The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton Volume II Part 35

WILLIAM WATSON.

SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON, Bart., P.R.A.

_Telegram._]

_April 16, 1895._ TO SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON, 2 HOLLAND PARK ROAD, KENSINGTON, LONDON.

Profondement touchee de votre si bonne lettre et aimables voeux pour ma fille, je vous en remercie de tout mon coeur, y voyant une nouvelle preuve de votre amitie. Je regrette vivement pas avoir le plaisir de vous revoir avant longtemps, mais suis sure penserez a moi.

COMTESSE PARIS.

BUCKINGHAM.

On arriving at Alger, Leighton wrote:--

HOTEL D'EUROPE, ALGER, _May 9, 1895_.

DEAR WELLS,--I got your first kind letter three days ago at Tlencen, and this morning, on pa.s.sing through this place, your very interesting account of the Banquet. I know you will not resent a _very_ brief acknowledgment; I have _one_ day here only, and a large pile of letters, with a good many of which I must deal, however laconically, at once. I need not a.s.sure you that your most kind words, like so many manifestations of friendship that I have received, touch me to the quick and will not be forgotten. That my dear old friend Millais could carry away his audience by his earnest and intense personality, I was quite certain. I rejoice in my heart at his success, apart from what I feel about his affectionate and warm expressions. It is worth while to break down, to be treated with such infinite kindness as I have met with everywhere amongst my colleagues and friends. I know you will like to hear that I am at last very decidedly better; in another month--for I don't mean to come home sooner--I really expect to be externally quite patched up--of course, the warning and the constant threat will remain by me, but I shall try to be careful, and hope yet for long to be the devoted servant of my brother members in the Academy.

Meanwhile, believe me, always sincerely yours,

FRED LEIGHTON.

_P.S._--I trust you have not suffered in your throat, which is a frequent anxiety to you from the necessity of much speaking. _I_ know how trying that is.

HOTEL D'EUROPE, ALGER, _May 21, 1895_.

DEAR LINA,--In an hour or two I leave for Europe, and in three weeks I shall be home again in comfortable Kensington.

I am grieved that you should have been worried--as well you might--by that idiotic report that I should not return to society or my profession (I wonder who invented it!), but you were fortunately soon relieved; I think I told you about the trouble Reuter and Hardy took in the matter. By-the-bye, you were right in supposing that the "long walk" was also a figment of the correspondents.

I am very glad to hear that you and Gussy are both at all events a little better at last. My bulletin is chequered, but certain things are satisfactory; in the first place, I see that fine weather and sun and pure air and the rest of it have nothing whatever to do with my condition; this, as I can't choose my climate, is distinctly rea.s.suring; also, the fact of my having been much better shows that I may hope distinctly for much improvement: in the other, a certain relapse which is now upon me shows how needful caution is, only it is disappointing to have had to go back to capsules. I have had in the main a most enjoyable time; have been very fortunate in the weather, inasmuch as the heat has not yet been intolerable, and I have done some work which will be useful perhaps and certainly delightful as a reminiscence and suggestion. A variety of untoward things, one on the top of the other, no doubt quite account for my, I hope not durable, relapse, and I have no doubt when I write again I shall be able to report fresh improvement.

The odd thing is, the bad effects _last_ so curiously. I understand hot railway journeys, bad food, &c. &c., telling on me, but I have been now two whole days and a bit in Algiers in _utter_ idleness, and a great deal on my back, and yet this morning I got an attack _lying in bed_! but don't let this disturb you--for several weeks I was much better and required _no_ capsules at all. This short little note will reach you, I suppose, on Friday morning; a line on that day or on Sat.u.r.day or Sunday, just to say that it has reached you would catch me at the Hotel Continental, Rue Castiglione, _Paris_. Please tell me, on the altogether improbable chance of my "looking in" on the Channel Islands, what the _best_ hotels are--I _must_ be comfortable. Best love to Gussy.--From your affectionate old brother,

FRED.

_P.S._--I wrote to the P. of W.'s secretary, asking him to say how much H.R.H.'s kind words had gratified me--I enclose the answer, which is nice, I think.

On Leighton's return to London he resumed his duties as President. He tried to believe what Sir Lauder Brunton hoped, but found it somewhat difficult to do so in the face of _facts_, he used to say. He, however, a.s.sumed that he was mending. On 19th July 1895 he wrote:--

DEAR BRITON RIVIeRE,--Very many thanks for your kind and thoughtful note. Do not think of postponing your motion; I have already been the innocent cause of the postponement of two very contentious motions in Council; I could not think of standing further in the way--pray, therefore, proceed with it. I had a nasty attack at that meeting but have felt no after effects, and am no doubt slowly mending. In haste, yours ever sincerely,

FRED LEIGHTON.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE FAIR PERSIAN"

(Unfinished at the time of Lord Leighton's death.) 1896 By permission of Sir Elliott Lees]

From his account to his friends after his return, his health had varied while abroad in an unaccountable manner, except in one instance where, as my husband and I knew from personal experience, the conditions were normally unhealthy. This evidently was the cause for his having had specially violent attacks at Morlaix in Brittany, which he visited on his journey home--and where, some years previously, our whole party had become more or less ill, owing, it was thought, to the unhealthiness of the place. His condition was much the same as when he left England. He worked steadily in his studio, and received the guests at the Annual Soiree of the Royal Academy. At the conclusion of the function a friend asked him how it had really fared with him--for apparently his vitality had appeared, as usual, inexhaustible. "I think the attacks must be greatly a matter of nerves," he answered. "I have stood here three hours and a quarter and have not had one,--while I was dressing and fearing how I should get through it, I had _three_."

Leighton did not go to Scotland that autumn but to the wild west coast of Ireland, again to that Malinmore that had so greatly fascinated him, and whose wild beauty he had longed for his sister to enjoy, "taking her courage in one hand, her goloshes in a second, and umbrella in the third."[85] On his way there he wrote to Mrs. Orr:--

IMPERIAL HOTEL, PEMBROKE STREET, CORK, _Thursday, September 5, 1895_.

DEAR LINA,--I was glad to glean from your letter of last Thursday that, taking it all round, you are having a fairly good time, and Gussy ditto. (I can't stand _wind_ either, it aggravates my system.) I've never seen Mull--should like to--but _not_ being a sociable bird (like you) should wish to have no acquaintances. Is it Napier of _Magdala_? if so, I knew the old lord of that ilk; indeed, to be accurate, I knew him even if it was not so; or Lord Napier of _Ettrick_? if so ditto, ditto. It is always the previous lot _I_ knew. By this time you will have been to Lindisfarne[86] (lovely name!)--if you did not enjoy the sands and the Abbey you need not call on me again. I suppose you are at home now. In a week or two I shall no doubt know how I am. Just off to Killarney, then Galway, then _Malinmore_, County Donegal, where I shall be from (say) the 10th to (say) the 17th, your affectionate old brother.

In another letter he wrote to Mrs. Orr: "I am too glad that you have made acquaintances--been a gregarious person. If I make an acquaintance anywhere, I have simply lost the game." From Malinmore on September 19th he wrote to me: "I'm sorry that you saw Scotland in a mist; its beauty is _succulent colour_--you want rain first and then a burst of sun--I am enjoying unsociable solitude keenly, like the bear I am; health so so; I'm sowing patience, but so far reaping nothing in particular. In a fortnight, off to Italy." On this visit to his "second home" Leighton began with Venice, from whence he wrote to me Oct. 9th: "The wind is howling and the rain pouring down in torrents--not a correct att.i.tude in Venice--I'm no better." Leighton next went to Naples, where he wrote the following letter to Mrs.

Orr:--

HOTEL BRISTOL, NAPLES, _October 18, 1895_.

DEAR LINA,--I am sorry that you and Gussy don't see your way to going to Bayreuth, since it is your health that seems to stand in the way; other reasons are all my eye. I KNOW from Gussy's own mouth that she would particularly like to hear the Siegfried Tetralogy at Bayreuth (and this _may_ be the last time of giving it _there_), I _know_ also that, given, of course, the Fursten Loge with its facilities, you would like to go, because you have said so. Well it will remain open in case you change what you, fondly and perhaps sincerely, regard as your minds.

I am very glad you take such a very sensible view of my ailment, because it makes it more easy to speak of it; I also live in the hope and, almost, expectation, that it will fizzle out some day of its own accord, and this enables me to bear up against the entire absence _at present_ of any improvement. I have at last finished my "Nordau," which I have read through from cover to cover; it is a very vigorous and remarkable book and of riveting interest to any one who likes polemics (from _outside_) as I do.

The author is at his best when he is dissecting a particular victim--say Nietzsche--on the other hand one is not a little repelled by his astoundingly unparliamentary insolence, his not infrequent disingenuousness and _spitzfindelei_ and his curious narrownesses and lacunae. The _Bocke die er schneidet_ when he gets on the subject of graphic art are quite comic. The fact is he is in some respects absolutely devoid of perception, like an otherwise most intelligent and cultured man who should have no ear for music. What, for instance, can we say of a man who a.s.serts, as a truism, that aesthetic and _s.e.xual_(!) feelings (not sensual but "_geschlechtlich_") are not merely akin but actually cover one another to a very large extent! I doubt whether there is anything chaster than the sense of beauty in abstract form; he has no inkling of this. When all is said and done he is himself in some measure a _crypto_degenerate, if I may so call him; degeneracy is a _Zw.a.n.gsvorstellung_ with him, he sees it everywhere; a curious instance is his seeing it in the fondness of English writers for alliteration; of course he knows, with his wide culture, better than I do that this a.s.sonance of the beginning of words dates from the dawn of our literature; _he might_, no doubt, say, "Yes! it is a _Ruckschlag_," but he would therein give another proof of his inept.i.tude in aesthetic matters. In _every_ Art, _iteration_, of which alliteration is a form, has ever been a powerful source of expression and charm. Meanwhile his last, remarkable, chapter "Therapie" takes a good deal of the sting out of the book; he owns that certain peculiarities--excess of sensibility and the like--are present in _nearly all art_, that it is, in fact, only a question of a degree and, he adds, in a pa.s.sage which Gussy has marked, "Who shall say _where_, exactly, madness begins?"

Amen! And that little (or large) spice of something which _might_ be madness if there was much more of it, has given to us poor mortals some of our keenest delights--"more grease to its elbow," say I, in my vulgar way. But, I say! Nietzsche!!

eh?--I've also read J. Kowaleski, with great interest--but, crikey! _what_ a creature to live with!!

Tell Gussy, with my love, that I have got the usual two seats (Queen's Hall) for the November _Wagner_. Tell her to keep the day open.--Afftly. yrs.

FRED.

From Naples he travelled to Rome to find his dear friend Giovanni Costa, with whom he spent the last weeks of his holiday. Of this visit Costa wrote the following in his "Notes":--

"His last study from nature was painted in Rome in October 1895, for the unfinished picture of 'Clytie,' exhibited in the Royal Academy, 1896. It was a study of fruit, and he enjoyed working on it for several hours, though he was then ill; and I believe that the hours he pa.s.sed in the courtyard of the Palazzo Odeschalchi painting these fruits, which he had arranged on a marble sarcophagus, afforded him, perhaps, the last artistic pleasures he ever enjoyed. It is true that after this he went to the Vatican, to Siena, and to Florence, where he saw for the last time the masterpieces with which these towns abound. But, standing before the great works of the masters of the past, he could only sigh.

"He worshipped children, and his pictures of children with fruit and flowers are among the most delicious and spontaneous work ever done by him in painting. And I can see him again, during the last visit he paid to Rome in 1895, on his knees before my little girl, to accede to her request that she should have a lock of his hair as a remembrance."

Nothing could give a better record of two sides of Leighton's nature, often believed to be incompatible, than the contents of the letter from Naples to his sister, with its remarks on Nordau, Nietzsche, and the like, and this beautiful picture recalled by his old friend Costa--Leighton on his knees before a little child. The intellect which could crack the hardest of intellectual nuts was surmounted by lowly reverence for all beauty, most ardently adored when that beauty came to him in its most innocent childlike garb.

Writing to me on his return on November the 6th Leighton says: "I shall try to look in to-morrow at five. I want very much to hear Fuller-Maitland's preachment" (Lectures on Purcell were being given at our house previous to the Purcell Festival). "I am sorry to say I am no better, rather worse." On being asked the next day, as he came into our house, "How is it?" the answer Leighton gave was, "Oh, worse!

Sometimes fifteen attacks a day." On his birthday, the 3rd of December, he wrote to his sister:--

2 HOLLAND PARK ROAD, KENSINGTON, W., _December 3, 1895_.

DEAR LINA,--The grand leaves in a mossy pot, and the sweet flowers, and the poems, and your letter, came all together. I know you will let me answer you both on one piece of paper. I know, dears, how true is your love, and though I am not a demonstrative person, it is very precious to me. I know you will both like to hear that after an _hour's_ innings between L.

Brunton, Dr. Tunnicliffe his partner, Roberts, and three most ingenious scientific instruments, and after tapping and auscultating of my wretched ear cap fore and aft, it was p.r.o.nounced that (in some mysterious way) I am _not_ worse, but _better_; well, I am glad to hear it; meanwhile my medicine is being strengthened, and will be again in the (pretty certain) event of its requiring more strength. L.B. quite _hopes_ to rig me out for the May banquet. Much love to both from affectionate old brother.

On the 14th he wrote to his friend Mr. Henry Wells:--

2 HOLLAND PARK ROAD, KENSINGTON, W., _December 14, 1895_.

DEAR WELLS,--Many thanks for your kind letter, relying on which I hasten to "nail" you for the _27th_; I shall be very much disappointed if you say me "nay." I never give a _long_ notice, in part so as to bring about a little shuffling of cards, and relieving my guests of a certain monotony of routine which might in the end irk them. I need not a.s.sure you that I am most warmly sensible to the vigilant and truly friendly interest which you manifest concerning my health; believe me, if I differ from you in not believing in the efficacy or feasibility of a suspension of activity for a year or two, it is in no unreasoning or perverse spirit (and let me, by-the-bye, say in pa.s.sing that I have, for a few days past, certainly been a little better).

Putting aside for a moment the fact that I have for the next year, and more, definite professional _obligations_ in the way of commissioned work (which is, unfortunately, not incompatible with having a certain number of unsold works!), to withdraw from Academic duties would mean _leaving England_ for the period in question; it would be morally impossible to remain here, apparently in robust health, congratulated constantly, as I am, on my healthy appearance, going about unrebuked by a _very_ cautious doctor (Lauder Brunton), taking the pleasures of life _apparently_ without any stint (as a matter of _fact_ I am very quiet and regular, and under _continuous_ medical treatment), and then shirking all its _duties_; but experience has shown that I gain nothing by absence--by change of climate and the rest; and, on the other hand, my temperament being what you know, the withdrawal from my active life would infallibly prey on me and have a marked effect on my health through my spirits; this is also the opinion of Lauder Brunton. My care must be to live quietly but not idly, and thus try to mend gradually, as I doubtless shall, in the hands of my doctor _and my ma.s.seur_.

_If_, which G.o.d forbid, I am p.r.o.nounced still unfit in May, I will bow, with whatever bitterness, to the judgment, but till then I must not forego hope. Meanwhile, you have all done me infinite service in prohibiting the "Discourse" for this year--I can't say how grateful I was for that! I shall also avoid, as far as may be, all _controversy_ at our table; that is the worst thing of all by far, for yours sincerely always,

FRED LEIGHTON.[87]

With the New Year honours and among those bestowed was a Peerage on Leighton, who was created Lord Leighton, Baron of Stretton (see chap.

i. vol. i., Antecedents). Needless to say, congratulations poured in from all sorts and conditions. One of these in writing was preserved because enclosed in a note to his sister.

_January 13, 1896._