by James Wilson
‘Very well,’ said Davenant. ‘You can have a break, Mrs. Holt.’
‘It would be as well, sir,’ she said, taking off her hat, ‘if you’re to get your dinner.’
‘Never mind about my dinner,’ he said. ‘If I keep you here all afternoon, it’s no matter: you can send out for a pie. A cup of tea in the kitchen, to restore you; and then back to singeing King Philip’s beard.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, compliantly enough – but her eyes rolled with a comic exasperation that fell just short of outright insolence.
‘Begone with you, you besom,’ said Davenant, raising his hand as if to strike her. ‘And tell Lawrence to bring us some wine.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, laughing.
There was a moment’s silence after she had gone. Davenant glanced out of the window, then turned and fixed me with a frank gaze. With a gravity I had not heard before, he said:
‘Turner was my friend, Mr. Hartright. I’ll not do anything to injure him. If you want scandal, or gossip, you won’t get it here.’
‘I give you my word,’ I said, ‘I am only interested in the truth.’
‘I’ll tell you that, and gladly,’ he said. ‘But mind – I speak only of what I know.’ He paused; then, pulling two chairs from the wall, muttered: ‘And I could earnestly wish others would the same. Will you sit down?’
‘Thank you.’
‘I sometimes think you could knock on any door in London, and find someone there whose acquaintance with Turner extends, at most, to having once seen him get out of a cab – and who will cheerfully swear on that basis that he was the most crabbed, suspicious, miserable skinflint in creation.’
I laughed; and he acknowledged it with a chuckle, and a curious little bounce of the head, as if I had complimented him on some soldierly skill. He went on:
‘But I knew him for thirty years, and found him as kind and sociable as any man I ever met. You certainly couldn’t have asked for a tenderer friend.’ He sat down, tugging at the knees of the old-fashioned breeches beneath his smock. ‘I was sick as a dog, once – the doctors almost gave me up, and most of my family, too – but Turner’d come every day, to inquire after my health, and wish me better – even, I afterwards discovered, when I was too weak to receive him myself, and he got no more for his pains than two minutes’ conversation with my house-keeper,’ He shook his head, and his eyes sparkled with tears, which he made no effort to hide.
‘But what of his supposed moroseness, and meanness?’ I said.
‘Why, as to that – you never saw such a fellow for merriment and hilarity, when he was easy, and among friends. Get up any little social or professional party, and he’d gladly participate, and pay his share – and sometimes, to my knowledge, he’d defray the whole expense himself, without others knowing it.’
‘How then did he get such a reputation?’ I asked. I was, I confess, astonished: for this genial figure bore no relation to Travis’s crazed dwarf – or to the misanthropic miser I had heard of at the Academy, or to Lady Eastlake’s friendless recluse.
‘Oh, I won’t deny there may have been reason enough, for those who judge a man by his appearance, and never trouble to look beneath the surface,’ said Davenant. ‘He lived most of his life with his old father, and much of the rest alone; and never learnt good domestic management – and thus could not receive his friends at his own table, as he told me on many occasions he would have liked. And he could be gruff, sometimes, too – especially if he thought you were trying improperly to find out his secrets, or interfere with his habits.’
But why (I immediately thought) should a man be at so much pains to protect his privacy, unless he has something shameful to conceal? I kept the question to myself; but, as if he could look into my mind, Davenant said:
‘I don’t know if you’ve a wife, Mr. Hartright – and, if so, how you live with her, and, if not, how you do without one – but you might well feel that it was no damned business of mine, unless you chose to tell me, and I should heartily agree with you.’
The young manservant entered, carrying a tray with a decanter and two glasses. He stood trembling while Davenant made a space for it on his painting table, and then set it down without mishap.
‘Thank you, Lawrence,’ said Davenant, as the boy withdrew. ‘That was Turner’s view,’ he went on, as if there had been no interruption. ‘To hate humbug, and meddling, and condemnation, was almost a religious principle with him. I never heard him speak ill of a fellow-creature, or fail to put the best construction he could on another’s behaviour. If he couldn’t defend you, or approve your work, he’d hold his tongue. Will you take some wine, sir?’
‘Thank you.’
‘He wouldn’t pry into your private affairs,’ he said, busying himself with the decanter, ‘and asked nothing more in return than that you shouldn’t pry into his. And all I can say is: I wish to God there were more like him.’ He handed me a glass, full to the brim with brown sherry; then raised his own, and, looking straight before him, as if he could see Turner’s face etched upon the empty air, said: ‘Here’s honour to your memory, you old scamp.’ He drank, and turned immediately towards me. ‘Your very good health, Mr. Hartright.’
‘And yours,’ I said. And yet I did not drink; for, in some obscure way, it seemed that to do so would be to set a kind of seal on our conversation, implying that I accepted not only his hospitality, but also his account of Turner – which, in truth, had left me more puzzled and unsatisfied than ever. I merely touched the glass to my lips, therefore, and tried feverishly to compose a question that would press him further without angering him.
Once again, he seemed to anticipate my thoughts.
‘You may yet wonder’, he said, sitting down again, ‘how such a man could have been the butt of so much malice, and so many hateful anecdotes? And the only answer I can give you is: envy. Most people seem to conceive of artists as little less than angels, but they’re not, by God! – in my experience, outside a schoolroom, you won’t find a bigger pack of squabbling, jealous, back-stabbing cheats and bullies anywhere on earth. They all try to make themselves into geniuses; and if they can’t do that, they’ll say anything, and believe anything, that seems to make the geniuses more like themselves.’
He hesitated; and for a moment I considered pointing out that I was an artist myself, of sorts; but quickly thought better of it.
‘And Turner was a genius, Mr. Hartright,’ he went on. ‘He was the genius, I’d take my oath upon it. Varnishing Days at the Academy, before the Exhibition, the rest of us’d just be putting the finishing touches to our work; but he’d send in a more or less bare canvas, and you’d see the younger members looking at it, and laughing, and saying: ‘What’s he going to do with that?’
And then he’d walk in, and open his little box of tricks, and get to work – never standing back, to look at what he was doing, for it was all in his head – and within a few hours he’d have conjured a picture out of nothing. If a savage had seen it, he’d have sworn it was magic. I remember, indeed, a young Scotch fellow watching it once, and going quite pale, and muttering something about sorcery.’
‘But surely’, I said, ‘no painter could fail to admire …’
He gave a derisive splutter. ‘Imagine, Mr. Hartright,’ he said, ‘you have laboured for six months on a painting, and are mightily pleased with it, and think it will get you a knighthood; and along comes Turner, and in a single day produces its nemesis, so that you are utterly eclipsed …’
I laughed nervously, for his words had struck a hidden weakness in me; and I suddenly found that I could imagine it, all too easily; and for a moment felt the chill of some bottomless desolation fall upon me like a shadow.
‘If you did a bright sun or a blue sky,’ he said, ‘he’d as like as not try to make a brighter or a bluer. Once, I recall, he’d done a beautiful grey picture of Helvoetsluys, without a hint of positive colour; and next to it was Constable’s Opening of Waterloo Bridge, which seemed to have been painted in
liquid gold and silver; and Turner looked several times from one to the other, and then fetched his palette, and put a daub of red lead on his grey sea, a little bigger than a shilling, and went away without a word.’ He started to laugh. ‘And poor Constable groaned: “Turner’s been here, and fired a gun”; for, of course, his own picture now looked weak and insipid by comparison.’
‘Perhaps, then,’ I said, ‘it’s little wonder Turner was so much disliked.’
Davenant nodded. ‘But what none of them understood was, he meant no harm by it. It was but a kind of friendly rivalry, a goad to make us all strive harder, to perfect our art. If you outdid him, he’d laugh about it, and clap you on the back, and tell you to enjoy your victory. And he’d as soon help you as fight you. No man had a truer eye for what was wrong with a picture, or for how to make it right.’ He got up. ‘Let me show you something.’
I followed him on to the landing and halfway down the stairs, where he stopped before the moonlit seascape I had passed, not a quarter of an hour since, on my way up. I now noticed, picked out in black lettering on the frame, the title: Dover beach: night. By John Davenant, R.A. Exhibited 1837.
‘There,’ he said.
It was a dramatic enough scene, with moonlight spilling out from behind a great bank of dark cloud, and then shattering into a hundred pieces on the inky sea. Just below the horizon was a heeling merchantman, its full sails almost black in the eerie light.
‘It has great power,’ I said, glad to be able to praise something wholeheartedly at last.
He nodded, colouring with pleasure. ‘But the power is Turner’s. My first conception was quite different – no cloud at all, and the moonlight falling straight on to the ship, and making the sails glow white – and that is what I painted. But when I saw it framed, and hung at the Academy, I knew it was wrong, and so did my friends – but could any of us say where the fault lay?’ He shook his head. ‘Not until Turner chanced by, clutching his palette, and looked at it for half a minute, and said: “It wants depth, and contrast. You should cover over the moon – make the mass of the cloud black, and the edges silver, so you’ve got the brightest and the darkest next to each other – put the sails in shadow, and a dab of light on the bow.” Well, I felt the truth of this, but I was naturally rather cautious, and, try as I might, I could not get the effect he meant; and after coming back once or twice to see how I was getting on, he finally lost patience with me, and seized the brushes, and did it himself – two great strokes of black, two of white’ – here he mimed the words, with large sweeping gestures – ‘one, two, three, four. And of course we all saw at once that he was right.’
Davenant stood back to admire the painting, chuckling and shaking his head in wonderment; but I felt faintly disturbed – not merely by the high-handedness of Turner’s intervention, but also by its result: for it had instantaneously transformed a scene of bland tranquillity into one of louring menace. My thoughts, however, were at that instant disrupted by the sound of footsteps from below, and by Davenant’s suddenly roaring, so loudly that I nearly leapt from my skin:
‘Good God, Hartright, there’s dedication for you!’
I turned, and saw Mrs. Holt coming upstairs towards us.
‘She doesn’t wait to be called, you note!’ said Davenant. ‘Can’t wait to get back to harrying the dons!’
‘We’ll lose the light, sir, is all I was thinking,’ said the cook.
‘Very true, Mrs. Holt,’ said Davenant. He turned to me. ‘She’s quite right, I fear, Mr. Hartright. You will, I hope, forgive me …?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘It was very good of you to give me as much time as you have.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Delighted to help. If I have. Which I doubt. . .’
I started to speak, but he held up his hand, and went on:
‘None of your damned flattery, now. Go on up, Mrs. Holt, and get on your regalia. I’ll be with you in a moment.’ Then he took my arm affably, and led me downstairs.
He had opened the door, and was about to shake my hand, when he stopped suddenly, and said:
‘Will you wait a minute, Mr. Hartright? Something I think may assist you.’
He crossed the hall, and entered a room at the back of the house. I stood beneath his bay window, and looked about me. To the south, the smoke hung over London like a great mantle, so thick and black that just to see it was to feel the weight of it on your chest, and its woolly itch against your skin; but here a fresh breeze ruffled my hair, and there were chinks of blue between the grey-rimmed clouds that churned and tumbled above the heath. Something in their wild motion put me in mind of sporting sea creatures, and I watched, rapt, until his voice roused me from my reverie:
‘Here,’ he said, handing me a folded sheet of paper. ‘Two more people who knew him well. But neither of them painters; so you may be sure that what they tell you will be untainted by artistic rancour. Michael Gudgeon’s an antiquary, who travelled with Turner years ago on a tour of Kent and Sussex. And Amelia Bennett is old Benjamin Waley’s daughter…’
He paused, searching my face for some sign of recognition. I shook my head.
‘You’re too young, I suppose,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘He was quite a man in his day. A great amateur, who befriended Turner when he was little more than a boy.’
I thanked him warmly, and started for Kensington in high good spirits. I had trusted to fate, and fate had amply repaid me; and some almost superstitious conviction told me that it had not done with me yet, but would repay me further still when I got home.
And I was not mistaken; for there, in the hall, was the enclosed note from Ruskin!
My love as always, to you and to the children.
Walter
VI
Letter from John Ruskin to Walter Hartright,
1st August, 185–
163 Dennmark Hill,
1st August,185–
Dear Mr. Hartright,
Thank you for your letter of 21st July. I should have replied sooner, had I been here to receive it, but I only returned yesterday from a long absence in Italy and France.
Yes, I shall be happy to talk to you about Turner – although I am not sure how far it lies within my power (or the power of any man or woman) to light your way. I fear, however, that I shall be unable to see you this week – for, as I am sure you know, it is the inevitable consequence of travel to come back and find one’s garden choked with weeds, and, if I do not set to at once, some of my tenderest plants (a book, a lecture, and a thousand shy little shoots that seem to have sprung from my words, and to want only encouragement to flourish) will surely die. Would Thursday next, at three o’clock, be convenient?
Yours very truly,
John Ruskin
VII
From the diary of Marian Halcombe, 4th August, 185-
A small cottage, with but one window on each floor, and entirely unremarkable save for a curious iron railing on the parapet, that looked as if a balcony had decided to emigrate from its original home to the roof. On one side, a tavern; on the other a little shop, advertising ‘ales’, ‘refreshments’ and ‘first-class ginger-beer’; next to that, a knock-kneed gateway bearing a weatherbeaten sign – all you could read was ‘Ale anders Boat ard’, so you had to fill in the ghosts of the missing ‘x’ and ‘y’ yourself – and leading to an untidy sprawl of spars and timbers and ropes. Facing the house, beyond the road, flowed the great river, hemmed in by a shallow embankment of rough stones, and approached by a flight of steps, which were crowded with lounging watermen smoking their pipes and waiting for custom. Further out, a desultory little army of mudlarks in ragged dress scoured the stinking mud for treasure.
‘Are you sure this is the right address?’ I asked the driver.
‘Six Davis Place, Chelsea, miss?’ he said, slowly, as if I were an idiot.
I got out. A knot of boys kicking a broken bottle stopped to stare at me, and two or three of the watermen stiffened and turned in my direction. They may simply have bee
n bored, or hoping I would take a boat; but there seemed a kind of animal watchfulness in their unsmiling faces, as if, even at this time of day, a lone woman could have no rightful business here. I knew, though, that to show fear is to feed the monster that frightens us, so I paid the cabman and marched up the path without so much as a backward glance.
As I knocked on the door, however, I sensed a movement behind me, and, looking round, saw that the group of boys had followed me, and were pressing against the gate like a pack of wild dogs. Most of them instantly turned their heads to avoid my eyes, but one, a gangly beanpole of twelve or thirteen, held my gaze steadily.
‘You want to know about Puggy?’ he called.
I couldn’t tell whether he was mocking me or trying to be helpful; but since I have found that, if you expect the best of people, they generally strive to live up to your expectations, I smiled and said:
‘Booth. I’m looking for Mrs. Booth.’
‘She won’t tell you nothing about him,’ said the boy.
There was no sound from within the house, so I knocked again.
The boy called: ‘Ask Mr. Neave about him.’
The words were barely out of his mouth when I heard a man shouting: That’s right, miss, I knew the Admiral!’
I turned, and saw one of the watermen (presumably Mr. Neave) crossing the road towards me. He seemed to have been drinking, for he staggered a little, and waved his arms wildly to attract my attention.
‘I took them everywhere,’ he said, gesturing across the river towards Battersea. ‘You come with me, I’ll show you where they went.’
I had no idea what they were talking about, but did not want to show it, for fear that it might encourage them to take some advantage of me, so I said nothing, and knocked for a third time. But I was beginning to lose heart. What if – as now seemed probable – Mrs. Booth were out, and I had to walk down the path again, and through the throng? My cab had long since disappeared from view, and there was not another in sight. To add to my disquiet, three or four more men, apparently attracted by the commotion, now spilled out of the tavern. One was a most impressive figure, a black-bearded giant in a red flannel shirt and pleated black French trousers, who elbowed his way to the front and bellowed, in what sounded like a Russian or Polish accent: