magnified coil of a simple snake; but its size, its glitter, its incompleteness, the terrible energy of it, its peculiar serpentine wiriness, that elasticity combined with stiffness which is so horrible to see and to feel, make it more awful even than the Python.

We do not believe in Turner’s power to evolve even as imperfect a saurian as his Ladon out of his imagination, however “healthy;” and have no doubt that he had seen the fossil remains of an ichthyosaurus. We have the testimony of Mrs. Wheeler that he was much interested in geology,[28]and think it more than probable that the thinness of the monster’s jaws and, we may add, the emptiness of his eye socket are due to his drawing them from a fossil, which his knowledge was not great enough to pad with flesh.

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DHE the first ten years of this period we have very little intelligence respecting Turner’s life. He moved from Hand Court, Maiden Lane, to 64, Harley Street, in 1799 or 1800, and it is not improbable that he bought the house, as No. 64 and the house next to it in Harley Street, and the house in Queen Anne Street, all belonged to him at the time of his death. There was communication between the three houses at the back, although the corner house fronting both streets did not belong to him. In 1801, 1802, 1803, and 1804, his address in the Royal Academy Catalogue is 75, Norton Street, Portland Road; but in 1804 it is again 64, Harley Street. In 1808[29]it is 64, Harley Street, and West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith; and this double address is given till 1811, when it is West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, only. In and after 1812 it is always Queen Anne Street West, with the addition, from 1814 to 1826, of his house at Twickenham, called Solus Lodge in 1814, and Sandycombe Lodgefrom 1815 to 1826. It is remarkable that in the Catalogue of the British Institution for 1814 his address is given as Harley Street, Cavendish Square, showing that he had not then given up his house in this street, and this is good evidence that it belonged to him.

The war which broke out with Bonaparte in 1803,[30]and was not finally closed till 1815, prevented him from pursuing his studies of Continental scenery, and he seems during this time to have devoted himself principally to the composition of his great rival pictures, and the “Liber Studiorum,” about which we have already written: he stayed occasionally with his friends, Mr. Fawkes at Farnley, where he studied the storm forHannibal Crossing the Alps, and Lord Egremont at Petworth, where he paintedApuleia and Apuleius. Almost the only glimpse that we get of his house in Harley Street, though it is very doubtful to what period it belongs, was sent to Mr. Thornbury by Mr. Rose of Jersey:—

“Two ladies, Mrs. R—— and Mrs. H—— once paid him a visit in Harley Street, an extremely rare (in fact, if not the only) occasion of such an occurrence, for it must be known he was not fond of parties prying, as he fancied, into the secrets of hisménage. On sending in their names, after having ascertained that he was at home, they were politely requested to walk in, and were shown into a large sitting room without a fire. This was in the depth of winter; and lying about in various places were several cats without tails. In a short time our talented friend made his appearance, asking the ladies if they felt cold. The youngest replied in the negative; her companion, more curious, wished she had stated otherwise, as she hoped they might have been shown into his sanctum or studio. After a little conversation he offered them wine and biscuits, which they partook of for the novelty, such an event being almost unprecedented in his house. One of the ladies bestowing some notice upon the cats, he was induced to remark that he had seven, and that they came from the Isle of Man.”[31]

Whatever is the proper date of this story, it is to be feared that he had good reason for not wishing persons to pry into the secrets of hisménage. We ourselves have no wish to pry into those secrets; but the fact that Turner had for the greater part of his life a home of which he was ashamed, is sufficient to explain a great deal of his want of hospitality, his churlishness to visitors, and his confirmed habits of secrecy and seclusion.

There is no doubt that he habitually lived with a mistress. Hannah Danby, who entered his service, a girl of sixteen, in the year 1801, and was his housekeeper in Queen Anne Street at his death, is generally considered to have been one; and Sophia Caroline Booth, with whom he spent his last years in an obscure lodging in Chelsea, another. There are many who have lived more immoral lives, and have done more harm to others by their immorality; but he chose a kind of illegal connection which was particularly destructive to himself. He made his home the scene of his irregularities, and, by entering into ultimate relations with uneducated women, cut himself off from healthy social influences which would have given daily employment to his naturally warm heart, and prevented him from growing into a selfish, solitary man. Not to be able to enjoy habitually the society of pure educated women, not to be able to welcome your friend to your hearth, could not have been good for a man’s character, or his art, or his intellect.

His uninterrupted privacy possibly enabled him to producemore, and to develop his genius farther in one direction; but we could have well spared many of his pictures for a few works graced with a wider culture and a healthier sentiment. He could paint, and paint, perhaps, better for his isolation—

“The light that never was on sea or land,The consecration and the Poet’s dream.”

But it would have been better for him, and, we think, for his art also, if he could have said:—

“Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives aloneHoused in a dream, at distance from the kind!Such happiness, wherever it be known,Is to be pitied; for ’tis surely blind.”[32]

It was not from any scorn of the conventions of society that he disregarded them, for there is no trace of any feeling of this sort in his pictures or his reported conversations, and in his will he required that the “Poor and Decayed Male Artists,” for whom he intended to found a charitable institution (“Turner’s Gift”), should be “oflawful issue.” One reason why he never married may have been his shyness and consciousness of his want of address and personal attraction. Mr. Cyrus Redding, from whom we have one of the brightest and best glimpses of Turner as a man, says:—

“He was aware that he could not hope to gain credit in the world out of his profession. I believe that his own ordinary person was, in his clear-mindedness, somewhat considered in estimating his career in life. He was once at a party where there were several beautiful women. One of them struck him much with her charms and captivating appearance; and he said to a friend, in a moment of unguarded admiration, ‘If she would marry me, I would give her a hundred thousand.’”

This, and the increasing absorption in his art of all of himself that could be so absorbed; his desire to economize both his time and his money; his innate hatred of interference with his liberty; his aversion from undertaking any obligation, the consequences of which he could not calculate—all tended to keep him from matrimony, and to make him content with the most unromantic amours.

That he in 1811 or thereabouts could be hospitable and a good companion away from home, is shown by Mr. Redding in his pleasant volume, from which we have just quoted. He met Turner on what appears to have been his first visit to the county to which his family belonged—Devonshire. He met him first, Mr. Redding thinks, at the house of Mr. Collier (the father of Sir Robert Collier), an eminent merchant of Plymouth, and accompanied him on many excursions. On one of these Turner actually gave a picnic “in excellent taste” at a seat on the summit of the hill, overlooking the Sound and Cawsand Bay.

“Cold meats, shell fish, and good wines were provided on that delightful and unrivalled spot. Our host was agreeable, but terse, blunt, and almost epigrammatic at times. Never given to waste his words, nor remarkably choice in their arrangement, they were always in their right place, and admirably effective.”[33]

This last sentence sounds somewhat paradoxical, but for that reason is probably all the more accurately descriptive of Turner’s art in words. Further on, when defendingthe great painter, we get a portrait of him as a “plain figure” with “somewhat bandy legs,” and “dingy complexion.” On another excursion, Redding spent a night at a small country inn with Turner, about three miles from Tavistock, as the artist had a great desire to see the country round at sunrise. The rest of the party, Mr. Collier and two friends, who had spent the day with them on the shores of the Tamar with a scanty supply of provisions, preferred to pass the night at Tavistock.

“Turner was content with bread and cheese and beer, tolerably good, for dinner and supper in one. I contrived to feast somewhat less simply on bacon and eggs, through an afterthought inspiration. In the little sanded room we conversed by the light of an attenuated candle, and some aid from the moon, until nearly midnight, when Turner laid his head upon the table, and was soon sound asleep. I placed two or three chairs in a line, and followed his example at full recumbency. In this way three or four hours’ rest were (sic) obtained, and we were both fresh enough to go out, as soon as the sun was up, to explore the scenery in the neighbourhood, and get a humble breakfast, before our friends rejoined us from Tavistock. It was in that early morning Turner made a sketch of the picture (Crossing the Brook)to which I have alluded, and which he invited me to his gallery to see.”

Another of these excursions was to Burr or Borough Island, in Bigbury Bay, “To eat hot lobsters fresh from the sea.”

“The morning was squally, and the sea rolled boisterously into the Sound. As we ran out, the sea continued to rise, and off Stake’s point became stormy. Our Dutch boat rode bravely over the furrows, which in that low part of the Channel roll grandly in unbroken ridges from the Atlantic.”

IVY BRIDGE. Water-colour in National Gallery.IVY BRIDGE.Water-colour in National Gallery.

Two of the party were ill; one, an officer in the army, wanted to throw himself overboard, and they“were obliged to keep him down among the rusty iron ballast, with a spar across him.”

“Turner was all the while quiet, watching the troubled scene, and it was not unworthy his notice. The island, the solitary hut upon it, the bay in the bight of which it lay, and the long gloomy Bolt Head to sea-ward, against which the waves broke with fury, seemed to absorb the entire notice of the artist, who scarcely spoke a syllable. While the fish were getting ready, Turner mounted nearly to the highest point of the island rock,and seemed writing rather than drawing. The wind was almost too violent for either purpose; what he particularly noted he did not say.”

These reminiscences of Mr. Redding contain the most graphic picture of Turner we possess. His carelessness of comfort, his devotion to his art, his power of continuous observation in despite of tumult and discomfort, his love of the sun and the sea, his habit of sketching from a high point of view, his ability to take “pictorial memoranda” in a violent wind, are all striking and essential peculiarities.

It is interesting to learn also from Mr. Redding, that “early in the morning before the rest were up, Turner and myself walked to Dodbrooke, hard by the town, to see the house that had belonged to Dr. Walcot (sic), Peter Pindar, and where he was born. Walcot sold it, and there had been a house erected there since; of this the artist took a sketch.” Turner probably appreciated Peter’s “Advice to Landscape Painters.”

One piece of Turner’s conversation is also worthy of record, if only on account of its rarity.

“He was looking at a seventy-four gun ship, which lay in the shadow under Saltash. The ship seemed one dark mass.“‘I told you that would be the effect,’ said Turner, referring to some previous conversation. ‘Now, as you observe, it is all shade.’“‘Yes, I perceive it; and yet the ports are there.’“‘We can only take what is visible—no matter what may be there. There are people in the ship; we don’t see them through the planks.’”

“He was looking at a seventy-four gun ship, which lay in the shadow under Saltash. The ship seemed one dark mass.

“‘I told you that would be the effect,’ said Turner, referring to some previous conversation. ‘Now, as you observe, it is all shade.’

“‘Yes, I perceive it; and yet the ports are there.’

“‘We can only take what is visible—no matter what may be there. There are people in the ship; we don’t see them through the planks.’”

This reads like a speech of Dr. Johnson.

We have another account of this same visit to Devonshire from Sir Charles Eastlake, which bears testimony to the hospitality which he received. Miss Pearce, an aunt of Sir Charles, appears to have been his hostess, and her cottage at Calstock the centre of his excursions. A landscape painter, Mr. Ambrose Johns, of great merit, according to Sir Charles, fitted up a small portable painting box, which was of much use to Turner in affording him ready appliances for sketching in oil.

“Turner seemed pleased when the rapidity with which these sketches were done was talked of; for departing from his habitual reserve in the instance of his pencil sketches, he made no difficulty in showing them. On one occasion, when, on his return after a sketching ramble to a country residence belonging to my father, near Plympton, the day’s work was shown, he himself remarked that one of the sketches (and perhaps the best) was done in less than half an hour.... On my inquiring what had become of these sketches, Turner replied that they were worthless, in consequence, as he supposed, of some defects in the preparation of the paper; all the grey tints, he observed, had nearly disappeared. Although I did not implicitly rely on that statement, I do not remember to have seen any of them afterwards.”[34]

Mr. Johns’s devotion was not rewarded till long afterwards, when the great painter sent him a small oil sketch in a letter. Mr. Redding obtained at the time a rough sketch, and these seem to have been the only returns he made for the kindness that was shown to him at Plymouth, though many years afterwards he spoke to Mr. Redding “of the reception he met with on this tour, in a strain that exhibited his possession of a mind not unsusceptible or forgetful of kindness.”

The date of this tour is given by Mr. Redding as probably1811, and by Eastlake 1813 or 1814. The principal pictorial results of it wereCrossing the Brook(exhibited in 1815), and various drawings for Cooke’sSouthern Coast, which commenced in 1814. It seems probable that his engagement on this work determined his visit to Cornwall and Devonshire, but this is uncertain, as is also whether he paid more than one visit to the locality.

This tour is also interesting from its being the only occasion on which Turner is known to have visited his kinsfolk. We are enabled to state on the authority of one of his family that he went to Barnstaple and called upon his relations there, and a gentleman, late of the Chancery Bar, has kindly supplied us with the following extract of a memorandum made by him in 1853, from facts sworn to in suits instituted to administer Turner’s estate.

“Price Turner, an uncle of the painter’s, having some idea of educating his son, Thomas Price Turner (now (1853) living at North Street, in the parish of St. Kerrian, Exeter, Professor of Music) as a painter, T. P. T. made, at the request of William Turner, the great artist’s father, two drawings as specimens of his ability, one a view of the city of Exeter, taken from the south side, and the other a view of Rougemont Castle, and sent them by Wm. Turner to his son. Shortly after, he (T. P. T.) received a number of water colour drawings, sketches, &c. Some of these were afterwards sent for again, one of which, a water colour view of Redcliffe Church, Bristol, Thomas Price Turner previously copied, which copy, together with the residue of Turner’s drawings, are still in his cousin’s possession.“J. M. W. Turner called at Price Turner’s house at Exeter about forty years ago (about 1813), and, saying that he called at his father’s request, had a conversation with Price Turner and his son and daughter. Thomas Price Turner went to London in 1834 to attend the Royal Musical Festival in commemoration of Handel, in which he was engaged as a chorus singer. He called three times on his cousin, and the third time saw him, but though he (J. M. W. T.) immediately recognized him, the painter gave him a cool reception, never so much as asking him to sit down.”

“J. M. W. Turner called at Price Turner’s house at Exeter about forty years ago (about 1813), and, saying that he called at his father’s request, had a conversation with Price Turner and his son and daughter. Thomas Price Turner went to London in 1834 to attend the Royal Musical Festival in commemoration of Handel, in which he was engaged as a chorus singer. He called three times on his cousin, and the third time saw him, but though he (J. M. W. T.) immediately recognized him, the painter gave him a cool reception, never so much as asking him to sit down.”

It is probable that Turner’s father removed with him to Harley Street in 1800. The powder tax of 1795 is said to have destroyed his trade, and he lived with his son till he died in 1830. He used to strain his son’s canvasses and varnish his pictures, “which made Turner say that his father began and finished his pictures for him.” As early as 1809, Turner “was in the habit of privately exhibiting such pictures as he did not sell, and the small accumulation he had at Harley Street in 1809 was already dignified with the name of the “Turner Gallery.”[35]This gallery Turner’s father attended to, showing in visitors &c., and when they stayed at Twickenham he came up to town every morning to open it. Thornbury says that the cost of this weighed upon his spirits until he made friends with a market-gardener, who for a glass of gin a-day, brought him up in his cart on the top of the vegetables. This is said to have been after Turner removed from Harley Street, and was very well off if not rich, for he had built his house in Queen Anne Street and his lodge at Twickenham,[36]both of which belonged to him, as well as the land at Twickenham, and (probably) the house in Harley Street. Turner’s father made great exertions to add to his son’s estate at Sandycombe, by running out little earthworks in the road and then fencing them round. At one time there was a regular row of these fortifications, which used to be called “Turner’s Cribs.” One day, however, they were ruthlessly swept away by some local authority. If, however, both father and son were very “saving” andeccentric in their ways, they were devoted to one another from the beginning to the end, to an extent very touching and beautiful, however strange in its manifestation.

Of Turner’s life at West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, we have only the following glimpse in a communication to Thornbury by “a friend.”

“The garden, which ran down to the river, terminated in a summer-house; and here, out in the open air, were painted some of his best pictures. It was there that my father, who then resided at Kew, became first acquainted with him; and expressing his surprise that Turner could paint under such circumstances, he remarked that lights and room were absurdities, and that a picture could be painted anywhere. His eyes were remarkably strong. He would throw down his water-colour drawings on the floor of the summer-house, requesting my father not to touch them, as he could see them there, and they would be drying at the same time.”

It may have been when at Hammersmith that he became acquainted with Mr. Trimmer, for in a letter to Mr. Wyatt of Oxford respecting two pictures of that city, which is dated “West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, Feb. 4, 1810,” he says, “Pray tell me likewise of a gentleman of the name of Trimmer, who has written to you to be a subscriber for the print.” This gentleman was the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, Vicar of Heston, who was one of Turner’s best and most intimate friends till his death. It is said that he first went to Hammersmith to be near De Loutherbourg, and it is probable that one of his reasons for building on his free—hold at Twickenham was to be nearer Mr. Trimmer. De Loutherbourg died in 1812.

Sandycombe Lodge, first called Solus Lodge, is on the road from Twickenham to Isleworth, and is built on low lying ground and damp. The original structure has been added to, but the additions being built of brick, it is easyto see how it looked in Turner’s time—a small semi-Italian villa covered with plaster and decorated with iron balustrades and steps. It is within walking distance (4 miles) of Heston. We are able by the kindness of Mr. F. E. Trimmer, the youngest son of Turner’s friend, to correct some false impressions conveyed by Thornbury’s garbled account of what he was told by the eldest son.

The Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, the son of the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer, and father of the Rev. Henry Syer Trimmer, who gave Thornbury his information, was about the same age as Turner, and very much interested in art. As an amateur painter he attained considerable skill, having a wonderful faculty for catching the manner of other artists. His great knowledge of pictures, and his continual experiments in the way of mediums, colours, and devices for obtaining effects, made his acquaintance specially interesting and valuable to Turner, and Turner’s to him. No better proof of his ability can be found than the two following stories:—

There is a picture at Heston before which Turner would frequently stand studying. It is a sea-piece with the sun behind a mist, and with a golden hazy effect not unlike Turner’s famousSun rising in a Mist, but the sea washes up to the frame. One day Turner said to Mr. Trimmer, “I like that picture; there’s a good deal in it. Where did you get it?” (Or words to this effect.) “I painted it,” was the reply; upon which the artist turned away without a word, and never looked at the picture again.

The true story of the picture, supposed to be by Sir Joshua Reynolds, to which Mr. Trimmer added a background, is this.[37]He purchased it in an unfinished conditionof a dealer in Holborn, and finished it himself, and it remained in his possession till his death, when his son (Mr. F. E. Trimmer), knowing its history, kept it out of the sale at Christie’s of his father’s fine collection, and sold it, among other less valuable and genuine productions, at Heston. The dealer who bought it (for £6) thought he had made a great catch, and inquired of Mr. Trimmer’s son the history of the picture, which he considered a splendid Sir Joshua, speaking especially of the background as being a proof of its authenticity. When Mr. Trimmer told him that his father had bought it in his own shop and had finished it himself, he would not believe it for a long time.

Of the other stories of Turner’s connection with Heston, and of his power to assist others in the composition of their pictures, the following is perhaps the most interesting:—[38]

Once when Howard (R.A.) was staying at the vicarage, painting a portrait of Mr. Trimmer’s second son, the Rev. Barrington James Trimmer, Turner was always finding fault with the work in progress. It was a full-size and full-length portrait of a boy of three years old, dressed in a white frock and red morocco shoes. One day Howard, annoyed at Turner’s frequent objections, told him that he had better do it himself, on which Turner said, “This is what I should do,” and taking up the cat he wrapped its body in his red pocket handkerchief, and put it under the boy’s arm. The effect of this, as may still be seen in the picture at the house of Mr. Trimmer’s son at Heston, was excellent. The cat gave an interest to the figure which it wanted, the red morocco shoes were no longer isolated patches of brightcolour at the bottom of the picture, the blank expanse of white frock was varied and lightened up by the red handkerchief and pussy’s tabby face, and the work, which was on the brink of failure, was a decided success. Parts of the cat, handkerchief, and landscape were put in by Turner.

Sketching with oils on a large canvas in a boat, driving out on little sketching excursions in his gig with his ill-tempered nag Crop Ear, said to have been immortalized in his picture of theFrosty Morning(which was, however, painted before he went to Twickenham), fishing for trout in the Old Brent, or for roach in the Thames, with Mr. Trimmer’s sons, digging his pond in his garden and planting it round with weeping willows and alders, the picture of Turner’s life at Twickenham is a pleasant and healthy one. At Heston he drew hisInterior of a Churchfor the “Liber,” and actually gave away two of his drawings to Mrs. Trimmer, one of a Gainsborough, which they had seen together on an excursion to Osterley House, and one of a woman gathering watercresses, whom they had met on their way. But these gifts were asked for by the lady, and Turner would not let them go without makingreplicas. He once stood with a long rod two whole days in a pouring rain under an umbrella fishing in a small pond in the vicarage garden, without even a nibble.

In connection with the Trimmers we get other instances of his rare and bare hospitality, which showed that he never altered his manner of living after he left Maiden Lane. We must refer the reader to Mr. Thornbury’s life for the remainder of these varied, interesting, and on the whole pleasant reminiscences.

Space, however, we must spare for a letter, very incorrectly given by Thornbury, the only record of his secondattachment, the object of which was the sister of the Rev. H. Scott Trimmer, who was at that time being courted by her future husband:—

“Tuesday. Aug. 1. 1815.“QUEENANNEST.“MY DEARSIR,“I lament that all hope of the pleasure of seeing you or getting to Heston—must for the present wholly vanish. My father told me on Saturday last when I was as usual compelled to return to town the same day, that you and Mrs. Trimmer would leave Heston for Suffolk as tomorrow Wednesday, in the first place, I am glad to hear that her health is so far established as to be equal to the journey, and believe me your utmost hope, for her benefitting by the sea air being fully realized will give me great pleasure to hear, and the earlier the better.“After next Tuesday—if you have a moments time to spare, a line will reach me at Farnley Hall, near Otley Yorkshire, and for some time, as Mr. Fawkes talks of keeping me in the north by a trip to the Lakes &c. until November therefore I suspect I am not to see Sandycombe. Sandycombe sounds just now in my ears as an act of folly, when I reflect how little I have been able to be there this year, and less chance (perhaps) for the next in looking forward to a Continental excursion, & poor Daddy seems as much plagued with weeds as I am with disapointments, that if Miss —— would but wave bashfulness, or—in other words—make an offer instead of expecting one—the same might change occupiers—but not to teaze you further, allow with most sincere respects to Mrs. Trimmer and family, to consider myself“Your most truly (or sincerely) obliged“J. M. TURNER.”

“Tuesday. Aug. 1. 1815.“QUEENANNEST.

“MY DEARSIR,

“I lament that all hope of the pleasure of seeing you or getting to Heston—must for the present wholly vanish. My father told me on Saturday last when I was as usual compelled to return to town the same day, that you and Mrs. Trimmer would leave Heston for Suffolk as tomorrow Wednesday, in the first place, I am glad to hear that her health is so far established as to be equal to the journey, and believe me your utmost hope, for her benefitting by the sea air being fully realized will give me great pleasure to hear, and the earlier the better.

“After next Tuesday—if you have a moments time to spare, a line will reach me at Farnley Hall, near Otley Yorkshire, and for some time, as Mr. Fawkes talks of keeping me in the north by a trip to the Lakes &c. until November therefore I suspect I am not to see Sandycombe. Sandycombe sounds just now in my ears as an act of folly, when I reflect how little I have been able to be there this year, and less chance (perhaps) for the next in looking forward to a Continental excursion, & poor Daddy seems as much plagued with weeds as I am with disapointments, that if Miss —— would but wave bashfulness, or—in other words—make an offer instead of expecting one—the same might change occupiers—but not to teaze you further, allow with most sincere respects to Mrs. Trimmer and family, to consider myself

“Your most truly (or sincerely) obliged“J. M. TURNER.”

But for the assurance of the present Mr. Trimmer, of Heston, that this attachment of Turner to Miss Trimmer was undoubted, and that this letter has always been considered in the family as a declaration thereof, we should have thought that the offer he wanted was one for Sandycombe Lodge and not for his hand. It is, however, past doubt that Turner was violently smitten, and though forty years old, felt it much.

The above letter was the only one known to have been written by Turner to his friend the Vicar of Heston, and it is quite untrue, as asserted by Thornbury, that the Vicar’s letters were burnt in sackfuls by his son. His large correspondence was patiently gone through—a task which took some years. Thornbury was probably thinking of the destruction of the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer’s correspondence by her daughter, in which it is true that sackfuls of interesting letters perished.

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THE life of Turner the man, that is, what we know of it, during these twenty years, may be written almost in a page—the history of his art might be made to fill many volumes. During this period he exhibited nearly eighty pictures at the Royal Academy, and about five hundred engravings were published from his drawings. If he had been famous before, he was something else, if not something more than famous now; he was “the fashion.” It was on this ground that Sir Walter Scott, who would have preferred Thomson of Duddingstone to illustrate his ‘Provincial Antiquities’ (published in 1826), agreed to the employment of Turner, who afterwards (in 1834) furnished a beautiful series of sixty-five vignettes for Cadell’s edition of Sir Walter’s prose and poetical works.

In 1819 Turner paid his first visit to Italy, which had a marked influence on his style. From this time forward his works become remarkable for their colour. Down to this time he had painted principally in browns, blues,and greys, employing red and yellow very sparingly, but he had been gradually warming his scale almost from the beginning. From the wash of sepia and Prussian blue, he had slowly proceeded in the direction of golden and reddish brown, and had produced both drawings and pictures with wonderful effects of mist and sunlight, but he had scarcely gone beyond the sober colouring of Vandevelde and Ruysdael till he began his great pictures in rivalry with Claude. In them may be seen perhaps the dawn of the new power in his art. In the Exhibition of 1815 were two prophecies of his new style, in which he was to transcend all former efforts in the painting of distance and in colour. These wereCrossing the Brook, with its magical distance, andDido building Carthage, with its blazing sky and brilliant feathery clouds. The first is the purest and most beautiful of all his oil pictures of the loveliness of English scenery, the most simple in its motive, the most tranquil in its sentiment, the perfect expression of his enjoyment of the exquisite scenery in the neighbourhood of Plymouth. The latter with all its faults was the finest of the kind he ever painted, and his greatest effect in the way of colour before his visit to Italy. In his other Carthage picture of this period,The Decline(exhibited 1817), the “brown demon,” as Mr. Ruskin calls it, was in full force, and his pictures ofDido and Æneas(1814),The Temple of Jupiter(1817), andApuleia and Apuleius, are cold and heavy in comparison. Indeed, from 1815 to 1823 his power, judged by his exhibited pictures, seemed to be flagging. Whether his second disappointment in love had anything to do with this we have no means of judging, but if it disturbed for a time his power of painting for fame, it certainly had no ill effecteither as to the quantity or quality of his water-colours for the engravers.

His most worthy and beautiful work of these years is to be found not in his oil pictures but in his drawings for Dr. Whitaker’s ‘History of Richmondshire’ (published 1823) and the ‘Rivers of England’ (1824). Both series were engraved in line in a manner worthy of the artist. One of the former, theHornby Castle, a little faded perhaps, but still exquisite in its harmonies of blue and amber, is to be seen at South Kensington. Three more were lately exhibited by Mr. Ruskin—Heysham Village,Egglestone Abbey, andRichmond. Of this series Mr. Ruskin says, “The foliage is rich and marvellous in composition, the effects of mist more varied and true” (than in theHakewilldrawings), “the rock and hill drawing insuperable, the skies exquisite in complex form.” The engravings probably owed much to Turner’s own supervision, and many of them, such asEgglestone Abbey, by T. Higham, andWycliffe, by John Pye, Middiman’sMoss Dale Fall, and Radcliffe’sHornby Castle, were perfect translations of the originals, showing an advance in the art of engraving as great as that which Turner had made in water-colour drawing. Except in the heightened scale of colour there is little in this series to show the influence of Italy, their temper is that ofCrossing the Brook, and the foliage and scenery that of England. Nor do we find anything but England in the ‘Rivers.’ Nothing can be more purely English than the exquisite drawing ofTotnes on the Dart(of which we give a woodcut). The original is one of the treasures of the National Gallery, and is marvellous for the minuteness of its finish and the breadth and truth of its effect. The tiny group of poplars in the middle distance arepainted with such dexterity that the impression of multitudinous leafage is perfectly conveyed, and the stillness of clear smooth water filled with innumerable variegated reflections, the beautiful distance with castle, church, and town, and the group of gulls in the foreground, make a picture of placid beauty in which there is no straining for effect, no mannerism, nothing to remind you of the artist. It is only in the touches of red in the fore of the river (touches unaccounted for by anything in the drawing) that you discern him at last, and find that you are looking not at nature but “a Turner.” If you are inclined to be angry with these touches, cover them with the hand and find out how much of the charm is lost.

TOTNES ON THE DART. From “Rivers of England.”TOTNES ON THE DART.From “Rivers of England.”

After the ‘Rivers of England,’ Turner produced work more magnificent in colour, more transcendent in imagination, indeedthework which singles him out individually from all landscape artists, in which the essences of the material world were revealed in a manner which was not only unrealized but unconceived before; but for perfect balance of power, for the mirroring of nature as it appears to ninety-nine out of every hundred, for fidelity of colour of both sky and earth, and form (especially of trees), for carefulness and accuracy of drawing, for work that neither startles you by its eccentricity nor puzzles you as to its meaning, which satisfies without cloying, and leaves no doubt as to the truth of its illusion, there is none to compare with these drawings of his of England after his first visit to Italy—and especially (though perhaps it is because we know them best that we say so) the drawings for the ‘Rivers of England.’ We are certain at least of this, that no one has a right to form an opinion about Turner’s power generally, either to go into ecstasies overor to deride his later work, till he has seen some of these matchless drawings. They form the true centre of his artistic life, the point at which his desire for the simple truth and the imperious demands of his imagination were most nearly balanced.

In 1821 and 1824 Turner exhibited no pictures at the Royal Academy, and it would have been no loss to his fame if his pictures of 1820 and 1822,Rome, from the Vatican, andWhat you will, had never left his studio; but in 1823 he astonished the world with the first of those magnificent dreams of landscape loveliness with which his name will always be specially associated;—The Say of Baiæ with Apollo and the Sibyl(1823). The three supreme works of this class,The Bay of Baiæ,Caligula’s Palace and Bridge(1831), andChilde Harold’s Pilgrimage(1832), are too well known to need description, and have been too much written about to need much comment. They were the realization of his impressions of Italy, with its sunny skies, its stone-pines, its ruins, its luxuriance of vegetation, its heritage of romance. How little the names given to these pictures really influence their effect, is shown by the frequency with which one of them is confused with another. What verses of what poet, what episode of history may have been in the artist’s mind is of little consequence, when the thought is expressed in the same terms of infinite sunny distance, crumbling ruin and towering tree. The artist may have meant to embody the whole of Byron’s mind in theChilde Harold, the history of Italy inCaligula’s Palace and Bridge, the folly of life inApollo and the Sibyl, but it does not matter now, the things are “Turners,” neither more nor less; we doubt very much whether Turner cared greatly for the particular stories attachedto many of his pictures. Some of them remind us of a title of a picture in the Academy of 1808,A Temple and Portico, with the drowning of Aristobulus, vide Josephus, book 15, chap. 3. In some it was no doubt his ardent desire to proclaim his thoughts on history and fate, but the result is much the same, for the medium in which he attempted to convey them was that least suited for his purpose. It was, however, his only means of expression, and there is something very sad in the idea of a mind struggling in vain to give its most serious thoughts didactic force. If these thoughts had been profound, and the mind that of a prophet, the failure would have been tragical. The language employed was the highest of its kind, but it was as inadequate for its purpose as music. It has, however, like fine music, the power of starting vibrations of sentiment full of suggestion, giving birth to endless dreams of beauty and pleasure, of sadness and foreboding, according to the personality and humour of those who are sensitive to its charm.

In 1825 were published his first illustrations to a modern poet—Byron; he contributed some more to the editions of 1833 and 1834, most of them being views of places which he had never seen, and therefore compositions from the sketches of others, like his drawings for Hakewill’s “Picturesque Tour of Italy” and Finden’s “Illustrations of the Bible.” No doubt the experience of his youth in improving the sketches of amateurs and the liberty which such work gave to his imagination, made it easy and congenial to him. These drawings show the variety of his artistic power and the perfection of his technical skill. TheHakewillseries is marvellous for minute accuracy (being taken from camera sketches)and for beautiful tree drawing, and the Bible series for imagination. They are, however, of less interest in a biography than those which were based upon his own impressions of the scenes depicted, such as his illustrations to Rogers and Scott.

In 1825 he exhibited only one picture,Harbour of Dieppe, and in 1826, the year when the publication of the “Southern Coast” terminated, three, of one of which there is told a story of unselfish generosity, which deserves special record. The picture was calledCologne—the arrival of a Packet-boat—Evening. Of this Mr. Hamerton writes: “There were such unity and serenity in the work, and such a glow of light and colour, that it seemed like a window opened upon the land of the ideal, where the harmonies of things are more perfect than they have ever been in the common world.” The picture was hung between two of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portraits, and Turner covered its glowing glory with a wash of lampblack, so as not to spoil their effect. “Poor Lawrence was so unhappy,” he said. “It will all wash off after the Exhibition.” As Mr. Hamerton truly observes, “It is not as if Turner had been indifferent to fame.”

There are many stories of apparently contrary action on Turner’s part, namely, of heightening the colour of his pictures to “kill” those of his neighbours at the Academy, but they do not spoil this story. During those merry “varnishing days” which Turner enjoyed so much, attempts to outcolour one another were ordinary jokes—give-and-take sallies of skill, made in good humour. No one entered into such contests with more zest than Turner, and he was not always the victor. This story seems to us to prove that when Turner saw that any onewas really hurt, his tenderness was greater than his spirit of emulation and jest.

Leslie tells the best of the “counter stories.”

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