Volume I Part 3 (2/2)

We had hot debates on the subject, in which the doctor adduced his conversations with the intelligent farland, whom he had especially studied, to show that their political education was such as to endanger the best interests of the com faith in the processes of universal suffrage, disputed his conclusions, so hotly in fact that we quarreled and he took one side of the quarter-deck for his promenades and I the other But the conditions of sea life, with a companionshi+p limited to two persons, are such that no quarrel that was not mortal, or from rivalry in the affections of a woman, could endure many days, and after a few such days we drew to the same side of the deck and were better friends than before, but we dropped politics

This was in January of 1850, and I a German savant, who in that state of A the horoscope of a nation, as it has been in recent times fulfilled; who saw in the crude notions of political econoerms of the political blunders and errors of to-day I drew his portrait, I made a few studies of sea and sky, but for the most part the sensation of simple existence under the conditions of illi beyond, was sufficient for me I used to lie on my back on the roof of the wheel-house and look into the sky, and try to ulls which sailed around overdoith their dove-like eyes as if to see what this thing ” of the sea as we got into the Gulf Strea and sudden population of the ocean, always bringing us surprises; the htful storion in which they were always to be expected, and which, though we had soh to satisfy s filled ht in nature that when, at the end of nearly three weeks at sea, we caht of the Irish coast, I hated the land

Life was enough under the sea conditions, and the prospect of the return to the list men was absolute pain

We made Liverpool in twenty-one days from New York, and the steamer which had left that port the next week did not arrive till three or four days after, so thatfor the letter of credit involved a hotel bill which nearly exhaustedmy circumstances, made the hotel keeper throw off fifty per cent of his bill (for I went to the ”captain's hotel”), and thus I succeeded in getting to London with the money which was to have paidto the careful calculations I had made, at the rate of a pound a week) reduced to provision for three, after which Providence was expected to provide e home In these weeks I had planned to see Turner's pictures, Copley Fielding's, with Creswick's, and all the others Ruskin had mentioned But the railways and hotels had never come into my arithmetic, and that was always, and remains, my weak point However, the letter of credit was for fifty pounds, and so I felt justified in eneral credit of that account

CHAPTER VI

ART STUDY IN ENGLAND

Arrived at Euston Station in the sht a penny loaf and walked the streets eating it and carrying o to present a letter of introduction given land, Mr Delf, who at once took ot a roos a week, service included, and an honest, kindly landlady to whom I still feel indebted for the affectionate interest she took in me I had letters to Mr SC Hall, editor of the ”Art Journal,” and the Rev William Black, pastor of the little Seventh Day Baptist Church at Millyard in Goodmansfields, Leman Street, a very ancient and well-endowed foundation, e and provision for two ser I sat all the tiical tastes whose researches had led him to the conviction that the Seventh Day was the true Christian Sabbath, and to fellowshi+p with the congregation of Millyard I was admitted to honoraryto the two dry-as-dust sermons was compensated for by the cordial friendshi+p of the pastor, an invitation to dinner every Saturday, and the hters My childhood's faith andso closely to me that the observances of our ancient church were to me sacred, and the Sabbath day at Millyard still held me to the simple ways of home In that secluded nook, out of all the rush and noise of London, we lived as we e; it was an _impasse_, and one who entered from the narrow and squalid alleys which led to it was surprised to find the little square of the old and disused graveyard, with its huge hawthorn trees and its inclosure of the parsonage appendages, as peaceful and as far from the world as if it had been in distant Devon

My letter to Mr Hall led to introductions to Leslie, Harding, Creswick, and several minor painters, all of whoave me on their own excellences and led ht her and more serious order, JB Pyne, one of the few thinkers and ilish painters Every Sunday I went out to Pyne's house in Fulha the day there Kitchen-gardens and green fields then lay between Kensington and Fulha and the hawthorn bloomed After an early dinner we passed the afternoon in talk on art and artists Pyne was one of the best talkers on art I ever knew, and a critic of very great lucidity; his art had great qualities and as great defects, but in comparison with soiant, and in certain technical qualities he had no equal in his generation except Turner He had the dangerous tendency, for an artist, of putting everything he did under the protection and direction of a theory--a course which invariably checks the fertility of technical resource, and which in his case had the unfortunate effect of causing hiarded as a mere theorist, whose as done by line and rule But I had good reason to know that Turner thought lish public, and I aoes on and his pictures acquire the mellowness of tone for which he carefully calculated in his hly esteemed than in his own time, and that the careful and systematic technique which characterized his work, and which is so opposed to the random and hypothetically inspired methods that are the admiration of a half-educated public, will find its true appreciation in the future

Of all the English artists of that day hom I became acquainted, Pyne impressed me as by a considerable measure the broadest thinker, and, except Turner in his water-color, the ablest landscape painter; old John Linnell in this respect standing nearest him in technical poith a 's work I took no interest; his conventions and tricks of the brush repelled ed, for this is the effect of wasted cleverness, that it disheartens athat his abilities are less, finds the achievement of clevererIn it I saw an exaggeration of Pyne's defects and the caricature of his good qualities Creswick had a better feeling for nature, but convention in hisme the way in which he produced detail in a pebbly brookside, byover it a brush loaded with pight only on the prominences, and did in a

A painter who taught me more than any other at that time was Edward Wehnert, mainly known then as an illustrator, and hardly remembered now even in that capacity Attracted by one of his water-colors, I went to hi enerous way, during the entire stay Iall the artists I have known, Wehnert's life ith the exception of sexton's, the h order, and his education far above that which the British artist of that day possessed He was a pupil of Paul Delaroche, and the Gerinative elelishman in him liberated entirely from the Gerh of the Gern a senti of that day He painted in both oil and water-color, with a facility of design I have never known surpassed,with ed in illustrating Grimm's stories, for a paltry compensation, but, as it seemed to me, in a spirit the most completely concordant with the stories of all the illustrations I have ever seen of that folk-lore

Wehnert had several sisters, who had been accustomed to a certain ease in life, and to maintain this all his efforts and those of a bachelor brother were devoted, to the sacrifice of his legitimate ambitions; he was overworked with the veriest hack-work of his profession, and I never knew hien, widely read and well taught in all that related to his art as well as in literature, and I used to sit s were passed in the family The sisters omen who had been of the world, clever, acco circle of friends; but over the whole faravity, as if of some past which could never be spoken of and into which I never felt inclined to inquire

A the memories of my first stay in London the Wehnerts awaken the tenderest, for through many years they proved the dearest and kindest of friends And the hospitality of London, wherever I found access to it, was un and unknown student without recommendation or achievement made on me an indelible impression I now and then found people who asked lish, or if all the people in the section frole case, that of a lady who proposed to make me responsible for slavery in the United States, I never found anything but friendshi+p and courtesy, and generally the friendliness took the form of active interest

Most ofup pictures by Turner, and of course I made the early acquaintance of Griffiths, a dealer in pictures, as Turner's special agent, and at whose gallery were to be seen such of his pictures as he wished to sell,--for no inducement could be offered which would make him dispose of some of them

Griffiths told me that in his presence an A Turner 5000, which was refused, for the Old ”Temeraire,” offered him a blank check, which was also rejected Griffiths's place became one of my most common resorts, for Griffiths was less a picture dealer than a passionate admirer of Turner, and seeh his love for the artist's pictures; and to share in his adain his cordial friendshi+p

Here I first saw Ruskin and was introduced to his of Turner, when a gentleallery, and, after a conversation between them, Griffiths came to me and asked if I should not like to be presented to the author of ”Modern Painters,” to which I naturally replied in the affir to find in hientle type, blonde, refined, and with as little self-assertion or dog of his own opinions; suggesting views rather than asserting them, and as if he had not himself cohtful and to me instructive conversation ended in an invitation to visit his father's collection of drawings and pictures at Den at his own house in Grosvenor Street After the lapse of forty-eight years, it is difficult to distinguish between the incidents which took place in this first visit to England in 1850 and those belonging to another a little later, butthe for at the Grosvenor Street residence, at which I st them GF Watts I then saw Mrs Ruskin, and I have a very vivid i to a friend, to whom I spoke of the visit just after, that she was the land As I approached the house there was a bagpiper playing near it, and the pipes entered into the conversation in the drawing-roo opinion of their music, which I heard for the first tination, but, after an annihilating look, she said mildly, ”I suppose no Southerner can understand the pipes,” and we discussed the soe of their effect

At that ti Calvinistic notions, and as I kept ion as on art, the two being then to me almost identical and to hi of the doctrine of foreordination (to lass of sherry, that he ”believed that it had been ordained frolass down e the wine” This was toproblem of all that Ruskin put before me, for it was the first time that the doctrine of Calvin had coave me a serious perplexity as to the accuracy of Ruskin's perceptions of nature Leslie had given me a card to see Mr

Holford's collection of pictures, in which was one of Turner's, the balcony scene in Venice, called, I think, ”Juliet and her Nurse” It was aof a certain effect seen with theto Ruskin, later on, that no other picture I had ever seen ofit, to which he replied that he had never noticed that it was a ht picture; but when I called his attention to the display of fireworks on the Grand Canal, he admitted that it was not custoht scene

My acquaintance with Ruskin lasted with varying degrees of intimacy, and so the civil war and bitterness against our government, till 1870, when it was terminated by a trivial personal incident to which his ave a false color We separated more and more widely in our opinions on art in later years, and the differences came to me reluctantly, for my reverence for the man was never to be shaken, while my study of art showed me finally that, however correct his views of the ethics of art ht be, from the point of view of pure art he was entirely mistaken, and all that his influence had done for ress could be made What little I had learned from the artists I knew had been in the main correct, and had aided to showof ”Modern Painters,” and of Ruskin himself later, was in the end fatal to the career to which I was then devoted, for I was unable to get back to the dividing of the ways

But the first mistake wasof the hand, for one so far beyond my technical attain theories beyond my practice My execution was so far in arrear of my perceptions of what should be in the result, that instead of the delight hich I had, untaught, and in ht of s so heavily as to make my work full of distress instead of that content hich the artist should alork Everything beca was tooood advice I received as laid under heavier disabilities by the better knowledge of what should be done In art education the training of the hand should, I a powers, so that the young student should feel that his ideal is just before hier's end That this is so rarely the case with art students in our day is, I am convinced, the chief reason of the technical inferiority of our modern painters and the root of the inferiority of h

I was already belated, and every advance I made in the study of the theory of art putland was speedily dispelled Lessons in water-color I could get at a guinea an hour, and to enter as a pupil with one of the better painters was impossible Pyne received from his pupils 100 a o and put it at six months By the advice of Wehnert, I applied to Charles Davidson, a member of the New Water-Color Society, for instruction, and went down into Surrey, where he lived, to be able to follow him in his work from nature He lived at Red Hill, and in the immediate vicinity John Linnell had built his then new horeat deal of the old lish type I have ever known, and to ious point of view as fro differences of the creed, of which I knew and cared nothing (formen,” and I had no conception of the distinctions of creed which would send on one side of the line of safety an Established Churchreed very well, and in the general impression I set Linnell down as a devout Christian of the Cromwellian type, and he certainly was a man of rey His Christianity ht have taken a form of less domestic sternness, but I reenuine piety, though not even ious severity excited in me