Turner Part 4

CHAPTER VI.

HARLEY STREET, DEVONSHIRE, HAMMERSMITH, AND TWICKENHAM.

1800 TO 1820.

During 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 Lodge from 1815 to 1826. It is remarkable that in the Catalogue of the British Inst.i.tution 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 for _Hannibal Crossing the Alps_, and Lord Egremont at Petworth, where he painted _Apuleia 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 his _menage_. 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 his _menage_. 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 produce more, 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 alone Housed 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 inst.i.tution ("Turner's Gift"), should be "of _lawful 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, sh.e.l.l 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 defending the 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 sh.o.r.es of the Tamar with a scanty supply of provisions, preferred to pa.s.s 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 rec.u.mbency. 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ma.s.s.

"'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 probably 1811, and by Eastlake 1813 or 1814. The princ.i.p.al pictorial results of it were _Crossing the Brook_ (exhibited in 1815), and various drawings for Cooke's _Southern 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 inst.i.tuted 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."

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 canva.s.ses 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 acc.u.mulation 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 gla.s.s 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" and eccentric 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 circ.u.mstances, 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."