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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Philip Gilbert Hamerton
+by Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
+
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+Title: Philip Gilbert Hamerton
+
+Author: Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
+
+Release Date: July, 2005  [EBook #8536]
+[This file was first posted on July 21, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON ***
+
+
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Tonya Allen, Charles
+Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
+
+_AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY_
+
+1834-1858
+
+_AND A MEMOIR BY HIS WIFE_
+
+1858-1894
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Intellectual living is not so much an accomplishment as a state or
+condition of the mind in which it seeks earnestly for the highest and
+purest truth.... If we often blunder and fail for want of perfect wisdom
+and clear light, have we not the inward assurance that our aspiration
+has not been all in vain, that it has brought us a little nearer to the
+Supreme Intellect whose effulgence draws us while it dazzles?"--_The
+Intellectual Life_.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+About twelve years ago my husband told me that he had begun to write an
+Autobiography intended for publication, but not during his lifetime. He
+worked upon it at intervals, as his literary engagements permitted, but
+I found after his sudden death that he had only been able to carry it as
+far as his twenty-fourth year. Such a fragment seemed too brief for
+separate publication, and I earnestly desired to supplement it by a
+Memoir, and thus to give to those who knew and loved his books a more
+complete understanding of his character and career. But though I longed
+for this satisfaction and solace, the task seemed beyond my power,
+especially as it involved the difficulty of writing in a foreign
+language. Considering, however, that the Autobiography was carried, as
+it happened, up to the date of our marriage, and that I could therefore
+relate all the subsequent life from intimate knowledge, as no one else
+could, I was encouraged by many of Mr. Hamerton's admirers to make the
+attempt, and with the great and untiring help of his best friend, Mr.
+Seeley, I have been enabled to complete the Memoir--such as it is.
+
+I offer my sincere thanks to Mr. Sidney Colvin and to his co-executor
+for having allowed the insertion of Mr. R. L. Stevenson's letters; to
+Mr. Barrett Browning for those of his father; to Sir George and Lady
+Reid, Mr. Watts, Mr. Peter Graham, and Mr. Burlingame for their own.
+
+I also beg Mr. A. H. Palmer to accept the expression of my gratitude for
+his kind permission to use as a frontispiece to this book the fine
+photograph taken by him.
+
+E. HAMERTON.
+
+_September_, 1896.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+My reasons for writing an Autobiography.--That a man knows the history
+of his own life better than a biographer can know it.--Frankness and
+reserve.--The contemplation of death.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+1834.
+
+My birthplace.--My father and mother.--Circumstances of their
+marriage.--Their short married life.--Birth of their child.--Death of
+my mother.--Her character and habits.--My father as a widower.--Dulness
+of his life.--Its degradation.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+1835-1841.
+
+My childhood is passed at Barnley with my aunts.--My grandfather and
+grandmother.--Estrangement between Gilbert Hamerton and his brother of
+Hellifield Peel.--Death of Gilbert Hamerton.--His taste for the French
+language.--His travels in Portugal, and the conduct of a steward during
+his absence.--His three sons.--Aristocratic tendencies of his
+daughters.--Beginning of my education.--Visits to my father.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+1842.
+
+A tour in Wales in 1842.--Extracts from my Journal of this tour.--My
+inborn love for beautiful materials.--Stay at Rhyl.--Anglesea and
+Caernarvon.--Reasons for specially remembering this tour.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+1843-1844.
+
+A painful chapter to write.--My father calls me home.--What kind of a
+house it was.--Paternal education and discipline.--My life at that time
+one of dulness varied by dread.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+1844.
+
+My extreme loneliness.--Thoughts of flight.--My father's last illness
+and death.--Circumstances of my last interview with him.--His funeral.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+1845.
+
+Dislike to Shaw in consequence of the dreadful life I lead there with my
+father.--My guardian.--Her plan for my education.--Doncaster
+School.--Mr. Cape and his usher.--The usher's intolerance of
+Dissenters.--My feeling for architecture and music.--The
+drawing-master.--My guardian insists on my learning French.--Our French
+master, Sig. Testa.--A painful incident.--I begin to learn the
+violin.--Dancing.--My aversion to cricket.--Early readings.--Love of
+Scott.--My first library.--Classical studies.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+1845.
+
+Early attempts in English verse.--Advantages of life at Doncaster.--A
+school incident.--Fagging.--Story of a dog.--Robbery.--My school-fellow
+Henry Alexander.--His remarkable influence.--Other school-fellows.
+--Story of a boat.--A swimming adventure.--Our walks and battles.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+1846.
+
+Early interest in theology.--Reports of sermons.--Quiet influence of Mr.
+Cape.--Failure of Mr. Cape's health.--His death.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+1847-1849.
+
+My education becomes less satisfactory.--My guardian's state of
+health.--I pursue my studies at Burnley.--Dr. Butler.--He encourages me
+to write English.--Extract from a prize poem.--Public discussions in
+Burnley School.--A debate on Queen Elizabeth.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+1850.
+
+My elder uncle.--We go to live at Hollins.--Description of the place.
+--My strong attachment to it.--My first experiment in art-criticism.
+--The stream at Hollins.--My first catamaran.--Similarity of my life at
+Hollins to my life in France thirty-six years later.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+1850.
+
+Interest in the Middle Ages.--Indifference to the Greeks and Romans.
+--Love for Sir Walter Scott's writings.--Interest in heraldry and
+illuminations.--Passion for hawking.--Old books in the school library at
+Burnley.--Mr. Edward Alexander of Halifax.--Attempts in literary
+composition.--Contributions to the "Historic Times."--"Rome in
+1849."--"Observations on Heraldry."
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+1850.
+
+Political and religious opinions of my relations.--The Rev. James
+Bardsley.--Protestant controversy with Rome.--German neology.--The
+inspiration of the Scriptures.--Inquiry into foundation for the
+doctrine.--I cease to be a Protestant.--An alternative presents
+itself.--A provisional condition of prolonged inquiry.--Our medical
+adviser.--His remarkable character.--His opinions.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+1851.
+
+First visit to London in 1851.--My first impression of the place.--
+Nostalgia of the country.--Westminster.--The Royal Academy.--Resolution
+never to go to London again.--Reason why this resolution was afterwards
+broken.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+1851-1852.
+
+The lore of reading a hindrance to classical studies.--Dr. Butler
+becomes anxious about my success at Oxford.--An insuperable
+obstacle.--My indifference to degrees.--Irksome hypocrisy.--I am nearly
+sent to a tutor at Brighton.--I go to a tutor in Yorkshire.--His
+disagreeable disposition.--Incident about riding.--Disastrous effect of
+my tutor's intellectual influence upon me.--My private reading.--My
+tutor's ignorance of modern authors.--His ignorance of the fine
+arts.--His religious intolerance.--I declare my inability to sign the
+Thirty-nine Articles.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+1852.
+
+Choice of a profession.--Love of literature and art.--Decision to make
+trial of both.--An equestrian tour.--Windermere.--Derwentwater.--I take
+lessons from Mr. J. P. Pettitt.--Ulleswater.--My horse turf.--Greenock,
+a discovery.--My unsettled cousin.--Glasgow.--Loch
+Lomond.--Inverary.--Loch Awe.--Inishail.--Inmstrynich.--Oban.--A
+sailing excursion.--Mull and Ulva.--Solitary reading.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+1853.
+
+A journal.--Self-training.--Attempts in periodical literature.--The
+time given to versification well spent.--Practical studies in art.--
+Beginning of Mr. Ruskin's influence.--Difficulty in finding a master in
+landscape-painting.--Establishment of the militia.--I accept a
+commission.--Our first training.--Our colonel and our adjutant.--The
+Grand Llama.--Paying off the men.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+1853.
+
+A project for studying in Paris.--Reading.--A healthy life.--
+Quinsy.--My most intimate friend.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+1853.
+
+London again.--Accurate habits in employment of time.--Studies with Mr.
+Pettitt.--Some account of my new master.--His method of technical
+teaching.--Simplicity of his philosophy of art.--Incidents of his
+life.--Rapid progress under Pettitt's direction.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+1653-1854.
+
+Acquaintance with R. W. Mackay.--His learning and accomplishments.--His
+principal pursuit.--His qualities as a writer.--Value of the artistic
+element in literature.--C. R. Leslie, R. A.--Robinson, the
+line-engraver.--The Constable family.--Mistaken admiration for minute
+detail.--Projected journey to Egypt.--Mr. Ruskin.--Bonomi.--Samuel
+Sharpe.--Tennyson.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+1854.
+
+A Visit to Rogers.--His Home.--Geniality in poets.--Talfourd.--Sir
+Walter Scott.--Leslie's picture, "The Rape of the Lock."--George
+Leslie.--Robert Leslie.--His nautical instincts.--Watkiss
+Lloyd.--Landseer.--Harding.--Richard Doyle.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+1854.
+
+Miss Marian Evans.--John Chapman, the publisher.--My friend William
+Shaw.--His brother Richard.--Mead, the tragedian.--Mrs. Rowan and her
+daughter.--A vexatious incident.--I suffer from nostalgia for the
+country.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+1854.
+
+Some of my relations emigrate to New Zealand.--Difficulties of a poor
+gentleman.--My uncle's reasons for emigration.--His departure.--Family
+separations.--Our love for Hollins.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+1854.
+
+Resignation of commission in the militia.--Work from nature.--Spenser,
+the poet.--Hurstwood.--Loch Awe revisited.--A customer.--I determine to
+learn French well.--A tour in Wales.--Swimming.--Coolness on account of
+my religious beliefs.--My guardian.--Evil effects of religions
+bigotry.--Refuge in work.--My drawing-master.--Our excursion in Craven.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+1855.
+
+Publication of "The Isles of Loch Awe and other Poems."--Their
+sale.--Advice to poetic aspirants.--Mistake in illustrating my book of
+verse.--Its subsequent history.--Want of art in the book.--Too much
+reality.--Abandonment of verse. A critic in "Fraser."--Visit to Paris
+in 1855.--Captain Turnbull.--Ball at the Hôtel de Ville.--Louis Napoleon
+and Victor Emmanuel.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+1855.
+
+Thackeray's family in Paris.--Madame Mohl.--Her husband's encouraging
+theory about learning languages.--Mr. Scholey.--His friend, William
+Wyld.--An Indian in Europe.--An Italian adventuress.--Important meeting
+with an American.--Its consequences.--I go to a French hotel.--People
+at the _table d'hote_.--M. Victor Ouvrard.--His claim on the
+Emperor.--M. Gindriez.--His family.--His eldest daughter.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+1856.
+
+Specialities in painting.--Wyld's practice.--Projected voyage on the
+Loire.--Birth of the Prince Imperial.--Scepticism about his inheritance
+of the crown.--The Imperial family.--I return home.--Value of the French
+language to me.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+1856.
+
+My first encampment in Lancashire.--Value of encamping as a part of
+educational discipline.--Happy days in camp.--The natural and the
+artificial in landscape.--Sir James Kay Shuttleworth's Exhibition
+project.--I decline to take an active part in it.--His energetic and
+laborious disposition.--Charlotte Brontë.--General Scarlett.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+I visit the homes of my forefathers at Hamerton, Wigglesworth, and
+Hellifield Peel.--Attainder and execution of Sir Stephen Hamerton.
+--Return of Hellifield Peel to the family.--Sir Richard.--The Hamertons
+distinguished only for marrying heiresses.--Another visit to the Peel,
+when I see my father's cousin.--Nearness of Hellifield Peel and Hollins.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+1857.
+
+Expedition to the Highlands in 1857.--Kindness of the Marquis of
+Breadalbane and others.--Camp life, its strong and peculiar
+attraction.--My servant.--Young Helliwell.--Scant supplies in the
+camp.--Nature of the camp.--Necessity for wooden floors in a bad
+climate.--Double-hulled boats.--Practice of landscape-
+painting.--Changes of effect.--Influences that governed my way of study
+in those days.--Attractive character of the Scottish Highlands.--Their
+scenery not well adapted for beginners.--My intense love of it.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+1857-1858.
+
+Small immediate results of the expedition to the Highlands.--Unsuitable
+system of work.--Loss of time.--I rent the house and island of
+Innistrynich.--My dread of marriage and the reasons for
+it.--Notwithstanding this I make an offer and am refused.--Two young
+ladies of my acquaintance.--Idea of a foreign marriage.--Its
+inconveniences.--Decision to ask for the hand of Mdlle. Gindriez.--I go
+to Paris and am accepted.--Elective affinities.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+1858.
+
+Reception at home after engagement.--Preparations at Innistrynich.--I
+arrive alone in Paris.--My marriage.--The religious ceremony.--An
+uncomfortable wedding.--The sea from Dieppe.--London.--The Academy
+Exhibition of 1858.--Impressions of a Frenchwoman.--The Turner
+collection.--The town.--Loch Awe.--The element wanting to happiness.
+
+
+
+
+MEMOIR.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+1858.
+
+My first sight of Loch Awe.--Arrival at Innistrynich.--Our domestic
+life.--Difficulties about provisions.--A kitchen-garden.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+1858.
+
+Money matters.--Difficulties about servants.--Expensiveness of our mode
+of life.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+1858.
+
+Painting from nature.--Project of an exhibition.--Photography.--Plan of
+"A Painter's Camp."--Topographic art.--Charm of our life in the
+Highlands.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+1858.
+
+English and French manners.--My husband's relatives.--First journey to
+France after our marriage.--Friends in London.--Miss Susan Hamerton.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+1859.
+
+Visits from friends and relatives.--A Frenchman in the Highlands.--
+Project of buying the island of Innistrynich.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+1859-1860.
+
+Financial complications.--Summer visitors.--Boats and boating.--Visit
+to Paris.--W. Wyld.--Project of a farm in France.--Partnership with M.
+Gindriez.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+1861-1863.
+
+Effects of the Highland climate.--Farewell to Loch Awe.--Journey to the
+south of France.--Death of Miss Mary Hamerton.--Settlement at
+Sens.--Death of M. Gindriez.--Publication of "A Painter's Camp."
+--Removal to Pré-Charmoy.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+1863-1868.
+
+Canoeing on the Unknown River.--Visit of relatives.--Tour in
+Switzerland.--Experiments in etching.--The "Saturday Review."--Journeys
+to London.--Plan of "Etching and Etchers."--New friends in
+London.--Etching exhibited at the Royal Academy.--Serious illness in
+London.--George Eliot.--Professor Seeley.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+1868.
+
+Studies of animals.--A strange visitor.--Illness at Amiens.--Resignation
+of post on the "Saturday Review."--Nervous seizure in railway
+train.--Mrs. Craik.--Publication of "Etching and Etchers."
+--Tennyson.--Growing reputation in America.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+1869-1870.
+
+"Wenderholme."--The Mont Beuvray.--Botanical studies.--La
+Tuilerie.--Commencement of "The Portfolio."--The Franco-Prussian War.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+1870-1872.
+
+Landscape-painting.--Letters of Mr. Peter Graham, R.A.--Incidents of the
+war-time.--"The Intellectual Life."--"The Etcher's Handbook."
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+1873-1875.
+
+Popularity of "The Intellectual Life."--Love of animals.--English
+visitors.--Technical notes.--Sir S. Seymour Haden.--Attempts to resume
+railway travelling.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+1876-1877.
+
+"Round my House."--Journey to England after seven years' absence.--Visit
+to Mr. Samuel Palmer.--Articles for the "Encyclopedia Britannica."
+--Death of my sister.--Mr. Appleton.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+1878-1880.
+
+"Marmorne."--Paris International Exhibition.--"Modern Frenchmen."
+--Candidature for the Watson Gordon Chair of Fine Arts.--The Bishop of
+Autun.--The "Life of Turner."
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+1880-1882.
+
+Third edition of "Etching and Etchers."--Kew.--The "Graphic
+Arts."--"Human Intercourse."
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+1882-1884.
+
+"Paris."--Miss Susan Hamerton's death.--Burnley revisited.--Hellifield
+Peel.--"Landscape" planned.--Voyage to Marseilles.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+1884-1888.
+
+"Landscape."--The Autobiography begun.--"Imagination in Landscape
+Painting."--"The Saône."--"Portfolio Papers."
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+1888-1890.
+
+"Man in Art" begun.--Family events.--Mr. G. F. Watts.--Mr.
+Bodley.--"French and English."
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+1890-1891.
+
+Decision to live near Paris.--Practice in painting and etching.--Search
+for a house.--Clématis.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+1891-1894.
+
+Removal to Paris.--Interest in the Bois de Boulogne.--M. Vierge.--"Man
+in Art."--Contributions to "Scribner's Magazine."--New form of "The
+Portfolio."--Honorary degree.--Last Journey to London.--Society of
+Illustrators.--Illness and death.
+
+
+
+
+AUTOBIOGRAPHY
+
+OF
+
+PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
+
+1834--1858
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+My reasons for writing an autobiography.--That a man knows the history
+of his own life better than a biographer can know it.--Frankness and
+reserve.--The contemplation of death.
+
+My principal reasons for writing an autobiography are because I am the
+only person in the world who knows enough about my history to give a
+truthful account of it, and because I dread the possibility of falling
+into the hands of some writer who might attempt a biography with
+inadequate materials. I have already been selected as a subject by two
+or three biographers with very friendly intentions, but their
+friendliness did not always ensure accuracy. When the materials are not
+supplied in abundance, a writer will eke them out with conjectural
+expressions which he only intends as an amplification, yet which may
+contain germs of error to be in their turn amplified by some other
+writer, and made more extensively erroneous.
+
+It has frequently been said that an autobiography must of necessity be
+an untrue representation of its subject, as no man can judge himself
+correctly. If it is intended to imply that somebody else, having a much
+slighter acquaintance with the man whose life is to be narrated, would
+produce a more truthful book, one may be permitted to doubt the validity
+of the inference. Thousands of facts are known to a man himself with
+reference to his career, and a multitude of determinant motives, which
+are not known even to his most intimate friends, still less to the
+stranger who so often undertakes the biography. The reader of an
+autobiography has this additional advantage, that the writer must be
+unconsciously revealing himself all along, merely by his way of telling
+things.
+
+With regard to the great question of frankness and reserve, I hold that
+the reader has a fair claim to hear the truth, as a biography is not
+avowedly a romance, but at the same time that it is right to maintain a
+certain reserve. My rule shall be to say nothing that can hurt the
+living, and the memory of the dead shall be dealt with as tenderly as
+may be compatible with a truthful account of the influences that have
+impelled me in one direction or another.
+
+I have all the more kindly feelings towards the dead, that when these
+pages appear I shall be one of themselves, and therefore unable to
+defend my own memory as they are unable to defend theirs.
+
+The notion of being a dead man is not entirely displeasing to me. If the
+dead are defenceless, they have this compensating advantage, that nobody
+can inflict upon them any sensible injury; and in beginning a book which
+is not to see the light until I am lying comfortably in my grave, with
+six feet of earth above me to deaden the noises of the upper world, I
+feel quite a new kind of security, and write with a more complete
+freedom from anxiety about the quality of the work than has been usual
+at the beginning of other manuscripts.
+
+Nevertheless, the clear and steady contemplation of death (I have been
+looking the grim king in the face for the last hour) may produce a
+paralyzing effect upon a man by making his life's work seem very small
+to him. For, whatever we believe about a future state, it is evident
+that the catastrophe of death must throw each of us instantaneously into
+the past, from the point of view of the living, and they will see what
+we have done in a very foreshortened aspect, so that except in a few
+very rare cases it must look small to them, and ever smaller as time
+rolls on, and they will probably not think much of it, or remember us
+long on account of it. And in thinking of ourselves as dead we
+instinctively adopt the survivor's point of view. Besides which, it is
+reasonable to suppose that whatever fate may be in store for us, a
+greater or less degree of posthumous reputation in two or three nations
+on this planet can have little effect on our future satisfaction; for if
+we go to heaven, the beatitude of the life there will be so incomparably
+superior to the pleasures of earthly fame that we shall never think of
+such vanity again; and if we go to the place of eternal tortures they
+will leave us no time to console ourselves with pleasant memories of any
+kind; and if death is simply the ending of all sensation, all thought,
+memory, and consciousness, it will matter nothing to a handful of dust
+what estimate of the name it once bore may happen to be current amongst
+the living--
+
+  "Les grands Dieux savent seuls si l'âme est immortelle,
+  Mais le juste travaille à leur oeuvre éternelle."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+1834.
+
+My birthplace.--My father and mother.--Circumstances of their
+marriage.--Their short married life.--Birth of their child.--Death of
+my mother.--Her character and habits.--My father as a widower.--Dulness
+of his life.--Its degradation.
+
+I was born at Laneside near Shaw, which is now a manufacturing town of
+some importance about two miles from Oldham in Lancashire, and about
+four miles from Rochdale in the same county.
+
+Laneside is a small estate with some houses and a little cotton-mill
+upon it, which belonged to my maternal grandfather. The house is of
+stone, with a roof of stone slate such as is usual in those parts, and
+it faces the road, from which it is separated by a little enclosure,
+that may be called a garden if you will. When I was a child, there were
+two or three poplar trees in that enclosure before the house; but trees
+do not prosper there, and now there is probably not one on the whole
+estate. One end of the house (which is rather long for its height and
+depth) abuts against the hill, and close behind it is the cotton-mill
+which my grandfather worked, with no great profit to himself or
+advantage to his descendants. I have mentioned a road that passes the
+house; it is steep, narrow, and inconvenient. It leads up to an elevated
+tract of the most dreary country that can be imagined, but there are one
+or two fields on the Laneside estate, above the stone-quarry, from which
+there is a good view in the direction of Rochdale.
+
+I never knew my grandfather Cocker, but have heard that he was a lively
+and vigorous man, who enjoyed life very heartily in his way. He married
+a Miss Crompton, who had a little property and was descended from the De
+Cromptons of Crompton Hall. I am not aware that she had any family
+pride, but, like most people in that neighborhood, she had a great
+appreciation of the value of money, and when she was left alone with her
+daughter, in consequence of Philip Cocker's premature death, she was
+more inclined to favor wealthy than impecunious suitors.
+My father had come to Shaw as a young attorney some time before he asked
+for Anne Cocker in marriage. He had very little to recommend him except
+a fine person, great physical strength, and fifteen quarterings. He had
+a reputation for rather dissolute habits, was a good horseman, an
+excellent shot, looked very well in a ball-room, and these, I believe,
+were all his advantages, save an unhappy faculty for shining in such
+masculine company as he could find in a Lancashire village in the days
+of George IV. Money he had none, except what he earned in his
+profession, at one time rather a good income.
+
+Miss Anne Cocker was a young lady with a will of her own, associated, I
+have been told (the two characteristics are by no means incompatible),
+with a very sweet and amiable disposition. At a time when my grandmother
+still vigorously opposed the match with my father, there happened to be
+a public charity ball in Shaw, and Miss Cocker showed her intentions in
+a very decided manner, by declining to dance with several gentlemen
+until the young lawyer presented himself, when she rose immediately with
+a very gracious smile, which was observed by all near enough to witness
+it. This was rather unkind perhaps to the other aspirants, and is, in
+fact, scarcely defensible, but it was Miss Cocker's way of declaring her
+intentions publicly. When my father made his offer, he was refused by my
+grandmother's orders, but received encouragement from her daughter (a
+tone of voice, or a look, yet more a tear, would be enough for a lover's
+hope), and counted upon the effects of perseverance. At length, when he
+and Miss Cocker thought they had waited long enough, they determined to
+marry without Mrs. Cocker's consent, and the determination was notified
+to my grandmother in the following very decided terms:--
+
+"DR. Madam,--You are no doubt well aware of the warm attachment which
+has long existed betwixt your dear daughter and myself. Upwards of
+twelve months ago our affections were immovably fixed upon each other,
+and I now consider it my duty to inform you that we are fully engaged,
+and have finally concluded to be married within a fortnight of the
+present time.
+
+"I sincerely trust that all your hostile feelings towards me are
+entirely worn out, and that you will receive me as the affectionate
+husband of your beloved daughter, and I with great confidence hope we
+shall be a happy family and live together with peace and harmony.
+
+"At my request your daughter will have all her property settled upon
+herself, so that I can have no control over it--thus leaving it
+impossible that I should waste it. And I trust that by an active
+attention to my profession I may be enabled not inconsiderably to
+augment it.
+
+"Be assured, Dear Madam, that your daughter and myself feel no little
+solicitude for your comfort and happiness, and that we shall at all
+times be most happy to promote them.
+
+"It is our mutual and most anxious wish that you should not attempt to
+throw any obstacle in the way of our marriage, as the only tendency it
+could have under present circumstances would be to lessen the happiness
+and comfort of our union.
+
+"We trust therefore that your regard for your daughter's happiness will
+induce you at once to give your full assent to the fulfilment of our
+engagement, as you would thereby divest our marriage of all that could
+possibly lessen the happiness we anticipate from it.
+
+"I know that your principal objection to me has been on account of my
+unsteadiness, and I deeply regret ever having given you cause to raise
+such an objection; but I trust my conduct for some time back having been
+of a very different character, will convince you that I have seen my
+error. The gayety into which I have fallen may partly be ascribed to the
+peculiarity of my situation; having no relations near me, no family
+ties, no domestic comforts, &c., I may be the more excusable for having
+kept the company of young men, but I can assure you I have lost all
+inclination for the practice of such follies as I have once fallen into,
+and I look to a steady, sober married life as alone calculated to afford
+me happiness.
+
+"I will wait upon you on Monday with most anxious hopes for your
+favorable answer.
+
+"I am, Dear Madam,
+
+"Yours most respectfully,
+
+"JOHN HAMMERTON.
+
+"Shaw, June 1st, 1833."
+
+The reader may be surprised by the double _m_ in the signature. It was
+my father's custom to write our name so, for a reason that will be
+explained in another chapter. The letter itself is rather formal,
+according to the fashion of the time, but I think it is a good letter in
+its way, and believe it to have been perfectly sincere. No doubt my
+father fully intended to reform his way of life, but it is easier to
+make a good resolution than to adhere to it. I do not know enough of the
+degree of excess to which his love of pleasure led him, to be able to
+describe his life as a young man accurately, but as my mother had been
+well brought up and was a refined person for her rank in society, I
+conclude that she would not have encouraged a notorious evil-liver.
+Those who knew my father in his early manhood have told me that he was
+very popular, and yet at the same time that he bore himself with
+considerable dignity, one old lady going so far as to say that when he
+walked through the main street at Shaw, it seemed as if all the town
+belonged to him. It is difficult for us to understand quite accurately
+the social code of the Georgian era, when a man might indulge in
+pleasures which seem to us coarse and degrading, and yet retain all the
+pride and all the bearing of a gentleman.
+
+The marriage took place according to the fixed resolution of the
+contracting parties, and their life together was immensely happy during
+the short time that it lasted. Most unfortunately it came to an end
+after little more than one year by my mother's lamentably premature
+death. I happen to possess a letter from my father's sister to her
+sister Anne in which she gives an account of this event, and print it
+because it conveys the reality more vividly than a narrative at second
+hand. The reader will pardon the reference to myself. It matters nothing
+to a dead man--as I shall be when this page is printed--whether at the
+age of fourteen days he was considered a fine-looking child or a
+weakling.
+
+"_Friday Morning._
+
+"MY DEAR ANNE,--You will not calculate upon so speedy an answer as this
+to your long and welcome epistle, nor will you calculate upon the
+melancholy intelligence I have to communicate. Poor John's wife,
+certainly the most amiable of all woman-kind, departed this life at
+twenty minutes past eleven last night. Her recovery from her confinement
+was very wonderful, we thought, but alas! it was a false one. The Drs.
+Whitaker of Shaw, Wood of Rochdale, and Bardsley of Manchester all agree
+in opinion that she has died of mere weakness without any absolute
+disease. She has been very delicate for a long time. Poor dear John--if
+I were quite indifferent to him I should grieve to see his agonies--he
+says at sixty it might have happened in the common course of things and
+he would have borne it better, but at twenty-nine, just when he is
+beginning life, his sad bereavement does indeed seem untimely. It is a
+sore affliction to him, sent for some good, and may he understand and
+apply it with wisdom! They had, to be sure, hardly been married long
+enough to quarrel, but I never saw a couple so intent on making each
+other happy; they had not a thought of each other but what tended to
+please. The poor little boy is a very fine one, and I hope he will be
+reared, though it often happens that when the mother is consumptive the
+baby dies. I do hope when John is able to look after his office a little
+that the occupation of his mind will give him calm. He walks from room
+to room, and if I meet him and he is able to articulate at all, he says,
+'Ah! where must I be? what must I do?' He says nobody had such a wife,
+and I do think nobody ever had. He wanted me not to write till
+arrangements were made about the funeral. I thought you would be sorry
+to be informed late upon a subject so near John's heart, and that it was
+too late for Mr. Hinde [Footnote: The Rev. Thomas Hinde, Vicar of
+Featherstone, brother-in-law of the writer of the letter.] to come to
+the funeral. I have really nothing to say except that our poor sister
+was so tolerable on Wednesday morning that I went with the Milnes of
+Park House to Henton Park races, which I liked very well, but as things
+have turned out I heartily repent going. Ann was, we hoped, positively
+recovering on Monday and Tuesday, but it seems to have been a lightening
+before death. She was a very long time in the agonies of death, but
+seemed to suffer very little. Our afflicted brother joins me in best
+love to you and your dear children. Kind compliments to Mr. Hinde.
+
+"I remain,
+
+"Your affectionate Sister,
+
+"M. HAMMERTON."
+
+The letter is without date, but it bears the Manchester postmark of
+September 27, 1834, and the day of my birth was the tenth of the same
+month. The reader may have observed a discrepancy with reference to my
+mother's health. First it is said that the doctors all agreed in the
+opinion that she died of mere weakness, without any absolute disease,
+but afterwards consumption is alluded to. I am not sure, even yet,
+whether my mother was really consumptive or only suffered from debility.
+Down to the time when I write this (fifty-one years after my mother's
+death) there have never been any symptoms of consumption in me.
+
+No portrait of my mother was ever taken, so that I have never been able
+to picture her to myself otherwise than vaguely, but I remember that on
+one occasion in my youth when I played the part of a young lady in a
+charade, several persons present who had known her, said that the
+likeness was so striking that it almost seemed as if she had appeared to
+them in a vision, and they told me that if I wanted to know what my
+mother was like, I had only to consult a looking-glass. She had blue
+eyes, a very fair complexion, and hair of a rich, strongly-colored
+auburn, a color more appreciated by painters than by other people. In
+the year 1876 I was examining a large boxful of business papers that had
+belonged to my father, and burning most of them in a garden in
+Yorkshire, when a little packet fell out of a legal document that I was
+just going to throw upon the fire. It was a lock of hair carefully
+folded in a piece of the bluish paper my father used for his law
+correspondence, and fastened with an old wire-headed pin. I at once took
+it to a lady who had known my mother, and she said without a moment's
+hesitation that the hair was certainly hers, so that I now possess this
+relic, and it is all I have of my poor mother whose face I never saw,
+and whose voice I never heard. Few people who have lived in the world
+have left such slight traces. There are no letters of hers except one or
+two formal compositions written at school under the eye of the mistress,
+which of course express nothing of her own mind or feelings. Those who
+knew her have told me that she was a very lively and amiable person,
+physically active, and a good horsewoman. She and my father were fond of
+riding out together, and indeed were separated as little as might be
+during their brief happiness. She even, on one occasion, went out
+shooting with him and killed something, after which she melted into
+tears of pity over her victim. [Footnote: A lady related to my mother
+shot well, and killed various kinds of game, of which I remember seeing
+stuffed specimens as trophies of her skill.]
+
+The reader will pardon me for dwelling thus on these few details of a
+life so sadly and prematurely ended. The knowledge that my mother had
+died early cast a certain melancholy over my childhood; I found that
+people looked at me with some tenderness and pity for her sake, so I
+felt vaguely that there had been a great loss, though unable to estimate
+the extent of it. Later, when I understood better what pains and perils
+Nature inflicts on women in order that children may come into the world,
+it seemed that the days I lived had been bought for me by the sacrifice
+of days that my mother ought to have lived. She was but twenty-four when
+she passed away, so that now I have lived more than twice her span.
+
+The effect of the loss upon my father was utterly disastrous. His new
+and good projects were all shattered, and a cloud fell over his
+existence that was never lifted. He did not marry again, and he lost his
+interest in his profession. My mother left him all her property
+absolutely, so he felt no spur of necessity and became indolent or
+indifferent; yet those who were capable of judging had a good opinion of
+his abilities as a lawyer. Just before his wife's death, my father had
+rather distinguished himself in an important case, and received a
+testimonial from his client with the following inscription:--
+
+_Presented to Mr. Hammerton, Solr, by his obliged client Mr. Waring, as
+a token of Esteem for his active services in the cause tried against
+Stopherd at Lancaster, in the arrangement of the argument arising
+thereon at Westminster, and his successful defence to the Equity Suit
+instituted by the Deft_. 1834.
+
+My father's practice at that time was beginning to be lucrative, and
+would no doubt have become much more so in a few years; but the blow to
+his happiness that occurred in the September of 1834 produced such
+discouragement that he sought relief from his depression in the society
+of lively companions. Most unfortunately for him, there was no lively
+masculine society in the place where he lived that was not at the same
+time a constant incitement to drinking. There were a few places in the
+Lancashire of those days where convivial habits were carried to such a
+degree that they destroyed what ought to have been the flower of the
+male population. The strong and hearty men who believed that they could
+be imprudent with impunity, the lively, intelligent, and sociable men
+who wanted the wittiest and brightest talk that was to be had in the
+neighborhood, the bachelor whose hearth was lonely, and the widower
+whose house had been made desolate, all these were tempted to join
+meetings of merry companions who set no limits to the strength or the
+quantity of their potations. My poor father was a man of great physical
+endowments, and he came at last to have a mistaken pride in being able
+to drink deeply without betraying any evil effects; but a few years of
+such an existence undermined one of the finest constitutions ever given
+to mortal man. A quarryman once told me that my father had appeared at
+the quarry at six o'clock in the morning looking quite fresh and hearty,
+when, taking up the heaviest sledge-hammer he could find, he gayly
+challenged the men to try who could throw it farthest. None of them came
+near him, on which he turned and said with a laugh of satisfaction,
+--"Not bad that, for a man who drank thirty glasses of brandy the
+day before!" Whether he had ever approached such a formidable
+number I will not venture to say, but the incident exactly paints my
+father in his northern pride of strength, the fatal pride that believes
+itself able to resist poison because it has the muscles of an athlete.
+
+It was always said by those who knew the family that my father was the
+cleverest member of it, but his ability must have expended itself in
+witty conversation and in his professional work, as I do not remember
+the smallest evidence of what are called intellectual tastes. My mother
+had a few books that had belonged to her family, and to these my father
+added scarcely anything. I can remember his books quite clearly, even at
+this distance of time. One was a biography of William IV., another a set
+of sketches of Reform Ministers, a third was Baines's "History of
+Lancashire," a fourth a Geographical Dictionary. These were, I believe,
+almost all the books (not concerned with the legal profession) that my
+father ever purchased. His bookcase did not contain a single volume by
+the most popular English poets of his own time, nor even so much as a
+novel by Sir Walter Scott. I have no recollection of ever having seen
+him read a book, but he took in the "Times" newspaper, and I clearly
+remember that he read the leading articles, which it was the fashion at
+that time to look upon as models of style. This absence of interest in
+literature was accompanied by that complete and absolute indifference to
+the fine arts which was so common in the middle classes and the country
+aristocracy of those days. I mention these deficiencies to explain the
+extreme dulness of my poor father's existence during his widowhood, a
+dulness that a lover of books must have a difficulty in imagining. A man
+living alone with servants (for his son's childhood was spent
+elsewhere), who took hardly any interest in a profession that had become
+little more than nominal for him, who had not even the stimulus of a
+desire to accumulate wealth (almost the only recognized object in the
+place where he lived), a man who had no intellectual pursuits whatever,
+and whose youth was too far behind him for any joyous physical activity,
+was condemned to seek such amusements as the customs of the place
+afforded, and these all led to drinking. He and his friends drank when
+they were together to make society merrier, and when they happened to be
+alone they drank to make solitude endurable. Had they drunk light wines
+like French peasants, or beer like Germans, they might have lasted
+longer, but their favorite drink was brandy in hot strong grogs,
+accompanied by unlimited tobacco. They dined in the middle of the day,
+and had the spirit decanters and the tobacco-box on the table instead of
+dessert, frequently drinking through the whole afternoon and a long
+evening afterwards. In the morning they slaked alcoholic thirst with
+copious draughts of ale. My father went on steadily with this kind of
+existence without anything whatever to rescue him from its gradual and
+fatal degradation. He separated himself entirely from the class he
+belonged to by birth, lived with men of little culture, though they may
+have had natural wit, and sacrificed his whole future to mere village
+conviviality. Thousands of others have followed the same road, but few
+have sacrificed so much. My father had a constitution such as is not
+given to one man in ten thousand, and his mind was strong and clear,
+though he had not literary tastes. He was completely independent, free
+to travel or to make a fortune in his profession if he preferred a
+sedentary existence, but the binding force of habit overcame his
+weakened will, and he fell into a kind of life that placed intellectual
+and moral recovery alike beyond his reach.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+1835-1841.
+
+My childhood is passed at Burnley with my aunts.--My grandfather and
+grandmother.--Estrangement between Gilbert Hamerton and his brother of
+Hellifield Peel.--Death of Gilbert Hamerton.--His taste for the French
+language.--His travels in Portugal, and the conduct of a steward during
+his absence.--His three sons.--Aristocratic tendencies of his
+daughters.--Beginning of my education.--Visits to my father.
+
+I was not brought up during childhood under my father's roof, but was
+sent to live with his two unmarried sisters. These ladies were then
+living in Burnley with their mother.
+
+Burnley is now a large manufacturing town of seventy thousand
+inhabitants, but in those days it was just rising in importance, and a
+few years earlier it had been a small country town in an uncommonly
+aristocratic neighborhood. The gate of Towneley Park opens now almost
+upon the town itself, and in former times there were many other seats of
+the greater or lesser squires within a radius of a very few miles. It is
+a common mistake in the south of England to suppose that Lancashire is a
+purely commercial county. There are, or were in my youth, some very
+aristocratic neighborhoods in Lancashire, and that immediately about
+Burnley was one of them. The creation of new wealth, and the extinction
+or departure of a few families, may have altered its character since
+then, but in the days of my grandfather nobody thought of disputing the
+supremacy of the old houses. There was something almost sublime in the
+misty antiquity of the Towneley family, one of the oldest in all
+England, and still one of the wealthiest, keeping house in its venerable
+castellated mansion in a great park with magnificent avenues. Other
+houses of less wealth and more modern date had their pedigrees in the
+history of Lancashire.
+
+My grandfather, Gilbert Hamerton, possessed an old gabled mansion with a
+small but picturesque estate, divided from Towneley Park by a public
+road, and he had other property in the town and elsewhere enough to make
+him independent, but not enough to make him one of the great squires.
+However, as he was the second son of an ancient Yorkshire family, and as
+pedigrees and quarterings counted for something in those comparatively
+romantic times, the somewhat exclusive aristocracy about Burnley had
+received him with much cordiality from the first, and he continued all
+his life to belong to it. His comparative poverty was excused by a
+well-known history of confiscation in his family, and perhaps made him
+rather more interesting, especially as it did not go far enough to
+become--what poverty becomes so easily--ridiculous. He lived in a large
+old house, and plentifully enough, but without state and style. His
+marriage had been extremely imprudent from the worldly point of view. An
+aunt of my grandfather's, on his mother's side, had invited him to stay
+with her, and had not foreseen the attractions of a farmer's daughter
+who was living in the house as a companion. My good, unworldly
+grandfather fell in love with this girl, and married her. He never had
+any serious reason to regret this very imprudent step, for Jane Smith
+became an excellent wife and mother, and she did not even injure his
+position in society, where she knew how to make herself respected, and
+was much beloved by her most intimate friends. I remember her, though I
+never knew my grandfather. My recollection of her is a sort of picture
+of an old lady always dressed in black, and seated near a window, or
+walking slowly with a stick. The dawn of reason and feeling is
+associated in my memory with an intense affection for this old lady and
+with the kind things she said to me, not yet forgotten. I remember, too,
+the awful stillness of her dead body (hers was the first dead human body
+I looked upon), and the strange emptiness of the house when it had been
+taken away.
+
+Though my grandmother was only a farmer's daughter, her parents were
+well-to-do in their own line of life, and at various times helped my
+grandfather with sums of money; but the fact remained that he had
+married quite out of his class, and it has always seemed to me probable
+that the marriage may have had some connection with the complete and
+permanent estrangement that existed between Gilbert Hamerton and his
+brother, the squire of Hellifield Peel. As soon as I was old enough to
+understand a little about relationships, I reflected that the houses of
+my own uncles were open to me, that my cousins were all like brothers
+and sisters to me, and yet that my father and my aunts had never been to
+their uncle's house at Hellifield, and that our relations there never
+came to see us at Burnley. The explanation of this estrangement given by
+my grandfather, was that there had been a disagreement about land; but
+perhaps he may have felt some delicacy about telling his children that
+his unambitious marriage had contributed to render the separation
+permanent. However this may have been, my grandmother never once saw the
+inside of her brother-in-law's house, and when she died there was, I
+believe, not even the formal expression of condolence that is usual
+among acquaintances. Gilbert Hamerton had lived at Hollins, a house and
+estate inherited from his mother; and James Hamerton, the elder brother,
+lived in a castellated peel or border tower at Hellifield, which had
+been built by Lawrence Hamerton in 1440. The two places are not much
+more than twenty miles apart; but the brothers never met after their
+quarrel, and my grandfather's sons and daughters never saw their uncle's
+house. One result of the estrangement was that we hardly seemed to
+belong to our own family; and I remember a lady, who had some very vague
+and shadowy claims to a distant connection with the family at
+Hellifield, asking one of my aunts in a rather patronizing manner if she
+also did not "claim to be connected" with the Hamertons of Hellifield
+Peel. Even to this day it is difficult for me to realize the simple fact
+that she was niece to an uncle whom she had never seen, and first cousin
+to his successor.
+
+My grandfather had lived in apparently excellent health till the age of
+seventy-seven, when one afternoon as he was seated in his dining-room at
+Hollins, nobody being present except his eldest daughter Mary, he asked
+her to open the window, and then added, "Say a prayer." She immediately
+began to repeat a short prayer, and before she had reached the end of it
+he was dead. There is a strange incident connected with his death, which
+may be worth something to those who take an interest in what is now
+called "Psychical Research." At the same hour his married daughter was
+sitting in a room forty miles away with her little boy, a child just old
+enough to talk, and the child stared with intense interest at an empty
+chair. His mother asked what attracted his attention, and the child
+said, "Don't you see, mamma, the old gentleman who is sitting in that
+chair?" I am careful not to add details, as my own imagination might
+unconsciously amplify them, but my impression is that the child was
+asked to describe the vision more minutely, and that his description
+exactly accorded with his grandfather's usual appearance.
+
+The old gentleman preserved the costume and manners of the eighteenth
+century, wearing his pig-tail, breeches, and shoe-buckles. He took life
+too easily for any intellectual achievements, but he had a great liking
+for the French language, and wrote a very original French grammar, which
+he had curiously printed in synoptic sheets, at his private expense,
+though it was never completed or published. I have sometimes thought it
+possible that my own aptitude and affinity for that language may have
+been inherited from him, and that his labors may in a manner have
+overcome many difficulties for me by the wonderful process of
+transmission. He never lived in France, and I believe he never visited
+the country, his French conversations being chiefly held with a
+good-natured Roman Catholic chaplain at Towneley Hall. My grandfather's
+most extensive travels were in Portugal, lasting six months, and with
+regard to that journey I remember two painful incidents. His travelling
+companion, a younger brother, died abroad, in consequence of having
+slept in a damp bed. The other incident is vexatious rather than
+tragical, and yet Wordsworth would have seen tragedy in it also. During
+his absence from home, my grandfather had confided the care of his
+estate to an agent, who cut down the old avenue of oaks that led to the
+house, on the pretext that some of the trees were showing signs of
+decay, and that he had an acceptable offer for the whole. The road
+retained the name of "The Avenue" for many years, but the trees were
+never replaced.
+
+Perhaps the reader will think this incident hardly worth mentioning, but
+to a lover of trees, avenues, and old houses, such as I confess myself
+to be, it seems the very perfection of a vexatious incident. I cannot
+imagine anything whatever, not entailing any serious consequences, that
+would have tried my own temper more.
+
+On my grandfather's death, the whole of his property went to his eldest
+son. He had brought up all his three sons to be solicitors, not because
+he had any peculiar enthusiasm for the legal profession, but simply as
+the readiest means of earning a living. The sons themselves had no
+natural affinity for the law; my eldest uncle heartily disliked it, the
+other regarded it with cool indifference, and my father expressed his
+desire that I should never be a lawyer, on the ground that a man had
+enough to plague him in his own concerns without troubling his mind
+about those of other people. One curious distinction may be noted here,
+as the result probably of that intermingling with the every-day world,
+which happens naturally in the career of provincial attorneys. Whilst my
+aunts remained all their lives aristocratic in their feelings, and
+rather liked to enjoy the hospitality of the great houses in the
+neighborhood, my uncles, and my father also, abandoned all aristocratic
+memories and aspirations, and entered frankly into the middle class.
+Each of them did what was natural under the circumstances. Women are
+generally more aristocratic than men, and cling more decidedly to their
+class, and I think my aunts showed better taste in liking refined
+society than my father did in lowering himself to associate with men of
+an inferior stamp in rank, in manners, and in habits. I distinctly
+remember how one of my aunts told me that somebody had made a remark on
+her liking for great people, and the only comment she made was, that she
+preferred gentlefolks because their manners were more agreeable. She was
+not a worshipper of rank, but she liked the quiet, pleasant manners of
+the aristocracy, which indeed were simply her own manners.
+
+My childhood could not have been better cared for, even by my own
+mother, than by these two excellent ladies. They gave me a beginning of
+education, and they have told me since that I learned to read English
+with the greatest facility, so that when I was sent to the Grammar
+School at Burnley, at the early age of five and a half, the master
+considered me so well forward that I was set at once to Latin. In those
+days it was a part of the wisdom of our educators to make us learn Latin
+out of a grammar written in that language, and I retain some
+recollection of the perfectly useless mental fatigue and puzzlement that
+I was made to undergo in learning abstract statements about grammatical
+science that were written in a tongue which I could not possibly
+understand. The idea of taking a child five and a half years old, and
+making it learn a dead language by abstract rules, is of itself a great
+error. The proper way to teach a child Latin is simply to give it a
+vocabulary, including only the things that it can see or imagine, and a
+few verbs to make little phrases. I had learned to read English so
+easily that good hopes were entertained for the rest of my education,
+but my progress in Latin was very slow, and the only result of my early
+training was to give me a horror of everything printed in Latin, that I
+did not overcome for many years.
+
+There was another child-pupil rather older than I, and the head-master
+of those days (Dr. Butler's predecessor), who had a rude disposition,
+sometimes amused himself by putting me on one of his knees, and the
+other little boy on the other knee, after which, by an adroit
+simultaneous movement of the two legs, he suddenly brought our heads
+into collision. I quite remember the sensation of being stunned on these
+occasions, but am not aware that my Latin was any the better for it.
+
+My recollection of those early years is extremely vague, and there is
+little in them that could interest the reader. I was taken once or twice
+a year to my father, and always disliked and dreaded those visits, as I
+feared him greatly, and with good reason. On one of these visits, when
+quite a child, I persuaded my father's groom to let me mount his
+saddle-horse, which I remember as a gray animal of what seemed a
+prodigious altitude. The man put me on the horse's back, and being
+entirely destitute of common-sense or prudence, actually gave me a whip
+and left the bridle to me. I applied the whip vigorously, and was very
+soon thrown off and carried back to the house covered with blood,
+happily without more serious consequences. Another little incident has
+more of the comic element. My father employed a tailor for himself, and
+told the man to make me a suit without entering into any particulars.
+The tailor being thus left to his own wisdom, made a costume that was
+the exact copy of a full-grown squire's dress on a small scale. It was
+composed of a green cut-away coat, a yellow waistcoat, and green
+trousers, the whole adorned with gilt buttons. The tailor dressed me,
+and then, proud of his work, presented me to my father and the ladies.
+If the tailor was proud, my pride and satisfaction were at least equal
+to his, and we neither of us could in the least understand the roars of
+laughter that my appearance provoked, whilst our feelings were deeply
+wounded by my father's tyrannical decree that I was never to wear those
+beautiful clothes at all. Even to this day I am capable of regretting
+that suit, and certainly I often see children now whose costumes are at
+least equally absurd.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+1842.
+
+A tour in Wales in 1842.--Extracts from my journal of this tour.--My
+inborn love for beautiful materials.--Stay at Rhyl.--Anglesea and
+Caernarvon.--Reasons for specially remembering this tour.
+
+The pleasantest recollections I have of my father are connected with a
+tour in Wales that he undertook with me and his eldest sister in the
+summer of 1842. My aunt made me keep a journal of that tour, which I
+still possess, and by its help those days come hack to me with a
+vividness that is very astonishing to myself. Being accustomed to live
+with grown-up people, and having no companions of my own age in the same
+house (though I had cousins at Hollins and friends at school), I had
+acquired a way of talking about things as older people talk, so that the
+journal in question contains many observations that do not seem natural
+for a child. The fact, no doubt, is that I listened to my father and
+aunt, and then put down many of their remarks in my little history of
+our tour; but I was very observant on my own account, and received very
+strong impressions, especially from buildings, such as old castles and
+cathedrals, and great houses, and I had a topographic habit of mind even
+in childhood, which made every fresh locality interesting to me and
+engraved it on my memory. Perhaps the reader may like to see a page of
+the diary. It seems rather formal and elderly to be written by a child
+eight years old, but it must be remembered that it was an exercise
+written by my father's desire and to please him. Letters to my cousins
+at the same date would have been more juvenile. Nevertheless, it was
+perfectly natural for me then to use words employed by older people, and
+the reader will remember that I had been learning Latin for more than
+two years.
+
+"On the road from Rhydland to Abergele we saw Hemmel Park, the seat of
+Lord Dinorbin, lately burnt down. Near Rhydland is Penwarn, the seat of
+Lord Mostyn; the house is small and unpretending, the grounds are
+beautiful. There is a very handsome dog-kennel, in which are kept
+forty-four couple of fine fox-hounds ready for work, besides old ones in
+one kennel, and young ones in another: the dogs all in such good order
+and kennels so perfectly clean. In one field were sixteen hunters
+without shoes. Lord Mostyn does not live much at Penwarn, generally in
+London. He is an old man, and at present an invalid. We had several
+pleasant days' fishing in the Clwyd and Elway; a Mr. Graham at Rhyl has
+permission to fish in Lord Mostyn's preserve, and he may take a friend,
+which character Papa and I personated for the time.
+
+"About eight miles from Rhyl is Trelacre, the seat of Sir Pyers Mostyn,
+a very excellent modern building; the grounds are laid out with most
+luxuriant taste, nothing is wanting to give effect to it as a whole. In
+the woods opposite the house is a rich but rather formal distribution of
+flower-beds; everything appeared to be in blossom. On an elevation is
+placed the most ingeniously contrived Grotto; at every turn there is a
+device of another character to the last, here a lion couchant, there the
+head of Momus, a wild boar's head, a heron, a skeleton, &c., &c. In one
+place were two old friars seated, each leaning on his stick, apparently
+in earnest conversation; all these are roughly, but with great accuracy,
+formed upon the numerous pillars which support a room or two above. The
+last object you arrive at is a hermit as large as life seated in his
+cell, with one book beside him and another on his knee, upon which his
+left hand is placed; his right is laid across his breast. The pillars
+are so contrived that the little cavern is light in every part; at the
+entrance is an immense sea-dragon with large glaring eyes and a long red
+tongue hanging half-way out. The monster had an effect somewhat
+startling. Next above the grotto is a small room hewn out of the rock,
+with sofas and pillows on each side the fireplace hewn out of the same
+rock. In the centre is a stone table, upon which were some beautiful
+antique bowls, cups, &c. The door to this apartment is a great
+curiosity, being made to appear as if of rock; we did not think at first
+that it was a real door. Over this room is another, the residence of a
+lame woman, who showed us upon the leads above her dwelling a very
+extensive prospect; amongst the objects was the mouth of the river Dee.
+She afterwards [took us] to a moss house, and several other nice points
+in the garden. The walks are covered with the material left in washing
+the lead ore, through which no weed can even peep. It is many-colored,
+and the glittering of here and there a bit of ore, lead, or silver, has
+a very pretty effect indeed."
+
+The reader will have had enough of the journal by this time. Its only
+merit is the accurate noting down of details that I had seen; but many
+of the details are such as children of that age do not commonly pay
+attention to, as, for instance, in this bit about an old church:--
+
+"The church at Dyserth has an east window which is considered the
+greatest antiquity in Wales; many figures of the saints are represented
+in colored glass, the lead betwixt the panes is the breadth of two
+fingers. The yard has several old trees--two very fine yews, and
+certainly the largest birch for miles round."
+
+I notice a great interest in all beautiful materials throughout the
+pages of this journal; the kind of wood used for the suites of furniture
+is invariably mentioned, as, for example, the chairs of solid ebony in
+the dining-room at Penrhyn Castle, the old oak in the dining-room at
+Trelacre, and the light oak in the drawing-room, the carved oak ceilings
+and pillars at Penrhyn, and the use of stone from St. Helen's there, as
+well as the bedstead that is made of slate, and the enormous table of
+the same material in the servants' hall. The interest in materials is a
+special instinct, a kind of sympathy with Nature showing itself by
+appreciation of the different qualities of her products. This instinct
+has always been very strong in me, and I have often noticed it in
+others, especially in artists. Some poets are very fond of describing
+beautiful materials; but the instinct is not confined to poetical or
+artistic natures, being often found amongst workmen in the handicrafts,
+and it may be associated with a sense of the usefulness of materials, as
+well as with admiration of their beauty. With me the interest in them is
+both artistic and utilitarian; all metals, woods, marble, etc., are
+delightful to me in some way.
+
+In 1842 Rhyl was a little quiet place known to the Liverpool people as a
+good bathing-place, but not spoiled by formal rows of houses and big
+hotels. There was at that time in Rhyl a gentleman who possessed a sort
+of genteel cottage in a relatively large garden, and though the house
+was small, it might have done for a widower like my father, and it was
+for sale. I remember urging my father to buy it, as Rhyl pleased me on
+account of the possibilities of boating and riding on the sands, besides
+which we had enjoyed some excellent fishing, which delighted me as a
+child, though I gave up the amusement afterwards. I mention the house
+here for a particular reason. It has remained very distinctly in my
+memory ever since, as my father's last chance of escape from his habits
+and associates. Whilst we were in Wales together he conducted himself as
+a man ought to do who is travelling with a lady and a child. He was not
+harsh with me, and notwithstanding my habitual fear of him, some of my
+Welsh days with him are pleasant to live over again in memory. Now, if
+he had bought that house, the sort of life we were then leading might
+have become habitual, and he might possibly have been saved from the sad
+fate that awaited him. However, though tempted for a moment, he refused
+because it did not seem a good investment, being a flimsy little
+building, not very well contrived.
+
+Though my father would not buy the house to please me, he bought me a
+little bay mare at Rhyl that was a pretty and swift creature, and we
+took her on the steamer to Menai, where, for want of a convenient
+arrangement for landing horses, she was pitched into the sea and made to
+swim ashore. She had been in a hot place on the steamer, near the
+engines, and the sudden change to the cold sea-water was probably (so we
+thought afterwards) the reason why she became broken-winded, which was a
+great grief to me. I hardly know why I record these trifles, but they
+have an importance in the feelings of a boy, and I am weak enough to
+have very tender feelings about animals down to the present day.
+
+We visited Anglesea and Caernarvon, and other places too well known for
+the reader to tolerate a description of them here. In those days the
+tubular bridge had not yet been thought of; but the beautiful suspension
+bridge at Menai was already in existence, and was the most remarkable
+bridge then existing in the world. I was more struck by the beauty of
+the structure than by its costliness or size; the journal says, "It is
+indeed wonderfully beautiful." On one of our excursions we saw what in
+rainy weather is a good waterfall, and I find a reference to this that I
+quote for the curious bit of Welsh-English that is included in it,--"We
+came to a little village, which has in a wet season a very fine
+waterfall; the driver said it would not be seen to advantage because
+there was 'few water.' There certainly was 'few water,' but the fine
+high rocks gave a powerful idea of what it would have been had the
+rushing of waters taken the place of the death-like stillness which then
+prevailed."
+
+The reader will perhaps pardon me for having dwelt longer on this Welsh
+tour than the interest of it may seem to warrant; but I look back to it
+with lingering regret as the last agreeable association connected with
+the memory of my father. It was a most happy little tour. I had an
+intensely strong affection for my father's eldest sister Mary, who
+accompanied us, and whose dear handwriting I recognize in a few
+corrections in the journal. Besides, that year 1842 is absolutely the
+last year of my life in which I could live in happy ignorance of evil
+and retain all the buoyancy of early boyhood. A terrible experience was
+in reserve for me that soon aged me rapidly, and made a really merry
+boyish life impossible for me after having passed through it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+1843-1844.
+
+A painful chapter to write.--My father calls me home.--What kind of a
+house it was.--Paternal education and discipline.--My life at that time
+one of dulness varied by dread.
+
+The writing of this chapter is so painful to me that the necessity for
+it has made me put off the composition of this autobiography year after
+year. Then why not omit the chapter altogether? The omission is
+impossible, because the events of the year 1843-1844 were quite the most
+important of my early boyhood, and have had a most powerful and in some
+respects a disastrous influence over my whole life.
+
+Notwithstanding my father's kindness to me during our Welsh tour, my
+feelings towards him were not, and could not be, those of trust and
+confidence. He was extremely severe at times, often much more so than
+the occasion warranted, this being partly natural in a strong
+authoritative man, and partly the result of irritability brought on by
+his habit of drinking. When inflamed with brandy he became positively
+dangerous, and I had a well-founded dread of his presence. At all times
+he was very uncertain--he might greet me with a kind word or he might be
+harsh or silent, just as it happened. During my visits to him at Shaw,
+one of my two aunts invariably accompanied me and stayed as long as I
+stayed, which was a great protection for me. The idea of being left
+alone with my father, even for a day, was enough to fill me with
+apprehension; however, it did not seem likely that I should have to live
+with him, as I should probably be sent to some distant school, and only
+come home for the holidays.
+
+This was the view of my future that was taken by my aunts and myself,
+when one day in the year 1843, I believe in the month of June, there
+came a letter from my father peremptorily declaring, in terms which
+admitted of no discussion, that although a child might live with ladies
+it was not good for a boy, and that he had determined to have me for the
+future under his own roof. The news came upon me like a thunderclap in a
+clear sky. I had grateful and affectionate feelings towards both my
+aunts, but to the elder my feelings were those of a son, and a very
+loving son, towards his mother. She had, in fact, taken the place of my
+mother so completely that I remained unconscious of my loss. I reserve
+for a pleasanter chapter than this the delightful duty of painting her
+portrait; at present it is enough to say that a separation from her in
+childhood was the most bitter grief that could be experienced by me, and
+my father's ukase made this separation seem destined to be eternal,
+except perhaps a short visit in the holidays. In a word, my filial life
+with her seemed at an end.
+
+I was taken to my father's and left alone with him. Some years before,
+he had bought a house in Shaw called Ivy Cottage,--a house with a front
+of painted stucco, looking on a garden,--and though the gable end of the
+house looked on a street, the other end had a view over some fields, not
+then built over. My father rented one or two of these fields for his
+horses and cows, and some farm buildings just big enough for his small
+establishment. He did not keep a carriage, and had even given up his
+dogcart, but he always had a saddle-horse for himself and a pony for me;
+at one time I had two ponies. His horses were his only luxury, but he
+was as exacting about them as if he had been a rich nobleman. He would
+not tolerate careless grooming for an instant; bits and stirrups were
+always kept in a state of exemplary brightness, and when he rode through
+Shaw he was quite fit to be seen in Hyde Park. At that time he had a
+jet-black mare of a vicious temper, which only gratified his pride as a
+horseman, and it so happened (I am not inventing this for a contrast)
+that my pony was of the purest white with full mane and tail of the
+same, and shaped exactly like the sturdy war-horses in old pictures. As
+he was still a fine-looking, handsome man and I was a healthy boy, no
+doubt we looked well enough, and it is probable that many a poor factory
+lad envied me my good luck in being able to ride about in that way,
+instead of working in a mill; but I rode in constant dread of my
+father's heavy hunting-whip. It had a steel hammer at the end of the
+long handle, and if at any time its owner fancied that I was turning my
+toes out, he did not say anything, but with a dexterity acquired by
+practice he delivered a sharp blow with that hammer on my foot which
+made me writhe with pain. Nothing vexed him more than any appearance of
+gentleness or tenderness. I loved my pony, Lily, and did not like to
+beat her when she was doing her best, and she had hard work to keep up
+with my father's ill-tempered mare, so he would say, "D--n it, can't you
+whip her? Can't you whip better than that? The strokes of that whip of
+yours are so feeble that they wouldn't kill a fly!" Nobody could say
+that of _his_ hitting. I had a little young dog that was very dear to
+me, and when it pleased my father one day to walk into the kitchen, it
+unluckily so happened that the dog was, or seemed to be, in his way, so
+he gave it a kick that sent it into the middle of the room, and there it
+lay quivering. He took no notice of it, said what he had to say, in his
+usual peremptory tone, and then left the room. I knelt down by the poor
+little dog, which was in its death-agony, and shortly breathed its last.
+
+During our rides my dreaded companion would stop at many inns and
+private houses, where he slaked his perpetual thirst in stirrup-cups, or
+sometimes he would go in and sit for a long time whilst the horses were
+cared for by some groom. The effects of these refreshments could not
+fail to be evident as we returned home; and it was more by good luck
+than anything else, except his habitually excellent horsemanship, that
+he was able to ride at all in that condition. I clearly remember one
+particular occasion when he seemed to be keeping his seat with more than
+usual uncertainty, and at last fairly rolled out of it. We were riding
+along a paved street, so that the fall would have been very serious; but
+two or three men who were watching him foresaw the accident just in
+time, and rushed forward to catch him as he fell. On another occasion
+when I was not present (indeed this happened before my settled residence
+with my father) he fell in a most dangerous way, with his foot caught in
+the stirrup, and was dragged violently down a steep hill till the horse
+was brought to a stand. Fortunately my father wore a top-coat at the
+time, which was soon torn off his back by the friction, and so were his
+other clothes, and the back itself was almost flayed; but the doctor
+said that if he had been lightly dressed the accident would have been far
+more serious.
+
+My father would sometimes send me on errands to a considerable distance
+with the pony, and as he hated all dawdling and loitering in others,
+though he had become a perfectly undisciplined man himself, he would
+limit me strictly to the time necessary for my journey, a time that I
+never ventured to exceed. In some respects the education that he was
+giving me, though of Spartan severity, was not ill calculated for the
+formation of a manly character. He quite understood the importance of
+applying the mind completely to the thing which occupied it for the
+moment. If he saw me taking several books together that had no
+connection with each other, he would say, "Take one of those books and
+read it steadily, don't potter and play with half-a-dozen."
+
+Desultory effort irritated him, and he was quick to detect busy idleness
+under its various disguises. He swore very freely himself, and as I
+heard so many oaths I was beginning to acquire the same accomplishment,
+when he overheard me accidentally and gave me such a stern lecture on
+the subject that I knew ever after I was not to follow the paternal
+example. What his soul hated most, however, was a lie or the shadow of a
+lie. He could not tolerate the little fibs that are common with women
+and children, and are often their only protection against despotism.
+"Tell the truth and shame the devil" was one of his favorite precepts,
+though why the devil should feel ashamed because I spoke the truth was
+never perfectly clear to my childish intellect. However, the precept
+sank deep into my nature, and got mixed up with a feeling of
+self-respect, so that it became really difficult for me to tell fibs. I
+remember on one occasion being a martyr for truth in peculiarly trying
+circumstances. It was before I lived permanently under the paternal
+roof, and on one of those visits we paid to my father. An aunt was with
+me (not the one who accompanied us to Wales), and she was often rather
+hard and severe. My father had made a law that I was to practise with
+dumb-bells a quarter of an hour every morning, and this exercise was
+taken in the garden, but before beginning I always looked at the clock
+which was in the sitting-room. On coming back into the house one
+morning, I met my father, who said, "Have you done your fifteen
+minutes?" "Yes, papa." "That is not true," said my aunt from the next
+room, "he has only practised for ten minutes; look at the clock!" My
+terrible master looked at the clock; the finger stood at ten minutes
+after eleven, and this was taken as conclusive evidence against me. I
+simply answered (what was true) that I had begun five minutes before the
+hour. This "additional lie" put my father into a fury, and he ordered me
+to do punishment drill with those dumb-bells for two hours without
+stopping. Of those hundred and twenty minutes he did not remit one. Long
+before their expiration I was ready to drop, but he came frequently to
+show that he had his eye upon me, and the horrible machine-like motion
+must continue. On other occasions I got punished for lying, when my only
+fault was the common childish inability to explain. "Why did you tear
+that piece of paper?" "Please, papa, I did not tear it; _I pulled it,
+and it tore_." Here is a child attempting to explain that he had not
+torn a piece of paper voluntarily, that he had stretched it only, and
+had himself been surprised by the tearing. In my father's code that was
+a "confounded lie," and I was to be severely punished for it.
+
+His system of education included riding as an essential part, and that
+he taught me well, so far as a child of that age could learn it. But
+though there were harriers within a few miles he could not take me to
+hunt, as children are sometimes taken in easier countries, the fields in
+Lancashire being so frequently divided by stone walls. The nature of our
+neighborhood equally prevented him from teaching me to swim, which he
+would otherwise have done, as there were no streams deep enough, or left
+in their natural purity. To accustom me to water, however, he made me
+take cold shower-baths, certainly the best substitute for a plunge that
+can be had in an ordinary room. In mental education he attached great
+importance to common things, to arithmetic, for example, and to good
+reading aloud, and intelligible writing. His own education had been very
+limited; he knew no modern language but his own, and I believe he knew
+no Greek whatever, and only just enough Latin for a solicitor, which in
+those days was not very much; but if he was a Philistine in neglecting
+his own culture, he had not the real Philistine's contempt for culture
+in others and desired to have me well taught; yet there was nobody near
+at hand to continue my higher education properly, and I was likely, had
+we lived long together at Shaw, to become like the regular middle-class
+Englishmen of those days, who from sheer want of preliminary training
+were impervious to the best influences of literature and art. I might
+have written a clear business letter, and calculated interest
+accurately.
+
+To accustom me to money matters, child as I was, my father placed gold
+and silver in my keeping, and whatever I spent was to be accounted for.
+In this way money was not to be an imaginary thing for me, but a real
+thing, and I was not to lose the control of myself because I had my
+pocket full of sovereigns. This was a very original scheme in its
+application to so young a child, but it perfectly succeeded, and I never
+either lost or misapplied one halfpenny of the sums my father entrusted
+to my keeping. He was evidently pleased with his success in this.
+
+There was a village school near his house kept by a respectable man for
+children of both sexes, and there I was sent to practise calligraphy and
+arithmetic. During school-hours there was at least complete relief from
+the paternal supervision, and besides this I managed to fall in love
+with a girl about a year older than myself, who was a very nice girl
+indeed, though she squinted to an unfortunate degree. That is the great
+advantage of having the young of both sexes in the same schoolroom,--the
+manners of the brutal sex may be made tender by the presence of the
+refined one. Boys and girls both went to the Grammar School at Burnley,
+in the now forgotten days when Mr. Raws was head-master there; but that
+was long before my time.
+
+My existence at Ivy Cottage was one of extreme dulness varied by dread.
+Every meal was a _tête-à-tête_ with my father, unrelieved by the
+presence of any lady or young person, and he became more and more gloomy
+as his nervous system gradually gave way, so that after having been
+simply stern and unbending, he was now like a black cloud always hanging
+over me and ready, as it seemed, to be my destruction in some way or
+other not yet clearly defined. It was an immense relief to me when a
+guest came to dinner, and I remember being once very much interested in
+a gentleman who sat opposite me at table, for the simple reason that I
+believed him to be the Duke of Wellington. There was rather more fuss
+than usual in the way of preparation, and my father treated his guest
+with marked deference, besides which the stranger had the Wellingtonian
+nose, so my youthful mind was soon made up on the subject, and I
+listened eagerly in the hope that the hero of Waterloo would fight some
+of his battles over again. He remained, however, silent on that subject,
+and I afterwards had the disappointment of learning that our guest was
+not the Duke, but only the holder of a high office in the county.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+1844.
+
+My extreme loneliness.--Thoughts of flight.--My father's last illness
+and death.--Circumstances of my last interview with him.--His funeral.
+
+It was one of the effects of the constant anxiety and excitement, and
+the dreadful wretchedness of that time, that my brain received the
+images of all surrounding creatures and things with an unnatural
+clearness and intensity, and that they were impressed upon it for life.
+Even now everything about Ivy Cottage is as clear as if the forty years
+were only as many days, and the writing of these chapters brings
+everything before me most vividly, not only the faces of the people and
+the habits and motions of the animals, but even the furniture, of which
+I remember every detail, down to the coloring of the services in the
+bedrooms, and the paint on my father's rocking-chair. An anecdote has
+been told in these pages about exercise with dumb-bells and an appeal to
+the clock. In writing that, I saw the real clock with the moon on its
+face (for it showed the phases of the moon), and my aunt standing near
+the window with her work in her hand and glancing up from the work to
+the clock, just as she did in reality.
+
+Amongst other particular occasions I remember one night when the moon
+shone very brightly in the garden, and I was sitting near my bedroom
+window looking over it, meditating flight. My father's cruelty had then
+reached its highest point. I was always spoken to harshly when he
+condescended to take any notice of me at all, and was very frequently
+beaten. Our meals together had become perfectly intolerable. He would
+sit and trifle with his cutlet, and cover it with pepper, for his
+appetite was completely gone, and there was no conversation except
+perhaps an occasional expression of displeasure. The continual tension
+caused by anxiety made my sleep broken and uncertain, and that night I
+sat up alone in the bedroom longer than usual and looking down upon the
+moonlit garden. There was an octagonal summer-house of trellis-work on
+the formal oblong lawn, and on the top of it was a large hollow ball of
+sheet-copper painted green that had cost my grandmother three pounds. It
+is oddly associated with my anxieties on that night, because I looked
+first at it and then at the moon alternately whilst thinking. The
+situation had become absolutely intolerable, the servants were my only
+protectors, and though devoted they never dared to interfere when their
+master was actually beating me. I therefore seriously weighed, in my own
+childish manner, the possibilities of a secret flight. The moonlight was
+tempting--it would be easy to go alone to the stable and saddle the
+pony. On a fine night I could be many miles away before morning. There
+was no difficulty whatever about money; I had plenty of sovereigns in a
+drawer to be accounted for afterwards to my father, and meanwhile could
+employ them in escaping from him. Still, I knew that such an employment
+of _his_ money would be looked upon by him as a breach of trust, and
+would, in fact, _be_ a breach of trust. This consideration was not
+easily set aside, though I now see that it was needlessly scrupulous,
+and have no doubt whatever that if a child is left by the ignorance or
+the carelessness of superior authority in the hands of a madman, it has
+a clear right to provide for its own safety by any means in its power.
+
+But where was I to go? My uncles were two very cool lawyers, always on
+the side of authority, and they would not be likely to believe my story
+entirely. A vague but sure instinct warned me that they would set me
+down for a rebellious boy who wanted to escape from justly severe
+paternal authority, and that they would at once send me back to Ivy
+Cottage. One of my two maiden aunts would be very likely to take the
+same view, but if the other received me with kindness, she could not
+have strength to resist my father, who would send or go to her at once
+and claim me. After thinking over all these things, I came to the
+conclusion that real safety was only to be found amongst strangers, and
+it seemed so hazardous to ask protection from unknown people that I
+decided to remain; but a very little would have settled it the other
+way. If those sovereigns had been really my own, I should probably have
+crept out of the house, saddled the pony, and ridden many miles; but so
+young a boy travelling alone would have been sure to attract attention,
+and the attempt to win deliverance would have been a failure. In after
+years, one of my elder relatives said that the attempt would almost
+certainly have caused my father to disinherit me by a new will, as my
+mother's property had been left to him absolutely. This danger was quite
+of a serious kind (more serious than the reader will think probable from
+what I choose to say in this place), as my father had another heir in
+view whom I never saw, but who was held _in terrorem_ over me.
+
+I awoke one bleak winter's morning about five o'clock, and heard the
+strangest cries proceeding from his room. His manservant had been
+awakened before me and had gone to the room already, where he was
+engaged in a sort of wrestling match with my father, who, in the belief
+that the house was full of enemies, was endeavoring to throw himself out
+of the window. Other men had been called for, who speedily arrived, and
+they overpowered him, though even the remnant of his mighty strength was
+such that it took six men to hold him on his bed. The attack lasted a
+whole week, and the house would have been a perfect hell, had not a
+certain event turned it for me into a Paradise.
+
+I had not been able somehow to get to sleep late at night for a short
+time, when a light in the room awoke me. The horrible life I had been
+leading for many a day and night had produced a great impressionability,
+and I was particularly afraid of my father in the night-time, so I
+started up in bed with the idea that he was come to beat me, when lo!
+instead of his terrible face, I saw what for me was the sweetest and
+dearest face in the whole world! It was his sister Mary, she who had
+taken my mother's place, and whom I loved with a mingled sentiment of
+filial tenderness and gratitude that remained undiminished in force,
+though it may have altered in character, during all the after years. For
+the suddenness of revulsion from horror to happiness, there has never
+been a minute in my existence comparable to the minute when I realized
+the idea that she had come. At first it seemed only a deceptive dream.
+Such happiness was incredible, and I did not even know she had been sent
+for; but the sweet reality entered into my heart like sunshine, and
+throwing my arms about her neck I burst into a passion of tears. She, in
+her quiet way, for she hardly ever yielded to a strong emotion, though
+her feelings were deep and tender, looked at me sadly and kindly and
+told me to sleep in peace, as she was going to remain in the house some
+time. Then she left the room, and I lay in the darkness, but with a new
+light brighter than sunshine in the hope that the miserable life with my
+father had at length come to an end. It had only been six months in all,
+but it had seemed longer than any half-dozen years gone through before
+or after.
+
+If this book were a novel, a very effective chapter might be written to
+describe my father's sufferings during his week of delirium, and all the
+dreadful fancies by which his disordered brain was oppressed and
+tortured; but I prefer to skip that week altogether, and come to a
+morning when his recovery was thought to be assured. He was no longer
+delirious, but apparently quite calm, though his manner was hard and
+imperious. He ordered me to be sent up to him, and I went almost
+trembling with the old dread of him, and with a wretched feeling that
+after my single week of respite the tyranny was to begin again. Such may
+have been the feelings of an escaped slave when he has been caught and
+brought back in irons, and stands once more in his master's presence. I
+tried to congratulate my master on his recovery in a clumsy childish
+way, but he peremptorily ordered me to fetch the "Times" and read to
+him. I began, as usual, one of the leading articles on the politics of
+the day, and before I had read many sentences my hearer declared that I
+was reading badly and made the article nonsense. Why had I put in such
+and such words of my own? he asked. His own precept that I was always to
+tell the truth under any circumstances had habituated me to be truthful
+even to him, so I answered boldly that I had not inserted the words
+attributed to me. Then I read a little farther, and he accused me of
+inserting something else that was not and could not be in the text; I
+said it was he who was mistaken, and he flew into an uncontrollable
+fury, one of those rages in which it had been his custom to punish me
+without mercy. What he might have done to me I cannot tell; he raised
+himself in bed and glared at me with an expression never to be
+forgotten. My aunt, however, had been listening at the door, thinking it
+probable that I should be in danger, and she now opened it and told me
+to come away. I have a confused recollection of reaching the door under
+a parting volley of imprecations.
+
+It was a mistake to let my father see me, as, in the perverted state of
+his mind, the mere sight of me was enough to make him furious. Whether
+he hated me or not, nobody knows; but he treated me as if I was the most
+odious little object that could be brought before his eyes. Very soon
+after the scene about the article in the "Times," and probably in
+consequence of the excitement brought on by it, my father had a fit of
+apoplexy, and lingered till the next morning about nine o'clock. I was
+not in the room when he died, but my aunt took me to see him immediately
+after, and then I received an impression which has lasted to the present
+day. The corpse was lying on its side amidst disordered bedclothes, and
+to this day I can never go into a bedroom where the bed has not been
+made without feeling as if there were a corpse in it. That dreadful
+childish sensation received when I saw my father's body just as it lay
+at the close of the death-agony, can even now be revived by the sight of
+a disordered bed; such is the force of early impressions, especially
+when they are received by a nervous system that has been overwrought by
+the extreme of mental wretchedness.
+
+The reader will hardly believe that the death of so hard a father could
+have been felt otherwise than as an inexpressible relief, and yet I was
+deeply affected by his loss. The kindest of fathers could hardly have
+been wept for more. My aunt's tears were more explicable; she was old
+enough to understand the frightful waste of the best gifts involved in
+that premature ending; as for my grief, perhaps the true explanation of
+it may be that I mourned rather the father who had been kind to me in
+Wales, than the cruel master at Ivy Cottage.
+
+I sometimes try to imagine what he might have been under more favorable
+circumstances. There were times after his wife's death when he meditated
+a complete change of residence, which might have saved him. He would
+always have been severe and authoritative, but without alcohol he would
+probably not have been cruel.
+
+I remember the day of the funeral quite distinctly. My father's two
+brothers came, though he had had scarcely any intercourse with them for
+years. They were most respectable men, quite free from my father's
+errors; but they had not half his life and energy. Such was the strength
+of his constitution that so recently as the time of our journey in Wales
+his health was not visibly impaired, and at the time of his death he had
+that rare possession for a man of thirty-nine, a complete set of
+perfectly sound teeth.
+
+His coffin was carried on the shoulders of six men from Ivy Cottage to
+the graveyard near the chapel. Shaw at that time had only a chapel, a
+hideous building on a bleak piece of rising ground, surrounded by many
+graves. It never looked more dreary than on that wretched January day in
+1844, when we stood round as the sexton threw earth on my father's
+coffin. He was laid in the same tomb with the poor young wife who had
+loved him truly, and to whom he had been a tender and devoted husband
+whilst their short union lasted.
+
+I am the only survivor of that day's ceremony. The little procession has
+all followed my father into the darkness, descending one by one into
+graves separated by great spaces of land and sea. And when this is
+printed I, too, shall be asleep in mine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+1845.
+
+Dislike to Shaw in consequence of the dreadful life I led there with my
+father.--My guardian.--Her plan for my education.--Doncaster
+School.--Mr. Cape and his usher.--The usher's intolerance of Dissenters.
+--My feeling for architecture and music.--The drawing-master.--My
+guardian insists on my learning French.--Our French master, Sig.
+Testa.--A painful incident.--I begin to learn the violin.--Dancing.--My
+aversion to cricket.--Early readings.--Love of Scott.--My first
+library.--Classical studies.
+
+One consequence of the horrible life I had led at Ivy Cottage was a
+permanent dislike to the place and the neighborhood, the evil effects of
+which will be seen in the sequel. For the present it is enough to say
+that I never went there again quite willingly. After my father's death
+my grandmother lived in the village, and I was taken to see her every
+year until her death; but though she was a very kind old lady, it was a
+trial to me to visit her. I used to lie awake in her house at nights,
+realizing those horrible nights I had passed at Ivy Cottage, with such
+extreme intensity that it seemed as if my father might enter the room at
+any time. This was not a superstitious dread of apparitions; but the
+association of ideas brought back the past with a clearness that was
+extremely painful. Even now, at a distance of more than forty years, I
+avoid whatever reminds me of that time, and am not sorry that this
+narrative now leads to something else.
+
+My father had no great affection for his brothers, who on their part
+could not have much esteem for him, so there was a mutual coolness which
+prevented him from appointing either of them to be my guardian. Probably
+they felt this as a slight, for, although always kind to me, they held
+completely aloof from anything like paternal interference with my
+education. My father had named his eldest sister, Mary, as my sole
+guardian, with, two lawyers as co-executors with her. The reader will
+probably think it was a mistake to appoint an old maid to be guardian to
+a boy; but my aunt was a woman of excellent sense, and certainly not
+disposed to bring me up effeminately; indeed, her willingness to
+encourage me in everything manly was such that she would always inflict
+upon herself considerable anxiety about my safety rather than prevent me
+from taking my full share of the more or less perilous exercises of
+youth. As to my education and profession her scheme was very simple and
+clear, and would have been perfectly rational if I had been all that she
+wished me to be. According to her plan I was to go to good schools
+first, and then be prepared for Oxford by tutors, and become a
+clergyman. There was some thought at one time of sending me to one of
+the great public schools; but this was abandoned, and I was first sent
+to Burnley School again, and then, after the summer holidays of 1845, to
+Doncaster, where I was a boarder in the house of the head-master.
+
+A word from me in favor of one of the public schools would probably have
+decided my guardian to send me there; but there was a _vis inertiae_ in
+my total want of social and scholastic ambition. I never in my life felt
+the faintest desire to rise in the world either by making the
+acquaintance of people of rank (which is the main reason why boys of
+middling station are sent to aristocratic schools), or by getting
+letters put after my name as a reward for learning what had no intrinsic
+charm for me. In the worldly sense I never had any ambition whatever.
+
+It seemed rather hard, after living at Burnley with my kind guardian, to
+be sent to Doncaster School and separated from her for five months at a
+time, but she thought the separation necessary, as there was nothing in
+the world she dreaded more than that her great affection might spoil me.
+Always gentle in her ways, always kind and considerate, that admirable
+woman had still a remarkable firmness of character, and would act, on
+due occasion, in direct opposition both to her own feelings and to mine,
+if she believed that duty required it.
+
+In those days there was no railway station at Doncaster, and my guardian
+took me from Featherstone (where her brother-in-law, Mr. Hinde, was
+vicar) to Doncaster in a hired carriage. I remember that it was an open
+carriage and we had nobody with us except the driver, and it was a fine
+hot day in August. I remember the long road, the arrival at an inn at
+Doncaster not far from the new church, and my first presentation to Mr.
+Cape, the head-master, who seemed a very kind and gentle sort of
+clergyman to a boy not yet acquainted with his cane. Then I was left
+alone in the strange school, not in the best of spirits, and if it had
+been difficult to restrain tears when my guardian left me, it became
+impossible in the little iron bed in the dormitory at night.
+
+There were not many boarders, perhaps a dozen, and three or four private
+pupils who were preparing for Cambridge. All these were lodged in the
+head-master's house, which was in a pleasant, open part of the town, on
+the road leading to the race-course, just beyond the well-known
+Salutation Hotel. Besides these, there were rather a large number of day
+scholars,--I forget how many, perhaps fifty or sixty,--and in those days
+the schoolhouse was a ground floor under the old theatre. We marched
+down thither in the morning under the control of an usher, who was
+always with us in our walks. This usher, whose name I well remember, but
+do not choose to print, was a vulgar, overbearing man whom it was
+difficult to like, yet at the same time we all felt that he was a very
+valuable master. Boys feel the difference between a master who is a
+gentleman and one who falls short of that ideal. We were clearly aware
+that the head-master, Mr. Cape, was a gentleman, and that the usher was
+not. Nevertheless, in spite of his occasional coarseness and even
+brutality, the usher was a painstaking, honest fellow, who did his duty
+very energetically. His best quality, which I appreciate far more now
+than I did then, was an extreme readiness to help a willing boy in his
+work, by clearly explaining those difficulties that are likely to stop
+him in his progress. Mr. Cape was more an examiner than a teacher, at
+least for us; with the private pupils he may have been more didactic.
+The usher evidently liked to be asked; he was extremely helpful to me,
+and thanks to him chiefly I made very rapid progress at Doncaster.
+Unfortunately an occasional injustice made it difficult to be so
+grateful to him as we ought to have been. Here is an example. One
+evening in the playground he told me to get on the back of another boy,
+and then thrashed me with a switch from an apple-tree. I begged to be
+told for what fault this punishment was inflicted, and the only answer
+he condescended to give me was that a master owed no explanation to a
+schoolboy. Down to the present time I have never been able to make out
+what the punishment was for, and strongly suspect that it was simply to
+exercise the usher's arm, which was a powerful one. He was a fair
+cricketer, though rather too fat for that exercise, and a capital
+swimmer, for which his fat was an advantage. He was an immoderate
+snuff-taker. Sometimes he would lay a train of snuff on the back of his
+hand and snuff it up greedily and voluptuously. In hot weather he
+sometimes sat in his shirt-sleeves, and would occasionally amuse himself
+by laying the snuff on his thick fat arm and then pass it all under his
+nose, which drew it up as the pneumatic discharging machines drew grain
+from the hold of a vessel. The odor of snuff was inseparable from his
+person.
+
+On Sunday mornings we were made to read chapters in the Bible before
+going to church, and the usher, who was preparing himself to enter Holy
+Orders, would sometimes talk to us a little about theology. Once he said
+that the establishment of religious toleration in England had been a
+deplorable mistake, and that Dissent ought not to be permitted by the
+Sovereign. This frank expression of perfect intolerance rather surprised
+me even then, and I did not quite know whether it would be just to
+extirpate Dissent or not. My principal feeling about the matter was the
+prejudice inherited by young English gentlemen of old Tory families,
+that Dissent was something indescribably low, and quite beneath the
+attention of a gentleman. Still, to go farther and compel Dissenters by
+force to attend the services of the Church of England did seem to me
+rather hard, and on thinking over the matter seriously in my own mind, I
+came to the conclusion that our usher must be wrong, unless Dissenters
+were guilty of some crime I was not aware of; but this, after all,
+seemed quite possible.
+
+We were taken to the services in Doncaster old church, which was
+destroyed by fire many years afterwards. Though not yet in my teens, I
+had an intense delight in architecture, and deeply enjoyed the noble old
+building, one of the finest of its class in England. Our pew was in the
+west gallery, not far from the organ, and from it we had a good view of
+the interior. The effect of the music was very strong upon me, as the
+instrument was a fine one, and I was fully alive to the influence of
+music and architecture in combination. The two arts go together far
+better than architecture and painting; for music seems to make
+architecture alive, as it rolls along the aisles and under the lofty
+vaults. I well remember feeling, when some noble anthem was being
+performed, as if the sculptured heads between the arches added a noble
+animation to their serenity. Even now, the impression received in those
+early days still remains in my memory with considerable clearness and
+fidelity, and I believe that the habit of attending service in such a
+beautiful church was a powerful stimulus to an inborn passion for
+architecture.
+
+I had already taken lessons in drawing, of the kind which in those days
+was thought suitable for boys who were not expected to be professional
+artists, so the drawing-master at Doncaster had me amongst his pupils.
+He was an elderly man, rather stout, and very respectable. His house was
+extremely neat and tidy, with proper mahogany furniture, and no artistic
+eccentricities of any kind whatever. He himself was always
+irreproachably dressed, and he wore a large ruby ring on the little
+finger of his left hand. To us boys he appeared to be a personage of
+great dignity, but we were not afraid of him in spite of the dignity of
+his manners, as he could not apply the cane. He was not unkind, yet in
+all my life I never met with anybody concerned with the fine arts who
+had so little sympathy, so little enthusiasm. On the whole, he was
+distinctly gentle with me, but I made him angry twice. He had done me
+the honor to promote me to water-color, and as I wanted a rag to wipe my
+slab and brushes, I ventured to ask for one, on which he turned upon me
+a glance of haughty surprise, and said, "Do you suppose, sir, that I can
+undertake to supply you with rags?" This will give an idea of the
+curiously unsympathetic nature of the man. On another occasion I was
+drawing a house, or beginning to draw one, when the master came to look
+over my shoulder and found great fault with me for beginning with the
+upper part of the edifice. "What stonemason or bricklayer," said he,
+"would think of building his chimney before he had laid the first row of
+stones on the foundation?" A young pupil must not correct the bad
+reasoning of his elders, but it seemed to me that the cases of a
+bricklayer building a real house and an artist representing one on paper
+were not precisely the same. Later in life I found that the best artists
+brought their works forward as much as possible simultaneously,
+sketching all the parts lightly at first, and keeping them all in the
+same degree of finish till the end. [Footnote: The most rational way to
+paint is first to paint all the large masses together, then the smaller
+or secondary masses, and finally the details, bringing the picture
+forward all together, as nearly as possible.]
+
+Nevertheless, the drawing-lessons were always a delightful break in our
+week's occupation, and I remember with pleasure the walk in the morning
+down to the drawing-master's house, two days in the week, and the happy
+hour of messing with water-color that followed it. In those days of
+blissful ignorance I had, of course, no conception of the difficulties
+of art, and was making that delusively rapid apparent progress which is
+so very encouraging to all incipient amateurs. Not a single study of
+those times remains in my portfolios to-day, and I know not what may
+have become of them. This is the more to be regretted, that in the fine
+weather our master took us into the fields round Doncaster and taught us
+to sketch from nature, which we accomplished in a rudimentary way.
+
+My dear, wise, and excellent guardian was always anxious that I should
+receive as good an education as my opportunities would permit, so she
+insisted on my learning French, and had herself taught me the elements
+of that language, which she was able to read, though she did not pretend
+to speak it. On going to Doncaster I found Latin and Greek so serious a
+business that I wanted to lighten my burdens, and begged to be excused
+from going on with French; but my guardian (who, with all her exquisite
+gentleness, had a very strong will) would not hear of any such
+abandonment, and wrote very determinedly on the subject both to me and
+to Mr. Cape. It is extremely probable that this exercise of my
+guardian's will may have had a great influence on my future life, as
+without some early knowledge of French I might not have felt tempted to
+pursue the study later, and if I had never spoken French my whole
+existence would have been quite different.
+
+Our French master at Doncaster was an Italian of good family named
+Testa, one of the most perfect gentlemen I ever met, and an excellent
+teacher. My deepest regret about him now is that I did not learn Italian
+with him also, then or afterwards. [Footnote: It is astonishing how many
+chances of improvement young men foolishly allow to slip by them. It
+would have been quite worth while after I became a free agent to go and
+spend six months or more at Doncaster, simply to read Italian with so
+good a master as Testa.] I learned Italian later in life, and with a far
+inferior master. Signor Testa was a tall, thin man, of rather cold and
+stately manners, with a fine-looking, noble head covered with curly
+brown hair. He was always exquisitely clean and orderly, both about his
+person and the books and things that belonged to him in his rooms, where
+there was an atmosphere of almost feminine refinement, though their
+occupant was by no means effeminate in his thoughts or bearing. We
+understood that he had left Italy in consequence of some political
+difficulty, and we knew that he had still relations there. One day, as
+we were engaged with our lesson at his lodgings, he took some leaves and
+a faded flower or two that had just arrived in a letter from Italy, and
+said, with tears in his eyes, "These have come from my father's place."
+Now it so happened that the eldest boy in our class was liable to fits
+of perfectly uncontrollable laughter (what the French call _le fou
+rire_), and, as the reader is sure to know, if he has ever been troubled
+with that disease himself, the fit very often comes on just at the
+moment when the patient feels that he is called upon to look
+particularly grave. This is what happened in the present case. Our
+unlucky fellow-pupil was tickled with something in Testa's accent or
+manner, or perhaps as he was an English boy the foreigner's tenderness
+of feeling may have seemed to him absurd; but whatever may have been the
+reason, his face became convulsed with suppressed laughter, which burst
+forth at last uncontrollably. This made the rest of us laugh too--not at
+poor Testa, but at our unworthy comrade. I shall never forget the
+Italian gentleman's look on that occasion. His eyes were still brimming
+with tears, but he laid down the flattened leaves and flowers and looked
+at us all round with an expression that cut me, at least, to the quick.
+"_Young gentlemen_," he said, "_I did not expect you to be so unkind_."
+I longed to explain, but did not find words at the moment, and we went
+on with our lesson. The fact was that Testa had not the least sense of
+humor in his composition, and so he could not understand what had
+happened. A humorous man, acquainted with the nature of boys, would have
+understood the attack of _fou rire_, and forgiven it; but then a
+humorous man would have thought twice before appealing to a set of
+English boys for sympathy with the feelings of an exile. The incident
+certainly increased my feelings of respect for Signor Testa, and made me
+try to please him. The French lessons were very agreeable to me, and
+besides duly preparing them, I read some French on my own account, and
+acquired a liking for the language that has remained with me ever since.
+
+If the reader has the sound old-fashioned notions about education by
+which all subjects were strictly divided into the two classes of serious
+and frivolous pursuits, he will already have suspicions about the
+soundness of a training that included the two idle accomplishments of
+Drawing and French, and what will he say, I wonder, when music is added
+to the list? My initiation into music took place in the following
+manner. We had a dancing-master who came regularly to Mr. Cape's house
+to prepare us to shine in society, and his instrument was the convenient
+dancing-master's pocket fiddle or kit. Although this instrument gives
+forth but a feeble kind of music, I was far more enchanted with it than
+by the dancing, and wrote a most persuasive letter to my good guardian
+imploring her to let me study the violin. Those were the happy times
+when one had energy for everything! I had already three languages on
+hand, and the art of painting in water-colors, besides which I was in a
+mathematical school where boys were prepared for Cambridge, [Footnote:
+Doncaster School at that time was a sort of little nursery for
+Cambridge. Mr. Cape was a Cambridge man, and so was his brother, the
+able master of Peterborough School.] but there seemed to be no reason
+why the art of violin-playing should not be added to these pursuits. My
+guardian, before consenting, prudently wrote to Mr. Cape to ask if this
+new accomplishment would not interfere too much with other matters, and
+his answer was in these words: "The lad is getting on well enough with
+his studies, so if he wants to amuse himself a little by scraping
+catgut, even let him scrape away!" It will be seen that Mr. Cape did not
+assign to music the high rank in education which has been attributed to
+it by some famous thinkers in ancient and modern times. Few musical
+sensations experienced during my whole life have equalled in intensity
+the sensation of hearing our dancing-master play upon a full-sized
+violin, after the weak and thin tones that our ears had been accustomed
+to by his kit. I was so little in the way of hearing music at Doncaster
+that the richer note of the violin seemed musical as the lyre of Apollo.
+A contrast so striking made me more passionately eager to learn, but I
+was informed by one of the private pupils who exercised considerable
+authority over the younger boys, that although I might study the violin
+with the dancing-master, I was never to practise it by myself. This
+restriction was pardonable in one who might reasonably dread the
+torturing attempts of a beginner, but it was certainly not favorable to
+my progress. However, in course of time it came to be relaxed; that is,
+as soon as I could play tunes.
+
+It is very odd that any one who dislikes dancing as heartily as I have
+always disliked it in manhood, should have been rather a brilliant
+performer when a boy. Our dancing-master was extremely pleased with me,
+and encouraged me by many compliments; nay, he even went so far as to
+teach me a sailor's hornpipe, which I danced in public as a _pas seul_
+when the school gave a theatrical entertainment on the approach of the
+Christmas holidays. All this is simply inconceivable now, for there is
+nothing which bores me so thoroughly as a ball, and I would at any time
+travel fifty miles to avoid one.
+
+At school the principal amusement was cricket, for which I soon acquired
+an intense aversion. All games bore me except chess and billiards, and
+it was especially hard to be compelled to field out to please the elder
+boys, and so waste the precious holiday afternoons. Our cricket ground
+was on the racecourse, and when I could get away I did so most joyfully,
+and betook myself to a quiet place amongst the furze nearer to the Red
+House than the Grand Stand. There my great delight was to read Scott's
+poems, which I possessed in pocket volumes. The same volumes are in my
+study now, and simply to handle them is enough to bring back many
+sensations of long-past boyhood. Of all the influences that had sway
+over me in those days and for long afterwards, the influence of Scott
+was by far the strongest. A boy cannot make a better choice. Scott has
+the immense advantage over dull authors of being almost always
+interesting, and the equally great advantage over many exciting authors
+that he never leaves an unhealthy feeling in the mind. I began with "The
+Lady of the Lake," then read "Marmion," and "The Lay of the Last
+Minstrel" and the Ballads, and finally "Rokeby." These were in separate
+small volumes, which gave me a desire to possess other authors in the
+same convenient form, so I added Goldsmith, Crabbe, Kirke White, and
+Moore's "Irish Melodies." A prize for history gave me "Paradise Lost" in
+two volumes of my favorite size, and two school-fellows, who saw that I
+had a taste for such volumes, kindly gave me others. During the holidays
+my guardian authorized the purchase of a Shakespeare in seven pocket
+volumes, and the "Spectator" in eight, so I had quite a little library,
+which became inexpressibly dear to me. It is very remarkable that for a
+long time I knew Scott thoroughly as a poet without having read a single
+novel by him. Having been invited by one of my school-fellows to a
+country house not very far from Doncaster, I was asked by the lady of
+the house what authors I had read, and on mentioning Scott's poems was
+told that he was greater as a novelist than as a poet, and that the
+Waverley novels were certainly his finest works. This seemed incredible
+to me then, the poems being so delightful that they could not possibly
+be surpassed. On another occasion I happened to be standing with Mr.
+Cape in the little chapel at Conisborough Castle, and having heard from
+an older school-fellow that Athelstane had died there, I asked Mr. Cape
+if it was true. "Yes," he answered, "if you believe Sir Walter Scott."
+Not having read "Ivanhoe," I was under the impression that the
+Athelstane in question was an historical personage.
+
+Nothing in the retrospect of life strikes me as more astonishing than
+the rapid mental growth that must have taken place between the date of
+my father's death and its second or third anniversary. When my father
+died I was simply a child, though rather a precocious one, as the
+journal in Wales testifies; but between two and three years after that
+event the child had become a boy, with a keen taste for literature,
+which, if it had been taken advantage of by his teachers, ought to have
+made his education a more complete success than it ever became.
+
+The misfortune was that the classics were not taught as literature at
+all, but as exercises in grammar and prosody. They were dissected by
+teachers who were simply lecturers on the science of language, and who
+had not large views even about that. Our whole attention being directed
+to the technicalities of the pedagogue, we did not perceive that the
+classic authors had produced poems which, as literature, were not
+inferior to those of our best English poets. So it happened that those
+of us who had literary tastes were content to satisfy them in reading
+English authors, and left them, as it were, at the door of the
+classroom. I worked courageously enough at the Latin books which were
+set before me, but never found the slightest enjoyment in them; indeed,
+it was only much later, and through the medium of French and Italian,
+that I gained some partial access to the literary beauty of Latin. As
+for Greek, I began it vigorously at Doncaster, but I did not get beyond
+the rudiments during my stay there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+1845.
+
+Early attempts in English verse.--Advantages of life at Doncaster.--A
+school incident.--Fagging.--Story of a dog.--Robbery.--My schoolfellow,
+Henry Alexander.--His remarkable influence.--Other schoolfellows.
+--Story of a boat.--A swimming adventure.--Our walks and battles.
+
+The love of literature was naturally followed by some early attempts at
+versification in English, which is generally looked upon as a silly
+waste of time in a boy, though if he writes Latin verses, which we were
+taught to do, he is thought to be seriously occupied. Prom the age of
+eleven to that of twenty-one I wrote English verses very frequently, and
+am now very glad I did so, being quite convinced that it was a most
+profitable exercise in the language. My early verses were invariably
+echoes of my dearly beloved Sir Walter Scott, a master whom it is not
+very difficult to imitate so far as mere versification is concerned. One
+little incident about this early verse-making is worth mentioning in
+this place. I was staying for a few days with a school-fellow at a house
+near Doncaster, when I dreamed a new ballad about a shipwreck, and on
+awaking wrote it down at once. The thing would not be worth quoting, if
+it were possible to remember it; but it was correct enough in rhymes and
+metre.
+
+My life at Doncaster was not on the whole unhappy, and the steady
+discipline of the school was doing me much good. Mr. Cape was a very
+severe master, and he used the cane very freely; but to a boy who had
+lived under the tyranny of my father Mr. Cape's severity seemed a light
+affliction. He kept up his dignity by seldom appearing in the
+schoolroom; he sat in his library or in the dining-room in a large
+morocco-covered arm-chair, holding a book in one hand whilst the other
+was always ready to clasp the cane that he kept close by. Any failure of
+memory would cause him to dart a severe look at the delinquent, a false
+quantity made him scowl, and when he suspected real carelessness the
+cane was resorted to at once. Unfortunately he could not apply it and
+keep his temper at the same time. The exercise roused him to fury, and a
+punishment which in his first intention was to have been mild became
+cruel through the effect of his own rapidly increasing irritation. Mr.
+Cape's health was not good, and no doubt this added to the natural
+irritability of his temper. There was one unfortunate youngster whose
+hands were covered with chilblains, and who was constantly displeasing
+Mr. Cape by inattention or inaccuracy, so he incurred such perpetual
+canings that his hands were pitiable to see, and must have been
+extremely painful. Our head-master was no doubt laudably, or selfishly,
+anxious that we should get on with our work so as to do him credit at
+Cambridge, where most of us were expected to go; but he seemed almost
+incapable of pity. I remember having the intense pleasure of playing him
+a little trick just after he had been caning a lad who was a very good
+friend of mine.
+
+It happened in this way--but first I must describe the topography of the
+place. Mr. Cape's house was a tall brick building that looked upon the
+street on one side, and on our playground (which had formerly been a
+garden) on the other. At the other end of the garden was a wash-house
+with the schoolroom over it, and in the wash-house there was a large
+copper for boiling linen. In the house the dining-room looked over the
+play-ground, and it somehow happened (perhaps it was in the Easter
+holidays) that there were no pupils left in the place but my friend
+Brokenribs and I. [Footnote: We always called him Brokenribs, which
+recalled his real name by a sort of imitation; besides which, though his
+ribs had not actually been broken, he had suffered from a good many
+bruises.] Mr. Cape called him up into the dining-room after dark, and
+began to thrash him. Brokenribs, after some time, began to think that a
+sufficient number of strokes had been administered, and put the
+dining-table between himself and his adversary, who could not get at him
+any longer. I was in the playground, and understood all that was passing
+by the shadows on the window-blinds.
+
+It was most amusing to me, as a spectator, to see the shadow of
+Brokenribs flit rapidly past, and still better perhaps to see it
+followed by that of Mr. Cape, with bald head and uplifted cane. When
+this entertainment had lasted some time I heard a great banging of doors,
+and Brokenribs issued from the house, rushing like a hunted deer the whole
+length of the playground. "Cape's after me!" he said. "Where shall I hide?"
+"In the copper!" I answered with a sudden inspiration, and ran into the
+wash-house with him, where I lifted the lid and stowed him away in
+safety. The lid had but just been replaced when Mr. Cape appeared in the
+playground and asked if I had seen Brokenribs. "Yes, sir, certainly; he
+was running this way, sir." I accompanied Mr. Cape into the wash-house,
+which had an outer door giving access to a lane, and observed with
+pleasure that he was forced to the irresistible conclusion that
+Brokenribs had taken flight. The lad's parents lived at an accessible
+distance (perhaps twenty miles), so Mr. Cape was tormented with the
+unpleasant idea that the lad had gone home to tell his own story. He
+therefore ordered a gig and drove off so as to catch Brokenribs during
+his flight. As my friend had been sitting in cold water, I got him out
+when the coast was clear, and made him go to bed, where the housekeeper
+sent him a treacle posset. After driving many a mile in vain, Mr. Cape
+returned very late, and never said a word on the subject to either of
+us.
+
+Poor Brokenribs was not only very often caned, but he was fag to a
+tyrannical private pupil, who made him suffer severely. The private
+pupils upheld the sacred institution of fagging, which gave them a
+pleasant sense of authority, and as they sat like gods above us, they
+were not in danger of retaliation. Brokenribs was fag to a young man who
+determined that he should learn two things,--first, to endure pain
+without flinching, and secondly, to smoke tobacco. To achieve the first
+of these great purposes, he used to twist the lad's arms and administer
+a certain number of hard blows upon them. This he did every day so long
+as the whim lasted. As for the smoking, poor Brokenribs had to smoke a
+certain number of pipes every day. A single pipe made him look ghastly,
+and the whole series made him dreadfully ill. I remember his white face
+at such times; but he attained his reward in becoming an accomplished
+and precocious smoker.
+
+I was fag myself at one time to a private pupil; but he was not very
+tyrannical with me, and only ordered me to light fires, which was a
+valuable element in my education.
+
+It gives one a fine independence of servants to be able to light a fire
+quickly and well. This accomplishment enables a man to get up as early
+as
+he chooses, even in winter, and I have never forgotten it; indeed, I
+lighted a fire an hour before writing this page. In my opinion, it would
+be wise to teach every boy the art of doing without servants on
+occasion.
+
+The private pupils exercised authority in other ways than by converting
+us into fags. It so happened that I became possessor of an unfortunate
+tawny dog. How one boy should be owner of a dog at school when the
+others had nothing to do with him may be difficult to understand; and
+indeed my ownership did not last for very long, but it was pleasant to
+me whilst it lasted. The poor beast, if I remember rightly, belonged to
+somebody who did not want him, and was going to have him slain. I had
+always an intense affection for dogs, and begged Mr. Cape to let me keep
+this one, promising that it should not be a nuisance. I was rather a
+favorite with the head-master, so he granted this very extraordinary
+request, and it was understood that the dog was to lodge in a box in the
+wash-house. I bought some fresh straw for him, and took the greatest
+care of him, so that he soon became strongly attached to me. Had there
+been no private pupils the creature would have been safe enough, as I
+would have fought any lad of my own age in his behalf, and Brokenribs,
+who was older, would have fought the bigger boys; but we none of us
+dared to resist the privates, who were grown men. One of the privates
+thought that a small boy ought not to possess a dog, and began to affirm
+that the animal was a nuisance. He then said it would be an improvement
+to cut off its tail, which he did accordingly, in spite of all my
+remonstrances. I pitied the poor beast when it lay suffering with its
+bleeding stump, and did all that affection could suggest for its
+consolation; but shortly afterwards the same private pupil, who had a
+taste for pistol-shooting, thought it would be good fun to shoot at a
+living target, so he took my dog away into a field and shot him there. I
+knew what he was going to do, but had no power to prevent it, as he had
+begun by persuading Mr. Cape that the poor beast was a nuisance, which
+he certainly was not. He was a very quiet, timid dog, of an anxious,
+apprehensive temperament, having probably never had reason to place much
+trust in the human species.
+
+There was one lad at the school who was a coarse bully, and I remember
+his playing a trick on me which was nothing less than pure brigandage.
+He ordered me to give him my keys, and rummaged in my private box. He
+found a small telescope in it which was to his liking, and took it. I
+never got any redress about that telescope, as the bully coolly said it
+had always belonged to him, and he was powerful enough to act on the
+great principle that _la force prime le droit_.
+
+It is most astonishing how some boys gain a great ascendency over others
+when there seems to be no substantial reason for it. One of my
+school-fellows, who was cousin to some of my cousins, and bore my
+surname as one of his Christian names, had quite a remarkable ascendency
+over boys, and yet he had not the physical size and strength which
+usually impose upon them. He was slight and small, though he had a
+handsome face; but he had an aristocratic temperament, which inspired a
+sort of respect, and a governing disposition, which made other boys
+yield to him. Nothing was more curious than to see how completely the
+bully effaced himself before that young gentleman's superiority. The
+bully was also a snob, and probably believed that Henry Alexander
+belonged to the highest aristocracy. He was well descended and well
+connected (there was an abeyant peerage in his family), but in point of
+fact, his social position was not better than that of some other boys in
+the school. I remember well the intense astonishment of the bully when
+he found out one day that Alexander bore my name as a Christian name,
+and learned the reason.
+
+Alexander was a perfect little dandy, being at all times exceptionally
+well dressed for a schoolboy, and on Sundays he came out with remarkable
+splendor. In spring and summer he wore a jacket and trousers of the most
+fashionable cut and of the very finest blue cloth, with a gloss upon it,
+and a white waistcoat adorned with a bunch of valuable trinkets to his
+watch-chain.
+
+His hat, his gloves, his wonderfully small boots, were all the pink of
+perfection. He smoked very good cigars, and talked about life with an
+air of the most consummate experience, that gained him profound respect.
+Most boys hesitate about the choice of a profession, but Alexander had
+no such indecision. He had made up his mind to be an officer, with his
+father's consent, and guided by a sure instinct, as he had exactly the
+qualities to make himself respected in a regiment. It does a young
+officer no harm to be rather a dandy and to shine in society, whilst the
+extreme decision and promptitude of Alexander's peremptory will, and the
+natural ease with which he assumed authority, would be most useful in
+command. A few years later he joined the 64th Regiment and went to
+India, where in spite of his rather delicate frame he became an active
+sportsman. One day, however, the surgeon of the regiment saw him by
+accident in his bath, and declared that he was too thin to be well, so
+he examined him, and found that consumption had begun. Alexander
+returned to England, where he lingered a few months, and then died. He
+came to see me not very long before his death, not looking nearly so ill
+as I had expected, but the doctor knew best. With better health he might
+have had a brilliant career, and was certain, at least, to be an
+efficient and popular officer, with the right degree of love for his
+profession.
+
+Another of my fellow-pupils who died early was the eldest son and heir
+of a country squire, and one of the handsomest and most able young men I
+ever met. He was a private pupil, yet not at all disliked by the younger
+boys, as he was always kind and friendly towards us. There was a project
+for his going out to India, and he talked over the matter with his
+father one evening at his own home. A dispute arose between father and
+son as they sat talking late, and when they separated for the night they
+were not on good terms. The next morning the young gentleman was found
+dead in bed under circumstances which led to a very strong suspicion of
+suicide. We were all deeply grieved by his death, as he seemed to have
+the best gifts of Nature, and life was opening so brightly before him;
+but he had a very high spirit, and if he really did commit suicide,
+which is not improbable, it is very likely that his pride had been
+wounded. Whenever I read in the poets or elsewhere of gifted young men
+who have ended sadly and prematurely, his image rises before me, though
+it is now forty years since we met. Poor Brokenribs is gone too, though
+he lived long enough to be a clergyman for some years. He was a
+thoroughly good fellow, bearing all his hardships with admirable
+equanimity.
+
+Before quitting the history of my school-days, I ought, perhaps, to tell
+the story of a great swimming exploit whereof I was the hero. The
+reader, after this expression, will count upon some display of prowess
+and of vanity at the same time, but there is neither in this case.
+
+After I had been at Doncaster about a year, one of the private pupils
+came to me one day with a pencil and a piece of paper in his hand, and
+said, "We are going to buy a boat at Cambridge; will you subscribe?" Now
+it so happened that I was born a boating creature, just as decidedly as
+I was _not_ born to be a cricketing creature, and such a question
+addressed to me was much as if one said to a young duck, "Would you like
+to go on the pond, or would you prefer being shut up in a cage?" Of
+course I said "yes" at once, and wrote an artful letter to my dear
+guardian begging for the four guineas which were to constitute me a
+shareholder in the expected vessel.
+
+The future captain of the boat took my money very readily when it came,
+and nobody could have felt more certain of a boating career than I did;
+but just before the arrival of the vessel itself, it occurred to Mr.
+Cape (rather late in the day) that he would take a prudent precaution,
+so he issued a ukase to the effect that none but good swimmers were to
+make any use of the boat. Now I had often heard, and read too in books,
+that man was naturally a swimming animal, and that any one who was
+thrown into water would swim if only he was not afraid, so I said
+inwardly, "It is true that I never _did_ swim, but that is probably
+because I have only bathed in shallow water; I have courage enough, and
+if they pitch me into the river Don, most probably I shall swim, as man
+is naturally a swimming animal and fear is the only impediment." One day
+at dinner Mr. Cape asked all the subscribers, one after another, if they
+could swim. There was a boy of about fourteen who was a splendid
+swimmer, and well known for such both to the masters and his
+school-fellows, but Mr. Cape did not omit him, and I envied the simple
+ease of his "Yes, sir." When it came to me, I too said "Yes, sir,"
+affecting the same ease, and Mr. Cape looked at me, and the
+assistant-master looked at me, and every one of the fellows looked at
+me, and then a slight smile was visible on all their countenances. After
+dinner the fine swimmer expressed his regret that he had not known
+sooner about my possession of this accomplishment, as we might have
+enjoyed it together in the Don. The next Saturday afternoon was fine, so
+the swimmers went to the river with the assistant-master, and I was very
+politely invited to accompany them. On this an older boy, who had always
+been kind to me, said privately, "You can't swim, I know you can't, and
+you'd better confess it, for if you don't, you run a good chance of
+being drowned this afternoon; the water is thirty feet deep." I
+answered, with cold thanks, that my friend's apprehensions were
+groundless; and we set off.
+
+On our way to the river the unpleasant reflection occurred to my mind,
+that possibly the books and the people might be wrong, and that mere
+courage might _not_ enable me to dispense with acquired skill.
+[Footnote: The doctrine that courage is enough is most mischievous and
+perilous nonsense. I have become a good swimmer since those days, and
+have taught my sons: but we had to learn it as an art, just as one
+learns to skate.] But I put away this idea as too disagreeable to be
+dwelt upon. Unfortunately the disagreeable idea that we set aside is
+often the true and the wise one.
+
+As we went through the town to the water the boy who had expressed his
+scepticism disappeared for a moment in a rope-maker's shop, and soon
+emerged with a long and strong cord over his shoulder. I guessed what
+that was for, and felt humiliated, but said nothing. The swimmers
+stripped and plunged, but just at the moment when I was going to plunge
+too I felt the strong hand of the assistant-master on my shoulder, and
+he said, "Wait one moment," The moment was employed by my school-fellow
+in fastening the cord round my waist, "Now, plunge as much as you like!"
+
+I was soon in the depths and struggling to get to the surface, but,
+somehow, did _not_ swim. My preserver on the bank thought it would be as
+well to convince me of my inability by a prolonged immersion, so he let
+me feel the unpleasant beginning of drowning. They say that the
+sensation is delightful at a later stage, and that the patient dreams he
+is walking in flowery meadows on the land. The first stage is
+undoubtedly disagreeable,--the oppression, the desire to breathe, are
+horrible,--but I did not get so far as to fill the lungs with water.
+Just in proper time there came a great tug at the cord, and I was fished
+up. I dressed, and felt very small, looking with envy on the real
+swimmers, and especially at the fat usher, who was rolling about like a
+porpoise in the middle of the river.
+
+The boat came, and I was allowed only to see her from the bank. How
+lovely she looked with her outside varnish and her internal coat of
+Cambridge blue! How beautiful were the light and elegant oars that I was
+forbidden to touch!
+
+Some time after that one of my school-fellows said: "You know, Hamerton,
+you're just as well out of that boat as in her, for whenever we want to
+go out on Wednesday or Saturday afternoons we always find that the
+privates have got the start of us. The fact is, the boat is as if she
+belonged to them." In a word, the private pupils looked on the
+aspirations of the others with marked disapproval. There ought, of
+course, to have been a plurality of boats; but Mr. Cape was not himself
+a boating man, and did not encourage the amusement. He dreaded the
+responsibility for accidents.
+
+One result of my adventure was a firm resolution that I would learn to
+swim, and not only that, but become really a good swimmer. I never
+attempted anything that seemed so hopelessly difficult for me, or in
+which my progress was so slow; but in course of time I did swim, and
+many years afterwards, from daily practice in the longer and warmer
+summers of France, I became an expert, able to read a book aloud in deep
+water whilst holding it up with both hands, or to swim with all my
+clothes on and a pair of heavy boots, using one hand only and carrying a
+paddle in the other, whilst I drew a small boat after me. The
+perseverance that led to this ultimate result is entirely due to that
+early misadventure at Doncaster. I have learned one or two other things
+in consequence of being stung with shame in a like manner, and am
+convinced that there is nothing better for a boy than to be roused to
+perseverance in that way.
+
+I never felt the least shame, however, in not being able to play cricket
+in a manner to please connoisseurs. I hated the game from the very
+beginning, and it was pure slavery to me, and I never had the faintest
+desire to excel in it or even to learn it. This dislike was a
+misfortune, as not to love cricket is a cause of isolation for an
+English boy.
+
+A kind of exercise that I was fond of was ordinary walking. We often
+took long walks on half-holidays that were delightful, and I have
+escaped very early on the summer mornings and taken a walk round the
+race-course, being back in time for the usual hour of rising. This,
+however, was found out in course of time and put an end to; but I had
+occasional headaches, so the doctor (who was a very kind friend of mine
+and invited me to his house) told Mr. Cape that he must send me out for
+a walk when I had a headache. "But how am I to know that his head really
+aches?" inquired the head-master. I heard the reply and took note of it.
+The doctor said it would usually be accompanied with flushing; so
+whenever I thought I was sufficiently red in the face I applied for
+leave to go to the race-course.
+
+The doctor had a son who was a good-natured, pleasant boy about my own
+age. There never was the slightest ill-feeling between us, but quite the
+contrary; and yet we fought many a hard battle simply because the elder
+boys backed us and set us on. They enjoyed the sport as they would have
+enjoyed cock-fighting, though perhaps not quite so much, as it was not
+quite so bloody and barbarous. This fighting was of no practical use;
+but if I had been able to thrash the bully who took my telescope _that_
+would have been of some use. Unfortunately he was my senior, and
+considerably my superior in strength, so prudence forbade the combat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+1846.
+
+Early interest in theology.--Reports of sermons.--Quiet influence of Mr.
+Cape.--Failure of Mr. Cape's health.--His death.
+
+During the time of my life at Doncaster I was extremely religious,
+having a firm belief in providential interferences on my behalf, even in
+trifling matters, such as being asked to stay from Saturday to Monday in
+the country. My prayers had especial reference to a country house that
+belonged to an old lady who was grandmother to a friend of mine, and
+extended a sort of grandmotherly kindness to myself also. [Footnote: She
+was a very remarkable and peculiar old lady. The house was very large;
+but she would only use a few small rooms. She never would travel by
+railway, but made long journeys, as well as short ones, in an old
+carriage drawn by a pair of farm-horses. She had a much handsomer
+carriage in the coach-house, a state affair, that was never used.]
+
+At Doncaster we were always obliged to take notes of the sermons, and
+write them out afterwards in an abridged form. As I had a theological
+turn, I sometimes inserted passages of my own in these reports which
+made the masters declare that they did not remember hearing the preacher
+say that; and on one occasion, being full of ideas of my own about the
+text which had effectually supplanted those of the preacher, I produced
+a complete original sermon, which cost me a reprimand, but evidently
+excited the interest of the master. Dr. Sharpe was Vicar of Doncaster in
+those days, but after forty years I may be excused if I do not remember
+much about what he preached. The pulpit was arranged in the
+old-fashioned three stages, for preacher, reader, and clerk, and on one
+occasion the highest of these was occupied by the famous Dr. Wolff, the
+missionary to Bokhara. He was a most energetic preacher, who thumped and
+pushed his cushion in a restless way, so that at last he fairly pushed
+it off its desk. He was quick enough to catch it by the tassel, but he
+did not catch his Bible, which fell on Dr. Sharpe's head or shoulder,
+and thence to the floor of the church. It was impossible to keep quite
+grave under the circumstances. Even the clergy smiled, the clerk sought
+refuge in fetching the fallen volume, and a thrill of humorous feeling
+ran through the congregation.
+
+Mr. Cape did not say much to us about religion. He read prayers every
+morning and evening, and once or twice I heard him preach when he took
+duty in a village church not far from the famous castle of Conisborough.
+There is an advantage to an active-minded boy in being with a quiet
+routine-clergyman like Mr. Cape, who proposes no exciting questions. I
+came under a very different influence afterwards, which plunged me into
+the stormy ocean of theological controversies at a time of life when it
+would have been better for me not to concern myself about such matters.
+The religion of a boy should be quiet and practical, and his theology
+should be as simple as possible, and quite uncontroversial in its
+temper. That was my case at Doncaster; I was a very firm believer, but
+simply a Christian not belonging to any party in the Church of England,
+and hardly, indeed, in any but an accidental way to the Church of
+England herself. Nothing could have been better. A boy is not answerable
+for the doctrines which are imposed upon him by his elders, and if they
+have a beneficial effect upon his conduct he need not, whilst he remains
+a boy, trouble himself to inquire further.
+
+Mr. Cape's health was gradually failing during the time of my stay at
+Doncaster School, and on the beginning of my fourth half-year after a
+holiday I found the house managed by his sister, and Mr. Cape himself
+confined to his room with hopeless disease. Very shortly afterwards the
+few boys who had come were sent home again, and Mr. Cape died. His
+sister was a kind old maid, who at once conceived a sort of aunt-like
+affection for me, and I remember that when I left she gave me a kiss on
+the forehead. I was grieved to part with her, and showed some real
+sympathy with her sorrow about her dying brother. I felt some grief on
+my own account for Mr. Cape, though he had thrashed me many a time with
+his ever-ready cane. Altogether the three half-years at Doncaster had
+been well spent, and I had got well on with my work.
+
+Mr. Cape's brother kept a good school at Peterborough, and wanted to
+have me for a pupil, but as he was especially strong in mathematics, and
+prepared young men for Cambridge, it was thought that, as I was to go to
+Oxford, it would be better that I should study under an Oxford man. I
+never had the slightest natural bent for mathematics, though I did the
+tasks that were imposed upon me in a perfunctory manner, and with
+sufficient accuracy just to satisfy my masters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+1847-1849.
+
+My education becomes less satisfactory.--My guardian's state of health.
+--I pursue my studies at Burnley.--Dr. Butler.--He encourages me to
+write English.--Extract from a prize poem.--Public discussions in
+Burnley School.--A debate on Queen Elizabeth.
+
+The story of my education becomes less satisfactory for me to write as I
+proceed with it. At thirteen I was a well-educated boy for my age, at
+fifteen or sixteen I had fallen behind, and if I have now any claim to
+be considered a fairly well-educated man, it is due to efforts made
+since youth was past.
+
+The main cause of this retardation may be told before proceeding
+further. I have already said what a strong affection I had for my
+guardian. It was a well-placed affection, as she was one of the noblest
+and best women who ever lived, and all my gratitude to her, though it
+filled my heart like a religion, was not half what she deserved or what
+my maturer judgment now feels towards her memory; but like all strong
+affections, it carried its own penalty along with it. About the time of
+Mr. Cape's death, I happened to be staying with some near relations, and
+one of them made a casual allusion to my guardian's heart-disease. I had
+never heard of this, and was inexpressibly affected by the news. My
+informant said that the disease was absolutely incurable, and might at
+any time cause sudden death. This was unhappily the exact truth, and
+from that moment I looked upon my dear guardian with other eyes. The
+doctors could not say how long she might live; there was no especial
+immediate danger, and with care, by incurring no risks, her life might
+be prolonged for years. After the first shock produced by this terrible
+news, I quickly resolved that as Death would probably soon separate us,
+and might separate us at any moment, I would keep as much as possible
+near my guardian during her life. She may have been tempted to keep me
+near her by the same consideration, but she was not a woman to allow her
+feelings to get the better of her sense of duty, and if I had not
+persistently done all in my power to remain at Burnley, she would have
+sent me elsewhere. Some reviewer will say that these are trifling
+matters, but in writing a biography it is necessary to take note of
+trifles when they affect the whole future existence of the subject. The
+simple fact of my remaining at Burnley for some years made me turn out
+an indifferent classical scholar, but at the time left my mind more at
+liberty to grow in its own way.
+
+It is time to give some account of Dr. Butler, the headmaster of Burnley
+Grammar School, who now became my master, and some time afterwards my
+private tutor. He was a most liberal-minded, kind-hearted clergyman, and
+a good scholar, but his too great tenderness of heart made him not
+exactly the kind of master who would have pushed me on most rapidly.
+
+I had a great affection for him, which he could not help perceiving, and
+this completely disarmed him, so that he never could find in his heart
+to say anything disagreeable to me, and on the contrary would often
+caress me, as it were, with little compliments that I did not always
+deserve. One tendency of his exactly fell in with my own tastes. He did
+not think that education should be confined to the two dead languages,
+but incited the boys to learn French and German, and even chemistry. I
+worked at French regularly; German I learned just enough to read one
+thin volume, and went no further. [Footnote: I resumed German many years
+afterwards, and had a Bavarian for my master; but he was unfortunately
+obliged to go back to his own country, and I stopped again, having many
+other things to do. All my literary friends who know German say it is of
+great use to them; but I never felt the natural taste for it that I have
+for French and Italian.] As for the chemistry, I acquired some
+elementary knowledge which afterwards had some influence in directing my
+attention to etching; indeed, I etched my first plate when a boy at
+Burnley School. It was a portrait of a Jew with a turban, and was
+frightfully over-bitten.
+
+Mr. Butler (he had not received his D.C.L. degree in those days) was a
+very handsome man, with most gentlemanly manners, and all the boys
+respected him. He governed the school far more by his own dignity than
+by any severity of tone. He always wore his gown in school, and had a
+desk made for himself which rather resembled a pulpit and was ornamented
+with two carved crockets, that of the assistant-master (who also wore
+his gown) being destitute of these ornaments. My progress in classics
+and mathematics was now not nearly so rapid as it had been under the
+severer _régime_ at Doncaster, but Mr. Butler thought he discovered in
+me some sort of literary gift, and encouraged me to write English
+essays, which he corrected carefully to show me my faults of style. This
+was really good, as Mr. Butler wrote English well himself, and was a man
+of cultivated taste. He even encouraged me to write verses,--a practice
+that I followed almost without intermission between the ages of twelve
+and twenty-one. I am aware that there are many very wise people in the
+world who think it quite rational, and laudable even, to write verses in
+the Latin language to improve their knowledge of that tongue, and who
+think it is a ridiculous waste of time to do the same thing in English.
+In my opinion, what holds good for one language holds good equally for
+another, and I no more regret the time spent on English versification
+than a Latin scholar would regret his imitations of Virgil. Perhaps the
+reader may like to see a specimen of my boyish attempts, so I will print
+an extract from one,--a poem that won a prize at Burnley School in the
+year 1847.
+
+The subject given us was "Prince Charles Edward after the Battle of
+Culloden." The poem begins with a wild galloping flight of the Prince
+from the battlefield of Culloden under the pale moonlight, and then of
+course we come to the boat voyage with Flora Macdonald. Here my love of
+boating comes in.
+
+  The lovely lamp of Heaven shines brightly o'er
+  The wave cerulean and the yellow shore;
+  As, o'er those waves, a boat like light'ning flies,
+  Slender, and frail in form, and small in size.
+  --Frail though it be, 'tis manned by hearts as brave
+  As e'er have tracked the pathless ocean's wave,--
+  High o'er their heads celestial diamonds grace
+  The jewelled robe of night, and Luna's face
+  Divinely fair! O goddess of the night!
+  Guide thou their bark, do thou their pathway light!
+  --Like sea-bird rising on the ocean's foam,
+  Or like the petrel on its stormy home,
+  Yon gallant bark speeds joyously along;
+  The wild waves roar, and drown the boatmen's song.
+  The sails full-flowing kiss the welcome wind,
+  And leave the screaming sea-gulls far behind!
+  Onward they fly. 'Tis midnight's moonlit hour!
+  When Fairies hold their court and Sprites have power.
+  And now 'tis morn! A fair Isle's distant strand
+  Tempts the tired fugitives again to land.
+  Fiercely repulsed, they dare once more the wave
+  Fired with undying zeal their Prince to save;
+  And when night flings her sable mantle o'er
+  The giant crags where sea-hawks idly soar,
+  They unmolested gain the wished-for land,
+  And soon with rapid steps bestride the strand.
+  To Kingsburgh's noble halls the path they gain
+  And leave afar the ever-murmuring main.
+
+[Footnote: In the printed copies of the poem, the age of the writer was
+given as thirteen, but I was only in my thirteenth year.]
+
+Very likely this extract will be as much as the reader will have
+patience for. I think the verses are tolerably good for a boy not yet
+thirteen years old. The versification is, perhaps, as correct as that of
+most prize poems, and there is some go in the poetry. It cannot,
+however, lay claim to much originality. Even in the short extract just
+given I see the influence of three poets, Virgil, Scott, and Byron. The
+best that can be expected from the poetry of a boy is that he should
+give evidence of a liking for the great masters, and in my case the
+liking was sincere.
+
+In later years Mr. Butler made me translate many of the Odes of Horace
+into English verse. I did that work with pleasure, but have not
+preserved one of the translations. I have said that he also encouraged
+me to write essays. He always gave the subject, and criticized my
+performance very closely. I wrote so many of these essays that I am
+afraid to give the number that remains in my memory, for fear of
+unconscious exaggeration.
+
+Besides these exercises we had public discussions in the school on
+historical subjects, and of these I remember a great one on the
+character of Queen Elizabeth. I was chosen for the defence, and the
+attack on Elizabeth's fame was to be made by the Captain of the school,
+a lad of remarkable ability named Edward Moore, who was greatly my
+superior in acquirements.
+
+It happened, I remember, that my guardian was staying at a country house
+(the Holme), which had formerly belonged to Dr. Whitaker, the celebrated
+historian of Craven, Whalley, and Richmondshire, and this learned man
+had left a good library, so I went to stay a few days to read up the
+subject. Those days were very pleasant to me; the house is very
+beautiful, with carved oak, tapestry, mullioned windows, old portraits,
+and stained glass, and just the old-world surroundings that I have
+always loved, and it nestled quietly in an open space in the bottom of a
+beautiful valley, between steep hills, with miles of walks in the woods.
+If ever I have been in danger of coveting my neighbor's house, it has
+been there.
+
+When we came to the debate, it turned out that my materials were so
+abundant that I spoke for an hour and a half; Moore spoke about forty
+minutes, and made a most telling personal hit when attacking Elizabeth
+for her vanity. "She was vain of her complexion, vain even of her hair"
+... (here the orator paused and looked at me, then he added, slowly and
+significantly), "_which was red_." The point here was, that my hair was
+red in those days, though it has darkened since. I need not add that the
+allusion was understood at once by the whole school, and was immensely
+successful.
+
+After we had spoken, a youth rose to give his opinion, and as his speech
+was sufficiently laconic, I will repeat it _in extenso_. The effect
+would be quite spoiled if I did not add that he was suffering from a
+very bad cold, which played sad havoc with his consonants. This was his
+speech, without the slightest curtailment:--
+
+"Id by opidiod Queed Elizabeth was to be blabed, because she was a proud
+wobad."
+
+My opponent in the debate on Elizabeth was, I believe, all things taken
+into consideration, the most gifted youth I ever knew during my boyhood.
+He kept at the head of the school without effort, as if the post
+belonged to him, and he was remarkable for bodily activity, being the
+best swimmer in the school, and, I think, the best cricketer also. He
+afterwards died prematurely, and his brother died in early manhood from
+exhausting fatigue during an excursion in the Alps.
+
+The school was in those days attended by lads belonging to all classes
+of society, except the highest aristocracy of the neighborhood, and it
+did a good deal towards keeping up a friendly feeling between different
+classes. That is the great use of a good local school. Many of the boys
+were the sons of rich men, who could easily have sent them to public
+schools at a distance, and perhaps in the present generation they would
+do so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+1850.
+
+My elder uncle.--We go to live at Hollins.--Description of the place.--
+My strong attachment to it.--My first experiment in art-criticism.--The
+stream at Hollins.--My first catamaran.--Similarity of my life at
+Hollins to my life in France thirty-six years later.
+
+My elder uncle, the owner of my grandfather's house and estate at
+Hollins, had been educated to the law, as the income of our branch of
+the family was insufficient, and he had begun to practise as a solicitor
+in Burnley, where at that time there was an excellent opening; but he
+had not the kind of tact which enables lawyers to get on in the world,
+so his professional income diminished, and he went to live in Halifax,
+and let the house at Hollins.
+
+His family was large, and for some years he did all in his power to live
+according to his rank in society, for he had married a lady of good
+family (they had thirty-six quarterings between them), and, like most
+men in a similar position, he was unwilling to adopt the only safe plan,
+which is to take boldly a lower place on the ladder. At Halifax he lived
+in a large house (Hopwood Hall), which belonged to his father-in-law,
+and there his wife and he received the Halifax society of those days, at
+what, I believe, were very pleasant entertainments, for they had the
+natural gift of hospitality, and lacked nothing but a large fortune to
+be perfect in the eyes of the world.
+
+My uncle's father-in-law was living in retirement at Scarborough when
+Hollins happened to fall vacant, so he became the tenant; but as the
+house was too large for him, my uncle divided it into two, and proposed
+to let the other half to my guardian and her sister.
+
+They accepted, and the consequence was that we went to live in the
+country,--a most important change for me, as I soon acquired that
+passion for a country life which afterwards became a second nature, and
+which, though it may have been beneficial to my health, and perhaps in
+some degree to the quality of my work, has been in many ways an all but
+fatal hindrance to my success.
+
+There are, or were, a great many old halls in Lancashire that belonged
+to the old families, which have now for the most part disappeared. They
+were of all sizes, some large enough to accommodate a wealthy modern
+country gentleman (though not arranged according to modern ideas), and
+others of quite small dimensions, though generally interesting for their
+architecture,--much more interesting, indeed, than the houses which have
+succeeded them. Hollins was between the two extremes, and when in its
+perfection, must have been rather a good specimen, with its mullioned
+windows, its numerous gables, and its formal front garden, with a
+straight avenue beyond. Unfortunately, my grandfather found it necessary
+to rebuild the front, and in doing so altered the character by
+introducing modern sash windows in the upper story; and though he
+retained mullioned windows on the ground floor, they were not strictly
+of the old type. My uncle also carried out other alterations, external
+and internal, which ended by depriving the house of much of its old
+character, and still more recent changes have gone farther in the same
+direction.
+
+However, such as it was in my youth, the place inspired in me one of
+those intensely strong local attachments which take root in some
+natures, and in none, I really believe, more powerfully than in mine.
+Like all strong passions, these local attachments are extremely
+inconvenient, and it would be better for a man to be without them; but
+all reasoning on such subjects is superfluous.
+
+Hollins is situated in the middle of a small but very pretty estate,
+almost entirely bounded by a rocky and picturesque trout-stream, and so
+pleasantly varied by hill and dale, wood, meadow, and pasture, that it
+appears much larger than it really is. In my boyhood it seemed an
+immensity. My cousins and I used to roam about it and play at Robin Hood
+and his merry men with great satisfaction to ourselves. We fished and
+bathed in one of the pools, where our ships delivered real broadsides of
+lead from their little cannons. These boyish recollections, and an early
+passion for landscape beauty, made Hollins seem a kind of earthly
+Paradise to me, and the idea of going to live there, instead of in a row
+of houses in a manufacturing town, filled me with the most delightful
+anticipations. My uncle put workmen in the house to prepare it, and on
+every opportunity I walked there to see what they were doing. Even at
+that age I knew much more about architecture than my elders, being
+perfectly familiar with the details of the old halls, and so I was
+constantly losing temper at what seemed to me the evident stupidity of
+the masons. There was an old master-mason, who did not like me and my
+criticisms, and he swore at me freely enough, in an explicit Lancashire
+manner. One day, simply by the eye, I perceived that he was four inches
+out in a measurement, and told him of it, when he swore frightfully. He
+then took his two-foot rule, and finding himself in the wrong, swore
+more frightfully than ever. This was my first experience in the
+thankless business of art-criticism, and it was the beginning of a false
+position, in which I often found myself in youth, from knowing more
+about some subjects than is usual with boys.
+
+The small estate on which Hollins is situated is divided from Towneley
+Park by a road and a wall, and on the opposite side its boundary, for
+most of the distance, is the rocky stream that has been already
+mentioned. The stream had a great influence on my whole life, by giving
+me a taste for the beauty of wild streams in Scotland and elsewhere. It
+is called the Brun, and gives its name to Burnley. The rocks are a
+sandstone sufficiently warm in color to give a very pleasant contrast to
+the green foliage, and the forms of them are so broken that in sunshine
+there are plenty of fine accidental lights and shadows. It was one of my
+greatest pleasures to follow the course of this stream, with a
+leaping-pole, up to the moors, where it flowed through a wide and
+desolate valley or hollow in the hills. As the aspect of a stream is
+continually changing with the seasons and the quantity of water, it is
+always new. The only regret I have about my residence near the Brun is
+that I did not learn at the right time to make the most of it in the way
+of artistic study; but I did as much, perhaps, as was to be expected
+from a boy who was receiving a literary and not an artistic education.
+
+The defect of the Brun was the absence of pools big enough for swimming
+and boating, but it gave a tantalizing desire for these pleasures, and I
+was as aquatic as my opportunities would allow. In June, 1850, my first
+catamaran was launched on a fish-pond. I built it myself, with an outlay
+of one pound for the materials. It was composed of two floats or tubes,
+consisting of a light framework of deal covered with waterproofed
+canvas. These were kept apart in the water, but joined above by a light
+open framework that served as a deck, and on which the passengers sat.
+The thing would carry five people, and was propelled by short oars.
+Being extremely light, it was easily drawn on a road, and was provided
+with small wheels for that purpose. This boyish attempt would not have
+been mentioned had it not been the first of a long series of practical
+experiments in the construction of catamarans which have continued down
+to the date of the present writing, and of which the reader will hear
+more in the sequel. I promise to endeavor not to weary him with the
+subject.
+
+It is astonishing how very far-reaching in their effects are the tastes
+and habits that we acquire in early life! The sort of existence that I
+am leading here at Pré Charmoy, near Autun, in this year 1886, bears a
+wonderfully close resemblance to my existence at Hollins in 1850. I am
+living, as I was then, on a pretty estate with woods, meadows, pastures,
+and a beautiful stream, with hills visible from it in all directions.
+There is a fish-pond too, about a mile from the house, and I am even now
+trying catamaran experiments on this pond, as I did on the other in
+Lancashire. My occupations are exactly the same, and to complete the
+resemblance it so happens that just now I am reading Latin. The chief
+difference is that writing has become lucrative and professional,
+whereas in those earlier days it was a study only.
+
+It is very difficult for me to believe that thirty-six years separate me
+from a time so like the present in many ways--like and yet unlike,--for
+I was then in Lancashire and am now in France; but this is a fact that I
+only realize when I think about it. The real exile for me would be to
+live in a large town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+1850.
+
+Interest in the Middle Ages.--Indifference to the Greeks and Romans.--
+Love for Sir Walter Scott's writings.--Interest in heraldry and
+illuminations.--Passion for hawking.--Old books in the school library
+at Burnley.--Mr. Edward Alexander of Halifax.--Attempts in literary
+composition.--Contributions to the "Historic Times."--"Rome in
+1849."--"Observations on Heraldry."
+
+The last chapter ended by saying that my occupations in early life were
+the same as they are at present, but I now remember one or two points of
+difference. In those days I lived, mentally, a great deal in the Middle
+Ages. This was owing to the influence of Sir Walter Scott, certainly of
+all authors the one who has most influenced me, and it was also due in
+some measure to a romantic interest in the history of my own family, and
+of the other families in the north of England with which mine had been
+connected in the past. For the Greeks and Romans I cared very little;
+they seemed too remote from my own country and race, and the English
+present, in which my lot was cast, seemed too dull and un-picturesque,
+too prosaic and commonplace. My imagination being saturated with Scott,
+I had naturally the same taste as my master. I soon learned all about
+heraldry, and in my leisure time drew and colored all the coats of arms
+that had been borne by the Hamertons in their numerous alliances, as
+well as the arms of other families from which our own was descended. I
+wrote black-letter characters on parchment and made pedigrees, and
+became so much of a mediaevalist that there was considerable risk of my
+stopping short in the amateur practice of such arts as wood-carving,
+illumination, and painting on glass. The same taste for the Middle Ages
+led me to imitate our forefathers in more active pursuits; amongst
+others I had such a passion for hawking that at one time I became
+incapable of opening my lips about anything else. My guardian said it
+was "hawk, hawk, hawking from morning till night." Not that I ever
+possessed a living falcon of any species whatever. My uncle resigned to
+me a corner of the outbuildings, on the ground-floor of which was a
+loose-box for my horse, and above it a room that I set apart for the
+falcons when they should arrive; but in spite of many promises from
+gamekeepers and naturalists and others, no birds ever came! The hoods
+and jesses were ready, very prettily adorned with red morocco leather
+and gold thread; the mews were ready too, with partitions in
+trellis-work of my own making,--everything was ready except the
+peregrines!
+
+I knew the coats-of-arms of all the families in the neighborhood, and of
+course that of the Towneleys, who had a chapel in Burnley Church for the
+interment of their dead, adorned with many hatchments. Those hatchments
+had a double interest for me, as heraldry in the first place, and also
+because the Towneleys had a peregrine falcon for their crest! I envied
+them that crest, and would willingly have exchanged for it our own
+"greyhound couchant, sable."
+
+Burnley School possesses a library which is rich in old tomes that few
+people ever read. In my youth these volumes were kept in a room entirely
+surrounded with dark oak wainscot, that opened on the shelves where
+these old books reposed. I read some of them, more or less, but have
+totally forgotten them all except a black-letter Chaucer. That volume
+delighted me, and I have read in it many an hour. It is much to be
+regretted that I had not the same affectionate curiosity about the Greek
+and Latin classics, but it was something to have a taste for the
+literature of one's own country.
+
+My uncle's brother-in-law, Mr. Edward Alexander, of Halifax, was a
+lawyer of literary and antiquarian tastes, and a great lover of
+books,--not to read only, but to have around him in a well-ordered
+library. He was extremely kind to me, and now, when I know better how
+very rare such kindness is in the world, I feel perhaps even more
+grateful for it than I did then.
+
+Mr. Alexander was the father of the young Alexander who was my
+school-fellow at Doncaster, and I am hardly exaggerating his affection
+for me when I say that he had a paternal feeling towards myself. He put
+his library entirely at my disposal, and gave me a room in his house at
+Heath Field, near Halifax, whenever I felt inclined to avail myself of
+it, and had liberty to go there.
+
+His library had cost him several thousand pounds, and was rich in
+archaeological books. Mrs. Alexander was a charming lady, always
+exquisitely gentle in her way, and gifted with a quiet firmness which
+enabled her to match very effectually the somewhat irascible disposition
+of my friend, who had the irritability as well as the kindness of heart
+which, I have since observed, are often found together in Frenchmen.
+With all his goodness he was by no means an indulgent judge; he could
+not endure the slightest failure or forgetfulness in good manners, and
+most of his young relations were afraid of him. I only offended him
+once, and that but slightly. He was walking in his own garden with my
+uncle, when I had to do something that required the use of both hands,
+and I was encumbered with a book. I dared not lay the book on the
+ground, as I should have done if it had been my own, so I asked my uncle
+to hold it. I could see an expression on Mr. Alexander's face which said
+clearly enough that I had taken a liberty in requesting this little
+service from a senior, and it only occurred to me as an afterthought
+that I might have put my hat on the ground and laid the book on the hat.
+This little incident shows one side of my dear friend's nature, but it
+was not at all a bad thing for me to be occasionally under the influence
+of one who was at the same time kind and severe. In early life he had
+been a dandy, and a local poet had called him,--
+
+ "Elegant Extracts, the Halifax fop."
+
+[Footnote: "Elegant Extracts" was the title of a book of miscellaneous
+reading which had an extensive sale in those days. The couplet related
+to a public ball,--
+
+  "Elegant Extracts, the Halifax fop,
+  With note-book in hand, took coach for the hop."
+
+Mr. Alexander sometimes alluded in a pleasant way to his early
+foppishness, and told some amusing anecdotes, one of which I remember.
+He and a young friend having adopted some startling new fashion before
+anybody else in Halifax, were going to church very proud of themselves,
+when they heard a girl laughing at them, on which her companion rebuked
+her, saying, "You shouldn't laugh; you might be struck so!" She thought
+the dandies were two misshapen idiots.]
+
+In his maturity all that remained of early dandyism was an intolerance
+of every kind of slovenliness. He rigorously exacted order in his
+library; I might use any of his books, but must put them all back in
+their places. Perhaps my present strong love of order may be due in a
+great measure to Mr. Alexander's teaching and example. Amongst the
+friends of my youth there are very few whom I look back to with such
+grateful affection.
+
+Like most boys who have become authors, I made attempts in literary
+composition independently of those which were directly encouraged by my
+master. In this way I wrote a number of articles that were accepted by
+the "Historic Times," a London illustrated journal of those days which
+was started under the patronage of the Church of England, but had not a
+great success. My first articles were on the Universities, of which I
+knew nothing except by hearsay, and on "Civilization, Ancient and
+Modern," which was rather a vast subject for a boy whose reading had
+been so limited. However, the editor of the "Historic Times" had not the
+least suspicion of my age, so I favored him with a long series of
+articles on Rome in 1849, forming altogether as complete a history of
+the city for that year as could have been written by one who had never
+seen it, who did not know Italian, and who had not access to any other
+sources of information than those which are accessible to everybody in
+the newspapers.
+
+Under these circumstances, it may seem absurd to have undertaken such a
+task, but the reader may be reminded that learned historians undertake
+to tell us what happened long ago from much less ample material. I got
+no money for these articles (there were twelve of them), and no
+publisher would reprint them because there was no personal observation
+in them which publishers always expect in a narrative of contemporary
+events. The work had, however, been a good exercise for me in the
+digesting and setting in literary order of a mass of confused material.
+
+My passion for heraldry and hawking led to the production of a little
+book on heraldry which was an imitation of Sir John Sebright's
+"Observations on Hawking," a treatise that seemed to me simple, and
+clearly arranged.
+
+My little book had no literary value, and the publisher said that only
+thirty-nine copies were sold; however, on being asked to produce the
+remainder of the edition, he said he was unable to do so, as the copies
+had been "mislaid." The printing and binding having been done at my
+expense, I compelled the publisher to reprint the book, but this brought
+me no pecuniary benefit, as the demand, such as it was, had been
+satisfied by the first edition.
+
+To this day I do not feel certain in my own mind whether the publisher
+was dishonest or not. It would be quite natural that a book on heraldry
+should have a very small sale, but on the other hand it is inconceivable
+that more than four hundred copies of a book should have been simply
+lost. [Footnote: There is a third possibility: the sale may have been
+exactly what the publisher stated; but he may have had no belief in the
+success of the work, and have printed only one hundred copies whilst
+charging me for five hundred.]
+
+It was a very good thing for me that the printing of this treatise on
+heraldry was a cause of loss and disappointment, for if it had been
+successful I might easily have wasted my life in archaeology, and
+corrected pedigrees--those long lists of dead people of whom nobody
+knows anything but their names, and the estates they were lucky enough
+to possess.
+
+The reader will see that up to this point my tastes had been
+conservative and aristocratic. Then there came a revolution which was
+the most important intellectual crisis of my life, and which deserves a
+chapter to itself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+1850.
+
+Political and religious opinions of my relations.--The Rev. James
+Bardsley.--Protestant controversy with Rome.--German neology.--The
+inspiration of the Scriptures.--Inquiry into foundation for the
+doctrine.--I cease to be a Protestant.--An alternative presents
+itself.--A provisional condition of prolonged inquiry.--Our medical
+adviser.--His remarkable character.--His opinions.
+
+All my relations were Tories of the most strongly Conservative type, and
+earnestly believing members of the Church of England, more inclined to
+the Evangelical than to the High Church party. In my early youth I
+naturally took the religion and political color of the people about me.
+
+There was at Burnley in those days a curate who has since become a
+well-known clergyman in Manchester, Mr. James Bardsley. He was a man of
+very strong convictions of an extreme Evangelical kind, and nature had
+endowed him with all the gifts of eloquence necessary to propagate his
+opinions from the pulpit. [Footnote: Since then he has become Canon and
+Archdeacon.] He was really eloquent, and he possessed in a singular
+degree the wonderful power of enchaining the attention of his audience.
+We always listened with interest to what Mr. Bardsley was saying at the
+moment, and with the feeling of awakened anticipation, as he invariably
+conveyed the impression that something still more interesting was to
+follow. His power as a preacher was so great that his longest sermons
+were not felt to be an infliction; one might feel tired after they were
+over, but not during their delivery. His power was best displayed in
+attack, and he was very aggressive, especially against the doctrines of
+the Church of Rome,--which he declared to be "one huge Lie."
+
+Of course a boy of my age believed his own religion to be absolutely
+true, and others to be false in exact proportion to their divergence
+from it, as this is the way with young people when they really believe.
+It was my habit to take an intensely strong interest in anything that
+interested me at all, and as religion had a supreme interest for me I
+read all about the Protestant controversy with Rome under Mr. Bardsley's
+guidance, in books of controversial theology recommended by him. My
+guardian, with her usual good sense, did not quite approve of this
+controversial spirit; she was content to be a good Christian in her own
+way and let the poor Roman Catholics alone, but I was too ardent in what
+seemed to me the cause of truth to see with indifference the menacing
+revival of Romanism.
+
+A large new Roman Catholic church was erected in Burnley, and opened
+with an imposing ceremony. There was at that time a belief that the
+power of the Pope might one day be re-established in our country, and
+the great results of the Reformation either wholly sacrificed or placed
+in the greatest jeopardy. Protestants were called upon to defend these
+conquests, and in order to qualify themselves for this great duty it was
+necessary that they should make themselves thoroughly acquainted with
+the great controversy between the pure Church to which it was their own
+happiness to belong, and that corrupt association which called itself
+Catholicism. I had rather a bold and combative disposition, and was by
+no means unwilling to take a share in the battle.
+
+All went well for a time. The spirit of inquiry is not considered an
+evil spirit so long as it only leads to agreement with established
+doctrines, and as an advanced form of Protestantism was preached in
+Burnley Church, I was at liberty to think boldly enough, provided I did
+not go beyond that particular stage of thought. Not having as yet any
+disposition to go beyond, I did not at all realize what a very small
+degree of intellectual liberty my teachers were really disposed to allow
+me.
+
+One occasion I remember distinctly. Mr. Bardsley was at Hollins, where
+he spent the evening with us, and in the course of conversation, as he
+was leaning on the chimney-piece, he spoke about German Neology, which I
+had never heard of before, so I asked what it was, and he described it
+as a dreadful doctrine which attributed no more inspiration to sacred
+than to profane writers. The ladies were shocked and scandalized by the
+bare mention of such a doctrine, but the effect on me was very
+different. The next day, in my private meditations, I began to wonder
+what were the evidences by which it was determined that some writers
+were inspired and infallible, and what critics had settled the question.
+The orthodox reader will say that in a perplexity of this kind I had
+nothing to do but carry my difficulty to a clergyman. This is exactly
+what I did, and the clergyman was Mr. Bardsley himself.
+
+He was full of kindness to me, and took the trouble to write a long
+paper on the subject, which must have cost him fully two days' work,--a
+paper in which he gave a full account of the Canon of Scripture from the
+Evangelical point of view. The effect on me was most discouraging, for
+the result amounted merely to this, that certain Councils of the Church
+had recognized the Divine inspiration of certain books, just as certain
+authoritative critics might recognize the profane inspiration of poets.
+After reading the paper with the utmost care I felt so embarrassed about
+it that (with the awkwardness of youth) I did not even write to thank
+the amiable author who had taken so much trouble to help me, and I only
+thanked him briefly on meeting him at a friend's house, where it was
+impossible to avoid the interchange of a few words.
+
+This autobiography is not intended to be a book of controversy, so I
+shall carefully avoid the details of religious changes and give only
+results. I do not think that anything in my life was ever more decisive
+than the receipt of that long communication from Mr. Bardsley. The day
+before receiving it I was in doubt, but the day after I felt perfectly
+satisfied that the Divine inspiration of the books known to Englishmen
+as the "Scriptures" rested simply on the opinion, of different bodies of
+theologians who had held meetings which were called Councils. The only
+difference between these Councils and those of the Church of Rome was,
+that these were represented as having taken place earlier, before the
+Church was so much divided; but it did not seem at all evident that the
+members of the earlier Councils were men of a higher stamp,
+intellectually, than those who composed the distinctly Roman Catholic
+Councils, nor was there any evidence that the Holy Spirit had been with
+those earlier Councils, though it afterwards withdrew itself from the
+later.
+
+The Protestant reader will perhaps kindly bear with me whilst I give the
+reasons why I ceased to be a Protestant, after having been so earnest
+and zealous in that form of the Christian faith. It appeared to me--I do
+not say it _is_, but it appeared to me, and appears to me still--that
+Protestantism is an uncritical belief in the decisions of the Church
+down to a date which I do not pretend to fix exactly, and an equally
+uncritical scepticism, a scepticism of the most unreceptive kind, with
+regard to all opinions professed and all events said to have taken place
+in the more recent centuries of ecclesiastical history. The Church of
+Rome, on the other hand, seemed nearer in temper to the temper of the
+past, and was more decidedly a continuation, though evidently at the
+same time an amplification, of the early Christian habits of thinking
+and believing.
+
+With this altered view of the subject the alternative that presented
+itself to me was that which presented itself to the brothers Newman, and
+if I had found it necessary to my happiness to belong to a visible
+Church of some kind, and if devotional feelings had been stronger than
+the desire for mental independence, I should have joined the Church of
+Rome.
+
+There were, indeed, two or three strong temptations to that course. My
+family had been a Catholic family in the past, and had sacrificed much
+for the Church of Rome when she was laboring under oppression; for a
+Hamerton to return to her would therefore have been quite in accordance
+with those romantic sentiments about distant ancestors which were at
+that time very strong in me. Besides this, I had all the feeling for the
+august ceremonial of the Catholic Church which is found in the writer
+who most influenced me, Sir Walter Scott; and there was already a
+certain consciousness of artistic necessities and congruities which made
+me dimly aware that if you admit the glories of ecclesiastical
+architecture, it is only the asceticism of Puritan rebellion against art
+that can deny magnificence to ritual. I had occasionally, though rarely,
+been present at High Mass, and had felt a certain elevating influence,
+and if I had said to myself, "Religion is only a poem by which the soul
+is raised to the contemplation of the Eternal Mysteries," then I could
+have dreamed vaguely in this contemplation better, perhaps, in the Roman
+Catholic Church than in any other. But my English and Protestant
+education was against a religion of dreaming. An English Protestant may
+have his poetical side, may be capable of feeling poetry that is frankly
+avowed to be such--may read Tennyson's "Eve of St. Agnes" or Scott's
+"Hymn to the Virgin" with almost complete imaginative sympathy; but he
+expects to believe his religion as firmly as he believes in the
+existence of the British Islands. Such, at least, was the matter-of-fact
+temper that belonged to Protestantism in those days. In more recent
+times a more hazy religion has become fashionable.
+
+My decision, therefore, for some time was to remain in a provisional
+condition of prolonged inquiry. I read a great deal on both sides, and
+constantly prayed for light, following regularly the external services
+of the Church of England. Here the subject may be left for the present.
+
+The reader is to imagine me as a youth who no longer believed in the
+special inspiration of the Scriptures, or in their infallibility, but
+who was still a Christian as thousands of "liberal" Church people in the
+present day are Christians.
+
+Before resuming my religious history, I ought to mention an influence
+which was supposed by my friends to have been powerful over me, but
+which in reality had slightly affected the current of my thinking. Our
+medical adviser was a surgeon rather advanced in years, and whose
+private fortune made him independent of professional success. As time
+went on, he allowed himself to be more and more replaced by his
+assistant, Mr. Uttley, one of the most remarkable characters I ever met
+with. In those days, in a northern provincial town, it required immense
+courage to avow religious heterodoxy of any advanced kind, yet Mr.
+Uttley said with the utmost simplicity that he was an atheist, and the
+religious world called him "Uttley the Atheist," a title which he
+accepted as naturally as if it implied no contempt or antagonism
+whatever. He was by no means devoid of physical courage also, for I
+remember that at one time he rode an ugly brute that had a most
+dangerous habit of bolting, and he would not permit me to mount her. He
+was excessively temperate in his habits, never drinking anything
+stronger than water, except, perhaps, a cup of tea (I am not sure about
+the tea), and never eating more than he believed to be necessary to
+health. He maintained the doctrine that hunger remains for a time after
+the stomach has had enough, and that if you go on eating to satiety you
+are intemperate. He disliked, and I believe despised, the habit of
+stuffing on festive occasions, which used to be common in the wealthier
+middle classes. I confess that Mr. Uttley's fearless honesty and steady
+abstemiousness impressed me with the admiration that one cannot but feel
+for the great virtues, by whomsoever practised; but Mr. Uttley had a
+third virtue, which is so rare in England as to be almost unintelligible
+to the majority,--he looked with the most serene indifference on social
+struggles, on the arts by which people rise in the world. Perfectly
+contented with his own station in life, and a man of remarkably few
+wants, he lived on from year to year without ambition, finding his chief
+interest in the pursuit of his profession, and his greatest pleasure in
+his books. He so little attempted to make a proselyte of me that, when
+at a later period I told him of a certain change of views, concerning
+which more will be said in the sequel, he was unaffectedly surprised by
+it, and said that he had never supposed me to be other than what I
+appeared to the world in general, an ordinary member of the Church of
+England. My intimate knowledge of Mr. Uttley's remarkable character must
+have had, nevertheless, a certain influence in this way, that it enabled
+me to estimate the vulgar attacks on infidels at their true worth; and
+though my own theistic beliefs were very strong, I knew from this
+example that an atheist was not necessarily a monster.
+
+The only occasions that I remember in youth when Mr. Uttley might have
+influenced me were these two. Being curious to know about opinions from
+those who really held them, and being already convinced that we cannot
+really know them from the misrepresentations of their enemies, I once
+asked Mr. Uttley what atheism really was, and why it recommended itself
+to him. He replied that atheism was, in his view, the acceptance of the
+smaller of two difficulties, both of which were still very great. The
+smaller difficulty for him was to believe in the self-existence of the
+universe; the greater was to believe in a single Being, without a
+beginning, who could create millions of solar systems; and as one or the
+other must be self-existent the difficulty about self-existence was
+common to both cases. The well-known argument from design did not
+convince him, as he believed in a continual process of natural
+adjustment of creatures to their environment,--a theory resembling that
+of Darwin, but not yet so complete. I listened to Mr. Uttley's account
+of his views with much interest; but they had no influence on my own, as
+it seemed to me much easier to refer everything to an intelligent
+Creator than to believe in the self-existence of all the intricate
+organizations that we see. Still, I was not indignant, as the reader may
+think I ought to have been. It seemed to me quite natural that
+thoughtful men should hold different opinions on a subject of such
+infinite difficulty.
+
+The other occasion was, when in the vigor of youthful Protestantism I
+happened to say something against the Church of Rome. Mr. Uttley very
+quietly and kindly told me that I was unjust towards that Church, and I
+asked him where the injustice lay. "It lies in this," he replied, "that
+you despise the dogmas of the Church of Rome as resting only on the
+authority of priests, whereas the case of that Church is not exceptional
+or peculiar, as _all_ dogmas rest ultimately on the authority of
+priests." To this I naturally answered that Scriptural authority was
+higher; but Mr. Uttley answered,--"The Roman Catholics themselves
+appeal to Scriptural authority as the Protestants do; but it is still
+the priests who have decided which books are sacred, and how they are to
+be interpreted." His conversation was not longer than my report of it,
+and it occurred when I met Mr. Uttley accidentally in the street; but
+though short, it was of some importance, as I happened at that time to
+be exercised in my mind about what Mr. Bardsley had told us concerning
+"German Neology." Subsequent observation has led me to believe that Mr.
+Uttley attributed more originating authority to priests than really
+belongs to them. It seems to me now that they take up and consecrate
+popular beliefs that may be of use, and that they drop and discard,
+either tacitly or openly, those beliefs which are no longer popular.
+Both processes have been going on, for some years very visibly in the
+Church of Rome, and the second of the two is plainly in operation in the
+Church of England.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+1851.
+
+First visit to London in 1851.--My first impression of the place.--
+Nostalgia of the country.--Westminster.--The Royal Academy.--Resolution
+never to go to London again.--Reason why this resolution was afterwards
+broken.
+
+In the year 1851 I went to London for the first time, to see the Great
+Exhibition. Our little party consisted only of my guardian, my aunt, and
+myself.
+
+My first impression of London was exactly what it has ever since
+remained. It seemed to me the most disagreeable place I had ever seen,
+and I wondered how anybody could live there who was not absolutely
+compelled to do so. At that time I did not understand the only valid
+reason for living in London, which is the satisfaction of meeting with
+intelligent people who know something about what interests you, and do
+not consider you eccentric because you take an interest in something
+that is not precisely and exclusively money-making.
+
+My aunts knew nobody in London except one or two ladies of rank superior
+to their own, on whom we made formal calls, which was a sort of human
+intercourse that I heartily detested, as I detest it to this day.
+
+Our lodgings were in Baker Street, which, after our pure air, open
+scenery, and complete liberty at Hollins, seemed to me like a prison.
+The lodgings were not particularly clean--the carpets, especially,
+seemed as if they had never been taken up. The air was heavy, the water
+was bad (our water at Hollins was clearer than glass, and if you poured
+a goblet of it beady bubbles clung to the sides), there was no view
+except up street and down street, and the noise was perpetual. A
+Londoner would take these inconveniences as a matter of course and be
+insensible to them, but to me they were so unpleasant that I suffered
+from nostalgia of the country all the time.
+
+The reader may advantageously be spared my boyish impressions of the
+Great Exhibition and the other sights of London. Of course we fatigued
+our brains, as country people always do, by seeing too many things in a
+limited time; and as we had no special purpose in view, we got, I fear,
+very little instruction from our wanderings amidst the bewildering
+products of human industry. I remember being profoundly impressed by
+Westminster Abbey, though I would gladly have seen all the modern
+monuments calcined in a lime-kiln; and Westminster Hall affected me even
+more, possibly because one of our ancestors, Sir Stephen Hamerton, had
+been condemned to death there for high treason in the time of Henry
+VIII. I was also deeply impressed by the grim, old Tower of London, and
+only regretted that I did not know which cell the unlucky Sir Stephen
+had occupied during his hopeless imprisonment there.
+
+The rooms of the Royal Academy left a more durable recollection than the
+contents of the great building in Hyde Park. Those are quite old times
+for us now in the history of English art. Sir Frederick Leighton was a
+young student who had not yet begun to exhibit; I think he was working
+in Frankfort then. Millais was already known as the painter of strange
+and vivid pictures of small size, which attracted attention, and put the
+public into a state of much embarrassment. There were three of these
+strange pictures that year,--an illustration of Tennyson, "She only
+said, 'My life is dreary,'" the "Return of the Dove to the Ark," and the
+"Woodman's Daughter." I distinctly remember the exact sensation with
+which my young eyes saw these works; so distinctly that I now positively
+feel those early sensations over again in thinking about them. All was
+so fresh, so new! This modern art was such a novelty to one who had not
+seen many modern pictures, and my own powers of enjoying art were so
+entirely unspoiled by the effect of habit that I was like a young bird
+in its first spring-time in the woods. I much preferred the beautiful
+bright pictures in the Academy, with their greens and blues like Nature,
+to the snuffy old canvases (as they seemed to me) in the National
+Gallery.
+
+The oddest result for a boy's first visit to London was a quiet mental
+resolution of which I said nothing to anybody. What I thought and
+resolved inwardly may be accurately expressed in these words: "Every
+Englishman who can afford it ought to see London _once_, as a patriotic
+duty, and I am not sorry to have been there to have got the duty
+performed; but no power on earth shall ever induce me to go to that
+supremely disagreeable place again!"
+
+Of course the intelligent reader considers this boyish resolution
+impossible and absurd, as it is entirely contrary to prevalent ideas;
+but a man may lead a very complete life in Lancashire, and even in
+counties less rich in various interest, without ever going to London at
+all. A man's own fields may afford him as good exercise as Hyde Park,
+and his well-chosen little library as good reading as the British
+Museum. It was the Fine Arts that brought me to London afterwards; the
+worst of the Fine Arts being that they concentrate themselves so much in
+great capitals.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+1851-1852.
+
+The love of reading a hindrance to classical studies.--Dr. Butler
+becomes anxious about my success at Oxford.--An insuperable
+obstacle.--My indifference to degrees.--Irksome hypocrisy.--I am nearly
+sent to a tutor at Brighton.--I go to a tutor in Yorkshire.--His
+disagreeable disposition.--Incident about riding.--Disastrous effect of
+my tutor's intellectual influence upon me.--My private reading.--My
+tutor's ignorance of modern authors.--His ignorance of the fine
+arts.--His religious intolerance.--I declare my inability to sign the
+Thirty-nine Articles.
+
+The various mental activities hinted at in the preceding chapters had
+naturally a retarding effect upon my classical studies, which I had
+never greatly taken to. It seemed then, and it seems to me still, that
+for one who does not intend to make a living by teaching them, the dead
+languages, like all other pursuits, are only worth a limited amount of
+labor. It may appear paradoxical at first, but it is true, that one
+reason why I did not like Latin and Greek was because I was extremely
+fond of reading. The case is this: If you are fond of reading and have
+an evening at your disposal, you will wish to read, will you not? But
+_construing_ is not reading; it is quite a different mental operation.
+When you _read_ you think of the scenes and events the author narrates,
+or you follow his reasoning; but when you _construe_ you think of cases
+and tenses, and remember grammatical rules. I could read English and
+French, but Latin and Greek were only to be construed _à coups de
+dictionnaire_.
+
+The case may be illustrated by reference to an amusement. A man who is
+indifferent to rowing cares very little what sort of boat he is in, and
+toils contentedly as peasants do in their heavy boots, but a lover of
+rowing wants a craft that he can move. This desire is quite independent
+of the merits of the craft itself, considered without reference to the
+man. A sailing yacht may he a beautiful vessel, but an Oxford oarsman
+would not desire to pull one of her cumbersome sweeps.
+
+I was at that time a private pupil of Dr. Butler's, and was getting on
+at such a very moderate pace that he began to be anxious about his
+responsibility. My guardian and he had decided together that I was to be
+sent to Oxford, and it was even settled to which college, Balliol; and
+my dear guardian expected me to come out in honors, and be a Fellow of
+my college and a clergyman. That was her plan; and a very good scheme of
+life it was, but it had one defect, that of being entirely inapplicable
+to the human being for whom it was intended. I looked forward to Oxford
+with anything but pleasure, and, indeed, considered that there was an
+insuperable obstacle to my going there. In those days most of the good
+things in life were kept as much as possible for members of the Church
+of England, and it was necessary to sign the Thirty-nine Articles on
+entering the University. This I could not do conscientiously, and would
+not do against the grain of my conviction. I looked upon this obstacle
+as insuperable; but if I had been as indifferent on such questions as
+young men generally are, there would still have remained a difficulty in
+my own nature, which is a rooted dislike to everything which is done for
+social advancement. I might possibly have desired to be a scholar, but
+cannot imagine myself desiring a degree. However, I might have taken the
+trouble to get a degree, simply to please my guardian, if there had not
+been that obstacle about the Thirty-nine Articles.
+
+From this time, during a year or two, there was a sort of game of
+cross-purposes between me and my guardian, as I had not yet ventured to
+declare openly my severance from the Church of England, and my
+consequent inability to go to one of her universities. The enormous
+weight of social and family pressure that is brought to bear on a youth
+with reference to these matters must be my excuse for a year or two of
+hypocrisy that was extremely irksome to me; but besides this I have a
+still better excuse in a sincere unwillingness to give pain to my dear
+guardian, and in the dread lest the declaration of heresy might even be
+dangerous to one whom I knew to be suffering from heart disease. I
+therefore lived on as a young member of the Church of England who was
+studying for Oxford, when in fact I considered myself no longer a member
+of that Church, and had inwardly renounced all intention of going to
+either of the Universities, which she still kept closed against the
+Dissenters.
+
+The inward determination not to go to Oxford or Cambridge had a bad
+effect on my classical studies, as I had no other object in view whilst
+pursuing them than the intellectual benefit to be derived from the
+studies themselves, and I had not any very great faith in that benefit.
+The most intelligent men I knew did not happen to be classical scholars,
+and some men of my acquaintance who _were_ classical scholars seemed to
+me quite impervious to ideas concerning science and the fine arts. Even
+now, after a much larger experience, I do not perceive that classical
+scholarship opens men's minds to scientific and artistic ideas, or even
+that scholarship gives much appreciation of literary art and excellence.
+Still, it is better to have it than to be without it. There is such a
+thing as a scholarly temper,--a patient, careful, exact, and studious
+temper,--which is valuable in all the pursuits of life.
+
+Mr. Butler had been for some time my private tutor--which means that I
+prepared my work at Hollins in the morning, and went to read with Mr.
+Butler in the afternoon. The plan was pleasant enough for me, but it was
+not advantageous, because what I most wanted was guidance during my
+hours of study,--such guidance as I had at Doncaster. However, I read
+and wrote Latin and Greek every day, and learned French at the same
+time, as Mr. Butler had a taste for modern languages. This went on until
+he became rather alarmed about my success at Oxford (which for reasons
+known to the reader troubled me very little), and told my guardian that
+she ought to send me to some tutor who could bestow upon me more
+continuous attention. I was as near as possible to being sent to a tutor
+at Brighton,--a reverend gentleman with aristocratic connections,--but
+he missed having me by the very bait which he held out to attract my
+guardian. He boasted in a letter of the young lords he had educated, and
+said he had one or two still in the house with him. We had a near
+neighbor and old friend who was herself very nearly connected with two
+of the greatest families in the peerage, and as she happened to call
+upon us when my guardian received the letter, it was handed to her, and
+she said: "That bit about the young lords is not a recommendation; the
+chances are that P. G. would find them proud and disagreeable." As for
+me, the whole project presented nothing that was pleasant. I disliked
+the south of England, and had not the slightest desire to make the
+acquaintance of the young noblemen. It was therefore rather a relief
+that the Brighton project was abandoned.
+
+It happened then that my dear guardian did the only one foolish and
+wrong thing she ever did in her whole life. She sent me to a clergyman
+in Yorkshire, who had been a tutor at Oxford, and was considered to be a
+good "coach,"--so far he may seem to have been the right man,--but he
+was unfortunately exactly the man to inspire me with a complete disgust
+for my studies. He had no consideration whatever for the feelings of
+other people, least of all for those of a pupil. He treated me with open
+contempt, and was always trying to humiliate me, till at last I let him
+understand that I would endure it no longer. One day he ordered me to
+clean his harness, with a peremptoriness that he would scarcely have
+used to a groom, so I answered, "No, sir, I shall not clean your
+harness; that is not my work." He then asked whether I considered myself
+a gentleman. I said "yes," and he retorted that it would be a good thing
+to thrash the gentility out of me; on which I told him that if he
+ventured to attempt any such thing I should certainly defend myself. I
+was a well-grown youth, and could have beaten my tutor easily. One day
+he attempted to scrape my face with a piece of shark's skin, so I seized
+both his wrists and held them for some time, telling him that the jest,
+if it was a jest, was not acceptable.
+
+As my tutor was very handsomely paid for the small amount of trouble he
+took with me, my guardian had inserted in the agreement a clause by
+which he was either to keep my horse in his stable, or else let me have
+the use of one of his own. He preferred, for economy's sake, to mount
+me; so in accordance with our agreement I innocently rode out a little
+in the early mornings, long before the hour fixed for our Greek reading
+together. As my tutor rose late, he was not aware of this for some time;
+but at length, by accident, he found it out, and then an incident
+occurred which exactly paints the charming amenity of the man.
+
+His stable-boy had brought the horse to the gate, and I was just
+mounting when my tutor opened his bedroom window, and called out, "Take
+that horse back to the stable immediately!" I said to the servant, who
+hesitated, that it was his duty to obey his master's orders, and
+dismounted; then I went to my lodgings in the village, and wrote a note
+to the tutor, in which I said that I expected him to keep his agreement,
+and in accordance with it I should ride out that day. I then left the
+note at the house, saddled the animal myself, and rode a long distance.
+From that time our relations were those of constrained formality, which
+on the whole I much preferred. My tutor assumed an air of injured
+innocence, and treated me with a clumsy imitation of politeness which
+was intended to wound me, but which I found extremely convenient, as the
+greater the distance between us the less intercourse there would be.
+However, after that demonstration of my rights, I kept a horse of my
+own--a much finer animal--at a farmer's.
+
+The intellectual influence of my present tutor was disastrous, by the
+reaction it produced. He was a fanatical admirer of the ancient authors
+who wrote in Latin and Greek, and was constantly expressing his contempt
+for modern literature, of which he was extremely ignorant. I was fond of
+reading, and had English books in my lodgings which were my refuge and
+solace after the pedantic lectures I had to undergo. My love for Scott
+was still very lively (as indeed it is to this day), but I had now
+extended my horizon and added Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, and other modern
+authors to my list. My tutor had all the hatred for Byron which
+distinguished the clergy in the poet's life-time, and he was constantly
+saying the most unjust things against him; as, for example, that the
+"Bride of Abydos" was not original, but was copied from the Greek of
+Moschus. This clerical hatred for Byron quite prevented my tutor from
+acquiring any knowledge of the poet; but he had seen a copy of his works
+at my lodgings, and this served as a text for the most violent
+diatribes. As for Shelley, he knew no more about him than that he had
+been accused of atheism. He had heard of Moore, whom he called "Tommy."
+I believe he had never heard of Keats or Tennyson; certainly he was
+quite unacquainted with their poems. He had a feeble, incipient
+knowledge of French, and occasionally read a page of Molière, with an
+unimaginable pronunciation; but he knew nothing really of any modern
+literature. On the other hand, his knowledge of the Greek and Latin
+classics was more intimate than that possessed by any other teacher I
+had ever known. He was a thorough, old-fashioned scholar, with all the
+pride of exact erudition, and a corresponding contempt for everybody who
+did not possess it. I do not at this moment remember that he ever
+referred to a dictionary. I only remember that he examined my Liddell
+and Scott to see whether those modern lexicographers had done their work
+in a way to merit his approval, and that he thought their book might be
+useful to me. He had some knowledge of astronomy, and was building a
+reflecting telescope which he never completed; but I remember that he
+was often occupied in polishing the reflectors whilst I was reading, and
+that his hand went on rubbing with a bit of soft leather, and a red
+powder, when he would deliver the clearest disquisitions on the
+employment of words by Greek authors, most of which I was not
+sufficiently advanced to profit by. His manner with me was impatient,
+and often rude and contemptuous. What irritated him especially in me was
+the strange inequality of my learning, for I was rather strong on some
+points, and equally weak on others; whilst he himself had an
+irresistible regularity of knowledge, at least in Latin and Greek.
+
+We did absolutely nothing else but Latin and Greek during my stay with
+this tutor, and I suppose I must have made some progress, but there was
+no _feeling_ of progress. In comparison with the completeness of my
+master's terrible erudition it seemed that my small acquirements were
+nothing, and never could be more than nothing. On the other hand, the
+extreme narrowness of his literary tastes led me to place a higher value
+on my own increasing knowledge of modern literature, and conclusively
+proved to me, once for all, that a classical education does not
+necessarily give a just or accurate judgment. "If a man," I said to
+myself, "can be a thorough classical scholar as my tutor is, and at the
+same time so narrow and ignorant, it is clear that a classical training
+does not possess the virtue of opening the mind which is ascribed to
+it."
+
+Besides his narrowness with regard to modern literature of all kinds, my
+tutor had the usual characteristic of the classical scholars of his
+generation, a complete ignorance and misunderstanding of the fine arts.
+All that he knew on that subject was that a certain picture by Titian
+was shameful because there was a naked woman in it; and I believe he had
+heard that Claude was a famous landscape-painter, but he had no
+conception whatever of the aims and purposes of art. One of his
+accusations against me was that, from vanity, I had painted a portrait
+of myself. As a matter of fact, the little picture was a portrait of
+Lord Byron, done from an engraving; but any artist may, without vanity,
+make use of his own face as a model.
+
+In religion my tutor was most intolerant. He could not endure either
+Roman Catholics or Dissenters of any kind, and considered no terms harsh
+enough for infidels. He told with approbation the story of some bigot
+like himself, who, when an unbeliever came into his house, had loudly
+ordered the servant to lock up the silver spoons. He possessed and read
+with approbation one of those intolerant books of the eighteenth century
+entitled, "A Short Method with Deists," in which the poor Deists were
+crushed beneath the pitiless heel of the dominant State Church. It
+happened one day, by a strange chance, that an antiquary brought a
+Unitarian minister, who also took an interest in archaeology, to visit
+the church where my tutor officiated, in which, there were some old
+things, and as they stayed in the church till our early dinner-time, my
+tutor could hardly do otherwise than offer them a little hospitality.
+When the guests had gone (I hope they enjoyed the conversation, which
+seemed to me artificial and constrained) my tutor said to me: "That man,
+that Unitarian, will go to hell! All who do not believe in the Atonement
+will go to hell!" I said nothing, but thought that the mild antiquary
+who sat with us at table might deserve a less terrible fate. My tutor
+troubled me less, perhaps, about theology than might have been expected.
+He intended to inflict much more theology upon me than I really had to
+undergo, thanks to his indolence, and the craft and subtlety with which
+I managed to substitute other work for it. Still, it was a trial to me
+to have to look acquiescent, or at least submissive and respectful,
+whilst he said the most unjust and intolerant things about those who
+differed from him, and with whom I often secretly agreed. And of course
+I had to listen to his sermons every Sunday, and to go through the
+outward seemings of conformity that my master had power enough to exact
+from me. Beyond the weekly services in the church he fulfilled scarcely
+any of the duties of a parish clergyman. He rose about eleven in the
+morning, and spent his time either in mechanical pursuits or in
+desultory reading, often of the Greek and Latin classics. In fact, my
+tutor's mind was so imbued with the dead languages that he was unable to
+write his own, but had constant recourse to Greek and Latin to make his
+meaning clear.
+
+A year spent with this clergyman, with whom I had not two ideas in
+common, produced an effect upon me exactly opposite to that which had
+been intended. My feelings towards the ancient classics had grown into
+positive repugnance when I saw the moderns so unjustly sacrificed to
+them, and my love for the moderns had increased to the point of
+partisanship. My tutor's injustice towards Dissenters and unbelievers
+had also, by a natural reaction, aroused in me a profound sympathy for
+these maligned and despised people, and I would willingly have joined
+some dissenting body myself if I could have found one that had exactly
+my own opinions; but it seemed useless to leave the Church of England
+for another community if I were no more in accordance with the new than
+with the old. The fact that my master had been a tutor at Oxford and was
+always boasting about his university career--he openly expressed his
+contempt for men who "had never seen the smoke of a university"--made me
+sick of the very name of the place, and to this day I have never visited
+it. In a word, my tutor made me dislike the very things that it was his
+business to make me like, and if I had ever felt the least desire for a
+degree he would have cured me of it, as it was impossible to desire
+honors that were accessible to so narrow a mind as his, a mind fit for
+nothing but pedagogy, and really unable to appreciate either literature
+or art.
+
+At the end of a year, therefore, I said plainly to my guardian that I
+was doing no good, and that it was useless to prepare me any further for
+Oxford, as I could not conscientiously put my name to the Thirty-nine
+Articles.
+
+If, in those days, any human being in our class of society in England
+had been able to conceive of such a thing as education not in clerical
+hands, I might have gone on with my classical studies under the
+direction of a layman; but education and the clergy were looked upon as
+inseparable; even by myself. My education, therefore, came momentarily
+to a stand-still, though it happened a little later that a sense of its
+imperfection made me take it up again with fresh energy on my own
+account, and I am still working at it, in various directions, at the
+mature age of fifty-two.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+1852.
+
+Choice of a profession.--Love of literature and art.--Decision to make
+trial of both.--An equestrian tour.--Windermere.--Derwentwater.--I take
+lessons from Mr. J. P. Pettitt.--Ulleswater.--My horse Turf.--Greenock,
+a discovery.--My unsettled cousin.--Glasgow.--Loch Lomond.
+--Inverary.--Loch Awe.--Inishail.--Innistrynich.--Oban.--A sailing
+excursion.--Mull and Ulva.--Solitary reading.
+
+The question of a profession now required an immediate decision. My
+guardian's choice for me had formerly been the Church, but that was not
+exactly suited to my ways of thinking. The most natural profession for a
+young man in my position would have been the law, but my father had
+expressly desired that I should not adopt it, as he was sick of it for
+himself, and wished to spare me its anxieties. The cotton trade required
+a larger disposable capital than I possessed, to start with any chance
+of success.
+
+My own desires were equally balanced between two pursuits for which I
+had a great liking, and hoped that there might be some natural aptitude.
+One of these was literature, and the other painting. A very moderate
+success in either of these pursuits would, it seemed to me, be more
+conducive to happiness than a greater success in some less congenial
+occupation. My fortune was enough for a bachelor, and I did not intend
+to marry, at least for a long time.
+
+There was no thought of ambition in connection with the desire to follow
+one of these two pursuits, beyond that of the workman who desires to do
+well. I mean, I had no social ambition in connection with them. It
+seemed to me that the liberty of thought which I valued above everything
+was incompatible, in England, with any desire to rise in the world, as
+unbelievers lay under a ban, and had no chance of social advancement
+without renouncing their opinions. This was an additional reason why I
+should seek happiness in my studies, as a worldly success was denied to
+me.
+
+The reader may perhaps think that I had not much, in the way of social
+advancement, to renounce, but in fact I had a position remarkably full
+of possibilities, that a man of the world could have used to great
+advantage. I had independent means, enough to enable me, as a bachelor,
+to live like a gentleman; I belonged to one of the oldest and
+best-descended families in the English untitled aristocracy, had a
+retentive memory, a strong voice, and could speak in public without
+embarrassment. A man of the world, in my position, would have found his
+upward course straight before him. He would simply have made use of the
+Church as an instrument (it is one of the most valuable instruments for
+the worldly), have given himself the advantages of Oxford, married for
+money, offered his services to the Conservative party, and gone into
+Parliament. [Footnote: The reader may wonder why the _Conservative_
+party is specially mentioned. It is mentioned simply because all my
+relations and nearly all my influential friends (who could have pushed
+me) belonged to it. The Conservative party is also the one that gives
+the best social promotion to those who serve it. There have been many
+little Beaconsfields.]
+
+It would have been much easier to do all that than to make a reputation
+either in literature or painting,--easier, I mean, for a man starting in
+life with so many good cards in his hand as I had.
+
+I have been sometimes represented as an unsuccessful painter who took to
+writing because he had failed as an artist. It is, of course, easy to
+state the matter so, but the exact truth is that a very moderate success
+in either literature or art would have been equally acceptable to me, so
+that there has been no other failure in my life than the usual one of
+not being able to catch two hares at the same time. Very few dogs have
+ever been able to do that.
+
+I decided to try to be a painter and to try to be an author, and see
+what came of both attempts. My guardian always thought I should end by
+being an author, and though she had no prejudice against painting, she
+looked upon it as a pursuit likely to be very tedious, at times, to
+those who practise it, in which she was quite right. It is generally a
+hard struggle, requiring infinite patience, even in the clever and
+successful.
+
+One of the first things I did was to go on horseback to the English Lake
+district in the summer of 1852, with the intention of continuing the
+journey, still on horseback, into the mountainous regions of Scotland.
+Unfortunately this project could not be executed with the horse I then
+possessed, the most dangerous, sulky, resolute, and cunning brute I ever
+mounted. I rode him as far as Keswick, where a horse-breaker tried him
+and said his temper was incurable, recommending me to have him shot. The
+advice was excellent, but I could not find it in my heart to destroy
+such a fine-looking animal, so I left him in grass at Penrith, and went
+on to Scotland by the usual means of travelling,--a change that I regret
+to this day.
+
+I had materials with me for painting studies in oil, and painted at
+Windermere and Derwentwater. It was an inexpressible pleasure to see
+these lakes, and a mental torment not to be able to paint them better.
+
+My first sight of Windermere (or of any natural lake, for I had hitherto
+seen nothing but fish-ponds and reservoirs) was enjoyed under peculiarly
+impressive circumstances. I had been riding alone or walking by the side
+of my horse during the night, and arrived at the lake shore by the
+guidance of a star. I wrote down my first impression next day, and have
+kept the words.
+
+"I could not find the way to the little harbor of Bowness, and so went
+on for a considerable distance till I came to a gate which, as I knew,
+from the position of the north star, would lead directly to the lake
+across the fields. There was a small and scarcely traceable footpath,
+and a board to warn trespassers. However, I fastened the horse to the
+gate and proceeded. I soon arrived at the shore, and was overawed by a
+scene of overpowering magnificence. The day was just dawning. The water
+mirrored the isles, except where the mist floated on its surface and
+wreathed round their bases. The trees were massed by it into domes and
+towers that seemed to float on the cloudy lake as if by enchantment. The
+stars were growing pale in the yellowing east; the distant hills were
+coldly blue, till far away lake and hill and sky melted into cloud.
+
+"Opposite, I saw the dark form of an island rising between me and the
+other shores, strongly relieved against the mist which crept along the
+base of the opposite mountain and almost clambered to its dark summit.
+The reflection of the dark upper part of the mountain (which rose clear
+of the mist) fell on the lake in such a manner as to enclose that of the
+island. In another direction an island was gradually throwing off its
+white robe of mist, and the light showed through the interstices of the
+foliage that I had taken for a crag.
+
+"I had a pistol with me, and tried the echo, though it seemed wrong to
+disturb a silence so sublime. I fired, and had time to regret that there
+was no echo before a peal of musketry came from the nearer hills and
+then a fainter peal from the distance, followed by an audible
+rejoinder."
+
+This is the kind of travel for the enjoyment of natural beauty. One
+should be either quite alone, or have a single companion of the same
+tastes, and one should be above all commonplace considerations about
+hours. Samuel Palmer often walked the whole night alone, for the
+pleasure of observing the beautiful changes between sunset and sunrise.
+
+In the evening there was a fine red sunset followed by moonlight, so I
+took a boat and rowed out in the moonlight alone. This first experience
+of lake scenery was an enchantment, and it had a great influence on my
+future life by giving me a passion for lakes, or by increasing the
+passion that (in some inexplicable way) I had felt for them from
+childhood. One of the earliest poems I had attempted to compose began
+with the stanza,--
+
+  "A cold and chilly mist
+    Broodeth o'er Winandermere,
+  And the heaven-descended cloud hath kissed
+    The still lake drear."
+
+I had already tried to paint lake scenery, in copying a picture, and my
+favorite illustrations in the Abbotsford edition of Scott's works were
+the lochs that I was now to see for the first time.
+
+After a night at Ambleside I saw Rydal Water in sunshine and calm, with
+faint breezes playing on its surface, and rode on to Keswick through the
+Vale of St. John. The only way in which it was possible to ride the
+brute I possessed was in putting him behind a carriage, which he
+followed as if he had been tied to it. In this manner I reached Keswick,
+after apologizing to a family party for dogging their carriage so
+closely. As soon as the vehicle came to a stop opposite the hotel, my
+horse, Turf, threw out his heels vigorously in the crowd. Luckily he
+hurt nobody, but the bystanders told me that one of his shoes had been
+within six inches of a young lady's face. A vicious horse is a perpetual
+anxiety. Turf kicked in the stable as well as out of it, and hit a groom
+on the forehead a few days later. The man would probably have been
+killed without the leather of his cap.
+
+Finding an artist at Keswick, Mr. J. P. Pettitt, I asked his advice and
+became his pupil for a few days. I climbed Skiddaw during the night with
+one of Mr. Pettitt's sons, who was a geologist and a landscape-painter
+also. When we got to the top of the mountain we were enveloped in a
+thick mist, which remained till we descended; but I lay down in my
+waterproof on the lee side of the cairn, and slept in happy oblivion of
+discomfort.
+
+Mr. Pettitt's lessons were of some use to me, but as all my serious
+education hitherto had been classical, I was not sufficiently advanced
+in practical art to prepare me for color, and I ought to have been
+making studies of light and shade in sepia.
+
+There was nothing more difficult in those days than for a young
+gentleman to become an artist, because no human being would believe that
+he could be serious in such an intention. As I had a fine-looking horse
+in the stable at the hotel, Pettitt of course took me for an amateur,
+and only attempted to communicate the superficial dexterity that
+amateurs usually desire. It was my misfortune to be constantly
+attempting what was far too difficult for me in art, and not to find any
+one ready and willing to put me on the right path. I was very well able,
+already, to make studies in sepia that would have been valuable material
+for future reference, whereas my oil studies were perfectly worthless,
+and much more inconvenient and embarrassing.
+
+I was enchanted with the Lake District, seeing Windermere, Derwentwater,
+and Ulleswater, besides several minor lakes; but although I delighted in
+all inland waters and the Lake District was so near to my own home, I
+never revisited it. The reason was that, after seeing the grander
+Highlands of Scotland, I became spoiled for the English Lakes. There was
+another reason,--the absence of human interest on the English lakes
+except of a quite modern kind, there being no old castles on shore or
+island. Lyulph's Tower, on Ulleswater, though immortalized by
+Wordsworth, is nothing but a modern hunting-box. Nevertheless, I have
+often regretted that I did not become more familiar with Wordsworth's
+country in my youth.
+
+The mention of Lyulph's Tower reminds me that when I landed there after
+a hard pull of seven miles against a strong wind, I was kindly invited
+to take part in a merry picnic that was just being held there by some
+farmers of the neighborhood. A very pretty girl asked me to dance, and I
+afterwards played the fiddle. The scene with the dancers in the
+foreground on the green sward, and the lake and mountains in the
+distance, was one of the most poetical I ever beheld.
+
+Turf had been ridden from Keswick to Penrith by the horse-breaker
+already mentioned, and with infinite difficulty. I would have left him
+in the breaker's hands, but he refused to mount again, saying that he
+had done enough for his credit, and so had I for mine. By his advice I
+took the same resolution, and as nobody in Penrith would ride the brute,
+he was left to grow still wilder in a green field whilst I went on to
+Scotland by the train.
+
+I had a cousin at Greenock who was learning to be a marine constructing
+engineer. He was a young man of remarkable ability, who afterwards
+distinguished himself in his profession, and might no doubt have made a
+large fortune if his habits had not been imprudent and unsettled. At
+that time he was tied to Greenock by an engagement with one of the great
+firms where he was articled. He had rooms in a quiet street, and offered
+me hospitality. One day I came in unexpectedly and found a baby in my
+bed, when the door opened suddenly, and a very pretty girl with dark
+eyes came and took the baby away with an apology. I immediately said to
+myself: "My cousin has been privately married, that pair of dark eyes
+has cost him his liberty, and that child is an infantine relation of
+mine!" This discovery remained a long time a secret in my own breast,
+and I affected a complete absence of suspicion during the rest of my
+stay at Greenock, but it was afterwards fully confirmed. My cousin had,
+in fact, married at the early age of nineteen, when he was still an
+articled pupil with Messrs. Caird, and living on an allowance from his
+father, whom he dared not ask for an increase. He was therefore obliged
+to eke out his means by teaching mechanical drawing in the evenings; but
+though his marriage had been an imprudence, it was not a folly. He had,
+in fact, shown excellent judgment in the choice of a wife. The dark eyes
+were not all. Behind them there was a soul full of the most cheerful
+courage, the sweetest affection, the most faithful devotion. For
+thirty-seven years my cousin's wife followed him everywhere, and bore
+his roving propensity with wonderful good humor. What that propensity
+was, the reader may partly realize when I tell him that in those
+_thirty_-seven years my cousin went through _eighty_-seven removals,
+some of them across the greatest distances that are to be found upon the
+planet. The only reason why he did not remove to all the different
+planets one after another was the absence of a road to them. This
+tendency of my cousin Orme had been predicted by a French phrenologist
+at Manchester when he was a boy. The phrenologist had said, after
+examining his "bumps," that Orme would settle in a place for a short
+time and appear satisfied at first, as if it were for good, but that
+very soon afterwards he would go elsewhere and repeat the process. I
+never met with any other human being who had such an unsettled
+disposition. The consequence was that he often quitted places where he
+was extremely prosperous, and people who not only appreciated his
+extraordinary talents, but were ready to reward them handsomely, in
+order to go he knew not whither, and undertake he knew not what.
+
+I left Greenock by an early steamer for Glasgow, and remember this one
+detail of the voyage. The morning air was brisk and keen, so I was not
+sorry to breakfast when the meal was announced, and did ample justice to
+it with a young and vigorous appetite. Having eaten my third poached
+egg, and feeling still ready for the more substantial dishes that
+awaited me, I suddenly recollected that I had already disposed of an
+ample Scotch breakfast at my cousin's. Can anything more conclusively
+prove the wonderful virtue of early hours and the healthy northern air?
+
+After visiting Glasgow and the Falls of Clyde in drenching rain, I saw
+Loch Lomond, which was my first experience of a Highland lake, and
+therefore memorable for me. The gradual approach, on the steamer,
+towards the mountains at the upper end of the lake was a revelation of
+Highland scenery. The day happened to be one of rapidly changing
+effects. A rugged hill with its bosses and crags was one minute in
+brilliant light, to be in shade the next, as the massive clouds flew
+over it, and the colors varied from pale blue to dark purple and brown
+and green, with that wonderful freshness of tint and vigor of opposition
+that belong to the wilder landscapes of the north. From that day my
+affections were conquered; as the steamer approached nearer and nearer
+to the colossal gates of the mountains, and the deep waters of the lake
+narrowed in the contracting glen, I felt in my heart a sort of
+exultation like the delight of a young horse in the first sense of
+freedom in the boundless pasture.
+
+The next sunrise I saw from the top of Ben Lomond, but will spare the
+reader the description. It was a delight beyond words for an
+enthusiastic young reader of Scott to look upon Loch Katrine at last.
+Thousands of tourists have been drawn to the same scenes by their
+interest in the same poet, yet few of them, I fancy, had in the same
+degree with myself the three passions for literature, for nature, and
+for art. If little has come of these passions, it was certainly not from
+any want of intensity in _them_, but in consequence of certain critical
+influences that will be explained later. I will only say in this place,
+that if the passion for art had been strongest of the three the
+productive result would have been greater.
+
+From Tarbet on Loch Lomond I went to Inverary, and the first thing I did
+there was to hire a sailing-boat and go beating to windward on Loch
+Fyne. I made a sketch of the ruined castle of Dundera, which stands
+between the road and the loch on a pretty rocky promontory. For some
+time I had a strong fancy for this castle, and wanted to rent it on
+lease and restore three or four rooms in it for my own use. The choice
+would have been in some respects wiser than that I afterwards made, as
+Dundera has such easy access to Inverary by a perfectly level and good
+road on the water's edge, and by the water itself; but the scenery of
+Loch Fyne is not as attractive as that of Loch Awe, and there is always
+a certain inevitable dreariness about a salt-water loch which, to my
+feeling, would make it depressing for long residence.
+
+I had travelled from Tarbet with a rather elderly couple who were very
+kind to me, and afterwards invited me to their house in Yorkshire. The
+lady was connected with Sir James Ross, the Arctic discoverer, and her
+husband had been a friend of Theodore Hook, of whom he told me many
+amusing anecdotes. They were both most amiable, cheerful people, and we
+formed a merry party of three when first I saw Loch Awe, as the carriage
+descended the road from Inverary to Cladich on the way to Dalmally. As I
+kept a journal of this tour, I find easily the account of my first
+boating on Loch Awe. It was in the month of August when we had come to a
+halt at Cladich:--
+
+"In the afternoon I made a sketch of the bridge taken from the ravine.
+It occupied me four hours, as the scene was of the most elaborate
+character. We dined at four o'clock, and then strolled to the lake,
+which was at some distance. Two boats were lying in a small stream which
+emptied itself into the lake, so I pressed one of them into my service,
+and was soon out upon the water. The boat was old, badly built, and
+rickety. The starboard oar was cracked, and the port oar had been broken
+in two and mended with bands of iron. The bottom was several inches deep
+in water, the thwarts were not securely fastened, nor were they at right
+angles to the keel. Out in the loch the waves were high, and the crazy
+craft rolled and pitched like a beer-barrel, the water in her washing
+from side to side. However, I reached the island called 'Inishail.' It
+was a striking scene. Around me were the tombs of many generations. In
+the far distance the dark ruin of Kilchurn was reduced almost to
+insignificance by its background of rugged hills towering into the
+clouds.
+
+"Night was coming on quickly as I rowed back to the mouth of the little
+river. On reaching the inn I found that the people were getting anxious
+about me."
+
+This first row on Loch Awe has a pathetic interest for me to this day.
+It was like one's first meeting with a friend who was destined to become
+very dear and to exercise a powerful influence on the whole current of
+one's life.
+
+As my first impression of London had been, "This is a place an
+Englishman ought to see once, but I will never come to it again," so my
+first impression about Loch Awe was a profound sort of melancholy
+happiness in the place and a longing to revisit it. I never afterwards
+quitted Loch Awe without the same longing to return, and I have never
+seen any place in the world that inspired in me that nostalgia in
+anything like an equal degree.
+
+There is an affinity between persons and places, but the Loch Awe that
+won my affection exists no longer. What delighted me was the complete
+unity of character that prevailed there, the lonely magnificent
+mountains, the vast expanse of water only crossed occasionally by some
+poor open boat, the melancholy ruins on island or peninsula, the
+wilderness, the sadness, the pervading sense of solitude, a solitude
+peopled only with traditions of a romantic past. It was almost as lonely
+as some distant lake in the wilds of Canada that the Indian crosses in
+his canoe, yet its ruined castles gave a poetry that no American waters
+can ever possess. Such was Loch Awe that I loved with the melancholy
+affection of youth before the experience of life had taught me a more
+active and practical philosophy than the indulgence in the sweet sadness
+of these reveries. But Loch Awe of to-day and of the future is as modern
+and practical as the sea-lochs that open upon the Clyde. On my first
+visit in 1852 there was neither steamer nor sailing-boat; now there are
+fourteen steamers on the lake, four of them public, and the railway
+trains pass round the skirts of Cruachan and rush through the Brandir
+Pass. There is a big hotel, they tell me, just opposite Kilchurn, from
+which place, by express train, you can get to Edinburgh in four hours.
+
+The day after our arrival at Loch Awe turned out to be most beautiful (a
+fine day in the Highlands seems, by contrast, far more beautiful than
+elsewhere), and I shall never forget the enchantment of the head of Loch
+Awe as our carriage slowly descended the hilly road from Cladich towards
+Dalmally, stopping frequently for me to look and sketch. When we got
+near the island, or peninsula, of Innistrynich, with its dark green oaks
+and pasture-laud of a brighter green in the sunshine, and gray rocks
+coming down into the calm, dark water, it seemed to my northern taste
+the realization of an earthly paradise. I have lived upon it since, and
+unwillingly left it, and to this day I have the most passionate
+affection for it, and often dream about it painfully or pleasurably, the
+most painful dream of all being that it has been spoiled by the present
+owner, which happily is quite the contrary of the truth.
+
+I went to Oban on the top of the coach in the most brilliant weather
+that ever is or can be, alternate sunshine and rain, with white clouds
+of a dazzling brightness. Under this enchantment, the barren land of
+Lorne seemed beautiful, and one forgot its poverty. For the first time,
+I saw the waters of Loch Etive, then a pale blue, stretching far inland,
+and the distant hills of Morven were, or seemed to be, of the purest
+azure.
+
+When my new friends had left me at Oban, I hired a sailing-boat and two
+men for a voyage amongst the Western Isles; but as she was an open boat,
+the men did not like the idea of risking our lives in her on the exposed
+waters of the Atlantic, so the voyage was confined to the Sound of Mull,
+and I crossed the island to its western shore on foot. That voyage left
+permanent recollections of grand effects and wild scenery of the kind
+afterwards described by William Black in his "Macleod of Dare." As we
+sailed across the Sound in the evening from Oban to Auchincraig, the sky
+was full of torn rain-clouds flying swiftly and catching the lurid hues
+from the sunset, whilst the distant mountains and cliffs of Mull were of
+that dark purple which seems melancholy and funereal in landscape,
+though it is one of the richest colors in the world. It was dangerous
+weather for sailing, being very squally, and in the year 1852 I knew
+nothing about the management of sailing-boats; but the men were not
+imprudent, and after coasting under the cliffs of Mull we landed at
+Auchincraig, where at that time there was a miserable inn. The next day
+we had a glorious sail up the sound to the Bay of Aros, stopping only to
+see Duart Castle. In walking across the island to Loch na Keal, we
+passed through a most picturesque camp, that would have delighted
+Landseer. There were hundreds of horses and innumerable dogs of the
+picturesque northern breeds. It was the half-yearly market of Mull.
+
+I shall never forget my first sight of Ulva, as we sat on the shore of
+Mull waiting for the ferry-boat. Ulva lay, a great dark mass, under the
+crimson west, reflected in a glassy sea. We had already seen Staffa and
+Iona, pale in the distant Atlantic. Then the boat fetched us, and we
+floated as in a poet's dream, till the worst of inns brought one back to
+a sense of reality.
+
+The boatman who accompanied me, whose name was Andrew, amused himself by
+telling lies to the credulous inhabitants of Ulva, and one of his
+inventions was that I was going to purchase the island. The other
+boatman, Donald, slept in the boat at Salan, wrapped up in a sail. The
+return voyage to Oban is thus described in my journal:--
+
+"A fine young man asked me for a seat in the boat, which I granted on
+condition that he would perform his share of the work. A favorable wind
+carried us well over fifteen miles, half our distance, and the rest had
+to be rowed. The sun set in crimson, and the crescent moon arose behind
+the blue hills of Mull, over the dark tower of Duart. The scene was
+shortly a festival of lights with stars in the sky and the water
+brilliantly phosphorescent, so that the oar seemed to drip with fire.
+Lastly, when we entered the smooth bright bay of Oban, a crescent of
+lights shone around it, reflected in columns of flame upon the surface."
+
+These were my chief experiences of the West Highlands during that first
+tour, and they left what I believe to be an indelible impression, for to
+this day I remember quite distinctly under what kind of effect each of
+these scenes presented itself. The artistic results of the tour
+consisted of sketches in oil and pencil, quite without value except to
+remind me of the scenes passed through, and of the most decidedly
+amateur character. I also wrote a journal, interesting to me now for the
+minute details it contains, which bring the past back to me very
+vividly, but utterly without literary merit. The wonder is how a youth
+with so little manifest talent as may be found in these sketches and
+journal could indulge in any artistic or literary ambition. My
+impression is that the dull year of heavy work that I had gone through
+with the Yorkshire tutor had done positive harm to me. Besides this, I
+was living, intellectually, in great solitude. My guardian was very
+kind, and she was a woman of sterling good sense, but she knew nothing
+about the fine arts, nor could she afford me much guidance in my
+reading, her own reading being limited to the Bible, and to some English
+and French classics. My uncles were both extremely reserved men who did
+not encourage my questions, so I was left for a while to get on without
+other intellectual assistance than that afforded by books. My eldest
+uncle, the owner of Hollins, said one day to my guardian, "Buy him the
+'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' it will prevent him from asking so many
+questions;" so she made the purchase, which gave me a large pasture, at
+least for facts, and as for good literature, my little library was
+beginning to be well stocked. I made no attempt at that time to keep up
+my Latin and Greek, nor did I work seriously at painting, but read,
+drew, and wrote very much as it happened, not subjecting myself to any
+rigorous discipline, yet never remaining unoccupied.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+1853.
+
+A journal.--Self-training.--Attempts in periodical literature.--The time
+given to versification well spent.--Practical studies in art.--Beginning
+of Mr. Ruskin's influence.--Difficulty in finding a master in
+landscape-painting.--Establishment of the militia.--I accept a
+commission.--Our first training.--Our colonel and our adjutant.--The
+Grand Llama.--Paying off the men.
+
+On January 1, 1853, I began to keep a journal, and continued it, with
+some intermissions, till June, 1855. The journal is long and minute in
+detail, and affords me a very clear retrospect of my life in those
+years; but it will be needless to trouble the reader with quotations
+from it.
+
+The title page of the diary is a clear indication of my pursuits. It is
+called an "Account of time spent in Literature, Art, Music, and
+Gymnastics." The reader may observe that Literature comes before Art, so
+that if I am now an author rather than an artist, the reason may be
+found in early studies and inclination. Music and gymnastics were, in my
+view, only a part of general culture, yet of considerable importance in
+their way.
+
+As a scheme of self-training, this seems sufficiently comprehensive, and
+to this day I feel the good effects of it. My reading was not badly
+chosen, the drawing gave some initiation into art, and exercise
+developed physical activity, not yet altogether lost in mature age.
+
+Still, the experienced reader will see at a glance that this was not the
+training of a young painter who, in a craft of such great technical
+difficulty and in an age of such intense competition, must give himself
+up more completely to his own special pursuit.
+
+On the first page of this diary I find an entry about an article for the
+"Westminster Review." I offered two or three papers to the
+"Westminster," which were declined, and then I wrote to the editor
+asking him if he would be so good as to explain, for my own benefit and
+guidance, what were the reasons for their rejection. His answer came,
+and was both kind and judicious. "An article," he told me, "ought to be
+an organic whole, with a pre-arranged order and proportion amongst its
+parts. There ought to be a beginning, a middle, and an end." This was a
+very good and much-needed lesson, for at that time I had no notion of a
+synthetic _ordonnance_ of parts. There was, no doubt, another reason,
+which the editor omitted out of consideration for the feelings of a
+literary aspirant, who was too young and too insufficiently informed to
+write anything that could interest readers of the "Westminster."
+
+I worked rather hard at writing English verse, and do not at the present
+time regret a single hour of that labor. My general habit was to write a
+poem, sometimes of considerable length, and then destroy it; but I kept
+some of these compositions, which were afterwards published in a volume.
+Verse-writing was good for me at that time for a particular reason. I
+did not understand the art of prose composition, which is much less
+obvious than that of poetry; but being already aware that verse-writing
+was an art, approached it in the right spirit, which is that of
+ungrudging labor and incessant care. The value or non-value of the
+result has nothing to do with the matter; the essential point is that
+verse was to me a discipline, coming just at a time of life when I had
+much need of a discipline. Besides, the mind of a young man is not ripe
+enough in reflection or rich enough in knowledge to supply substantial
+and well-nourished prose; but the freshness and keenness of his feelings
+may often give life enough to a few stanzas, if not to a longer poem.
+
+It may be objected to this advocacy of verse, that as the poet's gift is
+excessively rare, the probability is that a youth who writes verse
+attacks an art that he can never master. No doubt the highest degree of
+the poetic gift is most rare, and so, according to Christine Nilsson,
+are the gifts needed to make a _prima donna_, yet many a girl practises
+singing without hoping to be a Nilsson; and there are many poets in the
+world whose verses have melody and charm though their brows may never be
+"cooled with laurel." The objection to verse as a trifling occupation
+comes really from that general disinclination to read verse which
+excuses itself by the rarity of genius. Rossetti, who had genius in his
+own person, was always ready to appreciate good poetical work that had
+no fame to recommend it. [Footnote: Since the above was written I have
+met with an address delivered by Mr. Walter Besant, the novelist, in
+which he recommends the continuous practice of versification as a
+discipline in the use of language most valuable to writers of prose.]
+
+In the way of art at this time I painted three portraits and some
+landscapes that were merely studies. It is needless to enumerate these
+attempts, all of no value, and generally destroyed afterwards.
+
+An important event occurred on March 22,1853. Being in Manchester, I
+bought the first volume of Ruskin's "Modern Painters." In this way I
+came under the influence of Mr. Ruskin, and remained under it, more or
+less, for several years. It was a good influence in two ways, first in
+literature, as anything that Mr. Ruskin has to say is sure to be well
+expressed, and after that it was a good influence in directing my
+attention to certain qualities and beauties in nature; but in art this
+influence was not merely evil, it was disastrous. I was, however, at
+that time, just the young man predestined to fall under it, being very
+fond of reading, and having a strong passion for natural beauty. In the
+course of the year 1853 I corresponded with Mr. Ruskin about my studies,
+and I have no doubt of the perfect sincerity of his advice and the
+kindness of intention with which it was given; but it tended directly to
+encourage the idea that art could be learned from nature, and that is an
+immense mistake. Nature does not teach art, or anything resembling it;
+she only provides materials. Art is a product of the human mind, the
+slow growth of centuries. If you reject this and go to nature, you have
+to begin all over again, the objection being that one human life is not
+long enough for that.
+
+As it is possible that some critic may say that Mr. Ruskin's influence
+was not so much opposed to the tradition of art as I am representing it
+to be, and considering that I shall be dead when this is published, I
+quote the following passage from a memorandum found amongst the papers
+of Mr. Leitch, the water-color painter, and printed in his biography:--
+
+"I knew a young man of talent, ardent and energetic, and anxious to be a
+landscape-painter, who went to Mr. Ruskin and asked his advice as to
+what he should do, what school he should follow, how he should practise,
+and what master he should put himself under. I was told that the answer
+he got was to this effect: 'Have nothing to do with schools; put
+yourself under no master. Both the one and the other are useless. As
+soon as you can draw a tree, or a tower, or a rock, in an ordinary
+drawing-master way, that is sufficient. Take your materials then out to
+nature, and paint in _her_ school. It is the only school I know of where
+you can't go wrong.'"
+
+I had asked Mr. Ruskin to recommend me some landscape-painter in London
+with whom I could study for six months. His answer was: "There is no
+artist in London capable of teaching you and at the same time willing to
+give lessons. All those who teach, teach mere tricks with the brush, not
+true art, far less true nature." He then recommended me to "go to
+William Turner, of Oxford, not for six months, but for six weeks." I was
+prevented from following this advice by a technical difficulty. Turner
+of Oxford was a water-color painter. I had learned water-color with two
+masters, but had never liked it or felt the slightest impulse to
+continue it. One man is naturally constituted for one process, another
+for another. There is something in my idiosyncrasy repugnant to the
+practice of water-color and favorable to oil, and this in spite of the
+greater convenience of water-color, and the facility with which it may
+be left off and instantaneously resumed. In after-life I learned
+water-color a third time with a very able artist, and now I am able to
+paint studies in that medium from nature which are truthful enough, and
+people seem to like them; but hitherto I have had no enjoyment whatever
+in the work. The reader will please understand that this implies no want
+of appreciation of the art when it is skilfully practised by others.
+There are certain instruments of music that one may listen to with
+pleasure without having the slightest desire to perform upon them.
+[Footnote: My estimate of the rank of water-color amongst the fine arts
+has steadily risen as the true technical relations of the graphic arts
+have become clearer to me. Water-color is quite as great an art as
+fresco, whilst it is incomparably more convenient.]
+
+This being so, the reader will understand how I felt about going to
+William Turner of Oxford. Hour for hour, I would as willingly have read
+Greek as practise water-color washes. Not to trouble Mr. Ruskin,
+however, any further with my affairs, I tried to induce several
+well-known oil-painters to accept me as a pupil, but always met with the
+same answer, that they "did not teach." It was rather a matter of pride
+in those days for a successful painter to decline to give lessons; it
+proved him to be above the grade of a drawing-master.
+
+On March 29, 1853, a little event occurred which was one of the numerous
+causes that turned me aside from the steady practice of art. One of our
+friends called about the impending establishment of the militia, and
+offered to use his influence with Colonel Towneley to get a commission
+for me in the 5th Royal Lancashire, the regiment that was to have its
+headquarters at Burnley. My guardian much wished me to accept, and I did
+so to please her, as I had not been able to please her by going to
+Oxford. There was nothing in a military life, even for a short time
+every year, that had the slightest attraction for me. The notion of
+rendering a patriotic service did not occur to me, for nobody in those
+days looked upon the militia seriously. We were only laughed at for our
+pains, and we had a great deal of trouble and hard work in getting the
+regiment, including ourselves, into something distantly resembling
+military order. Before we were called up for training I got some
+initiation with a line regiment.
+
+Our colonel was the representative of a very old Catholic family, the
+Towneleys of Towneley. This family had been, skilful enough to avoid
+shipwreck during the contests that attended the establishment of
+Protestantism in England. It had survived in increasing wealth and
+prosperity, and had now reached the calm haven of a civilized age, with
+tolerant and liberal institutions. Everything promised a long
+continuance. The head of the family had no male heir, but his brother
+John, who was a major in our regiment, had one son, a cousin of Roger
+Tichborne, and on this son the hopes of continuance rested. Those hopes
+have not been realized. The young man died in his youth; his father and
+his uncle also died; the property is divided amongst three heiresses,
+and now for the first time, since surnames were invented, there is no
+longer a Towneley of Towneley.
+
+The colonel was a man of the kindest disposition and the most gentle
+manners, without much confidence in himself. For all regimental matters
+he trusted the adjutant, Captain Fenton, an officer who had seen much
+active service in India. Fenton had by nature the gifts of a ruler of
+men. When not on duty he was as gentle as a lady, a pleasant and amiable
+talker, but on the parade-ground he ruled us all like a Napoleon. He had
+lost one eye; people always believed in battle, but in fact, the loss
+had occurred in a tennis-court since his return from India. The other
+eye seemed to have gained, in consequence, a supernatural degree of
+penetration. It looked you through! One day, on the parade-ground, that
+eye glared at me in such a manner that I was quite intimidated, and said
+what I had to say in rather a low tone of voice. "Speak up, sir! can't
+you?" thundered the adjutant. "Mister Hamerton, I tell you to speak up!"
+
+Fenton had an extremely pretty little bay horse, that had been in a
+circus, so when he rode past the companies on parade, and the band
+struck up, the horse used to begin dancing, keeping time beautifully,
+and indeed danced all the way from company to company. This used to put
+Fenton out of temper, and as soon as ever military usages permitted it,
+he would stop the band with a gesture, even in the middle of a tune; in
+fact, no matter at what moment. To such of us as had a musical
+disposition, this was perhaps as difficult to hear as the dancing of
+Fenton's horse could be to him. [Footnote: We had a major who did not
+much like the band, and when he could stop it, he would say, "Tell that
+band to hold its tongue."]
+
+During our first training there were not billets enough in Burnley to
+lodge all our men, so one company had to be sent to Padiham, and mine
+was selected. I was a lieutenant, and had neither captain nor ensign,
+being quite alone as a commissioned officer, but we possessed an
+excellent old sergeant, who had seen active service, and, of, course, he
+taught me what to do. My "mess" consisted of a solitary dinner in the
+inn at Padiham, sufficient, but not luxurious. My guardian had wished me
+to go into the militia to live rather more with young gentlemen, and my
+only society was that of the old sergeant, who punctiliously observed
+the difference of rank. On account of the distance from Padiham to
+Burnley (rather more than three miles), we were excused the early
+parade, but went through the two others. The consequence was, that at
+the end of the training, although we had marched more than the other
+companies, we had had only two-thirds of their drill, and when the grand
+inspection by a general took place, it was thought advisable to hide my
+company and another, that was also weak in drill, though for a different
+reason. Luckily, there was a sort of dell in the parade-ground, and we
+were ordered to march down into it. There we stood patiently in line
+during the whole time of the review, and the inspecting general never
+looked at us, which was what the colonel desired. Being destitute of
+military ambition, I was quite contented to remain down in the hollow.
+The most modest and obscure positions are sometimes the most agreeable.
+
+We had a major who had been a colonel in the Guards. It was whispered
+that he did not know very much about drill, having probably forgotten
+his acquirements. One day, however, he commanded the regiment, and I
+ventured to ask him a question. He answered with a good-humored smile,
+that the commanding officer was like the Grand Llama of Thibet,--he
+could not be approached directly, but only through the adjutant. My
+belief was, and is, that my question puzzled him, for he was far too
+good-natured not to have answered it at once if he had been able. I told
+the story to my brother officers, who were amused by the comparison with
+the Grand Llama, and we sometimes called the major by that high-sounding
+title afterwards.
+
+As a perfectly inexperienced young officer, without anybody but an old,
+over-worked and used-up sergeant to help him, and a number of drunken
+Irishmen in the company to vex and trouble him by day and by night, I
+had as much to do during the first training as could be expected of a
+youth in my situation. The last day of the training I committed the
+blunder of advancing small sums of money to a number of men, who, of
+course, immediately got drunk. My ignorance of popular manners and
+customs had made me unable to realize the lamentable fact that if you
+pay five shillings to a man in the improvident class he will at once
+invest it in five shillings' worth of intoxication. I was still in
+Padiham at two in the afternoon, finishing accounts, and I had to be in
+Burnley with my men in time to get them off by the evening trains. When
+we started many of them were so drunk that they could not walk, and I
+requisitioned a number of empty carts, and so got the drunken portion of
+the company to headquarters. Then there came the final settlement of
+more than eighty separate accounts. Without the adjutant, Fenton, I
+should never have got through it. He was a methodical man, who
+understood the business. He got a quantity of small change, piled it in
+separate heaps upon a table, had each man brought up before him, and
+said authoritatively, "So much is owing to you--there it is!" In this
+way we got through the payments, and the drunken men were lodged in
+prison for the night.
+
+I was glad to get back to my quiet literary and artistic occupations,
+and my country home. We had been so busy during our first training, and
+I had been so much separated from the other officers by my duty at
+Padiham, that so far as society was concerned, I might almost as well
+have been on the top of Pendle Hill. Besides that, Englishmen are slow
+to associate--they are shy, and they look at each other a long time
+before getting really acquainted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+1853.
+
+A project for studying in Paris.--Reading.--A healthy life.--Quinsy.
+--My most intimate friend.
+
+If there is any good in an autobiography it ought to be as an example or
+a warning to others; so at the risk of seeming to moralize, which,
+however, is far from my intention, I will say something in this place
+about my manner of life in those days.
+
+First with regard to art, it was not my fault if all the painters I had
+applied to said that they did not take pupils. There was a young
+gentleman in our neighborhood who, though a rich man's son, worked
+seriously at painting, and put himself every year under the direction of
+a French artist in Paris, where he studied in an atelier. I had an idea
+of joining him, but my guardian (who with all her sweetness of
+disposition could be authoritative when she liked) put a stop to the
+project by saying that she refused her consent to any plan involving
+absence from England before the expiration of my minority. She had the
+usual English idea that Paris is a more immoral place than London.
+Perhaps it may be, but great capitals such as Paris, London, and Vienna
+have this in common, that you may be moral in them, or immoral, as you
+like; and if we are to avoid a town because immorality is practised
+there, we must avoid all the great and most of the smaller centres of
+intelligence.
+
+For the present I worked from nature, but not with sufficient energy or
+regularity. I had not found my path, and was always dissatisfied with my
+studies. In literature my reading was abundant, and included the best
+English poets and essayists. I had entirely given up reading Latin and
+Greek at that time, and was not just then studying any modern language
+in their place. Young men both over-estimate and under-estimate their
+own gifts,--they do not know themselves, as indeed how should they? I
+had an impression that Nature had not endowed me with a gift for
+languages. This impression was not only erroneous, but the exact
+contrary of the truth, for I am a born linguist.
+
+My life in general was healthy and active. It included a great deal of
+walking exercise, sometimes five hours in a day. This, with bathing,
+kept me in fair health, though I never had what is called robust health,
+that which allows its possessor to commit great imprudences with
+impunity. I was once near losing life altogether by an odd result from a
+small accident. My horse, which was a heavy and large animal, put his
+foot accidentally on mine. The accident did not prevent me from riding
+out on the moors, but when I got there the pain became so violent that I
+held my foot in a cold rivulet. During the night the pain returned, and
+then I foolishly plunged the foot into a cold bath. The result was that
+the inflammation flew to the throat, and I had a quinsy which nearly
+carried me off. I remember asking for everything by writing on a slate,
+and the intense longing I had for lemonade.
+
+My most intimate friend in those days was a young solicitor in Burnley,
+a man of remarkable ability and naturally polished manners. His
+professional duties did not leave him very much time for reading, but he
+had a mind far above the common Philistinism that cannot appreciate
+literature. I must have wearied him sadly sometimes by reading my own
+verses,--always a most foolish thing to do, and at this day quite
+remote from my notions of an author's dignity. Handsley was wisely
+indifferent to literary fame, and never wrote anything himself except
+his letters, which were those of a clear-headed man of business. He took
+upon himself great labors and great responsibilities, which ripened his
+faculties at a very early age, and he bore them with uncommon firmness
+and prudence. I never met with his superior in the practical sense that
+seizes upon opportunities, and in the energy which arrives in time.
+"Opportunity is kind," said George Eliot, "but only to the industrious."
+Handsley was always one of those to whom Opportunity is kind. If his
+career had been in Parliament I am convinced that he would have risen
+high. His merits were exactly those that are most valued in an English
+Cabinet Minister. At the present time he has under his management some
+of the largest collieries in Lancashire, and has been for many years one
+of the most influential men in the neighborhood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+1853.
+
+London again.--Accurate habits in employment of time.--Studies with Mr.
+Pettitt.--Some account of my new master.--His method of technical
+teaching.--Simplicity of his philosophy of art.--Incidents of his
+life.--Rapid progress under Pettitt's direction.
+
+On August 8, 1853, the writer of this book, who had promised and vowed
+never to visit London again, went there to see the Royal Academy
+Exhibition, and of course found it closed. If any one could have seen me
+before the closed doors, knowing that I had come all the way from
+Lancashire in the expectation of finding them open, he might have
+derived some innocent mirth from my disappointment.
+
+The Royal Academy being no longer accessible, I turned into the National
+Gallery, and at once began to take notes in a pocket-book. This seems to
+have been my habit at that time. I took notes about everything--about
+painting, architecture, and even the Royal Mews. The notes are copious
+and wordy. Though destitute of literary merit, they certainly serve
+their purpose, for they recall things vividly enough, even in detail.
+Nothing of any importance is omitted.
+
+Although notes of that kind are unreadable, they are very useful
+afterwards for reference, and my time could scarcely have been better
+spent. I find I gave five hundred words to the description of Turner's
+"Building of Carthage," and other pictures are treated with equal
+liberality. I carried the same laborious system of note-making even into
+exhibitions. In later life one learns the art of doing such work more
+briefly.
+
+Having purchased a few prints for study, I returned to Lancashire and
+resumed my strict division of time. Four hours a day were given to
+practical drawing, but not invariably the entry is sometimes three or
+two only. When art lost an hour, literature gained it, either in study
+or practical writing. I was curiously accurate in my accounts of time,
+and knew to half-an-hour what was spent on this pursuit or that. Here is
+an extract in evidence of this tendency:--
+
+"Thursday, August 13, 1853. Determined to-day to study the copper Albert
+Dürer 80 hours, having given 83 to the wood-cuts. I have already given
+the copper 101/2 hours, so that I have 691/2 to devote to it yet. I
+shall also give 40 hours to Kreutzer's violin studies, and have already
+practised them 24, which leaves 16. I shall now commence a course of
+poetical reading, beginning with 50 hours of Chaucer, and as I gave him
+11/2 last night it leaves me exactly 481/2."
+
+This is carrying exactness to excess, and it is not given as an example
+to be followed, but it had the advantage of letting me know how my time
+expenditure was running. In this way it became clear that if I intended
+to be an artist the time given to practical work was insufficient. As no
+painter of eminence would take a pupil I bethought me of Mr. Pettitt,
+who had given me lessons at Keswick. He consented to take me, but said
+that he had left the north of England for London. In the Lake District
+he had been earning a small income; in London he earned twice as much,
+but his expenses increased in proportion. The change, however, was a
+disappointment to me, as it would have been more profitable to study
+from nature under my master's direction, than to copy pictures in a
+London studio.
+
+My new London life began at the end of December, 1853. It has always
+been, in my case, an effort little short of heroic to go and stay in a
+town at all. My dislike to towns increases in exact mathematical
+proportion to their size. The notion of going to London to study
+landscape-painting seemed against nature. The negotiations with Mr.
+Pettitt had been begun with the hope of a return to Derwentwater.
+
+However, one dark and drizzly evening in December I found myself seeking
+the number my new master had given me, in Percy Street. He was not
+there, that was his studio only; the house was in the suburbs. We met on
+the following morning in the studio, where stood an enormous picture of
+Nebuchadnezzar and the Golden Image. This was conceived on the
+principles of John Martin, with prodigious perspectives of impossible
+architecture, and the price was a thousand pounds. The labor involved
+was endless, but the whole enterprise was vain and futile from beginning
+to end. Pettitt could work honestly and laboriously from
+nature,--indeed, he never stinted labor in anything,--but such a large
+undertaking as this piece of mingled archaeology and art was alike
+beyond his knowledge and outside the range of his imagination. He was
+not to blame, except for an error of judgment. The demand for his work
+was feeble and uncertain, so he thought it necessary to attract
+attention by a sensation picture. To finish the history of this work
+without recurring to it, I have only to add that it proved in all ways,
+financially and otherwise, a failure.
+
+Mr. Pettitt was a most devoted student of nature, and his best pictures
+had the character of faithful studies. He would sit down in some rocky
+dell by the side of a stream in Wales, and paint rocks and trees month
+after month with indefatigable perseverance; but he had no education,
+either literary or artistic, and very little imaginative power. His only
+safety was in that work from nature, and he would have stuck to it most
+resolutely had there been any regularity in the encouragement he
+received; but his income, like that of all painters who are not
+celebrated, was very uncertain, and he could not quietly settle down to
+the tranquil studies that he loved. Anxiety had made him imprudent; it
+had driven him to try for notoriety. The Nebuchadnezzar picture, and
+other mistakes of a like magnitude, were the struggles of a disquieted
+mind. Pettitt had a very large family to maintain, and did nothing but
+paint, paint from morning till night, except for half-an-hour after his
+light lunch, when he read the "Times." As the great picture did not
+advance very rapidly, he worked by gaslight after the short London
+winter day, and often pursued his terrible task till the early hours of
+the morning, when exhausted nature could resist no longer, and be fell
+asleep on a little iron bed in the studio. There were days when he told
+me he had worked twenty hours out of the twenty-four. All this was a
+perfectly gratuitous expenditure of time and health that could not
+possibly lead to any advantage whatever.
+
+Pettitt was a very kind and attentive teacher, and his method was this:
+He would begin a picture in my presence, give me two white canvases
+exactly the same size, and then tell me to copy his hour's work twice
+over. Whilst he painted I watched; whilst I painted he did not look over
+me, but went on with his own work. He was always ready to answer any
+question and to help me over any difficulty. In this way he soon
+initiated me into the processes of oil-painting so far as I required any
+initiation, for most of them were familiar to me already. Unfortunately,
+Pettitt had no conception of art. This needs a short explanation, as the
+reader may allowably ask how a man without any conception of art could
+be even a moderately successful artist.
+
+The answer is that men like Mr. Pettitt regard painting simply as a
+representation of nature, and their pictures are really nothing but
+large and laborious studies. Pettitt was a most sincere lover of nature,
+but that was all; he knew little or nothing of those necessities and
+conditions that make art a different thing from nature. The tendency of
+his teaching was, therefore, to lead me to nature instead of leading me
+to art, and this was a great misfortune for me, as my instincts were
+only too much in the same direction already. I could get nature in the
+country, and that in endless abundance; what I needed at that time was
+some guidance into the realm of art.
+
+Pettitt taught me to draw in a hard, clear, scientific manner. He
+himself knew a little geology, and one of his sons was a well-informed
+geologist. I copied studies of cliffs that were entirely conceived and
+executed in the scientific spirit.
+
+The ideas of artistic synthesis, of seeing a subject as a whole, of
+subordination of parts, of concentration of vision, of obtaining results
+by opposition in form, light and shade, and color, all those ideas were
+foreign to my master's simple philosophy of art. In his view the artist
+had nothing to do but sit down to a natural subject and copy with the
+utmost diligence what was before him, first one part and then another,
+till the whole was done. My master, therefore, only confirmed me in my
+own tendencies, which were to turn my back on art and go to nature as
+the sole authority. Mr. Ruskin's influence had impelled me in the same
+direction. Every one is the product of his time and of his teachers. It
+is not my fault if the essentially artistic elements in art were hidden
+from me in my youth. Had I perceived them at that time they would only
+have seemed a kind of dishonesty.
+
+If Mr. Pettitt had written an autobiography it would have been extremely
+interesting. He was the twenty-fifth child of his father, and five were
+born after him. He began by being apprenticed to a cabinet-maker, but
+did not take to the work, and was put into a printing-office. Then he
+served an apprenticeship to a japanner, and married very early on
+incredibly small earnings, which, however, he increased by his rapidity
+in work and his incessant industry. Before the expiration of his
+apprenticeship he had a shop of his own, and sold japanned tea-trays and
+bellows. When he was able to rent a house, he made all the furniture
+with his own hands, and took a pride in having it very good, either
+solid mahogany or veneered. He saved money in the japanning business,
+and then on these savings undertook to teach himself painting. His
+earliest works were sold for anything they would fetch. Whilst I was in
+London he recognized one of them, a small picture that he immediately
+bought back for sixpence. There had been a fall in its market value,
+alas! for the original price was ninepence. Pettitt had a fancy for
+collecting his early daubs, as they confirmed his sense of progress.
+Having acquired some knowledge of painting, he engaged himself on weekly
+wages as a decorator of steamboat panels. His employers wanted quantity
+rather than finish, but Pettitt liked to finish as well as he could, and
+recommended his fellow-workmen to study from nature. This led to his
+dismissal.
+
+During the time of his poverty, Pettitt made an excursion into France,
+and being at Paris with a companion as penniless as himself, he had to
+devise means for reaching England without money. The pair had nothing of
+any value but a flute, and the flute had silver keys, so it was a
+precious article. With the proceeds in their pockets the friends tramped
+to Boulogne on foot, and there they arrived in the last stage of
+poverty. They cleaned themselves as well as they could before showing
+their faces at the hotel they had patronized when richer, and there they
+stayed for some days in the hope of a remittance from an uncle. That
+relative was of opinion that a little hardship would surely bring the
+travellers back to England, and so he sent them nothing. What was to be
+done? They avowed the whole case to the hotel-keeper, who not only made
+no attempt to detain them, but filled their empty purses. The story
+concludes prettily, for the obdurate uncle relented on their arrival,
+and at once repaid the Frenchman.
+
+Pettitt long preceded Mr. Louis Stevenson in the idea of travelling in
+France with a donkey. He, too, explored some mountainous districts in
+the centre or south of France with a donkey to carry his luggage, and
+the two companions slept out at nights, as Mr. Stevenson did afterwards.
+At last Pettitt met with an old woman whose lot seemed to him
+particularly hard. She had to walk from a hill-village down to the
+valley every day, nearly twenty miles going and returning; so Pettitt
+made her a present of his donkey, and she prayed for him most fervently.
+
+Another of my master's pedestrian rambles extended for fifteen hundred
+miles along the coast of Great Britain. During this excursion he
+accumulated a vast quantity of sketches, truthful memoranda, almost as
+accurate as the photographs which have now superseded studies of that
+kind.
+
+Pettitt had made astonishing progress considering the humble position he
+started from; but unfortunately for me he was not a man of culture, even
+in art. One of his friends, a journalist, who often called at the
+studio, and who saw a little deeper than most people, said to me one day
+that the art of painting, as practised by many fairly successful men
+(and he referred tacitly to my master), might be most accurately
+described as "a high-class industry."
+
+For my part I worked very steadily when in London, and made rapid
+progress. It was not quite in the right direction, unfortunately.
+
+No reader of these pages will be able to imagine what a sacrifice that
+stay in London was for me. The studio was never cleaned, and very badly
+ventilated. My master did not perceive this amidst the clouds of his own
+tobacco smoke, but for me, who had come from perfect cleanliness and the
+pure air of our northern hills, it was almost unbearable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+1853-1854.
+
+Acquaintance with R. W. Mackay.--His learning and accomplishments.--His
+principal pursuit.--His qualities as a writer.--Value of the artistic
+element in literature.--C. R. Leslie, R. A.--Robinson the
+line-engraver.--The Constable family.--Mistaken admiration for minute
+detail.--Projected journey to Egypt.--Mr. Ruskin.--Bonomi.--Samuel
+Sharpe.--Tennyson.
+
+My lodgings were at Maida Hill, and I soon became personally acquainted
+with a writer whom I knew already by correspondence, Mr. R. W. Mackay,
+author of "The Progress of the Intellect."
+
+Mr. Mackay was for many years a kind friend of mine. An incident
+occurred long afterwards which put an end to this friendship. I made
+some reference to him in a review that was not intended to be unkind or
+depreciatory in any way, as I always felt a deep respect for Mr. Mackay,
+but unhappily he saw it in another light, and so it ended our
+intercourse. In 1853, and for long afterwards, there was nothing to
+foreshadow a rupture of this kind, and I am still able to write of my
+old friend as if he had always remained so.
+
+Mr. Mackay was primarily a scholar and secondarily an artist. He had
+been educated at Cambridge, and being gifted with an extraordinary
+memory, he accumulated learning in very abundant stores. As to his
+memory, it is said that he once accepted a challenge to recite a
+thousand lines of Virgil, and did it without error. He had a good
+practical knowledge of French and German. He possessed a large
+collection of water-color sketches made during his travels in Italy and
+elsewhere, work of a kind that an amateur might judiciously practise, as
+there was no false finish about them. They recalled scenes that had
+interested him either by their natural beauty, which he appreciated, or
+by association with classical literature.
+
+I hardly like to use the word "gentleman," because it is employed in so
+many different senses, but I never knew anybody who realized my
+conception of that ideal more perfectly than Mr. Mackay. In him, as
+Prince Leopold said of another, all culture and all refinement met. He
+was extremely simple in all his ways, and averse to every kind of vanity
+and ostentation. He had a sufficient fortune for a refined life, and did
+not care for any kind of wasteful extravagance. All belonging to him was
+simple and in good taste. He did not see very much society; that which
+he did see included several men and women of distinguished ability.
+
+Mr. Mackay's chief pursuit was one to which I would never have devoted
+laborious years--theology on the negative side. His idea was that the
+liberation of thought could only be accomplished by going painfully over
+the whole theological ground and _explaining_ every belief and phase of
+belief historically and rationally. My opinion was, and is, that all
+this trouble is superfluous. The true liberation must come from the
+enlargement of the mind by wider and more accurate views of the natural
+universe. As this takes place, the mediaeval beliefs must drop away of
+themselves, and we now see that this process is actually in operation.
+So far from devoting a life to the refutation of theological error, I
+would not bestow upon such an unnecessary and thankless toil the labor
+of a week or a day.
+
+The habit of study and reflection had done Mr. Mackay some harm in one
+respect; it had withdrawn him too much from commonplace reality. He
+always seemed to be moving in a dream, and to recall himself to the
+actual world by an effort. This is a result of excessive culture that I
+have observed in other cases. My conclusion is that all the culture in
+the world, all the learning, all the literary skill and taste put
+together, are not so well worth having as the keen and clear sense of
+present reality that common folks have by nature.
+
+Mr. Mackay was a laborious and careful writer, and he had a good style
+of its kind, though it was more remarkable for strength and soundness
+than for vivacity and ease. It was too much of one texture to be
+attractive, and so he never became a popular author. Of course the
+heterodoxy of Mr. Mackay's opinions was one great cause of his failure
+to catch the public ear in England, but even that difficulty can be got
+over by a great literary artist. He tried to do his best, as to literary
+form, but he never condescended to write for the market in any way, and
+used to maintain that if a book was to be profitable it _must_ be
+written for the market.
+
+I do not quite agree with this opinion. I should say, rather, that
+literature resembles painting in being one of the fine arts, and that
+when a book, like a picture, is a fine work of art, it has a great
+chance of being a commercial success.
+
+Renan's books have been very successful literary speculations, because
+Renan is a first-rate artist. Mackay would have been a better artist in
+literature if he had not been so much overpowered by the immense masses
+of his materials.
+
+Amongst the new friends I gained at Mr. Mackay's house was C. R. Leslie,
+the painter. I was charmed with him from the first, and retain to this
+day the liveliest recollection of his exquisitely urbane manners, and
+even of the tones of his voice. Leslie was a man of unquestionable
+genius, but entirely free from the tendency to despise other people,
+which so often accompanies genius. On first meeting with him I took him
+for a clergyman, and told him of it later. He felt rather flattered than
+otherwise by the mistake, and I have no doubt that his modest nature
+would at once refer to points on which the average clergyman would
+probably be his superior. Some artists are lost in admiration of their
+own works, so that the way to please them is to praise what they have
+done themselves; but the way to please Leslie was to praise what
+Constable had done. His admiration for Constable was quite as strong a
+passion as Mr. Ruskin's admiration of Turner, though it did not express
+itself in such perfervid language. I might at that time have become
+Constable's pupil, indirectly. Leslie would have educated me in the art
+of that master. I had nothing to do but work by myself, copying studies
+and pictures by Constable in a studio of my own within a short distance
+of Leslie's house, and he would have come to me often to advise.
+Robinson, the eminent line-engraver, strongly urged me to put myself
+under Leslie's direction, and this, I believe, was the Academician's
+kind, indirect way of offering it. On the other hand, I did not wish to
+hurt Pettitt by leaving him, and Constable's choice of quiet rural
+subjects was to me, at that time, uninteresting. I disliked tame
+scenery, not having as yet the artistic perceptions which are needed for
+the appreciation of it.
+
+Leslie introduced me to Constable's family, who were very kind, and they
+showed me all the sketches of his that remained in their possession. My
+love for precise and definite drawing made me unable to see the real
+merits of those studies, though I was not much mistaken in thinking that
+drawing of the quality I then cared for was not to be found in them.
+Constable was essentially what the French understand by the word
+_paysagiste_; that is, an artist who studies the every-day aspects of
+common nature broadly. He would have done me much good at that time, if
+I had felt interested in him, but the lover of the Western Highlands
+could not bring himself to care for the fields and hedgerows about
+Flatford. Pettitt, at any rate, loved our Lake District and Wales.
+Again, though I had a hearty and just admiration for Leslie's unrivalled
+power of painting expression in the faces of ladies and gentlemen in
+drawing-rooms, I had never seen any landscape by him except tame
+backgrounds, which seemed to me quite secondary, as they were.
+
+I had at that time a mistaken belief (derived originally from Mr. Ruskin
+and confirmed by Mr. Pettitt) that there was something essentially
+meritorious in bestowing great labor on a work of art. It is well for an
+artist to be habitually industrious, because that increases his skill,
+but it is a matter of indifference whether this or that picture has cost
+much or little labor, provided that the artist has clearly expressed
+what he desired. Mr. Robinson, the line-engraver, gave me a good lesson
+on this subject. We were looking at a drawing by Millais in Indian ink
+which was penned all over in minute hatchings. I was full of admiration
+for the industry of the artist, but Robinson thought it labor thrown
+away. I met Mr. Ruskin personally one evening, and we examined a
+water-color by John Lewis which was on a table-desk. The drawing was
+fortunately glazed, for as Mr. Ruskin was holding the candle over it the
+composite dropped on the glass. He pointed out the minute beauties of a
+camel's eye, which was painted so carefully that even the hairs of the
+eyelash were given, and the reflections on the mirror of the eye. This
+praise of minute detail was at that time only too much in accordance
+with my own taste. I had an intense admiration for such feats of skilled
+industry as the wonderful lattices that Lewis used to paint with the
+eastern sunshine streaming through them on a variety of different
+surfaces. I met John Lewis himself. He was a fine-looking man, with a
+beard which at that time was of the purest silvery white. I afterwards
+had the advantage of a little correspondence with Lewis. He wrote well,
+and expressed his opinions about art-work very clearly in his letters.
+They amounted chiefly to this: Work always as much from nature as
+possible, and give all the care you can.
+
+At that time I had a settled scheme for going to travel and work in
+Egypt, and it would have been better for me than Scotland on account of
+the greater sameness of the effects. I mentioned this project to Mr.
+Ruskin, who said that he avoided travelling in countries where he could
+not be sure of ordinary comforts, such as a white table-cloth and a
+clean knife and fork; still, he would put up with a great deal of
+inconvenience to be near a mountain. Talking of Turner's paintings in
+comparison with his water-colors, he said he would rather have half the
+drawings than all the oil pictures. He compared a drawing of Nemi with
+an oil picture that we could see at the same time, two works almost of
+the same date, and gave reasons for preferring the water-color.
+
+My Egyptian scheme brought me into relations with Bonomi, who at that
+time was a famous traveller. Bartlett, the artist-traveller, whose works
+had been very widely spread abroad by engraving, told me that when he
+was ill of a fever at Baalbec he was nursed by a sheik who wore a beard
+and rode an Arab horse. This sheik spoke English, and was, in fact,
+Bonomi, who had adopted the manners of the wandering Arabs, and would
+have remained amongst them if his English friends had not persuaded him
+to return.
+
+Bonomi was one of the liveliest little men I ever met. I feel almost
+guilty of a fraud with regard to him, for his amiability towards me was
+due in great part to his belief of my statement that I was going to
+Egypt; yet I never went there, and shall certainly not go now. My only
+excuse is that I sincerely believed the same statement myself. He said
+that the effects of color and light in Egypt at morning and evening were
+perfectly inconceivable. He recommended me to travel, not on the Nile
+itself, but on the bank with camels, as that gave a greatly superior
+view, both of the country and the river.
+
+Mr. Samuel Sharpe was a charming, straightforward old gentleman, who
+said what he thought, without any feeble concession to other people's
+opinions. He did not share the prevalent enthusiasm for Turner, which
+was of course in great part factitious, as many of the people who
+praised Turner so warmly then had laughed at his pictures a few years
+before. Mr. Sharpe thought that Turner was an unsafe guide for a young
+landscape-painter to imitate. It is remarkable, as a matter of fact, how
+little practical influence Turner has had upon the progress of landscape
+art. Another and a stronger proof of the independence of Mr. Sharpe's
+judgment was his opinion about England and Russia. He did not think it
+necessary to oppose Russia's progress towards Constantinople by force,
+but thought there was room enough for the two empires without collision.
+If Mr. Sharpe's opinion had prevailed, there would have been no Crimean
+War, but he and those who thought with him were very much isolated at
+that time.
+
+I met at his house a cousin of Miss Martineau, who told us some good
+stories, especially about Tennyson. On this a brother of our host said
+that he was once travelling when he met with a party of tourists, among
+whom he recognized the Laureate. "Who _is_ that gentleman?" said they.
+"He has been the life and soul of our party, and we cannot get a clue to
+his name, for he has baffled us in every way, tearing it off his luggage
+and out of the book he was reading." Mr. Sharpe betrayed the secret, not
+much to the Laureate's satisfaction. When travelling in Scotland some
+time afterwards I myself met with Tennyson, so a tourist kindly
+explained who he was in these words: "That's Alfred Tennyson, _the
+American poet_."
+
+Such is fame!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+1854.
+
+A visit to Rogers.--His home.--Geniality in poets.--Talfourd.--Sir
+Walter Scott.--Leslie's picture, "The Rape of the Lock."--George
+Leslie.--Robert Leslie.--His nautical instincts.--Watkiss Lloyd.--
+Landseer.--Harding.--Richard Doyle.
+
+Mr. Leslie took me one afternoon to see old Mr. Rogers, the poet. When
+we arrived he was out for a drive, so we quietly examined the works of
+art in the house until his return.
+
+The interest of that house was quite peculiar to itself. Even the
+arrangement of the furniture had been unaltered for years, and as the
+rooms, just as we saw them, had been visited by most people of note
+during nearly two generations, they had an interest from association
+with famous names that could not be rivalled, at that time, by any other
+rooms in London. The dining-room, for example, was exactly in the same
+state as when Byron dined there, and would eat nothing but a biscuit.
+Leslie said: "I have seen Mrs. Siddons sitting on the corner of that
+sofa near the fire, and Walter Scott walk up to her and shake hands."
+Leslie mentioned many other celebrities, but none of them were so
+interesting to me as the authors of "Waverley" and "Childe Harold."
+
+Many of the material objects about us had a history of their own. A
+stand that carried an antique vase had been carved by Chantrey when a
+young unknown furniture-carver, and so had the sideboard, as Chantrey
+reminded Mr. Rogers long afterwards, when he was received as a guest in
+the same room. The fender, chimney-piece, and ceiling had been designed
+by Flaxman, the panels of a cabinet had been painted by Stothard.
+
+We went upstairs to see some pictures in Rogers' bedroom, in itself a
+very simple, homely place, with the old man's flannels warming before
+the fire. The picture in that room which pleased me most was a subject
+borrowed from Raphael, by Leslie,--a lady teaching her boy to read,--but
+it was treated freely by Leslie from other models. The boy was his son
+George (the future Academician) when young; he had already begun to be
+good-looking.
+
+As we were examining this picture, Mr. Rogers returned from his drive
+and received us in the dining-room. He said, "Mr. Hamerton, I think I've
+seen you before," but I said he was mistaken, so he held out his hand
+and went on: "Well then, I'm very glad to see you now, especially so
+well introduced. Have you been all over the house? You have the honor of
+knowing a very distinguished artist. Look at that picture on the
+sideboard, of the poor babes in the Tower! Don't you like it? I think it
+is beautiful, beautiful. Nobody ought to be able to look at such a
+picture without shedding tears. See the light on the heads--oh! it is
+beautiful!" Then he began to ramble a little, but soon came back to
+realities, and invited Leslie to dine the next day and meet two
+distinguished friends. "I'd rather have you by yourself," he added; "you
+and I could do very well without the others."
+
+This was the Rogers of 1854,--senile, as was natural at the age of
+ninety-one years and eight months, yet still retaining much of the old
+Rogers, hospitable, sometimes caustic, sometimes pathetic, and always a
+true lover and appreciator of the fine arts. Leslie declared him to be
+the only amateur who had knowledge enough to form a good collection
+without assistance.
+
+I dined with Leslie the same day, and the talk turned upon the poets.
+Leslie said that the virtue of geniality was of great value to a poet,
+and that if Byron had possessed the geniality of Goldsmith, he would
+have been as great a poet as Shakespeare, but that his misanthropy
+spoiled all his views of life. In saying this, Leslie probably
+underestimated the literary value of ill-nature. Much of Byron's
+intensity and force is due to the energy of malevolence. The success of
+Ruskin's earlier writings was due in part to the same cause. In
+periodical literature, it was pure _méchanceté_ that first made the
+"Saturday Review" successful.
+
+Talking of Talfourd (who had lately died on the bench) Leslie said that
+he was a high liver, and that led him to give an account of Sir Walter
+Scott's way of life. At dinner he would eat heartily of many dishes and
+drink a variety of wines. At dessert he drank port; and last of all a
+servant brought him a small wooden bowl full of neat whiskey, which he
+drank off. He then either wrote or talked till midnight, and refreshed
+himself with a few glasses of porter before going to bed. Leslie did not
+mean to imply that Scott was intemperate for a man of a robust
+constitution who took a great deal of exercise, but only that, like
+Talfourd, he was a high liver. It is remarkable, in connection with the
+subject of Scott's own habits, that eating and drinking are so often and
+so minutely described in his novels. His heroes and heroines always have
+hearty appetites, except when they are laid up with illness.
+
+A few days after our visit to Rogers, I went to see Leslie's picture of
+"The Rape of the Lock," and met Robinson, the engraver, on my way. He
+told me to expect the finest modern picture I had ever seen. It was
+certainly one of the most perfect works of its class. The action and
+expression of the sixteen figures were as lively as in a Hogarth, with
+more refinement. Leslie was completely in sympathy with Queen Anne's
+time, and reproduced it with unfailing zest and knowledge. He had been
+very careful about details. The interior at Hampton Court had been
+painted on the spot, and all the still life in the picture, even to a
+fan, had been studied with equal accuracy. Mrs. Leslie's mother sat
+looking at the picture, and making the liveliest comments on the subject
+and the actors. She would get up without hesitation to see something
+more nearly, and turn round with perfect balance of body to make her
+remarks to the company. She appeared to me then to be about sixty, but
+the age of her daughter made that impossible. _Her real age was
+ninety-three!_ It seemed incredible that she was older than Mr. Rogers.
+Her grandchildren were playfully sarcastic at times, to draw her out in
+argument.
+
+"We know, grandmamma, that you are a dandy yourself, so no wonder that
+you admire the dresses in the picture."
+
+"Yes, yes, I _do_ like people to be dressed as well as possible,--as
+well, I mean, as they can really afford. I like them to wear the very
+best materials as tastefully as they can." Whilst she was looking at the
+picture, Mr. Leslie sat down by her side and read the passage from "The
+Rape of the Lock" that his painting illustrated. It was a very
+interesting scene--the master with his children about him, and his wife
+and her old mother all looking at his last and greatest work, whilst he
+was reading Pope's perfect verses so beautifully.
+
+I have scarcely mentioned Leslie's sons yet. George, the future
+Academician, was an intimate friend of mine in those days. He was a
+clever talker, and he had the advantage--often precious to a taciturn
+companion like me--of never allowing the conversation to flag for a
+single instant. I think I never knew any one of the male sex, with the
+exception of Francis Palgrave, who could keep up such an abundant stream
+of talk as George Leslie. This led some of his friends to think that he
+would never have any practical success in art, but he afterwards proved
+them to be in the wrong. He had a frank, straightforward, boyish nature,
+with a fund of humor, and a healthy disposition to be easily pleased.
+His philosophy of life, under an appearance of careless gayety, was,
+perhaps, in reality deeper than that of my learned friend Mr. Mackay;
+for whilst the elderly scholar was laboring painfully and thanklessly to
+elucidate the past, the young artist was enjoying the present in his own
+way, and looking forward hopefully to the future. The buoyancy of
+spirits that George Leslie had in those days is an excellent gift for a
+young artist, because it carries him merrily over the difficulties of
+his craft. His brother Robert was older and graver. He painted landscape
+and marine subjects; but though his pictures have been regularly
+accepted at the Academy he has had no popular success. This may be
+attributed in great part to his habit of living away from London. Robert
+Leslie has all his life had very strong nautical instincts, and very
+likely knows more about shipping than any other artist. My belief is
+that one reason why he has not been a very successful painter is that
+he knows too much about nature, and lives too much in the presence
+of nature, which is always overwhelming and discouraging. After
+I knew him in London, Robert Leslie indulged his nautical instincts
+in sailing and yacht-building, as well as in painting marine pictures.
+Aided only by a single workman, he constructed a vessel of thirty-six
+tons. With this and other yachts he has made himself familiar with
+the southern coasts of England, and has frequently crossed the
+Atlantic both on steamers and sailing-vessels. Now that we are both
+getting elderly men I heartily regret not to have seen more of Robert
+Leslie; but so it is in life,--so it has been particularly in _my_
+life,--we are separated by distance from those who might have been our
+most intimate and most valued friends. [Footnote: Robert Leslie had a
+literary gift, and wrote some clever papers, which have been collected
+and published under the title of "A Sea Painter's Log."]
+
+Another friend, gained during my first stay in London, was Mr. Watkiss
+Lloyd, who has given up many of the best years of his life to
+intellectual pursuits. He has been much devoted to ancient Greek
+literature and history, and has studied Greek art with unflagging
+interest at the same time, so that he possesses an advantage over most
+scholars in knowing both sides of the Hellenic intellect. He has a
+manly, frank, and generous nature, with cheerful, open manners. Watkiss
+Lloyd is one of several superior men amongst my acquaintances who have
+not achieved popularity as authors. The reason in his case may be that
+as he has never been obliged to write for money, he has never cared to
+study the conditions of success. I told him once, when we were talking
+on this subject, that in my opinion it was most necessary to have a
+clear and definite idea of the kind of public one is addressing, and
+that we ought to write to an especial public, as St. Paul wrote to the
+Ephesians. Failure may be caused by having confused ideas about our
+public, or by writing only for ourselves, as if our works were destined
+to remain in manuscript like a private journal. A man may write what is
+clear for himself, when it will require to be read twice or three times
+by another. Besides this reason, I am inclined to believe that the
+constant study of ancient Greek is not a good preparation for popular
+English authorship. The scholar and the successful writer are two
+distinct persons. They may be occasionally combined in one by accident,
+but if the reader will run over in his mind the names of popular modern
+authors, he will find very few distinguished scholars amongst them.
+
+However this may be, Watkiss Lloyd is something better than a popular
+author; he is an intellectual man, truly a lover of knowledge and of
+wisdom. Without shutting his eyes to the evils that are in the world, he
+does not forget the good. On one occasion, after a terrible malady that
+had occurred to one dear to him, I said that undeserved diseases seemed
+to me clear evidence of imperfection in the universe. He answered, that
+as we receive many benefits from the existing order of things that we
+have not merited in any way, so we may accept those evils that we have
+not merited either. This struck me as a better reason for resignation
+than the common assertion that we are wicked enough to deserve the most
+frightful inflictions. We do not really believe that our wickedness
+deserves cancer or leprosy.
+
+I never wished to push myself into the society of celebrated persons for
+the purpose of getting acquainted with them, but I plead guilty to that
+degree of curiosity which likes to see them in the flesh. I knew
+Landseer by sight, and probably rather astonished him once in a London
+street by taking my hat off as if he had been Prince Albert. He used to
+pass an evening from time to time at Leslie's house, and I met him
+there. He then seemed a very jovial, merry English humorist, with a
+natural talent for satire and mimicry; but there was another side to his
+nature. If he enjoyed himself heartily when in company, he often
+suffered from deep depression when alone. I remember seeing him by
+himself when he looked the image of profound melancholy. At that time I
+had warmer admiration for his art than I have now, and the general
+public looked upon him as the greatest artist in England. No doubt he
+was very observant, and had a wonderful memory for animals and their
+ways, as well as some invention; he had also unsurpassable technical
+skill, of a superficial kind, in painting.
+
+Harding was another very clever artist whom I met at Leslie's. I had
+correspondence with him a little as a teacher, and had studied his
+works. He had taught many amateurs, including Mr. Ruskin and a clever
+friend of mine in the North. I admired his skill, but disliked his
+extreme artificiality of style, and the more I went to nature the more
+objectionable did it appear to me. The kind of success which is attained
+by forcing nature into drawing-masters' set forms never tempted me in
+the least. Harding was at one time probably the most successful
+drawing-master in England. The word "clever" characterizes him exactly.
+He was clever in the art of substituting himself for nature, clever in
+the wonderful facility with which he used several graphic arts
+technically very different from each other, and clever especially in
+that supreme tact of the successful drawing-master by which he makes the
+amateur seem to get forward rapidly. He had immense confidence in
+himself, and in his own theories and principles.
+
+Another well-known artist whom I met at Leslie's was Richard Doyle. He
+had great gifts of wit and invention, with a curiously small fund of
+science,--genius without the knowledge that might have given strength to
+genius. It is impossible, however, to feel any regret on this account,
+for if Doyle's drawings had been thoroughly learned they would have lost
+their _naïveté_. He was intelligent enough to make even his lack of
+science an element of success, for he turned it into a pretended
+simplicity. His own face was mobile and expressive, and it was evident
+that he passed quickly from one idea to another without uttering more
+than a small percentage of his thoughts.
+
+I remember dancing "Sir Roger de Coverley" when Landseer and Richard
+Doyle were of the set. They were both extremely amusing, but with this
+difference: that whereas Landseer evidently laid himself out to be funny
+in gesture and action, the fun in Doyle's case lay entirely in the play
+of his physiognomy. Leslie, too, had a most expressive face--not
+handsome (I mean, of course, the elder Leslie; his son George is
+handsome), but most interesting, and full of meaning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+1854.
+
+Miss Marian Evans.--John Chapman, the publisher.--My friend William
+Shaw.--His brother Richard.--Mead, the tragedian.--Mrs. Rowan and her
+daughter.--A vexatious incident.--I suffer from nostalgia for the
+country.
+
+Mr. Mackay took me to one of the evening receptions that were given at
+that time by Mr. John Chapman, the publisher. On our way he spoke of
+Miss Marian Evans, then only known to a few as a translator from the
+German, and to still fewer as a contributor of articles to the
+"Westminster Review,"--a periodical that she partly directed. Neither
+the translations nor the articles revealed anything beyond good ordinary
+literary abilities. Mr. Mackay told me, however, that this Miss Evans
+was a very accomplished lady, and played remarkably well on the piano.
+
+She was at Mr. Chapman's little conversazione, and performed for us. I
+remember being well pleased with the music, and thinking that she was
+one of the best amateurs I had heard, but I cannot remember what she
+played, nor anything about her talk, which would probably be a series of
+little private conversations with people that she already knew.
+
+Mr. John Chapman was young at that time, and a very fine-looking man. He
+had entered upon the most unprofitable line of business that he could
+have chosen in the England of those days, the trade in philosophic
+free-thinking literature of the highest class. The number of buyers was,
+of course, exceedingly limited, both by the thoughtful character of the
+works published, and by the unpopularity of the opinions expressed in
+them. The marvel is that such a speciality in publishing could be made
+to support itself at all. As a matter of fact, some of the wealthier
+free-thinkers published their works, or those of others, at their own
+expense, and some helped to maintain the "Westminster Review." Things
+have altered wonderfully since then. At the present day the literature
+of free inquiry is presented to the world by the richest and most
+eminent publishing firms, and free-thinkers have access to the most
+influential and the most widely disseminated periodicals.
+
+Some readers of this autobiography may still look upon John Chapman's
+speciality with horror; but such a feeling would be unjust. The books he
+published were generally high in tone, and they certainly never
+condescended to the use of unbecoming language in dealing with matters
+held sacred by the majority of the English people. The only object of
+that modest propaganda was to win for Englishmen the right to think for
+themselves, and also to express their thoughts. That battle has been
+won, and, for my part, I feel nothing but respect for those who had
+courage to confront the stern intolerance of the past.
+
+My society in London was not entirely confined to the pursuers of
+literature and art. I had a few other friends, especially one old
+school-fellow, William Shaw, afterwards an able London solicitor. His
+mind was an odd compound of manly sense in everything connected with his
+profession, and boyishness in other ways. He always retained that
+boyishness, which was probably an excellent thing for him as a
+relaxation from serious cares. He took little interest in the fine arts,
+but at a later period he had the wonderful goodness to give house-room
+to some of my unpopular and unsalable pictures, and went so far, in the
+way of friendship, that he actually hung them in his dining-room! He was
+very fond of recalling reminiscences of our childhood, especially what
+he characterized as "the great Fulledge railway swindle." When we were
+little boys we undertook the construction of a miniature railway on his
+father's land, and issued shares to pay for the rolling plant and the
+rails. We got together rather a handsome sum in this way from various
+good-natured friends, and after the expiration of some weeks could show
+them a rather long embankment. Then we got tired of spade work, and the
+enterprise languished. Finally the works came to a standstill, and I
+believe we spent the shareholders' money on something else, for
+assuredly they never saw it again. After beginning so hopefully in the
+art of getting up bubble companies, it is perhaps to be regretted that
+we did not continue, as we might have been eminent financiers by this
+time. My friend was very active in his youth. I have seen him run by the
+side of a galloping horse in a field, holding by the mane, and vault on
+the animal's back, after which it went on faster than ever and leapt a
+little brook or a hedge. An odd incident occurs to my recollection just
+now. My friend had a susceptible heart, and a ravishing beauty was
+staying at a certain, country house, so we drove over to call there that
+he might see her. I went with him, and we had a dog-cart with a very
+lively horse. The drive was in the form of a great circle before the
+front door, so he tried to turn to the left; but the horse had decided
+for the right, and between them they effected a compromise by taking a
+straight cut over the lawn and flower-beds, which presented a deplorable
+appearance afterwards. Any one else would have felt a little confused
+after such an accident, but Shaw relied upon the good-nature of the
+ladies, who always forgave him everything in consideration for his
+winning ways and his handsome face.
+
+William Shaw's brother, Richard, was the first member of Parliament who
+represented Burnley. I met him in London in 1854, and remember a
+description he gave of an old gentleman who was then living permanently
+at the Tavistock Hotel. That old gentleman was a perfect mystery; no one
+knew where he came from: he never either wrote or received a letter, he
+had no settled occupation, but read all the papers, and used to swear
+aloud quite dreadfully when he found any fact or opinion that displeased
+him. He compensated for this bad language by shouting "Bravo! bravo! Go
+it, my boy!" when he found an article to his mind. He once rambled twice
+round Covent Garden market without being able to find his way out, and
+on discovering that he had got back to the Tavistock, attributed all his
+difficulties to the waiter, and scolded him most furiously. The mystery
+about him, and his odd manners, would have been an attraction for
+Dickens.
+
+Amongst other acquaintances that I made in London was Mead, the
+tragedian of Drury Lane Theatre. I recollect admiring his "Iago" very
+much. His countenance, which was agreeable and bland in private life,
+could be made to express all the evil passions with astonishing power.
+He was rather a skilful painter, having occasionally been able to sell a
+picture for twenty pounds. When he had a little time to spare, Mead
+would come and work on Pettitt's great picture of the Golden Image. He
+once drew my portrait, and I drew his. My guardian was not quite pleased
+that I should know an actor, but Mead attracted me by the superior tone
+of his conversation. It was the first time in my life that I had met
+with an accomplished talker; I had known plenty of talkers who were only
+fluent, but Mead had always something interesting to say, and he
+invariably said it with easy finish and good taste. In a word, he was a
+master of spoken English, and did not fear to make use of his power, not
+having the usual English false shame which prevents our countrymen from
+saying things quite perfectly. Mead had tender feelings. Once after
+reading in a newspaper the account of some battle of no great
+importance, as we consider such events from a distance, he suddenly
+realized, in imagination, the effect of the news on the relatives of the
+killed and wounded, and burst into tears. Mead was good enough to accept
+on one or two occasions the simple kind of hospitality that I could
+offer him at my lodgings, and I find notes in the diary recording the
+happy swiftness of the hours I spent with him.
+
+I never made the slightest attempt to enter what is specially called
+"London Society," though I had some friends or acquaintances who
+belonged to it. My time was entirely taken up with work and visits to a
+few houses. I am astonished on looking back to those days by the extreme
+kindness of people who were much older than myself, and for whom my
+society could have no other attraction than the opportunity it offered
+for the exercise of their own goodness. I had one merit, that of being
+an excellent listener, which has been a great advantage to me through
+life. A distinguished Frenchman once said to me, "You are the best
+listener I ever met;" but he had been accustomed to his own countrymen
+who are not generally patient or attentive for more than a few seconds
+at a time, and who have the habit of interruption.
+
+It is possible, too, that my manners may have been good, for my dear
+guardian, so kind and mild about most things, could not tolerate
+anything like boorishness, and never hesitated to correct me. Another
+effect of her influence upon me was that I liked the society of
+well-bred ladies, and felt quite at ease in it. There was a most
+intelligent Danish family of ladies, Mrs. Rowan and her daughters, who
+received me very kindly. They spoke English wonderfully, with something
+like a slight Cumberland accent, and I believe their German was as good
+as their English. Mrs. Rowan had been a friend of Thorwaldsen the
+sculptor, and possessed three hundred and fifty of his original
+drawings, which I did not see, as she had lent them to Prince Albert. A
+singular and most vexatious incident is associated in my memory with
+those drawings, and I am sure Mrs. Rowan could never think of them
+without remembering it. She had (too kindly) lent them to an artist, who
+returned them, indeed, but not without having exercised his own talents
+in improving them, as drawing-masters do to the work of their youthful
+pupils. The reader may imagine the depth of Mrs. Rowan's gratitude. Her
+daughter, Frederica, whose name afterwards became generally known, was
+one of the most cultivated and agreeable women I ever met. Her nature
+had been a little saddened by family misfortunes (the Rowans had been a
+very wealthy family in Denmark), but her quiet gravity was of a noble
+kind, and if she took life seriously she had sufficient reasons for
+doing so.
+
+My studies under Mr. Pettitt went on very regularly all this time, and I
+made great _apparent_ progress, although, as will be seen later, it was
+not progress in the right direction. One little incident may be
+mentioned in proof that I could at least imitate closely. The reader is
+already aware that my master's system of teaching consisted in bringing
+a picture slowly forward in my presence, whilst I was to copy what had
+been done. One day, when the picture had got well forward, Mr. Pettitt
+took up my copy by mistake and put it on his own easel. After he had
+worked upon it for a quarter of an hour I thanked him for the
+improvement. He said he had been quite unconscious of the difference,
+and told me to work on his own canvas to repay him for his labor on
+mine. Critics will please understand that I know how little this proves
+as well as they do. It proves nothing beyond a talent for imitation and
+the possession of some manual skill. I have sometimes thought in later
+life that if instead of going so much to nature I had mimicked some
+particular painter I might have obtained recognition as an artist.
+
+Notwithstanding so much that was agreeable in my London life, it was
+still a hard trial of resolution for me to work in a close,
+ill-ventilated, and gloomy studio without any view from its window, and
+in the beginning of April I returned to the country. From that day to
+this I have never lived in London, which has probably been a misfortune
+to me, both as artist and writer. I have been there frequently on
+business, but have never stayed a day or an hour longer than the time
+necessary to get through what was most pressing. It is curious, but
+perfectly true, that I have never in my life felt the slightest desire
+to purchase or rent any house whatever in London, and there is not a
+house in all "the wilderness of brick" that I would accept as a free
+gift if it were coupled with the condition that I should live in it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+1854
+
+Some of my relations emigrate to New Zealand,--Difficulties of a poor
+gentleman.--My uncle's reasons for emigration.--His departure.--Family
+separations.--Our love for Hollins.
+
+In the month of April, 1854, an event occurred which was of great
+importance in our family.
+
+My eldest uncle, Holden Hamerton, emigrated to New Zealand with all his
+children, and a son and daughter of my uncle Hinde accompanied them.
+This suddenly reduced our circle by eleven persons, without counting a
+young family belonging to my cousin Orme.
+
+My uncle, who was at that time a solicitor in Halifax, had reached a
+very critical period in the life of a _père de famille_. His children
+were grown up and expensive, and he had tried various ways of
+economizing without any definite result. Amongst others, he had given up
+Hopwood Hall, his mansion in Halifax, and had converted the stabling at
+Hollins into a residence for his wife and the children who remained with
+her. The stables were large enough to make a spacious dwelling. I
+remember the regret I felt on seeing the workmen pull down the handsome
+oak stalls, and remove the beautiful pavement, which was in blocks of
+smooth stone carefully bevelled at the angles. My unfortunate uncle
+lived like a bachelor in a small house in Halifax to be near his office,
+and only came to Hollins for the Sunday.
+
+It is, of course, very easy to criticize a comparatively poor gentleman
+with a large family who is trying not to be ruined. It is easy to say
+that he ought to live strictly within his income, whatever it may be;
+but to do that strictly would require an iron resolution. He must cut
+short all indulgences, annihilate all elegancies, set his face against
+all the customs of his class. His attitude towards his wife and children
+must be one of stern refusal steadily and implacably maintained. If he
+relaxes--and all the influences around him tend to make him relax--the
+old habits of customary expense will re-establish themselves in a few
+weeks. He must cut his family off from all society, and with regard to
+himself he must do what is far more difficult--cut himself off from all
+domestic affection, behave like a heartless miser, and, at the very time
+when he most needs a little solace and peace in his own home, constitute
+himself the executor of the pitiless laws that govern the human
+universe.
+
+My uncle was not equal to all this. He could make hard sacrifices for
+himself, and, in fact, did reduce his own comforts to those of a poor
+bachelor, but he could not find in his heart to refuse everything to his
+family; so that although they made no pretension now to anything like an
+aristocratic position, my uncle still found himself to be living rather
+beyond his means, and the expense of establishing his sons and daughters
+in England being now imminent, and avoidable only in one way, he spent
+days, and I fear also nights, of anxiety in arriving at a determination.
+
+A journey to Scotland settled the matter. My uncle visited his eldest
+son Orme, who was then at Greenock, and he discovered, as I had done,
+that my cousin was married. Of course I had kept his secret, having
+found it out by accident when a guest under his roof. The young man
+offered to accompany his father to New Zealand, and my uncle, who loved
+his eldest son, thought that this would be some compensation for leaving
+England. He did not know that Orme's irresistible instinct for changing
+his residence would make the New Zealand expedition no more than a
+temporary excursion for him.
+
+Another reason for emigrating to New Zealand was this: My uncle's second
+son, Lewis, had abandoned the profession of the law and gone to
+Australia by himself, where he was now a shepherd in the bush. He would
+rejoin his father, and they would be a re-united family. All of them
+would be together in New Zealand except one, my cousin Edward, who lay
+in the family vault in Burnley Church. I had feelings of the strongest
+fraternal affection for Edward, and if the reader cares to see his
+likeness, he has only to look at the engraved portraits of Shelley,
+especially the one in Moxon's double-column edition of 1847. The
+likeness there is so striking that, for me, it supplies the place of
+any other.
+
+Edward died at the age of seventeen. He had a gentle and sweet nature;
+but although he resembled Shelley so closely in outward appearance, he
+was without any poetical tendency. His gifts were arithmetical and
+mathematical, and whenever he had a quarter of an hour to spare he was
+sure to take a piece of paper and cover it all over with figures. His
+early death certainly spared him much trouble that he was hardly
+qualified to meet. He had that dislike to physical exercise which often
+accompanies delicate health, though there was no appearance of weakness
+till the beginning of his fatal illness.
+
+I well remember my uncle's last visit to his sisters. He did not say
+that it was his last, but left some clean linen in the house, saying he
+would want it when he came again. In this way there was a little
+make-belief of hope; but I doubt if my aunts were really deceived, and I
+did not quite know what to think. My uncle seemed flushed and excited,
+and contradicted me rather sharply because I happened to be in error
+about something of no importance. It was a hard moment for him, as he
+loved his sisters, and had the deepest attachment to Hollins, where he
+was born, and where he had passed the happiest days of his life. His
+last visit has remained so distinct in my memory that I can even now see
+clearly his great stalwart figure in the chair on the right-hand side of
+the fireplace. Then he left us and passed the window, and since that day
+he never was seen again at his old place. I can imagine what it must
+have been to him to turn round at the avenue gate, and look back on the
+gables of Hollins, knowing it to be for the last time.
+
+His wife and the rest of his family went away without inflicting upon
+themselves and us the pain of a farewell. I was present, however, at
+Featherstone when my cousin Hinde left for New Zealand. One of his
+sisters accompanied him out of pure sisterly devotion. She thought he
+would be lonely out in the colony, so she would go and stay with him
+till he married. He did not marry, and she never returned.
+
+The colonial strength of England is founded upon these family
+separations, but they are terrible when they occur, especially when the
+parents are left behind in the old country. To us who remained this
+wholesale emigration in our family produced the effect of a great and
+sudden mortality. For my part I have received exactly one letter from
+the New Zealand Hamertons since they left. It was a very interesting
+letter, interesting enough to make me regret "there was but one."
+
+My uncle's property sold well, and on leaving England he had still a
+balance of ten thousand pounds in his pocket, which was more than most
+emigrants set out with; but he built a good house on the estate he
+purchased, and it was ruined in the war. His wife was a woman of great
+courage and wonderful constitutional cheerfulness, both severely tested
+by three months of incessant sea-sickness on the outward voyage. They
+met with one terrible storm, during which the captain did not hope to
+save the vessel, and my uncle and aunt sat together in their cabin
+clasping each other's hands, and calmly awaiting death.
+
+After their departure my guardian and her sister remained at Hollins as
+tenants of the new proprietor. We still clung to the old place, but it
+did not seem the same to us. On the night of the sale by auction my aunt
+said to me, sadly, as we took our candlesticks to go to bed: "It is
+strange to think that we positively do not know under whose roof we are
+going to sleep to-night." The change was felt most painfully by her. My
+guardian had a more resigned way of accepting the evils of life; she had
+a kind of Christian pessimism that looked upon terrestrial existence as
+not "worth living" in itself, and a little less or more of trouble and
+sorrow in this world seemed to her scarcely worth considering, being
+only a part of the general unsatisfactoriness of things. Her sister had
+intense local attachments, and the most intense of them all was for this
+place, her birthplace, where she had passed her youth. This attachment
+was increased in her case by a strong, deep, and poetic sentiment that I
+hardly like to call aristocratic, because that word will have other
+associations (of pride in expensive living) for most readers. My aunt
+had the true sentiment of ancestry, and it was painful to her to see a
+place go out of a family. I have the same sentiment, though with less
+intensity, and there were other reasons that made me love Hollins
+very much. At that time the natural beauty that surrounded it was
+quite unspoilt. We were near to the streams and the moors that I
+delighted in, and the idea of being obliged to leave, as we might be
+at any time by the new proprietor, was painful to a degree that only
+lovers of nature will understand.
+
+Even now, in my fifty-fourth year, I very often dream about Hollins,
+about the old garden there, and the fields and woods, and the rocky
+stream. Sometimes the place is sadly and stupidly altered in my dream,
+and I am irritated; at other times it is improved and enriched, and the
+very landscape is idealized into a nobler and more perfect beauty.
+
+I need only add to this account of my uncle's emigration, that when he
+landed on the shores of New Zealand in much perplexity as to where he
+should go to find a temporary lodging, a colonist met him, and said that
+he had been told by the Masonic authorities to receive him fraternally.
+This he did by taking the whole family under his roof and entertaining
+them as if they had been old friends, thereby giving my uncle ample time
+to make his own arrangements. In a later chapter of this autobiography I
+intend to give a short account of what happened to the emigrants
+afterwards.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+1854.
+
+Resignation of commission in the militia.--Work from nature.--Spenser,
+the poet.--Hurstwood.--Loch Awe revisited.--A customer.--I determine to
+learn French well.--A tour in Wales.--Swimming.--Coolness on account of
+my religious beliefs.--My guardian.--Evil effects of religious
+bigotry.--Refuge in work.--My drawing-master.--Our excursion in Craven.
+
+After returning to the country I went through another militia training,
+and soon afterwards resigned my commission. According to my present
+views of things I should probably not have done so, as it would be a
+satisfaction to me now to feel myself of some definite use to my
+country, even in the humble capacity of a militia officer; but in those
+days the militia was not taken seriously by the nation, so the officers
+did not take it seriously either, and, after a brief trial, a great many
+of them resigned. The recognized motive for going into the militia was a
+social motive, and as I never had any social ambition it mattered
+nothing to me that there were a few men of rank in the regiment. I had
+not any real companions in it, for I was much younger than most of my
+brother officers, and it is likely enough that the society of an
+inexperienced youth could offer no attraction to them. My love of my
+chosen studies was accompanied by a complete indifference to amusements,
+so that the cards and billiards after mess were not an attraction for
+me, and my ignorance of field sports has always made me feel rather a
+"muff" and a "duffer" in the society of country gentlemen.
+
+The Colonel was always kind to me, and as I looked older than my age, he
+quite forgot how young I was and procured for me a captain's commission.
+As a matter of fact, I believe that a minor cannot hold a militia
+captaincy, because it requires a property qualification. Somehow, the
+Colonel was afterwards reminded of my age, and then thought he had made
+a mistake; however, my resignation rectified it. In fairness to myself
+it may be added that my military work was always done in a manner that
+gained the approval of our real master, the adjutant.
+
+One cause that certainly influenced me in leaving the regiment was the
+necessity for appearing to be either a member of the Church of England
+or a member of the Church of Rome. As I belonged to neither, I felt it a
+hardship to be compelled to march to church every Sunday, and go through
+the forms of the service. It will, of course, seem absurd to any man of
+the world that such a trifle should have any weight whatever. Nobody
+endowed with what men of the world call "common-sense" ever hesitates
+about going through forms and ceremonies, when he can maintain or
+increase his worldly position by doing so. As for me, I make no claim to
+superior virtue, but cannot help feeling an invincible repugnance to
+these shams. My own line had been chosen when I refused to go to Oxford
+and sign the Thirty-nine Articles; the forced conformity in the militia
+was a deflection of the compass, but it has pointed straight ever since,
+and may it point straight to the end!
+
+When free again, I set to work from nature, applying what Pettitt had
+taught me. I drew and painted studies of rocks with great fidelity, and
+as rocks are hard things, and my work was as hard as possible, there can
+be no doubt that so far it was like nature. Pettitt had strengthened the
+positive and scientific tendency that there is in me, so that I was
+quite ardent in the pursuit of the rigid and measurable truths, neither
+knowing nor caring anything about those more subtle and less manifest
+truths that the cultivated artist loves. However, I painted away
+diligently enough from nature, giving two long sittings each day, and
+writing only in the evenings. My readings at this time were chiefly in
+Shakespeare and Spenser.
+
+I may have been attracted to Spenser partly by the belief, greatly
+encouraged by the local antiquaries, that the famous Elizabethan poet
+lived for some time with relations of his at Hurstwood,--a hamlet by the
+side of the same stream that passes by Hollins and a mile or two above
+it. The old houses at Hurstwood remained as they were in Spenser's time,
+and the particular one is known where his reputed family lived.
+[Footnote: The presumptive evidence in favor of the theory that Spenser
+stayed at Hurstwood is very strong, and of various kinds. The reader who
+takes any interest in the subject is referred to the "Transactions of
+the Burnley Literary and Scientific Club," vol. iv., 1886, where he will
+find a wood-cut of the house that once belonged to the Spensers of
+Hurstwood.] As you ascend the stream beyond Hurstwood, you approach the
+open moors, which were always a delight to me. The love of the stream
+and the hills beyond frequently led me to pass the little hamlet where
+Spenser is said to have lived, and in this way he seemed to belong to
+our own landscape, since he must have wandered by the same river, and
+looked upon the same hills. So as a boy whose daily wanderings were by
+the Avon might naturally think of Shakespeare more frequently than
+another, my thoughts turned often to the author of the "Faerie Queene."
+I never read that poem steadily and fairly through, but I strayed about
+in it, which is the right way of reading it.
+
+My own pursuit of poetry at that time led me to think of a poem founded
+on the legends of Loch Awe. To penetrate my mind more completely with
+the genius of the place, I went there in the summer of 1854, and worked
+at the poem, besides drawing some illustrations, of which a few were
+afterwards engraved. Notwithstanding a great liking for Loch Awe, my
+stay there was not particularly agreeable. I lived, of course, at the
+inns, which were not very good, and having no companion, not even a
+servant, I felt rather dull and lonely, especially on the wet days. A
+well-known London banker was staying at the inn of Cladich at the same
+time with me, so we became acquainted, and he wished to purchase one of
+my studies; but as I intended to keep them all, I declined. This was
+very foolish, as it would have been easy to do another of the same
+subject for myself, and the mere fact of selling would have been a
+practical encouragement, especially as that purchase would probably have
+been followed by others. The very smallest beginnings are of importance.
+It is much for a young artist to get a few pounds fairly offered by a
+customer who knows nothing about him except his work, and is actuated by
+no motives of friendship.
+
+Another visitor at the same inn exercised upon me an influence of a very
+different kind. He had a young daughter with him, and to keep the girl
+in practice he constantly spoke French to her. I had studied the
+language more than most English boys do, and yet I found myself totally
+unable to follow those French conversations. This plagued me with an
+irritating sense of ignorance, so I looked back on my education
+generally, and found it unsatisfactory. Being conscious that my
+classical attainments were not very valuable, I determined to acquire
+some substantial knowledge of modern languages, and to begin by learning
+French over again, so as to write and speak it easily. This resolution
+remained in my mind as irrevocably settled, and was afterwards
+completely carried out.
+
+As I shall have a good deal to say about Loch Awe in future pages of
+this book, I omit all description of it here. Many of the days spent
+there in 1854 were rainy, and I sat alone writing my poem in a little
+bedroom on the ground-floor of the inn at Cladich. Of all literary work
+versification is the most absorbing, and if it is good for nothing else,
+it has at least the merit of getting one well through a rainy day.
+
+On my return from Scotland, I accompanied my guardian and her sister on
+a tour in Wales. We revisited Rhyl and some other places that I had seen
+with my father, including Caernarvon. This tour was of no importance in
+itself; but as from Scotland I had brought the resolution that made me
+seriously study French, so from Caernarvon I brought a resolution to
+master the art of swimming. Being in the water one morning, I suddenly
+found that I could swim after a fashion, and this led to more serious
+efforts. Our stream at home was delightful for mere bathing; but the
+rocks were an impediment to active exercise. I afterwards became an
+accomplished swimmer, and could do various tricks in the water, such as
+reading aloud from a book held in both hands, or swimming in clothes and
+heavy boots, with one hand out of the water carrying a paddle and
+drawing a canoe after me. I have often carried one of my little boys on
+my shoulders; but they are now better swimmers than myself, and the
+eldest has saved several men from drowning. It is an immense comfort, if
+nothing else, to be perfectly at home in the water, and it has increased
+my pleasure in boating a hundred-fold.
+
+There is nothing further of importance to be noted for the year 1854,
+except that I began to perceive a certain coolness, or what the French
+call _èloignement_, in our friends, which I attributed to my religious
+opinions. I never obtruded my opinions on any one, but did not conceal
+them beneath the usual conventional observances, so that our neighbors
+became aware that I did not think in a strictly orthodox manner, though
+they were in fact completely ignorant of the true nature of my beliefs.
+I remember one interesting test of my changed position in society. There
+was a certain great country house where I had been on the most intimate
+terms from childhood, where the boys called me by my Christian name, as
+I called them by theirs, and where my guardian and I were from time to
+time invited to dine, and sometimes to spend a day or two. When our
+militia regiment was in training, the owner of this house invited the
+officers to a grand dinner, and I, an old intimate friend, was omitted.
+It was impossible that this omission could have been accidental, and it
+was impossible not to perceive it. I afterwards learned that my
+religious views were regarded with disapproval in that house, and there,
+of course, the matter rested. At the same time, or soon afterwards, I
+noticed that invitations from certain other houses also came to an end,
+a matter of little consequence to me personally; but I thought that it
+might indirectly be injurious to my guardian and her sister, and began
+to feel that I had become a sort of social disgrace and impediment for
+them.
+
+It was probably about this time that my guardian bought for me some
+religious books, in which heterodox opinions were represented as being
+invariably the result of wickedness. I said it was a pity that religious
+writers could not learn to be more just, as heterodoxy might be due to
+simple intellectual differences. My guardian answered that she could
+perceive no injustice whatever in the statement that I complained of.
+This was infinitely painful to me, as coming from the person I most
+loved and esteemed in all the world. Another incident embittered my
+existence for some time. I had an intimate friend in Burnley, and my
+guardian said that she regretted this intimacy, not for any harm that my
+friend was likely to do me, but because with my "lamentable opinions" I
+might corrupt his mind. My answer to attacks of this kind has always
+been simple silence; when they came from other people I treated them
+with unfeigned indifference; but when they came from that one dear
+person, whose affection I valued more than all honors and all fame, they
+cut me to the quick, and then I knew by cruel experience what a dreadful
+evil religious bigotry is. For what had I ever said or done to deserve
+censure? I had as good a right to my opinions as other people had to
+theirs, yet I kept them within my own breast, and avoided even the
+shadow of offence. My only crime was the negative one of nonconformity.
+Even in my latter years, the same old spirit of intolerance pursues me.
+The nearest relation I have left in England said to my wife that she
+hoped my books had not an extensive sale, so that their evil influence
+might be as narrowly restricted as possible. As for her, she would not
+even look into them. [Footnote: In writing this autobiography I often
+suddenly remember some forgotten incident of past times. Here is one
+that has just occurred to me. When walking out in 1853, I met a boy who
+shouted after me, "You're the fellow that thinks we are all like rats!"
+He had probably heard my opinions discussed in his family circle--how
+justly and how intelligently his exclamation shows.]
+
+My refuge in those days was that best of all refuges--occupation. I was
+constantly at work on my different pursuits, and led a very healthy life
+at Hollins. The greatest objection to it was an evil that I have had to
+put up with in several different places, and that is intellectual
+isolation, especially on the side of art. I had nobody to speak to on
+that subject, except my old drawing-master, Mr. Henry Palmer. He had
+inevitably fallen into the usual routine of futile teaching, which is
+the fault of an uneducated public opinion, and of which the
+drawing-masters themselves are the first victims, so I did not take
+lessons from him; but he felt a warm and earnest interest in the fine
+arts, and we talked about old masters and modern masters for hours
+together in my study at Hollins, and in our walks. We once made a
+delightful sketching excursion together into the district of Craven, and
+I remember that at Bolton Abbey we met with a wonderful German who could
+sit in the presence of nature and coolly make trees according to a
+mechanical recipe. He might just as well have drawn the scenery of the
+Wharfe in the heart of Berlin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+1855.
+
+Publication of "The Isles of Loch Awe and other Poems."--Their sale.
+--Advice to poetic aspirants.--Mistake in illustrating my book of
+verse.--Its subsequent history.--Want of art in the book.--Too much
+reality.--Abandonment of verse.--A critic in "Fraser."--Visit to Paris
+in 1855.--Captain Turnbull.--Ball at the Hôtel de Ville.--Louis
+Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel.
+
+My volume, "The Isles of Loch Awe and other Poems," appeared the day I
+came of age, September 10, 1855. It was published at my own expense, in
+an edition of two thousand copies, of which exactly eleven were sold in
+the real literary market. The town of Burnley took thirty-six copies,
+from a friendly interest in the author, and deserves my deepest
+gratitude--not that the thirty-six copies quite paid the expenses of
+publication!
+
+Perhaps some poetic aspirant may read these pages, and if he does, he
+may accept a word of advice.
+
+The difficulty in publishing poems is to get them fully and fairly read
+and considered by some publisher of real eminence in the trade. It is
+difficult to appreciate poetry in manuscript, and there is such a
+natural tendency to refuse anything in the form of metre, that it is
+well to smooth the way for it as much as possible. I would, therefore,
+if I had to begin again, get my poems put into type, and a private
+edition of one hundred copies should be printed. A few of these being
+sent to the leading publishers, I should very soon ascertain whether any
+one of them was inclined to bring out the work. If they all declined, my
+loss would be the smallest possible, and I should possess a few copies
+of a rare book. If one publisher accepted, I should get an appeal to the
+public, which is all that a young author wants. [Footnote: A single copy
+clearly printed by the type-writing machine would now be almost as good
+for the purpose as a small privately printed edition.]
+
+I committed a great error in illustrating my book of verse. The
+illustrations only set up a conflict of interest with the poetry, and
+did no good whatever to the sale, whilst they vastly increased the cost
+of publication. Poetry is an independent art, and if it cannot stand on
+its own merits, the reason must be that it is destitute of vitality.
+
+The subsequent history of this volume of poems is worth telling to those
+who take an interest in books. It was published at six shillings, and as
+the sale had been extremely small, I reduced the price to half-a-crown.
+The reduction brought on a sale of about three hundred copies, and there
+it stopped. I then disposed of the entire remainder to a wholesale buyer
+of "remainders" for the modest sum of sixpence per copy. Since I have
+become known as a writer of prose, many people have sought out this book
+of verse, with the wonderful and unforeseen result that it has resumed
+its original price. I myself have purchased copies for five shillings
+each that I had sold for sixpence (not a profitable species of
+commerce), and I have been told that the book is now worth six
+shillings, exactly my original estimate of its possible value to an
+enlightened and discriminating public.
+
+Emerson wrote that the English had many poetical writers, but no poet,
+and this at a time when Tennyson was already famous. The same spirit of
+exclusion, in a minor degree, will deny the existence of all poets
+except three, or perhaps four, in a generation. It would be presumptuous
+to hope to be one of the three; but I do not think it was presumptuous
+in me to hope for some readers for my verse. As this autobiography
+approached that early publication, I read the volume over again, with a
+fresh eye, after an interval of many years, exactly as if it had been
+written by somebody else. There is poetry in the verse, and there is
+prose also, my fault having been, at that time, that I was unable to
+discriminate between the two. I had not the craft and art to make the
+most of such poetical ideas as were really my own. These defects are
+natural enough in a very young writer who could not possibly have much
+literary skill. Amongst other marks of its absence, or deficiency, must
+be reckoned the facility with which I allowed the mere matter-of-fact to
+get into my verse, not being clearly aware that the matter-of-fact is
+death to poetic art, and that nothing whatever is admissible into poetry
+without being first idealized. Another cause of inferiority was that my
+emotions were too real. The consequence of reality in emotion is very
+curious, being exactly the contrary of what one would naturally expect.
+Real emotion expresses itself simply and briefly, and often quite feebly
+and inadequately. [Footnote: Amongst the uneducated genuine emotion is
+often voluble; but poets usually belong to the educated classes.] The
+result, of course, is that the reader's feelings are not played upon
+sufficiently to excite them. Feigned, or artistic emotion, on the
+contrary, leaves the poetic artist in the fullest possession of all his
+means of influence, and he works upon the reader's feelings by slow or
+by sudden effects at his own choice. [Footnote: Two diametrically
+opposite opinions on this subject are held by actors, some of whom think
+that in their profession emotion ought to be real, others that it ought
+to be feigned. I know nothing about acting; but have always found in
+literature and art, and even in the intercourse of life, that my own
+real emotions expressed themselves very inadequately.]
+
+The failure of "The Isles of Loch Awe" occasioned me rather a heavy
+loss, which had the effect of making me economical for two or three
+years, during which I did not even keep a horse. I also came to the
+conclusion that nobody wanted my verses, and (not having either the
+inspiration of Shelley and Keats, or the dogged determination of
+Wordsworth) I gave up writing verse altogether, and that with a
+suddenness and completeness that astonishes me now. Young men are
+extreme in their hopes and in their discouragements. I had expected to
+sell two thousand copies of a book of poetry by a totally unknown
+writer, and because I did not immediately succeed in the hopeless
+attempt I must needs break with literature altogether! It did not occur
+to me to pursue the art of prose composition, which is quite as
+interesting as that of verse, and ten times more rewarding in every
+sense.
+
+My book had been, on the whole, very kindly received by the reviews, and
+a very odd incident occurred in connection with a well-known periodical.
+At that time "Fraser's Magazine" was one of the great authorities, and a
+contributor to it was so pleased with my poems that he determined to
+write an important article upon them. One of his friends knew of this
+intention, and told me. He revealed to the contributor, accidentally,
+that he had given me this piece of information, on which the contributor
+at once replied that since the author of the volume had been made aware
+that it was to be reviewed, it was evident that his knowledge of the
+fact had made it impossible to write the article. Does the reader
+perceive the impossibility? I confess that it is invisible for me.
+However, by this trifling incident my book missed a most important
+review, which, at that time, might have classed it amongst the
+noticeable publications of the period.
+
+My commercial non-success in poetry threw me back more decidedly upon
+painting, and this in combination with the resolution to learn French
+well, of which something has been already said, made me go to Paris in
+the autumn of 1855. I was at that time so utterly ignorant of modern
+languages, as they are spoken, that in the train between Calais and
+Paris I could not be certain, until I was told by an Englishman who was
+more of a linguist than myself, which of my fellow-travellers were
+speaking French and which Italian. I made such good use of my time in
+Paris that when returning to England on the same railway, after the
+short interval of three months, I spoke French fluently (though not
+correctly) for the greater part of the way, and did not miss a syllable
+that was said to me.
+
+I had no knowledge of Paris and its hotels, so let myself be guided by a
+fellow-traveller. We went to the Hôtel du Louvre, then so new that it
+smelt of plaster and paint. In those days, big, splendid hotels were
+almost unknown in Europe. The vast dining-hall, with its palatial
+decoration, impressed my inexperience very strongly. During my stay in
+the Hôtel du Louvre, I made the acquaintance of some English officers.
+One was a splendid-looking man of about twenty-eight, physically the
+finest Englishman I was ever personally acquainted with, and another was
+a much older and more experienced officer on leave of absence from
+India, where he ruled over a considerable territory. His name was
+Turnbull, and I have been told since by another Indian officer, that
+Captain Turnbull was the original of Colonel Newcome. Certainly, he was
+one of the kindest, most amiable, and most unpretending gentlemen I ever
+met. These two officers were invited to the ball at the Hôtel de Ville
+that was given by the Parisian municipality to the Emperor and King
+Victor Emmanuel, and it happened that the young military Adonis had not
+his uniform with him, whilst the idea of going to the ball without it,
+and appearing only like a commonplace civilian, was so vexatious as to
+be inadmissible. He therefore refused to go, and transferred his card to
+me; so I went with Captain Turnbull, who had a cocked hat like a
+general, and was taken for one. Some French people, by a stretch of
+imagination, even took him for Prince Albert!
+
+The Hôtel de Ville was very splendid on a night of that kind, and when,
+long afterwards, I saw it as a blackened ruin, the details of that past
+splendor all came back to me. The most interesting moment was when the
+crowd of guests formed in two lines in the great ball-room, and the
+Emperor and King took their places for a short time on two thrones,
+after which they slowly walked down the open space. I happened to be
+standing near a French general, who kindly spoke a few words to me, and
+just after that the Emperor came and shook hands with him, asking a
+friendly question. In this way I saw Louis Napoleon very plainly; but
+the more interesting of the two souvenirs for me is certainly that of
+the immortal leader of men who was afterwards the first King of Italy.
+As for Louis Napoleon, the sight of him in his glory called to mind an
+anecdote told of him by Major Towneley in our regiment. When an exile in
+London, he spoke to the major of some project that he would put into
+execution _quand je serai Empereur_. "Do you really still cherish hopes
+of that kind?" asked the sceptical Englishman. "They are not merely
+hopes," answered Louis Napoleon, "but a certainty." He believed firmly
+in the re-establishment of the Empire, but had no faith whatever in its
+permanence. This uneasy apprehension of a fall was publicly betrayed
+afterwards by the unnecessary plebiscitum. In a conversation with a
+French supporter of the Empire, Louis Napoleon said, "So long as I am
+necessary my power will remain unshakable, but when my hour comes I
+shall be broken like glass!" He believed himself to be simply an
+instrument in the hands of Providence that would be thrown away when no
+longer of any use.
+
+We who saw the sovereigns of France and Sardinia walking down that
+ball-room together, little imagined what would be the ultimate
+consequences of their alliance--the establishment of the Italian
+kingdom, then of the German Empire, with the siege of Paris, the
+Commune, and the total destruction of the building that dazzled us by
+its splendor, and of the palace where the sovereigns slept that night.
+
+Now they sleep far apart,--one in the Pantheon of ancient Rome, in the
+midst of the Italian people, who hold his name in everlasting honor; the
+other in an exile's grave in England, with a name upon it that is
+execrated from Boulogne to Strasburg, and from Calais to Marseilles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+1855.
+
+Thackeray's family in Paris.--Madame Mohl.--Her husband's encouraging
+theory about learning languages.--Mr. Scholey.--His friend, William
+Wyld.--An Indian in Europe.--An Italian adventuress.--Important meeting
+with an American.--Its consequences.--I go to a French hotel.--People at
+the _table d'hôte_.--M. Victor Ouvrard.--His claim on the Emperor.--M.
+Gindriez.--His family.--His eldest daughter.
+
+Captain Turnbull knew some English people in the colony at Paris, so he
+introduced me to two or three houses, and if my object had been to speak
+English instead of French, I might have gone into the Anglo-Parisian
+society of that day. One house was interesting to me, that of
+Thackeray's mother, Mrs. Carmichael Smith. Her second husband, the
+major, was still living, and she was a vigorous and majestic elderly
+lady. She talked to me about her son, and his pursuit of art, but I do
+not remember that she told me anything that the public has not since
+learned from other sources. I soon discovered that she had very decided
+views on the subject of religion, and that she looked even upon
+Unitarians with reprobation, especially as they might be infidels in
+disguise. My own subsequent experience of the world has led me to
+perceive that, when infidels wear a cloak, they generally put on a more
+useful and fashionable one than that of Unitarianism--they assume the
+religion that can best help them to get on in the world. However, I was
+not going to argue such a point with a lady who was considerably my
+senior, and I was constantly in expectation of being examined about my
+own religious views, knowing that it would be impossible for me to give
+satisfactory answers. I therefore decided that it would be better to
+keep out of Mrs. Carmichael Smith's way, and learned afterwards that she
+had a reputation for asserting the faith that was in her, and for
+expressing her disapproval of everybody who believed less. For my part,
+I confess to a cowardly dread of elderly religious Englishwomen. They
+have examined me many a time, and I have never come out of the ordeal
+with satisfaction, either to them or to myself.
+
+Thackeray's three daughters were in Paris at that time. I remember Miss
+Thackeray quite distinctly. She struck me as a young lady of uncommon
+sense and penetration, and it was not at all a surprise to me when she
+afterwards became distinguished in literature. Thackeray himself was in
+London, so I did not meet him.
+
+I went occasionally in the evening to see that remarkable woman, Madame
+Mohl. She was the oddest-looking little figure, with her original
+notions about toilette, to which she was by no means indifferent. In the
+year 1855 she still considered herself a very young woman, and indeed
+was so, relatively to the great age she was destined to attain. After I
+had been about six weeks in Paris, her husband gave me the first bit of
+really valuable encouragement about speaking French that I had received
+from any one.
+
+"Can you follow what is said by others?"
+
+"Yes, easily."
+
+"Very well; then you may be free from all anxiety about speaking--you
+will certainly speak in due time."
+
+An eccentric but thoroughly manly and honest Englishman, named Scholey,
+was staying at the Hôtel du Louvre at the same time with Captain
+Turnbull. He was an old bachelor, and looked upon marriage as a snare;
+but I learned afterwards that he had been in love at an earlier period
+of his existence, and that the engagement had been broken off by the
+friends of the young lady, because Scholey combined the two great
+defects of honesty and thinking for himself in religious matters. So
+long as people prefer sneaks and hypocrites to straightforward
+characters like Scholey, such men are likely to be kept out of polite
+society. A dishonest man will profess any opinion that you please, or
+that is likely to please you, so long as it will advance his interest.
+If, therefore, a lover runs the risk of breaking off a marriage rather
+than turn hypocrite, it is clear that his sense of honor has borne a
+crucial test.
+
+  "I had not loved thee, dear, so much,
+  Loved I not honor more!"
+
+Scholey spoke French fluently, and, as he lived on the edge of England,
+he often crossed over into France. I deeply regret not to have seen much
+more of him. One of his acts of kindness, in 1855, was to take me to see
+his old friend William Wyld, the painter, with whom I soon became
+acquainted, and who is still one of my best and most attached friends.
+Wyld lived and worked at that time in the same studio, in the Rue
+Blanche, where he is still living and working in this present year
+(1887), an octogenarian with the health and faculties of a man of fifty.
+
+There was, in those days, an Indian staying at the Hôtel du Louvre, who
+spoke English very well, but not French, so he was working at French
+diligently with a master. This Indian was always called "the Prince" in
+the hotel, though he was not a prince at all, and never pretended to be
+one, but disclaimed the title whenever he had a chance. He lived rather
+expensively, but without the least ostentation, and had very quiet
+manners. He progressed well with his French studies, but did not stay
+long enough to master the language. I was very much interested in him,
+as a young man is in all that is strange and a little romantic. He
+talked about India with great apparent frankness, saying, that naturally
+the Indians desired national independence, but were too much divided
+amongst themselves to be likely to attain it in our time. The Mutiny
+broke out rather more than a year afterwards, and then I remembered
+these conversations.
+
+"The Prince" had some precious and curious things with him, which he
+showed me; but his extreme dislike to attracting attention made him
+dress quite plainly at all times, especially when he went out, which was
+usually in a small brougham. Now and then an English official, from
+India, or some military officer, would call upon him, and sometimes they
+spoke Arabic or Hindostanee.
+
+There was a lady at the hotel who has always remained in my memory as
+one of the most extraordinary human beings I ever met. She was an
+Italian, good-looking, yet neither pretty nor handsome, and, above all,
+intelligent-looking. She dressed with studiously quiet taste, and used
+to dine at the _table d'hôte_ with the rest of us. Besides her native
+Italian, she spoke French and English with surprising perfection, and
+her manners were so modest, so unexceptionable in every way, that no one
+not in the secret would or could have suspected her real business, which
+was to secure a succession of temporary husbands in the most respectable
+manner, and without leaving the hotel. Her linguistic accomplishments
+gave her a wide field of choice, and representatives of various nations
+succeeded each other at irregular but never very long intervals. As I
+shall be dead when this is published, perhaps it may be as well to say
+that I was not one of the series. The reader may believe this when he
+remembers that I was very economical for the time being, in consequence
+of the loss on my book of poems. After a while my French teacher
+informed me that "the Prince" had been caught by the fair Italian, who
+established herself quietly somewhere in his suite of rooms. People did
+not think this very wrong in a Mahometan, but after his departure from
+Paris I happened to be studying some old Italian religious pictures in
+the Louvre, and suddenly became aware that the same lady was looking at
+a Perugino near me. This time she was with the Prince's successor,--a
+most respectable English gentleman, and so far as absolute correctness
+of outward appearance went, there was not a more presentable couple in
+the galleries. It is my opinion that she succeeded more by her good
+manners and quiet way of dressing than by anything else. She must have
+been a real lady, who had fallen into that way of life in consequence of
+a reverse of fortune.
+
+After a while I came to the conclusion that I was too much with English
+people at the Hôtel du Louvre, and an incident occurred which altered
+the whole course of my future life, and is the reason why I am now
+writing this book in France. I had been up late one night at the Opera,
+and the next morning rose an hour later than usual. An American came
+into the breakfast-room of the hotel and found me taking my chocolate.
+Had I risen only half-an-hour earlier, I should have got through that
+cup of chocolate and been already out in the streets before the American
+came down. To have missed him would have been never to know my wife,
+never even to see her face, as the reader will perceive in the sequel,
+and the consequences of not marrying her would have been incalculable.
+One of them is certain in my own mind. The modest degree of literary
+reputation that makes this autobiography acceptable from a publisher's
+point of view has been won slowly and arduously. It has been the result
+of long and steadfast labor, and there is no merely personal motive that
+would have ever made me persevere. Consequently, the existence of this
+volume, and any meaning that now belongs to the name on its title page,
+are due to my getting up late that morning in the Hôtel du Louvre.
+
+The American and I being alone in the breakfast-room, and shamefully
+late, were drawn together by the sympathy created by an identical
+situation, and began to talk. He gave some reasons for being in Paris,
+and I gave mine, which was to learn French. We then agreed that to get
+accustomed to the use of a foreign language the first thing was to
+surround ourselves with it entirely, and that this could not be done in
+a cosmopolitan place like the Hôtel du Louvre.
+
+"I have a French friend," the American said, "who could give you the
+address of some purely French hotel where you would not hear a syllable
+of English."
+
+After breakfast he kindly took me to see this friend, who was a merchant
+sitting in a pretty and tidy counting-house all in green and new oak.
+The merchant spoke English (he had lived in America) and said, "I know
+exactly what you want,--a quiet little French hotel in the Champs
+Élysées where you can have clean rooms and a well-kept _table d'hôte_."
+He wrote me the address on a card, and I went to look at the place.
+
+The hotel, which exists no longer, was in the Avenue Montaigne. It
+suited my tastes precisely, being extremely quiet, as it looked upon a
+retired garden, and the rooms were perfectly clean. There was only one
+story above the ground-floor, and here I took a bedroom and sitting-room
+looking upon the garden. The house was kept by a widow who had very good
+manners, and was, in her own person, a pleasant example of the
+cleanliness that characterized the house. I learned afterwards (not from
+herself) that she had been a lady reduced to poor circumstances by the
+loss of her husband, and that her relations being determined that she
+should do something for her living, had advanced some money on condition
+that she set up an establishment. Having no experience in hotel-keeping,
+she soon dissipated the little capital and lived afterwards on a
+pittance in the strictest retirement.
+
+When I took my rooms the small hotel seemed modestly prosperous. There
+were about a dozen people at the _table d'hôte_, but they did not all
+stay in the house. We had an officer in the army who had brought his
+young provincial wife to Paris, a beautiful but remarkably unintelligent
+person, and there were other people who might be taken as fair specimens
+of the better French _bourgeoisie_. The most interesting person in the
+hotel was an old white-headed gentleman whose name I may give, Victor
+Ouvrard, a nephew of the famous Ouvrard who had been a great contractor
+for military clothes and accoutrements under Napoleon I. Victor Ouvrard
+was living on a pension given by a wealthy relation, and doing what he
+could to push a hopeless claim on Napoleon III. for several millions of
+francs due by the first Emperor to his uncle. I know nothing about the
+great contractor except the curious fact that he remained in prison for
+a long time rather than give up a large sum of money to the Government,
+saying that by the mere sacrifice of his liberty he was earning a
+handsome income. The nephew was what we call a gentleman, a model of
+good manners and delicate sentiments. He would have made an excellent
+character for a novelist, with his constantly expressed regret that he
+had not a speciality.
+
+"Si j'avais une spécialité!" he would say, as he tapped his snuff-box
+and looked up wistfully to the ceiling--"si j'avais seulement une
+spécialité!" He felt himself humiliated by the necessity for accepting
+his little pension, and still entertained a chimerical hope that if the
+Emperor did not restore the millions that were due, he might at least
+bestow upon him enough for independence in his last years. There had
+been some slight indications of a favorable turn in the Emperor's mind,
+but they came to nothing. Meanwhile M. Victor Ouvrard lived on with
+strict economy, brushing his old coats till they were threadbare, and
+never allowing himself a vehicle in the streets of Paris. He was an
+excellent walker, and we explored a great part of the town together on
+foot. He kindly took patience with my imperfect French, and often gently
+corrected me. The long conversations I had with M. Ouvrard on all sorts
+of subjects, in addition to my daily lessons from masters, got me
+forward with surprising rapidity. I observed a strict rule of abstinence
+from English, never calling on any English people, with the single
+exception of Mr. Wyld, the painter, nor reading any English books. When
+M. Ouvrard was not with me in the streets of Paris, I got up
+conversations with anybody who would talk to me, merely to get practice,
+and in my own room I wrote French every day. Besides this, for physical
+exercise, I became a pupil in a gymnasium, and worked there regularly.
+One thing seemed strange in the way they treated us. When we were as hot
+as possible with exercise, at the moment of leaving off and changing our
+dress, men came to the dressing-rooms to sponge us with ice-cold water.
+They said it did nothing but good, and certainly I never felt any bad
+effects from the practice.
+
+The ice-cold water reminds me of a ridiculous incident that occurred in
+the garden of the Tuileries. M. Ouvrard and I were walking together in
+the direction of the palace, when we saw a Frenchman going towards it
+with his eyes fixed on the edifice. He was so entirely absorbed by his
+architectural studies that he did not notice the basin just in front of
+him. The stone lip of the basin projects a little on the land side, so
+that if you catch your foot in it no recovery is possible. This he did,
+and was thrown violently full length upon the thin ice, which offered
+little resistance to his weight. The basin is not more than a yard deep,
+so he got out and made his way along the Rue de Rivoli, his clothes
+streaming on the causeway. Some spectators laughed, and others smiled,
+but M. Ouvrard remained perfectly grave, saying that he could not
+understand how people could be so unfeeling as to laugh at a misfortune,
+for the man would probably take cold. Perhaps the reader thinks he had
+no sense of humor. Yes, he had; he was very facetious and a hearty
+laugher, but his delicacy of feeling was so refined that he could not
+laugh at an accident that seemed to call rather for his sympathy.
+
+A French gentleman who was staying at the hotel had a friend who came
+occasionally to see him, and this friend was an amiable and interesting
+talker. He had at the same time much natural politeness, and seeing that
+I wanted to practise conversation he indulged me by patiently listening
+to my bad French, and giving me his own remarkably pure and masterly
+French in return. His name, I learned, was Gindriez, and he was living
+in Paris by the tolerance of the Emperor. He had been Prefect of the
+Doubs under the second Republic, and had resigned his prefecture as soon
+as the orders emanating from the executive Government betrayed the
+intention of establishing the Empire. As a member of the National
+Assembly he had voted against the Bonapartists, and was one of the few
+representatives who were concerting measures against Napoleon when he
+forestalled them by striking first. After the _coup d'état_ M. Gindriez
+fled to Belgium, but returned to Paris for family reasons, and was
+permitted to remain on condition that he did not actively set himself in
+opposition to the Empire. M. Gindriez looked upon his own political
+career as ended, though he could have made it prosperous enough, and
+even brilliant, by serving the power of the day. A more flexible
+instrument had been put into his prefecture, a new legislative body had
+been elected to give a false appearance of parliamentary government, and
+an autocratic system had been established which M. Gindriez believed
+destined to a prolonged duration, though he felt sure that it could not
+last forever. Subsequent events have proved the correctness of his
+judgment. The Empire outlasted the lifetime of M. Gindriez, but it did
+not establish itself permanently.
+
+It was a peculiarity of mine in early life (which I never thought about
+at the time, but which has become evident in the course of this
+autobiography) to prefer the society of elderly men. In London I had
+liked to be with Mackay, Robinson the engraver, and Leslie, all
+gray-headed men, and in Paris I soon acquired a strong liking for M.
+Ouvrard, M. Gindriez, and Mr. Wyld. They were kind and open, and had
+experience, therefore they were interesting; my uncles in Lancashire
+had, no doubt, been kind in their own way, that is, in welcoming me to
+their houses, but they were both excessively reserved. Being at that
+time deeply interested in France, I was delighted to find a man like M.
+Gindriez who could give me endless information. His chief interest in
+life lay in French politics; art and literature being for him subjects
+of secondary concern, but by no means of indifference, and the plain
+truth is that he had a better and clearer conception of art than I
+myself had in those days, or for long afterwards. There was also for me
+a personal magnetism in M. Gindriez, which it was not easy to account
+for then, but which is now quite intelligible to me. He had in the
+utmost strength and purity the genuine heroic nature. I came to
+understand this in after years, and believe that it impressed me from
+the first. It is unnecessary to say more about this remarkable character
+in this place, because the reader will hear much of him afterwards. It
+is enough to say that I was attracted by his powers of conversation and
+his evident tenderness of heart.
+
+When we had become better acquainted, M. Gindriez invited me to spend an
+evening at his house after dinner, and I went. He was living at that
+time on a boulevard outside the first wall, which has since been
+demolished. His _appartement_ was simply furnished, and not strikingly
+different in any way from the usual dwellings of the Parisian middle
+class. I had now been absent for some weeks from anything like a home,
+and after living in hotels it was pleasant to find myself at a domestic
+fireside. M. Gindriez had several children. The eldest was a girl of
+sixteen, extremely modest and retiring, as a well-bred _jeune fille_
+generally is in France, and there was another daughter, very pretty and
+engaging, but scarcely more than a child; there were also two boys, the
+eldest a very taciturn, studious lad, who was at that time at the
+well-known college of Sainte Barbe. Their mother had been a woman of
+remarkable beauty, and still retained enough of it to attract the eye of
+a painter. She had also at times a certain unconscious grace and dignity
+of pose that the great old Italian masters valued more than it is valued
+now. M. Gindriez himself had a refined face, but my interest in him was
+due almost entirely to the charm and ease of his conversation.
+
+In writing an autobiography one ought to give impressions as they were
+received at the time, and not as they may have been modified afterwards.
+I am still quite able to recall the impression made upon me by the
+eldest daughter in the beginning of 1856. I did not think her so pretty
+as her sister, though she had a healthy complexion, with bright eyes and
+remarkably beautiful teeth, whilst her slight figure was graceful and
+well formed; but I well remember being pleased and interested by the
+little glimpses I could get of her mind and character. It was a new sort
+of character to me, and even in the tones of her voice there was
+something that indicated a rare union of strength and tenderness. The
+tenderness, of course, was not for me, a foreign temporary guest in
+those days, but I found it out by the girl's way of speaking to her
+father. I perceived, too, under an exterior of cheerfulness, rising at
+times to gayety, a nature that was really serious, as if saddened by a
+too early experience of trouble.
+
+The truth was, that in consequence of her father's checkered career,
+this girl of sixteen had passed through a much greater variety of
+experience than most women have known at thirty. Her mother, too, had
+for some time suffered almost continuously from ill-health, so that the
+eldest daughter had been really the active mistress of the house. Her
+courage and resolution had been put to the test in various ways that I
+knew nothing about then, but the effects of an uncommon experience were
+that deepening of the young nature which made it especially interesting
+to me. Afterwards I discovered that Eugénie Gindriez had read more and
+thought more than other girls of her age. This might have been almost an
+evil in a quiet life, but hers had not been a quiet life.
+
+We soon became friends in spite of the French conventional idea that a
+girl should not open her lips, but it did not occur to me that we were
+likely ever to be anything more than friends. Had the idea occurred,
+the obstacle of a difference in nationality would have seemed to me
+absolutely insuperable. I thought of marriage at that time as a
+possibility, but not of an international marriage. In fact, the
+difficulties attending upon an international marriage are so
+considerable, and the subsequent practical inconvenience so troublesome,
+that only an ardently passionate and imprudent nature could overlook
+them.
+
+I, for my part, left Paris without being aware that Mademoiselle
+Gindriez had anything to do with my future destiny; but she, with a
+woman's perspicacity, knew better. She thought it at least probable, if
+not certain, that I should return after long years; she waited
+patiently, and when at last I did return there was no need to tell on
+what errand.
+
+An incident occurred that might have been a partial revelation to me and
+a clear one to her. Before my departure from Paris, M. Ouvrard said to
+me that he had been told I was engaged to "une Française."
+
+"What is her name?"--he mentioned another young lady. Now to this day I
+remember that when he spoke of a French marriage as a possibility for me
+I at once saw, mentally, a portrait of Eugénie Gindriez. However, as a
+French marriage was _not_ a possibility, I thought no more of the
+matter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+1856.
+
+Specialities in painting.--Wyld's practice.--Projected voyage on the
+Loire.--Birth of the Prince Imperial.--Scepticism about his inheritance
+of the crown.--The Imperial family.--I return home.--Value of the French
+language to me.
+
+Being entirely absorbed in the study of French during my first visit to
+Paris, I did little in the practice of art. My Lancashire neighbor, who
+was studying in Paris, worked in Colin's atelier, and I have since
+regretted that I did not at that time get myself entered there, the more
+so that it was a decent and quiet place kept under the eye of the master
+himself, who had long been accustomed to teaching. My friend had
+certainly made good progress there. I was unfortunately influenced by
+two erroneous ideas, one of them being that the studies of a
+figure-painter could be of no use in landscape, [Footnote: This idea had
+been strongly confirmed by Mr. Pettitt.] and the other that it was wiser
+to be a specialist, and devote myself to landscape exclusively. It is
+surprising that the notion of a limited speciality in painting should
+have taken possession of me then, as in other matters I have never been
+a narrow specialist, or had any tendency to become one.
+
+The choice of a narrow speciality may be good in the industrial arts,
+but it is not good in painting, for the reason that a painter may at any
+time desire to include something in his picture which a specialist could
+not deal with. To feel as if the world belonged to him a painter ought
+to be able to paint everything he sees. There is another sense in which
+speciality may be good: it may be good to keep to one of the graphic
+arts in order to effect that intimate union between the man and his
+instrument which is hardly possible on any other terms.
+
+Wyld would have taught me landscape-painting if I had asked him, and I
+did at a later period study water-color with him; but his practice in
+oil did not suit me, for this reason: it was entirely tentative, he was
+constantly demolishing his work, so that it was hard to see how a pupil
+could possibly follow him. The advantage in working under his eye would
+have been in receiving a great variety of sound artistic ideas; for few
+painters know more about _art_ as distinguished from nature. However, by
+mere conversation, Wyld has communicated to me a great deal of this
+knowledge; and with regard to the practical advantages of painting like
+him they would probably not have ensured me any better commercial
+success, as his style of painting has now for a long time been
+completely out of fashion.
+
+My scheme in 1856 was to make a great slow boat voyage on the Loire,
+with the purpose of collecting a quantity of sketches and studies in
+illustration of that river; and my ardor in learning to speak French had
+for an immediate motive the desire to make that voyage without an
+interpreter. I have often regretted that this scheme was never carried
+out. I have since done something of the same kind for the Saône, but my
+situation is now entirely different. I am now obliged to make all my
+undertakings _pay_, which limits them terribly, and almost entirely
+prevents me from doing anything on a great scale. For example, these
+pages are written within a few miles of Loire side; the river that flows
+near my home is a tributary of the Loire; I have all the material outfit
+necessary for a great boating expedition, and still keep the strength
+and the will; but no publisher could prudently undertake the
+illustration of a river so long as the Loire and so rich in material, on
+the scale that I contemplated in 1856.
+
+It is unnecessary to trouble the reader with my crude impressions of
+European painting in the Universal Exhibition of that year. I no more
+understood French art at that time than a Frenchman newly transplanted
+to London can understand English art. The two schools require, in fact,
+different mental adjustments. Our National Gallery had sufficiently
+prepared me for the Louvre, which I visited very frequently; and there I
+laid the foundations of a sort of knowledge which became of great use
+many years afterwards, though for a long time there was nothing to show
+for it.
+
+No historical event of importance occurred during my stay in Paris,
+except the birth of the Prince Imperial. I was awakened by the cannon at
+the Invalides, and having been told that if there were more than
+twenty-one guns the child would be a boy, I counted till the
+twenty-second, and then fell asleep again. There existed, even then, the
+most complete scepticism as to the transmission of the crown. Neither M.
+Gindriez, nor any other intelligent Frenchman that I met, believed that
+the newly born infant had the faintest chance of ever occupying the
+throne of France. Before the child's birth I had seen his father and
+mother and all his relations at the closing ceremony of the Universal
+Exhibition, and thought them, with the exception of the Empress, a
+common-looking set of people. They walked round the oblong arena in the
+Palais de l'Industrie exactly as circus people do round the track at the
+Hippodrome. The most interesting figure was old Jerome--interesting, not
+for himself, as he was a nonentity, but as the brother of the most
+famous conqueror since Caesar.
+
+Being called back to England on a matter of business, I cut short my
+stay in Paris, and arrived at Hollins without having advanced much as an
+artist, but with an important linguistic acquirement. The value of
+French to me from a professional point of view is quite incalculable.
+The best French criticism on the fine arts is the most discriminating
+and the most accurate in the world, at least when it is not turned aside
+from truth by the national jealousy of England and the consequent
+antipathy to English art. At the same time, there are qualities of
+delicacy and precision in French prose which it was good for me to
+appreciate, even imperfectly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+1856.
+
+My first encampment in Lancashire.--Value of encamping as a part of
+educational discipline.--Happy days in camp.--The natural and the
+artificial in landscape.--Sir James Kay Shuttleworth's Exhibition
+project.--I decline to take an active part in it.--His energetic and
+laborious disposition.--Charlotte Brontë.--General Scarlett.
+
+The Loire expedition having been abandoned for the year 1856, and the
+Nile voyage put off indefinitely, I remained working in the north of
+England, discouraged, as to literature, by the failure of the book of
+verse, and without much encouragement for painting either; so the summer
+of 1856 was not very fruitful in work of any kind.
+
+Towards autumn, however, I took courage again, and determined to paint
+from nature on the moors. This led to the first attempt at encamping.
+
+It is wonderful what an influence the things we do in early life may
+have on our future occupations. In 1886, exactly thirty years later, I
+made the Saône expedition, for which two _absolutely essential_
+qualifications were an intimate knowledge of the French language and a
+practical acquaintance with encamping. The Roman who said that fifteen
+years made a long space in human life would have appreciated the
+importance of thirty, yet across all that space of time what I did in
+1856 told just as effectually as if it had been done the year before.
+_Moral_ (for any young man who may read this book): it is impossible to
+say how important the deeds of twenty-one may turn out to have been when
+we look back upon them in complete maturity. All we know about them is
+that they are likely to be recognized in the future as far more
+important than they seemed when they were in the present.
+
+Encamping is now quite familiar to young Englishmen in connection with
+boating excursions, and it has even been adopted in American pine
+forests for the sake of health; but in 1856 only military men and a few
+travellers knew anything about encampments. I was led into this art, or
+amusement (for it is both), by a very natural transition. Here are the
+three stages of it.
+
+1. You want to paint from nature in uncertain weather, and you build a
+hut for shelter.
+
+2. The hut is at some distance from a house, and you do not like to
+leave it, so you sleep in it.
+
+3. The accommodation is found to be narrow, and it is unpleasant to have
+one little room for everything, so you add a tent or two outside and
+keep a man. Hence a complete little encampment.
+
+Everybody considered me extremely eccentric in 1856 because I was led
+into encamping; but it was an excellent thing for me in various ways. A
+young man given up to such pursuits as literature and art needs a closer
+contact with common realities than aesthetic studies can give. The
+physical work attendant upon encamping, and the constant attention that
+_must_ be given to such pressing necessities as shelter and food, give
+exactly that contact with reality that educates us in readiness of
+resource, and they have the incalculable advantage of making one learn
+the difference between the necessary and the superfluous. I look back
+upon early camping experiments with satisfaction as an experience of the
+greatest educational value. Even now, in my sixth decade, I can sleep
+under canvas and arrange all the details of a camp with indescribable
+enjoyment, and (what is perhaps better still) I can put up cheerfully
+with the very humblest accommodation in country inns, provided only that
+they are tolerably clean.
+
+The arrangements of my hut on the moor near Burnley have been described
+in detail in "The Painter's Camp," so it is unnecessary to give a
+minute account of them in this place. I was entirely alone, except
+the company of a dog, and had no defence but a revolver. That month
+of solitude on the wild hills was a singularly happy time, so happy
+that it is not easy, without some reflection, to account for such
+a degree of felicity. I was young, and the brisk mountain air
+exhilarated me. I walked out every day on the heather, which I
+loved as if my father and mother had been a brace of grouse.
+Then there was the steady occupation of painting a big foreground study
+from nature, and the necessary camp work that would have kept morbid
+ideas at a distance if any such had been likely to trouble me. As for
+the solitude, and the silence broken only by wind and rain, their effect
+was not depressing in the least. Towns are depressing to me--even Paris
+has that effect--but how is it possible to feel otherwise than cheerful
+when you have leagues of fragrant heather all around you, and blue
+Yorkshire hills on the high and far horizon?
+
+A noteworthy effect of this month on the moors was that on returning to
+Hollins, which was situated amongst trim green pastures and plantations,
+everything seemed so astonishingly artificial. It came with the force of
+a discovery. From that day to this the natural and the artificial in
+landscape have been, for me, as clearly distinguished as a wild boar
+from a domestic pig. My strong preference was, and still is, for wild
+nature. The unfortunate effects of this preference, as regards success
+in landscape-painting, will claim our attention later.
+
+The grand scheme for an Exhibition of Art Treasures at Manchester, in
+1857, suggested to Sir James Kay Shuttleworth the idea of having an
+Exhibition at Burnley in the same year to illustrate the history of
+Lancashire. He thought that a certain proportion of the visitors to the
+Manchester Art Treasures would probably be induced to visit our
+little-known but prosperous and rising town. His scheme was of a very
+comprehensive character, and included a pictorial illustration of
+Lancashire. There would have been pictures of Lancashire scenery as well
+as portraits of men who have distinguished themselves in the history of
+the county, and whose fame has, in many instances, gone far beyond its
+borders. All the mechanical inventions that have enriched Lancashire
+would also have been represented.
+
+Having thought this over in his own mind, Sir James wanted an active
+lieutenant to aid him in carrying his idea into execution, and as he
+knew me he asked me to be the practical manager of the Exhibition. I was
+to travel all over the county, see all the people of importance, and
+borrow, whenever possible, such of their pictures and other relics as
+might be considered illustrative of Lancashire history. Sir James had
+many influential friends, I myself had a few, and it seemed to him that
+by devoting my time to the scheme heartily I might make it a success. My
+reward was to be simply a very interesting experience, as I should see
+almost all the interesting things and people in my native county.
+
+Sir James did his best to entice me, and as he was a very able man with
+much knowledge of the world, he might possibly have succeeded had I not
+been more than usually wary. Luckily, I felt the whole weight of my
+inexperience, and said to myself: "Whatever we do it is _certain_ that
+mistakes will be committed, and very probable that some things will be
+damaged. All mistakes will be laid to my door. Then the Exhibition
+itself may be a failure, and it is disagreeable to be conspicuously
+connected with a failure." I next consulted one or two experienced
+friends, who said, "Sir James will have the credit of any success there
+may be, and you, as a young useful person, comparatively unknown, will
+get very little, whilst at the same time you will be burdened with heavy
+anxieties and responsibilities." I therefore firmly declined, and as Sir
+James could not find any other suitable assistant, his project was never
+reaped.
+
+It seems odd that the existence of this Lancashire Exhibition should
+have depended on the "yes" or "no" of a lad of twenty-three; yet so it
+did, for if I had consented the scheme would certainly have been carried
+into execution, whether successfully or not it is impossible to say. The
+enterprise would have greatly interested and occupied me, for I have a
+natural turn for organizing things, being fond of order and details, and
+I should have learned a great deal and seen many people and many houses;
+still, the negative decision was the wiser.
+
+Sir James Kay Shuttleworth was certainly one of the remarkable people I
+have known. At that time he was unpopular in Burnley on account of his
+separation from his wife, who had been the richest heiress in the
+neighborhood, the owner of a fine estate and a grand old hall at
+Gawthorpe. People thought she had been ill-used. Of this I really know
+(of my own knowledge) absolutely nothing, and shall print no hearsays.
+
+Sir James himself was an ambitious and very hard-working man, who passed
+through life with no desire for repose. Public education, in the days
+before Board Schools, was his especial subject, and he owed his
+baronetcy to his efforts in that cause. The Tory aristocracy of the
+neighborhood disliked him for his liberal principles in politics, and
+for his brilliant marriage, which came about because the heiress of
+Gawthorpe took an interest in his own subjects. Perhaps, too, they were
+not quite pleased with his too active and restless intellect. He made
+one or two attempts to win a position as a novelist, but in connection
+with literature future generations will know him chiefly as the kind
+host of Charlotte Brontë, who visited him at Gawthorpe.
+
+I regret now that I never met Charlotte Brontë, as she was quite a near
+neighbor of ours; in fact, I could have ridden or walked over to Haworth
+at any time. That village is just on the northeast border of the great
+Boulsworth moors, where my hut was pitched. At the time of my encampment
+there Charlotte Brontë had been dead about eighteen months. She was
+hardly a contemporary of mine, as she was born seventeen years before
+me, and died so prematurely; still, when I think that "Jane Eyre" was
+written within a very few miles of Hollins, [Footnote: I have not access
+to an ordnance map, but believe that the distance was hardly more than
+eight miles across the moors. Haworth is only twelve miles from Burnley
+by road.] and that for several years, during which I rode or walked
+every day, Charlotte Brontë was living just on the other side of the
+moors visible from my home, I am vexed with myself for not having had
+assurance enough to go to see her. Since those days a hundred ephemeral
+reputations have risen only to be quenched forever in the great ocean of
+the world's oblivion, but the fame of "Jane Eyre" is as brilliant as it
+was when the book astonished all reading England forty years ago.
+[Footnote: I am writing in 1888.]
+
+Amongst the distinguished people belonging to the neighborhood of
+Burnley was General Scarlett, who led the charge of the Heavy Cavalry at
+Balaclava,--brilliant feat of arms much more satisfactory to military
+men than the fruitless sacrifice of the Light Brigade, which, however,
+is incomparably better known. I recollect General Scarlett chiefly
+because he set me thinking about a very important question in political
+economy. I happened to be sitting next him at dinner when the talk
+turned upon wine, and the General said, "The Radicals find fault with
+the economy of the Queen's household because they say that the wine
+drunk there costs sixteen thousand a year. I don't know what it costs,
+but that is of no consequence." I then timidly inquired if he did not
+think it was a waste of money, on which, in a kind way, he explained to
+me that "if the money were paid and put into circulation it did not
+signify what it had been spent upon." I knew there was something
+fallacious in this, but my own ideas were not clear upon the subject,
+and it did not become me to set up an argument with a distinguished old
+officer like the General. Of course the right answer is that there is
+always a responsibility for spending money so as to be of use not only
+to the tradesman who pockets it, _but to the consumers also_. If the
+wine gave health and wisdom it would hardly be possible to spend too
+much upon it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+I visit the homes of my forefathers at Hamerton, Wigglesworth, and
+Hellifield Peel.--Attainder and execution of Sir Stephen Hamerton.--
+Return of Hellifield Peel to the family.--Sir Richard.--The Hamertons
+distinguished only for marrying heiresses.--Another visit to the Peel,
+when I see my father's cousin.--Nearness of Hellifield Peel and Hollins.
+
+In one of these years (the exact date is of no consequence) I visited
+the old houses in Yorkshire which had belonged to our family in former
+times. The place we take our name from, Hamerton, belonged to Richard de
+Hamerton in 1170. I found the old hall still in existence, or a part of
+it, and though the present building evidently does not date from the
+twelfth century, it dates from the occupation of my forefathers. At the
+time of my visit there was some very massive oak wainscot still
+remaining.
+
+The situation is, to my taste, one of the pleasantest in England. The
+house is On a hill, from which it looks down on the valley of Slaidburn.
+Steep green pastures slope to the flat meadows in the lower ground,
+which are watered by a stream. There are many places of that character
+in Yorkshire, and they have never lost their old charm for me. I cannot
+do without a hill, and a stream, and a green field. [Footnote: Since
+this was written I have been compelled to do without them by the
+necessity for living close to an art-centre, a necessity against which I
+rebelled as long as I could. Even to-day, however, I would joyously give
+all Paris for such a place as Hollins or Hamerton (as I knew them), with
+their streams and pastures, and near or distant hills.]
+
+My forefathers lived at Hamerton, more or less, from a time of which
+there is no record down to the reign of Henry VIII., but their principal
+seat in the time of their greatest prosperity was Wigglesworth Hall. I
+arrived there in time to see masons demolishing the building. One or two
+Gothic arched door-ways still remained, but were probably destroyed the
+next week. Just enough, of the house was preserved to shelter the
+occupant of the farm.
+
+For me this unnecessary destruction is always distressing, even in
+foreign countries. It is excusable in towns, where land is dear; but in
+the country the site of an old hall is of such trifling value that it
+might surely be permitted to fall peaceably to ruin.
+
+The family of De Arches, to which Wigglesworth originally belonged, bore
+for arms _gules, three arches argent_. The coincidence struck me
+forcibly when I saw the Gothic arches still standing amongst the ruins.
+
+The place came into the possession of our family by the marriage of Adam
+de Hamerton, in the fourteenth century, with Katharine, heiress of Elias
+de Knoll of Knolsmere. His father, Reginald de Knoll, had married
+Beatrix de Arches, heiress of the manor of Wigglesworth. These estates,
+with others too numerous to mention, remained in our family till they
+were lost by the attainder of Sir Stephen Hamerton, who joined the
+insurrection known as "The Pilgrimage of Grace" in the reign of Henry
+VIII.
+
+During these excursions to old houses I visited Hellifield Peel, still
+belonging to the chief of our little clan. The Peel is an old border
+tower, embattled, and with walls of great thickness. It is large enough
+to make a tolerably spacious, but not very convenient, modern house, and
+my great uncle spoiled its external appearance by inserting London sash
+windows in the gray old fortress wall. On this occasion I did not see
+the interior, not desiring to claim a relationship that had fallen into
+abeyance for half-a-century; yet I felt the most intense curiosity about
+it, and for more than twenty years afterwards I dreamed from time to
+time I got inside the Peel, and saw quite a museum of knightly armor
+[Footnote: The first Sir Stephen Hamerton was made a knight banneret in
+Scotland by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in the reign of Edward IV. He
+married Isabel, daughter of Sir William Plumpton, of Plumpton, and a
+letter of his is still extant in the Plumpton correspondence.] and other
+memorials which, I regret to say, have not been preserved in reality.
+
+Hellifield Peel was built by Laurence Hamerton in 1440. When the second
+Sir Stephen was executed for high treason and his possessions
+confiscated, the manor of Hellifield was preserved by a settlement for
+his mother during her life. After that it was granted by the king to one
+George Browne, of whom we know nothing positively except that he lived
+at Calais, and after changing hands several times it came back into the
+Hamerton family by a fine levied in the time of Queen Elizabeth. The
+owners then passed the manor to John Hamerton, a nephew of Sir Stephen.
+The attainted knight left an only son, Henry, who is said to have been
+interred in York Minster on the day when his father was beheaded in
+London. Whitaker thought it "not improbable that he died of a broken
+heart in consequence of the ruin of his family." Henry left no male
+issue.
+
+The career of Sir Stephen seems to have been doomed to misfortune, for
+there were influences that might have saved him. He had been in the
+train of the Earl of Cumberland, the same who afterwards held Skipton
+Castle against the rebels. Whitaker says "he forsook his patron in the
+hour of trial." This seems rather a harsh way of judging a Catholic, who
+believed himself to be fighting for God and His spoliated Church against
+a tyrannical king. I notice that in our own day the French Republican
+Government cannot take the smallest measure against the religious
+houses, cannot even require them to obey the ordinary law of the
+country, but there is immediately an outcry in all the English
+newspapers; yet the measures of the Third Republic have been to those of
+Henry VIII. what that same Third Republic is to the First. All that can
+be fairly urged against Sir Stephen Hamerton is that "after having
+availed himself of the King's pardon, he revolted a second time."
+
+There is nothing else, that I remember, in the history of our family
+that is likely to have any interest for readers who do not belong to it.
+Sir Richard Hamerton, of Hamerton, married in 1461 a sister of the
+bloody Lord Clifford who was slain at Towton Field, and that is the
+nearest connection that we have ever had with any well-known historical
+character.
+
+Through marriages we are descended, in female lines, from many
+historical personages, [Footnote: Some in the extinct Peerage, and
+others belonging to royal families of England and France which have
+since lost their thrones by revolution.]--a matter of no interest to the
+reader, though I acknowledge enough of the ancestral sentiment to have
+my own interest in them quickened by my descent from them.
+
+Another consequence of belonging to a well-connected old family was that
+I sometimes, in my youth, met with people who were related to me, and
+who were aware of it, although the relationship was very distant. I
+recollect, for instance, that one of the officers in our militia
+regiment remembered his descent from our family, and though I had never
+seen him before it was a sort of _lien_ between us.
+
+The Hamertons do not seem to have distinguished themselves in anything
+except marrying heiresses, and in that they were remarkably successful.
+At first a moderately wealthy family, they became immensely wealthy
+by the accumulation of heiresses' estates, and after being ruined
+by confiscation they began the same process over again; but being
+at the same time either imprudent or careless, or too much burdened
+with children (my great-grandfather had a dozen brothers and sisters),
+they have not kept their lands. One of my uncles said to me that
+the Hamertons won property in no other way than by marriage, and
+that they were almost incapable of retaining it; he himself had the one
+talent of his race, but was an exception to their incapacity. In justice
+to our family I may add that we are said to make indulgent husbands and
+fathers,--two characters incompatible with avarice, and sometimes even
+with prudence when the circumstances are not easy.
+
+On a later occasion I made a little tour in Craven with a friend who had
+a tandem, and we stopped at Hellifield, where I sketched the Peel.
+Whilst I sat at work the then representative of the family, my father's
+first cousin, came out upon the lawn; but I did not speak to him, nor
+did he take any notice of me. He was a fine, hale man of about eighty.
+
+The _nearness_ of Hellifield to Hollins was brought home to me very
+strongly on that occasion. It was late afternoon when I finished my
+sketch, and yet, as we had very good horses, we reached home easily the
+same evening. So near and yet so far! As I have said already in the
+third chapter, my grandfather's wife and children never even saw his
+brother's house, and during my own youth the place had seemed as distant
+and unreal as one of the old towers that I had read about in northern
+poetry and romance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+1857.
+
+Expedition to the Highlands in 1857.--Kindness of the Marquis of
+Breadalbane and others.--Camp life, its strong and peculiar
+attraction.--My servant.--Young Helliwell.--Scant supplies in the
+camp.--Nature of the camp.--Necessity for wooden floors in a bad
+climate.--Double-hulled boats.--Practice of landscape-painting.--Changes
+of effect.--Influences that governed my way of study in those
+days.--Attractive character of the Scottish Highlands.--Their scenery
+not well adapted for beginners.--My intense love of it.
+
+In the year 1857 I made the expedition to the Highlands which afterwards
+became well known in consequence of my book about it.
+
+The Marquis of Breadalbane (the first Marquis) granted me in the kindest
+way permission to pitch my camp wherever I liked on his extensive
+estate, and at the same time gave me an invitation to Taymouth Castle.
+The Duke of Argyll gave me leave to encamp on an island in Loch Awe that
+belonged to him, and Mr. Campbell of Monzie granted leave to encamp on
+his property on the Cladich side of the lake. I ought to have gone to
+Taymouth to thank Lord Breadalbane and accept the hospitality he had
+offered, but it happened that he had not fixed a date, so I avoided
+Taymouth. This was wrong, but young men are generally either forward or
+backward. The Marquis afterwards expressed himself, to a third person,
+as rather hurt that I had not been to see him.
+
+My advice to any young man who reads this book is always to _show_ that
+he appreciates kindness when it is offered. There is not very much of it
+in the world, but there is some, and it is not enough merely to feel
+grateful; we ought to accept kindness with visible satisfaction. One of
+my regrets now is to have sometimes failed in this, usually out of mere
+shyness, particularly where great people were concerned. Here is another
+instance. When going to Inverary on the steamer, I made the acquaintance
+of a very pleasant Scotchman, who turned out to be the Laird of Lamont,
+on Loch Fyne side. He took an interest in my artistic projects, and very
+kindly invited me to go and see him. Nothing would have been easier,--I
+was as free as a fish, and might have sailed down Loch Fyne any day on
+my own boat,--yet I never went.
+
+The book called "A Painter's Camp" gave a sufficient account of my first
+summer in the Highlands, which was not distinguished by much variety, as
+I remained almost exclusively at Loch Awe; but the novelty of camp life
+_by choice_ seems to have interested many readers, though they must have
+been already perfectly familiar with camp life _by necessity_ in the
+practice of armies and the experience of African travellers. The true
+explanation of my proceedings is the intense and peculiar charm that
+there is about encamping in a wild and picturesque country. I had tasted
+this on the Lancashire moors, and I wanted to taste it again. Just now,
+whilst writing, I have on my table a letter from an English official in
+Africa, who tells me of his camp life. He says: "The wagon was generally
+my sleeping quarter. I had two tents and a riding horse, and very seldom
+slept in a house or put the horse in a stable. _Such a life was ever,
+and is now, to me the acme of bliss. No man can be said to have really
+lived who has not camped out in some such way, and I know well that you
+especially will say Amen! to this sentiment._ Since 1848, I have lived
+altogether for about six years in the open, and have never caught a
+cold. Only, through imprudent uncovering of the head, once in 1855,
+whilst drawing the topography of a mountain, I was struck down by
+sunstroke."
+
+The reasons for this intense attraction in camp life are probably
+complex. One certainly is that it brings us nearer to nature, but a
+still deeper reason may be that _it revives obscure associations that
+belong to the memory of the race, and not to that of the individual_.
+Camping is in the same category with yachting, fishing, and the
+chase,--a thing practised by civilized man for his amusement, because it
+permits him to resume the habits of less civilized generations. The
+delight of encamping, for a young man in vigorous health, is the
+enforced activity in the open air that is inseparably connected with it.
+
+I had only one servant, a young man from the moorland country on the
+borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire, perfectly well adapted to life in
+the Highlands. He had excellent health, and was physically a good
+specimen of our north-English race. It was a pleasure to see his tall
+straight figure going over the roughest ground with no appearance of
+hurry, but in fact with such unostentatious swiftness that few sportsmen
+could follow him. I was myself active enough then, and accustomed to
+wild places, but he always restrained himself when we did any mountain
+work together. He afterwards became well known as the "Thursday" of the
+"Painter's Camp," but I may give his real name here, which was Young
+Helliwell. Temperate, hardy, and extremely prudent, not to be caught by
+any allurements of vulgar pleasure, he lived wisely in youth, and will
+probably have fewer regrets than most people in his old age.
+
+Young had studied the art of simple cookery at Hollins, so he was able
+to keep me tolerably well when we happened to have anything to eat,
+which was not always. There were no provision shops on Lochaweside;
+Inverary was at some distance in one direction and Oban in the other,
+and as I had never given a thought to feeding before, I was an utterly
+incompetent provider. The consequence was that we fasted like monks,
+except that our abstinence was not on any regular principle; in fact,
+sometimes we had so little to eat for days together that we began to
+feel quite weak. This gave us no anxiety, and we only laughed at it,
+undereating being always more conducive to good spirits than its
+opposite, provided that it is not carried too far.
+
+The camp consisted of three structures,--my hut, which was made of
+wooden panels with plate-glass windows; a tent for Young, with a wooden
+floor, and wooden sides to the height of three feet; lastly, a military
+bell-tent that served for storing things. My hut was both painting-room
+and habitation, but it would have been better to have had a separate
+painting-room on rather a larger scale. Mr. Herkomer afterwards imitated
+the hut for painting from nature in Wales, and he introduced a clever
+improvement by erecting his hut on a circular platform with a ring-rail,
+so that it could be turned at will to any point of the compass. Young's
+tent was, in fact, also a kind of hut with a square tent for a roof.
+
+In a climate like that of the West Highlands, wooden floors at least are
+almost indispensable; but a camp so arranged ceases to be a travelling
+camp unless you have men and horses in your daily service like a Shah of
+Persia. It may be moved two or three times in a summer.
+
+I have always had a fancy for double-hulled boats (now generally called
+catamarans), and had two of them on Loch Awe. This eccentricity was
+perhaps fortunate, as my boats were extremely safe, each hull being
+decked from stem to stern and divided internally into water-tight
+compartments. They could therefore ship a sea with perfect impunity, and
+although often exposed to sudden and violent squalls, we were never in
+any real danger. One of my catamarans would beat to windward tolerably
+well, but she did not tack quickly, and occasionally missed stays.
+However, these defects were of slight importance in a boat not intended
+for racing, and small enough to be always quite manageable with oars.
+Since those days I have much improved the construction of catamarans, so
+that their evolutions are now quicker and more certain. They are
+absolutely the only sailing-boats that combine lightness with safety and
+speed.
+
+As to the practice of landscape-painting, I very soon found that the
+West Highlands were not favorable to painting from nature on account of
+the rapid changes of effect. Those changes are so revolutionary that
+they often metamorphose all the oppositions in a natural picture in the
+course of a single minute. I began by planting my hut on the island
+called Inishail, in the middle of Loch Awe, with the intention of
+painting Ben Cruachan from nature, but soon discovered that there were
+fifty Cruachans a day, each effacing its predecessor, so my picture got
+on badly. If I painted what was before me, the result was like playing
+successfully a bar or two from each of several different musical
+compositions in the vain hope of harmonizing them into one. If I tried
+to paint my first impression, it became increasingly difficult to do
+that when the mountain itself presented novel and striking aspects.
+
+Every artist who reads this will now consider the above remarks no
+better than a commonplace, but in the year 1857 English
+landscape-painting was going through a peculiar phase. There was, in
+some of the younger artists, a feeling of dissatisfaction with the
+slight and superficial work too often produced from hasty water-color
+sketches, and there was an honest desire for more substantial truth
+coupled with the hope of attaining it by working directly from nature.
+My critical master, Mr. Ruskin, saw in working from nature the only hope
+for the regeneration of art, and my practical master, Mr. Pettitt,
+considered it the height of artistic virtue to sit down before nature
+and work on the details of a large picture for eight or ten weeks
+together. I was eagerly anxious to do what was considered most right,
+and quite willing to undergo any degree of inconvenience. The truth is,
+perhaps, that (like other devotees) I rather enjoyed the sacrifice of
+convenience for what seemed to me, at that time, the sacred cause of
+veracity in art.
+
+The Highlands of Scotland were intensely attractive to me, as being a
+kind of sublimation of the wild northern landscape that I had already
+loved in my native Lancashire; but the Highlands were not well chosen as
+a field for self-improvement in the art of painting. A student ought not
+to choose the most changeful of landscapes, but the least changeful; not
+the Highlands or the English Lake District, but the dullest landscape he
+can find in the south or the east of England. Norfolk would have been a
+better country for me, as a student, than Argyllshire. If, however, any
+prudent adviser had told me to go to dull scenery in those days, it
+would have been like telling a passionate lover of great capitals to go
+and live in a narrow little provincial town. I hated dull, unromantic
+scenery, and at the same time had the passion for mountains, lakes, wild
+moorland, and everything that was rough and uncultivated,--a passion so
+predominant that it resembled rather the natural instinct of an animal
+for its own habitat than the choice of a reasonable being. I loved
+everything in the Highlands, even the bad weather; I delighted in clouds
+and storms, and have never experienced any natural influences more in
+harmony with the inmost feelings of my own nature than those of a great
+lake's dark waters when they dashed in spray on the rocks of some lonely
+islet and my boat flew past in the gray and dreary gloaming.
+
+"Le paysage," says a French critic, "est un état d'âme." He meant that
+_what we seek_ in nature is that which answers to the state of our own
+souls. What is called dreary, wild, and melancholy scenery afforded me,
+at that time, a kind of satisfaction more profound than that which is
+given by any of the human arts. I loved painting, but all the
+collections in Europe attracted me less than the barren northern end of
+our own island, in which there are no pictures; I loved architecture,
+and chose a country that is utterly destitute of it; I delighted in
+music, and pitched my tent where there was no music but that of the
+winds and the waves.
+
+The Loch Awe of those days was not the Loch Awe of the present. There
+was no railway; there was not a steamer on the lake, either public or
+private; there was no hotel by the waterside, only one or two small
+inns, imperceptible in the vastness of the almost uninhabited landscape.
+The lake was therefore almost a solitude, and this, added to the
+wildness of the climate and the peculiarly simple and temporary
+character of my habitation, made nature much more profoundly impressive
+than it ever is amidst the powerful rivalry of the works of man. The
+effect on my mind was, on the whole, saddening, but not in the least
+depressing. It was a kind of poetic sadness that had nothing to do with
+low spirits. I have never been either merry or melancholy, but have kept
+an equable cheerfulness that maintains itself serenely enough even in
+solitude and amidst the desolate aspects of stony and barren lands. As
+life advances, it is wise, however, to seek the more cheering influences
+of the external world, and those are rather to be found in the brightest
+and sunniest landscape, with abundant evidence of happy human
+habitation; some southern land of the vine where the chestnut grows high
+on the hills, and the peach and the pear ripen richly in innumerable
+gardens.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+1857-1858.
+
+Small immediate results of the expedition to the Highlands.--Unsuitable
+system of work.--Loss of time.--I rent the house and island of
+Innistrynich.--My dread of marriage and the reasons for
+it.--Notwithstanding this I make an offer and am refused.--Two young
+ladies of my acquaintance.--Idea of a foreign marriage.--Its
+inconveniences.--Decision to ask for the hand of Mdlle. Gindriez.--I go
+to Paris and am accepted.--Elective affinities.
+
+The immediate artistic results of the expedition to the Highlands were
+very small. I had gone there to paint detailed work from nature, when I
+ought to have gone to sketch, and so adapt my work to the peculiar
+character of the climate.
+
+The tendency then was to detail, and the merit and value of good
+sketching were not properly understood. There has been a complete
+revolution, both in public and in artistic opinion, since those days.
+The revival of etching, which in its liveliest and most spontaneous form
+is only sketching on copper, the study of sketches by the great masters,
+the publication of sketches by modern artists of eminence in the
+artistic magazines, have all led to a far better appreciation of
+vitality in art, and consequently have tended to raise good sketching
+both in popular and in professional estimation. At the Paris Exhibition
+of 1889 the Grand Prizes for engraving were given to an English
+sketching etcher, Haden, and to two French etchers, Boilvin and Chauvel.
+In 1857, I and many others looked upon sketching as defective work,
+excusable only on the plea of want of time to do better. The omissions
+in a sketch, which when intelligent are merits, seemed to me, on the
+contrary, so many faults. In a word, I knew nothing about sketching. My
+way was to draw very carefully and accurately, and then fill in the
+color and detail in the most painstaking fashion from nature. I went by
+line and detail, nobody having ever taught me anything about mass and
+tonic values, still less about the difference between art and nature,
+and the necessity for transposing nature into the keys of art. The
+consequence was a great waste of time, and of only too earnest efforts
+with hardly anything to show for them.
+
+Here I leave this subject of art for the present, as it will be
+necessary to recur to it later.
+
+My guardian, like all women, had an objection to what was not customary,
+and as my camp was considered a piece of eccentricity, she wanted me to
+take a house on Lochaweside. The island called Innistrynich, which is
+near the shore, where the road from Inverary to Dalmally comes nearest
+to the lake, had a house upon it that happened to be untenanted. There
+were twelve small rooms, and the camping experience had made me very
+easy to please. It was possible to have the whole island (about thirty
+acres) as a home farm, so I took it on a lease. This turned out a
+misfortune afterwards, as I got tied to the place, not only by the
+lease, but by a binding affection which was extremely inconvenient, and
+led to very unfortunate consequences.
+
+My dear guardian had another idea. Though she had prudently avoided
+marriage on her own account, she thought it very desirable for me, and
+sometimes recurred to the subject. Her heart complaint made her own life
+extremely precarious, and she wished me to have the stay and anchorage
+of a second affection that might make the world less dreary for me after
+she had left it. At the same time it may be suspected that she looked to
+marriage as the best chance of converting me to her own religious
+opinions, or at least of obtaining outward conformity. To confess the
+plain truth, I had a great dread of marriage, and not at all from any
+aversion to feminine society, or from any insensibility to love.
+
+My two reasons were these, and all subsequent observation and experience
+have confirmed them. For a person given up to intellectual and artistic
+pursuits there is a special value in mental and pecuniary independence.
+So far as I could observe married men in England, they enjoyed very
+little mental independence, being obliged, on the most important
+questions, to succumb to the opinions of their wives, because what is
+called "the opinion of Society" is essentially feminine opinion. In our
+class the ladies were all strong Churchwomen and Tories, and the men I
+most admired for the combination of splendid talents with high
+principle, were to them (so far as they knew anything about such men)
+objects of reprobation and abhorrence. No mother was ever loved by a son
+more devotedly than my guardian was by me, and yet her intolerance would
+have been hard to bear in a wife. Kind as she always was in manner, the
+theological injustice which had been instilled into her mind from
+infancy made her look upon me as bad company for my friends, as a
+heretic likely to contaminate their orthodoxy. I could bear that, or
+anything, from her, but I determined that if I married at all it should
+not be to live under perpetual theological disapprobation.
+
+The other grave objection to marriage was the dread of losing pecuniary
+independence. I cared nothing for luxury and display, having an
+unaffected preference for plain living, and being easily bored by the
+elaborate observances of fine society, so that comparative poverty had
+no terrors for me on that account; but there was another side to the
+matter. A student clings to his studies, and dreads the interference
+that may take him away from them. An independent bachelor can afford to
+follow unremunerative study; a married man, unless he is rich, must lay
+out his time to the best pecuniary advantage. His hours are at the
+disposal of the highest bidder.
+
+There was a young lady in Burnley for whom I had had a boyish attachment
+long before, and whom I saw very frequently at her father's house in the
+years preceding 1858. He was a banker in very good circumstances, and a
+kind friend of mine, as intimate, perhaps, as was possible considering
+the difference of years. He had been a Wrangler at Cambridge, and now
+employed his forcible and fully matured intellect freely on all subjects
+that came in his way, without deference to the popular opinions of the
+hour. These qualities, rare enough in the upper middle class of those
+days, made him very interesting to me, and I liked my place in an
+easy-chair opposite to his, when he was in the humor for talking. He had
+three handsome daughters, and his eldest son had been my school-fellow,
+and was still, occasionally at least, one of my companions. Their mother
+was a remarkably handsome and amiable lady, so that the house was as
+pleasant as any house could be. We had music and played quintets, and
+the eldest daughter sometimes played a duet with me. She was a good
+amateur musician, well educated in other ways, and with a great charm of
+voice and manner. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that
+the old boyish attachment revived on my side, though there was nothing
+answering to it on hers.
+
+My good friend, her father, sometimes talked to me about marriage, and
+expressed the regret that in a state of civilization like ours, and in
+our class, a family of children should be a cause of weakness instead of
+strength. In a primitive agricultural community, sons are of great
+value, they are an increase of the family force; in a highly-civilized
+condition, they only weaken the father by draining away his income.
+"Daughters," said my friend, "are of use in primitive societies and in
+the English middle class, because they do the work of the house, and
+spare servants; but our young ladies do nothing of the least use, and
+require to be first expensively educated, and afterwards expensively
+amused." My friend then went into details about the cost of his own
+family, which was heavy without extravagance or ostentation. All this
+was intended to warn me, but I asked if he had any objection to me
+personally as a son-in-law. He answered, with all the kindness I
+expected, that there was no objection to make (he was too intelligent to
+see anything criminal in my philosophical opinions), and that in what he
+had said about the costliness of marriage he had spoken merely as a
+friend, thinking of the weight of the burden I might be taking upon
+myself, and the inconvenience to my own life in the future.
+
+One afternoon his daughter and I were alone together, playing a duet,
+when I asked her if she would have me, and she laughingly declined. I
+remember being so little hurt by the refusal that I said: "That is not
+the proper way to refuse an, offer; you ought to express a little
+regret--you might say, at least, that you are sorry." Then the young
+lady laughed again, and said: "Very well, I will say that I am sorry, if
+you wish it." And so we parted, without any further expression of
+sentiment on either side.
+
+I never could understand why men make themselves wretched after a
+refusal. It only proves that the young lady does not care very much for
+one, and it is infinitely better that she should let him know that
+before marriage than after. It was soon quite clear to me that, in this
+case, the young lady's decision had been the wise one. We were not
+really suited for each other, and we should never have been happy, both
+of us, in the same kind of existence. Perhaps she was rather difficult
+to please, or indifferent to marriage, for she never accepted anybody,
+and is living still (1889) in happy independence as an old maid, within
+a short distance of Hellifield Peel. I had a little indirect evidence,
+thirty years afterwards, that she had not forgotten me. Most likely she
+will survive me and read this. If she does, let the page convey a
+complete acknowledgment of her good sense.
+
+This was the only offer of marriage I ever made in England. There was a
+certain very wealthy heiress whose uncle was extremely kind to me, and
+he pushed his kindness so far as to wish me to marry her. She was
+well-bred, her manners were quite equal to her fortune, and she had a
+good appearance, but the idea of marriage did not occur to either of us.
+Some time afterwards, her uncle said to a friend of mine: "I cannot
+understand Hamerton; I wanted him to marry my niece, and he has gone and
+married a French woman." "Oh!" said the other, "that was only to
+improve his French!"
+
+There was another case that I would have passed in silence, had not
+people in Lancashire persistently circulated a story of an offer and a
+refusal. A young lady, also a rich heiress, though not quite so rich as
+the other, had a property a few miles distant from mine. She was a very
+attractive girl, very pretty, and extremely intelligent, and we were
+very good friends. To say, in this case, that the idea of marriage never
+occurred would he untrue; but when I first knew her she was hardly more
+than a child, and afterwards it became apparent to me that to live
+happily in her house I should have to stifle all my opinions on
+important subjects, so I never made the offer that our friends and
+perhaps she herself expected. Whether she would have accepted me or not
+is quite another question. Had I made any proposal I should have
+accompanied it by a very plain statement of my obnoxious opinions on
+religion and politics, and these would almost certainly have produced a
+rupture. After my marriage, and before hers, we met again in the old
+friendly way. I was paying a call with my wife, in a country house in
+Lancashire, when a carriage came up the drive--_her_ carriage--and the
+lady of the house, extremely fluttered, asked me if I had no objection
+to meet Miss ----. "On the contrary," I said, "I like to meet old
+friends." The young lady visibly enjoyed the humor of the situation, and
+the embarrassment of our hostess. We talked easily in the old way, and
+afterwards my wife and I left on foot, and _her_ carriage passed us,
+rather stately, with servants in livery. "There goes your most dangerous
+rival," I said to my wife, and told her what story there was to tell.
+"She is much prettier than I am," was the modest answer, "and evidently
+a good deal richer; and she is a charming person." In due time Miss ----
+married very suitably. Her husband is a good Churchman and Conservative,
+who takes a proper interest in the pursuits belonging to his station.
+
+My guardian was of opinion that with my philosophical convictions, which
+were at that time not only unpopular, but odious and execrated in our
+own class in England, I should have to remain an old bachelor. She
+herself would certainly never have married an unbeliever, and
+although her great personal affection for me made her glad to
+have me in the house, she must have felt that it was like sheltering
+a pariah. Her sister once heard some rumor or suggestion, connecting
+my name with that of a pious young lady, and looked upon it as a
+sort of sacrilege. Under these circumstances I came at last to
+the conclusion that, being under a ban, I would at least enjoy my
+liberty, either by living my own life as a bachelor, or else by
+marrying purely and simply according to inclination, without any
+reference to the opinion of other people.
+
+It was at this time that the idea of a foreign marriage first occurred
+to me as a possibility. I had never thought of it before, and if such an
+idea had entered my head, the clear foresight of the enormous
+inconveniences would have immediately expelled it. A foreign marriage
+is, in fact, quite an accumulation of inconveniences. One of the two
+parties must always be living in a foreign country, and in all their
+intercourse together one of the two must always be speaking a foreign
+language. The families of the two parties will never know each other or
+understand each other properly; there will be either estrangement or
+misunderstanding. And unless there is great largeness of mind in the
+parties themselves, the difference of national customs is sure to
+produce quarrels.
+
+All this was plain enough, and yet one morning, when I was writing on my
+desk (a tall oak desk that I used to stand up to), the idea suddenly
+came, as if somebody had uttered these words in my ear: "Why should you
+remain lonely all your days? Eugénie Gindriez would be an affectionate
+and faithful wife to you. She is not rich, but you would work and fight
+your way."
+
+I pushed aside the sheet of manuscript and took a sheet of note-paper
+instead. I then wrote, in French, a letter to a lady in Paris who knew
+the Gindriez family, and asked her if Mademoiselle Eugénie was engaged
+to be married. The answer came that she was well, and that there had
+been no engagement. Soon afterwards I was in Paris.
+
+I called on M. Gindriez, but his daughter was not at home. I asked
+permission to call in the evening, and she was out again. This was
+repeated two or three times, and my wife told me afterwards that the
+absences had not been accidental. At last we met, and there was nothing
+in her manner but a certain gravity, as if serious resolutions were
+impending. Her sister showed no such reserve, but greeted me gayly and
+frankly. After a few days, I was accepted on the condition of an annual
+visit to France.
+
+From a worldly point of view, this engagement was what is called in
+French _une folie_, on my part, and hardly less so on the part of the
+young lady. We had, however, a kind of inward assurance that in spite of
+the difference of nationality and other differences, we were, in truth,
+nearer to each other than most people who contract matrimonial
+engagements. The "elective affinities" act in spite of all appearances
+and of many realities.
+
+We have often talked over that time since, and have confessed that we
+really knew hardly anything of each other, that our union was but an
+instinctive choice. However, in 1858 I had neither doubt nor anxiety,
+and in 1889 I have neither anxiety nor doubt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+1858.
+
+Reception at home after engagement.--Preparations at Innistrynich.--I
+arrive alone in Paris.--My marriage.--The religious ceremony.--An
+uncomfortable wedding.--The sea from Dieppe.--London.--The Academy
+Exhibition of 1858.--Impressions of a French woman.--The Turner
+collection.--The town.--Loch Awe.--The element wanting to happiness.
+
+On returning home after my engagement I was greeted very affectionately
+at the front door by my dear guardian, who expressed many wishes for my
+future happiness; but her sister sat motionless and rigid in an
+arm-chair in the dining-room, and did not seem disposed to take any
+notice of me. From that time until long after my marriage she treated me
+with the most distant coldness, varied occasionally by a bitter
+innuendo.
+
+I said nothing and bore all patiently, looking forward to a speedy
+deliverance. There was much in the circumstances to excuse my aunt, who
+was intensely aristocratic and intensely national. She was the proudest
+person I ever knew, and would have considered any marriage a misalliance
+for me if my wife's family had not had as long a pedigree as ours, and
+as many quarterings as the fifteen that adorned our shield. Being a
+stanch Protestant, she was not disposed to look favorably on a Roman
+Catholic, unless she belonged to one of the old English Catholic
+families. Her ideas of the French nation were those prevalent in England
+during the wars against Napoleon. She had probably counted upon me to do
+something to lift up a falling house, and instead of that I was going to
+marry she knew not whom. It is impossible to argue against national and
+class prejudices; the fact was simply that my wife's family belonged to
+the educated French middle class. Her uncle was a well-to-do attorney in
+Dijon, [Footnote: Very nearly in the same social position as my own
+father. His daughter afterwards married the grandson and representative
+of the celebrated Count Français de Nantes, who filled various high
+offices in the State, and was grand officer of the Legion of Honor and
+Peer of France. A fine portrait of him by David is amongst their family
+pictures.] and her father had gone through a perfectly honorable
+political career, both as deputy and prefect. My wife herself had been
+better educated than most girls at that time, and both spoke and wrote
+her own language not only correctly, but with more than ordinary
+elegance,--a taste she inherited from her father. As to her person, she
+dressed simply, but always with irreproachable neatness, and a
+scrupulous cleanliness that richer women might sometimes imitate with
+advantage. These were the plain facts; what my aunt imagined is beyond
+guessing.
+
+Before my marriage I went to Loch Awe, to prepare the house on
+Innistrynich and furnish it. Of all strange places in the world for a
+young Parisienne to be brought to, surely Innistrynich was the least
+suitable! My way in those days was the usual human way of thinking, that
+what is good for one's self is good for everybody else. Did I not know
+by experience that the solitude of Loch Awe was delightful? Must not my
+Paradise be a Paradise for any daughter of Eve?
+
+It was a charming bachelor's paradise the morning I left for Paris, a
+bright May morning, the loch lying calm in its great basin, the islands
+freshly green with the spring. At Cladich the people, who knew I was
+going to fetch a bride, threw old shoes after the carriage for luck. It
+did not rain rice at Loch Awe in those days.
+
+I was an excellent traveller then, and did not get into a bed before
+arriving in Paris. There was a day in London between two nights of
+railway, a day spent in looking at pictures and making a few purchases.
+At Paris I went to a quiet hotel in the Cité Bergère. I was utterly
+alone; no relation or friend came with me to my marriage. Somebody told
+me a best man was necessary, so I asked a French acquaintance to be best
+man, and he consented. The morning of my wedding there was a _garçon_
+brushing the waxed oak floor on the landing near my door. I had a
+flowered white silk waistcoat, and the man said: "Monsieur est bien beau
+ce matin; on dirait qu'il va à une noce." I answered: "Vous avez bien
+deviné; en effet, je vais à une noce." It was unnecessary to give him
+further information.
+
+The marriage was a curious little ceremony. My wife's father had friends
+and acquaintances in the most various classes, who all came to the
+wedding. Some men were there who were famous in the Paris of those days,
+and others whom I had never heard of, but all were alike doomed to
+disappointment. They expected a grand ceremony in the church, and
+instead of that we got nothing but a brief benediction in the vestry, by
+reason of my heresy and schism. The benediction was over in five
+minutes, and we left in the pouring rain, whilst a crowd of people were
+waiting for the ceremony to begin. My wife, like all French girls, would
+have liked an imposing and important marriage, and lo! there was nothing
+at all, not even an altar, or a censer, or a bell!
+
+However, we had been legally married at the _mairie_ with the civil
+ceremonial, and as we were certainly blessed in the vestry, nobody can
+say that our union was unhallowed. I shall always remember that
+benediction, for, brief as it was, it cost me a hundred francs.
+[Footnote: Including what I had to pay for being called a schismatic by
+the Archbishop of Paris, or his officials.] A magnificent mass on my
+daughter's marriage cost me only sixty, which was a very reasonable
+charge.
+
+Words cannot express how odious to me are the fuss and expense about a
+wedding. There was my father-in-law, a poor man, who thought it
+necessary (indeed, he was compelled by custom) to order a grand feast
+from a famous restaurant and give a brilliant ball, as if he had been
+extremely happy to lose his daughter, the delight of his eyes and the
+brightness of his home. Everything about our wedding was peculiarly
+awkward and uncomfortable. I knew none of the guests, I spoke their
+language imperfectly, and was not at ease, then, in French society; we
+had to make talk and try to eat. The family was sad about our departure,
+the sky was gray, the streets muddy and wet. In an interval of tolerable
+weather we went for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne to get through the
+interminable afternoon.
+
+It was pleasanter when, a day or two later, my wife and I were looking
+out upon the sea from Dieppe. She had never seen salt water before, and
+as it happened to be a fine day the vast expanse of the Channel was all
+a wonderful play of pale greens and blues, like turquoise and pale
+emerald. There were white clouds floating in the blue sky, and here and
+there a white sail upon the sea. My wife was enchanted with this, to her
+fresh young eyes, revelation of a novel and unimaginable beauty. It was
+a new world for her, and that hour was absolutely the only hour in her
+life during which she thoroughly enjoyed the sea; for she is the worst
+of sailors, and now cannot even endure the smell of salt water at a
+distance.
+
+The first thing we did in London was to go and see the Exhibition of the
+Royal Academy. My wife, like her father, took a keen interest in art,
+and had been rather well acquainted with French painting for a girl of
+her age. When she got into an English Exhibition she looked round in
+bewildered amazement. It was, for her, like being transported into
+another planet. In 1858 the difference between French and English
+painting was far more striking than it is to-day. French color, without
+being generally good, was subdued; in fact, most of it was not color at
+all, but only gray and brown, with a little red or blue here and there
+to make people believe that there was color. The English, on the other
+hand, were trying hard for real color, but the younger men were in that
+crude stage which is the natural "ugly duckling" condition of the
+genuine colorist. The consequence was an astounding contrast between the
+painting of the two nations, and to eyes educated in France English art
+looked outrageous to a degree that we realize with the greatest
+difficulty now. At a later period my wife became initiated into the
+principles and tendencies of English painting, and then she began to
+enjoy it. I took her to see the Turner collection in 1858, and that
+seemed to her like the ravings of a madman put on canvas; but a few
+years later she became a perfectly sincere admirer of the noblest works
+of Turner. I may add that in 1858 my wife was already, in spite of her
+difficulty in understanding what to her were novelties, far more in
+sympathy with art generally than I was myself. She had lived in a great
+artistic centre, whilst I had lived with nature in the north, and cared,
+at that time, comparatively little about the art of the past, my hopes
+being concentrated on a kind of landscape-painting that was to come in
+the future, and to unite the effects I saw in nature with a minute
+accuracy in the drawing of natural forms. The kind of painting I was
+looking forward to was, in fact, afterwards realized by Mr. John Brett.
+
+My wife's first impressions of London generally were scarcely more
+favorable than her impressions of English painting, but they were of a
+very different order. If the painting had appeared too bright, the town
+appeared too dingy. London is extremely dismal for all French people,
+whose affection for their own country leads them to the very mistaken
+belief that the skies, in France, are bright all the year round. My wife
+now prefers London to any place in the world except Paris; in fact, she
+has a strong affection for London, the consequence of the kindness she
+has received there, and also of the enlightened interest she takes in
+everything that is really worth attention.
+
+We went straight from London to Glasgow, and thence to Loch Awe, which
+happened at that time to be enveloped in a dense fog that lasted two
+days, so that when I told my wife that there was a high mountain on the
+opposite side of the lake she could hardly believe it. In fact, nothing
+was visible but a still, gray, shoreless sea.
+
+I was now, as it seemed, in a condition of great felicity, being in the
+place I loved best on earth with the person most dear to me.
+Unfortunately, the union of many different circumstances and conditions
+is necessary to perfect happiness, if happiness exists in the world. The
+element lacking in my case was success in work, or at least the inward
+assurance of progress. There was our beautiful island home, in itself as
+much a poem as a canto of "The Lady of the Lake," with its ancient oaks,
+its rocky shore, its green, undulating, park-like pasture; there was the
+lake for sailing and the mountain for climbing, and all around us a
+country of unlimited wealth of material for the sketcher. Amidst all
+this, with a too earnest and painful application, I set myself to do
+what had never been done,--to unite the color and effect of nature to
+the material accuracy of the photograph.
+
+
+
+
+
+MEMOIR
+
+OF
+
+PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
+
+1858-1894
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+1858.
+
+My first sight of Loch Awe.--Arrival at Innistrynich.--Our domestic
+life.--Difficulties about provisions.--A kitchen garden.
+
+When Philip Gilbert Hamerton asked me to marry him, he conscientiously
+attempted to explain how different my life would be in the Highlands of
+Scotland from that to which I had been accustomed in Paris. He said how
+solitary it was, especially in the winter-time; how entirely devoid of
+what are called the pleasures of a metropolis--to which a Parisian lady
+has the reputation of being such a slave (he knew, however, that it was
+not my case); and already his devotion to study was such that he
+requested me to promise not to interfere with his work of any kind that
+he deemed necessary,--were it camping out, or sailing in stormy weather
+to observe nature under all her changing aspects, either of day or
+night.
+
+Still, the picture he drew of our future existence was by no means all
+in dark colors, for with the enthusiasm of an artist he described the
+glories of the Highlands, the ever-varying skies, the effects of light
+and shadow on the mountains, the beauties of the lovely isles, and the
+charm of sailing on the moonlit and mysterious lake. He also made me
+acquainted with the numerous legends of Loch Awe (he had told them in
+verse, but I was ignorant of English), which would lend a romantic
+atmosphere to our island-home. He was so sensitive to the different
+moods of nature that his descriptions gave to a town-bred girl like me
+an intense desire to witness them with my own eyes; and when I did see
+them there was no _désillusion_, and the effect was so overpowering that
+it seemed like the revelation of a new sense in me. The first glimpse I
+had of Loch Awe, from the top of the coach, was like the realization of
+a fantastic and splendid dream; I could not believe it to be a reality,
+and thought of some mirage; but my husband was delighted by this first
+impression.
+
+We reached Innistrynich shortly before nightfall, and I was taken to the
+keeper's cottage to warm myself, whilst the luggage was being conveyed
+across the bay to the house. Though it was the end of May, the weather
+had been so cold all the way that I felt almost benumbed after the
+drive; for, being accustomed to the climate of France, I had taken but
+scanty precautions in the way of wraps, believing them to be superfluous
+at that time of the year. My husband, having begged the keeper's wife to
+take care of me, she carried her assiduities to a point that quite
+confused me, for I could not remonstrate in words, and she was so
+evidently prompted by kindness that I was fearful of hurting her by
+opposing her well-meant but exaggerated attentions. She swathed me in a
+Scotch plaid, and placed the bundle I had become in a cushioned and
+canopied arm-chair by the peat-fire, the smoke and unaccustomed odor of
+which stifled me; then she insisted upon removing my boots and
+stockings, and chafed my feet in her hands, to bring back a little
+warmth. Lastly, she hospitably brought me what she thought the best
+thing she had to offer, a hot whiskey toddy. To please her, and also to
+relieve my numbness, I tried my best to drink what seemed to me a horrid
+mixture, but I could not manage it, and could not explain why, and the
+poor woman remained lost in sorrowful bewilderment at my rejection of
+the steaming tumbler. Just then my husband came back, and after thanking
+the keeper's wife, rowed me over to Innistrynich.
+
+It was then quite dark, and impossible to see the island, even the
+outside of the cottage; but when the door was open, it showed the
+prettiest picture imaginable: the entrance was brilliantly illuminated,
+and our two servants--a maid and a young lad ("Thursday" of the
+"Painter's Camp"), both healthy and cheerful-looking, were standing
+ready to relieve us of our wraps. The drawing-room had an inviting glow
+of comfort, with the generous fire, the lights of the elegant candelabra
+playing amongst the carvings of the oak furniture, and the tones of the
+dark ruddy curtains harmonizing with the lighter ones of the
+claret-colored carpet; an artistic silver set of tea-things, which my
+husband had secretly brought from Paris with the candelabra, had been
+spread on the table ready for us, and my appreciation of the taste and
+thoughtfulness displayed on my behalf gladdened and touched the donor.
+I had never before partaken of tea as a meal, but it was certainly a
+most delightful repast to both of us.
+
+After a short rest, my husband showed me the arrangements of the house,
+rich in surprises to my foreign notions, but none the less interesting
+and pleasant.
+
+Our drawing-room was to serve as dining-room also, for the orthodox
+dining-room had been transformed into a studio and sitting-room; they
+stood opposite to each other. A little further along the corridor
+came the two best bedrooms, which, at first sight, gave to a Parisian
+girl a sensation of bareness and emptiness, corrected later by habit.
+Everything necessary was to be found there,--large brass bedsteads
+with snowy coverings, all the modern contrivances for the toilet,
+chests of drawers, each surmounted by a bright looking-glass;
+even a number of tiny and curious gimcracks ornamented the narrow
+mantelpiece; but to a French eye the absence of curtains to the bed, and
+the unconcealed display of washing utensils, suggested a _cabinet de
+toilette_ rather than a bedroom. This simplicity has now become quite
+fashionable among wealthy French people, on account of its healthiness:
+the fresh air playing more freely and remaining purer than in rooms
+crowded with stuffed seats, and darkened by elaborate upholstery.
+
+On the upper story were four other rooms, used as laboratory,
+store-room, and servants' rooms; whilst on the ground-floor we had a
+scullery, a large kitchen, a laundry,--that I used afterwards as a
+private kitchen, when my husband provided it with a set of French brass
+pans and a charcoal range,--a spare room, which was turned into a
+nursery by and by, and lastly, a repository for my husband's not
+inconsiderable paraphernalia.
+
+The first days after our arrival were devoted to sailing or rowing on
+the lake, to acquaint me with its topography; soon, however, we made
+rules to lose no time, for we had both plenty of work before us.
+
+My husband, at that time, knew French pretty well; he could express
+everything he wished to say, and understood even the _nuances_ of the
+language, but his accent betrayed him at once as an Englishman, and
+there lingered in his speech a certain hesitation about the choice of
+words most appropriate to his meaning. As for me, my English had
+remained that of a school-girl, and my husband offered me his
+congratulations on my extremely limited knowledge, for this reason--that
+I should have little to unlearn. We agreed, to begin with, that one of
+us ought to know the other's language thoroughly, so as to establish a
+perfect understanding, and as he was so much more advanced in French
+than I in English, it was decided that for a time he should become my
+pupil, and that our conversations should be in my mother-tongue.
+
+On my part I devoted two hours a day to the study of English grammar,
+and to the writing of exercises, themes, and versions. This task was
+fulfilled during my husband's absence, or whilst he was engaged with his
+correspondence; and in the afternoon I used to read English aloud to
+him, while he drew or painted either at home or out of doors. It was his
+own scheme of tuition, and proved most satisfactory, but required in the
+teacher--particularly at the beginning--an ever-ready attention to
+correct the pronunciation of almost every word, and to give the
+translation of it, together with a great store of patience to bear with
+the constantly recurring errors; for not to mar my interest in the works
+he gave me to read, I was exempted from the slow process of the
+dictionary. He was himself the best of dictionaries--explaining the
+differences of meaning, giving the life and spirit of each term, and
+always impressing this truth, that rarely does the same expression
+convey exactly the same idea in two languages. He frequently failed to
+give word for word, because he would not give an approximate
+translation; but he was always ready with a detailed explanation, and so
+taught me to enter into the peculiar genius of the language; so that if
+I did not become a good translator, I learned early to think and to feel
+in sympathy with the authors I was studying.
+
+If the weather allowed it, Gilbert generally took me out on the lake,
+and according to the prevailing wind, chose some particular spot for a
+study. These excursions lasted about half the day or more, and then some
+sort of nourishment was required; but as my ignorance of the language
+prevented me from giving the necessary orders, the responsibility of the
+commissariat entirely devolved upon him; and I may candidly avow that
+the results were a continual source of surprise to me. Being
+unacquainted with English ways, I presumed that it was customary to live
+in the frugal and uniform fashion prevalent at Innistrynich; namely, at
+breakfast: ham or bacon; sometimes eggs, with or without butter,
+according to circumstances; toast--or scones, if bread were wanting--and
+coffee. At lunch: dry biscuits and milk. At tea-time, which varied
+considerably _as to time_, ranging from five if we were in the house, to
+eight or nine if my husband was out sketching: ham and eggs again, or a
+little mutton--chop or steak, if the meat were fresh, cold boiled
+shoulder or leg if it was salted; and a primitive sort of crisp, hard
+cake, which Thursday always served with evident pleasure and pride,
+being first pastry-cook and then partaker of the luxury. I often
+wondered how Englishmen could grow so tall and so strong on such food;
+for I was aware within myself of certain feelings of weakness and
+sickness never experienced before, but which I was ashamed to confess so
+long as men whose physical organizations required more sustenance
+remained free from them. One day, however, the reason of this difference
+became clear to me. My husband had proposed to show me Kilchurn Castle,
+which he was going to sketch, and we started early after the first light
+breakfast, with Thursday to manage the sails. On turning round
+Innistrynich we met a contrary wind, and had to beat against it: it was
+slow work, and at last I timidly suggested that it might perhaps be
+better to turn back to get something to eat; but Gilbert triumphantly
+said he was prepared for the emergency, and had provided ... a box of
+figs!!!... yes, and he opened it deliberately and offered me the first
+pick. I could not refrain from looking at Thursday, whose face betrayed
+such a queer expression of mingled amusement and disappointed
+expectation that I burst out laughing heartily, at which my husband, who
+had been meditatively eating fig after fig, looked up wondering what was
+the matter. I then asked if that was all our meal, and he gravely took
+out of the box two bottles of beer and a flask of sherry, the look of
+which seemed to revive Thursday's spirits wonderfully. As for me, who
+drank at that time neither beer nor wine, and whose taste for dry figs
+was very limited, I hinted that something more--bread, for
+instance--would not have been superfluous. The opportunity for ridding
+himself of cares so little in harmony with his tastes and artistic
+pursuits was not lost by my husband, and I was then and there invested
+with the powers and functions of housekeeper.
+
+This was the plan adopted for the discharge of my new duties. In the
+morning I studiously wrote, as an exercise, the orders I wished to give,
+and, after correction, I learned to repeat them by word of mouth till I
+could be understood by the servants. It succeeded tolerably when my
+husband was accessible, if an explanation was rendered necessary on
+account of my foreign accent; but there was no way out of the difficulty
+if he happened to be absent.
+
+Ever since I knew him I had noticed his anxiety to lose no time, and to
+turn every minute to the best account for his improvement. Throughout
+his life he made rules to bind his dreamy fancy to active study and
+production; they were frequently altered, according to the state of his
+health and the nature of his work at the time; but he felt the necessity
+of self-imposed laws to govern and regulate his strong inclination
+towards reflection and reading. He used to say that when people allowed
+themselves unmeasured time for what they called "thinking," it was
+generally an excuse for idle dreaming; because the brain, after a
+certain time given to active exertion, felt exhausted, and could no
+longer be prompted to work with intellectual profit; that, in
+consequence, the effort grew weaker and weaker, till vague musings and
+indistinct shadows gradually replaced the powerful grasp and clear
+vision of healthy mental labor.
+
+On the other side, it must be said that he was too much of a poet to
+undervalue the state of apparent indolence which is so favorable to
+inspiration, and that he often quoted in self-defence the words of
+Claude Tillier,--"Le temps le mieux employé est celui que l'on perd."
+Aware of his strong propensity to that particular mental state, he
+attempted all his life to restrict it within limits which would leave
+sufficient time for active pursuits. His love of sailing must have been
+closely connected with the inclination to a restful, peaceful, dreamy
+state, for although fond of all kinds of boating, he greatly preferred a
+sailing-boat to any other, and never wished to possess a steamer, or
+cared much to make use of one.
+
+Still, he took great pleasure in some forms of physical exercise: he
+could use an oar beautifully; he was a capital horseman, having been
+used to ride from the age of six, and retained a firm seat to the last;
+he readily undertook pedestrian excursions and the ascent of mountains.
+He often rode from Innistrynich to Inverary or Dalmally (when our island
+became a peninsula in dry weather, or in winter when the bay was frozen
+over); but he found little satisfaction in riding the mare we had then,
+which was mainly used as a cart-horse to fetch provisions, for the
+necessaries of life were not very accessible about us. We had to get
+bread, meat, and common grocery from Inverary, and the rest from
+Glasgow, so that we soon discovered that the whole time of a male
+servant would be required for errands of different kinds. Not
+unfrequently was the half of a day lost in the attempt to get a dozen
+eggs from the little scattered farms, or a skinny fowl, or such a rare
+delicacy as a cabbage. Sometimes Thursday came back from the town
+peevish and angry at his lost labor, having found the bread too hard or
+too musty, and mutton unprocurable; as to the beef which came
+occasionally from Glasgow, it was usually tainted, except in
+winter-time, and veal was not to be had for love or money, except in a
+condition to make one fearful of a catastrophe.
+
+There was also the additional trouble of unloading the goods on the side
+of the road, of putting them into the boat, to be rowed across the bay;
+then they must be carried to the house either by man or horse. Merely to
+get the indispensable quantity of fuel in such a damp climate, when
+fires have to be kept up for eight or oftener nine months in the year,
+was a serious matter, and my husband complained that he was constantly
+deprived of Thursday's services. He then decided to take as a gardener,
+out-of-door workman, and occasional boatman, a Highlander of the name of
+Dugald, whom he had employed sometimes in the latter capacity, for he
+knew something of boats, having been formerly a fisherman.
+
+There were some outbuildings on the island; one of them contained two
+rooms, which Dugald and his wife found sufficient for them (they had no
+children), and this became the gardener's cottage. Another was used as a
+stable, and the smallest as a fowl-house and carpenter's shop, for now
+we had come to the conclusion that we could not possibly live all the
+year round on the island without a small farm, to provide us, at least,
+with milk, cream, butter, and eggs; so we bought two cows, and also a
+small flock of sheep, that we might always be sure of mutton--either
+fresh or salted. This did not afford a great variety of _menus_, but it
+was better than starvation.
+
+Vegetables, other than potatoes and an occasional cabbage, being
+unseen--and I believe unknown--at Loch Awe, and my husband's health
+having suffered in consequence of the privation, we had the ambition of
+growing our own vegetables, and a great variety of them too. Dugald was
+set to dig and manure a large plot of ground, though he kept mumbling
+that it was utterly useless, as nothing could or would grow where oats
+did not ripen once in three years, and that Highlanders, who knew so
+much better than foreigners, "would not be fashed" to attempt it.
+However, as he was paid to do the work, he had to do it; and it was
+simple enough, for he had no pretensions to being a gardener; the choice
+of seeds and the sowing of them were left to Gilbert, who had never
+given a thought to it before, and to me, who knew absolutely nothing of
+the subject. In this emergency we got books to guide us, bought and
+sowed an enormous quantity of seeds, and to our immense gratification
+some actually sprouted. Our pride was great when the doctor came to
+lunch with us for the first time, and we could offer him radishes and
+lettuce, which he duly wondered at and appreciated. Of course we had to
+put up with many failures, but still it was worth while to persevere,
+as, in addition to carrots, onions, turnips,--which grew to
+perfection,--potatoes and cabbages, we had salads of different kinds,
+small pumpkins, and fine cauliflowers. I soon discovered that peat was
+extremely favorable to them, so we had a trench made in peaty soil,
+where they grew splendidly.
+
+Although very well satisfied on the whole with our attempt, we thought
+it absorbed too much of my husband's time, and he soon requested me to
+go on with it by myself, and frankly avowed that he could not take any
+interest in gardening, even in ornamental gardening. This lack of
+interest seemed strange to me, because he liked to study nature in all
+her phenomena, but it lasted to the end of his life; he did not care in
+the least for a well-kept garden, but he liked flowers for their colors
+and perfumes,--not individually,--and trees for their forms, either
+noble or graceful, and especially for their shade. He could not bear to
+see them pruned, and when it became imperative to cut some of their
+branches, he used to complain quite sadly to his daughter--who shared
+his feelings about trees--and he would say: "Now, Mary, you see they are
+at it again, spoiling our poor trees." And if I replied, "But it is for
+their health; the branches were trailing on the ground, and now the
+trees will grow taller," he slowly shook his head, unconvinced. When we
+took the small house at Pré-Charmoy, he was delighted by the wildness of
+the tiny park sloping gently down to the cool, narrow, shaded river,
+over which the bending trees met and arched, and he begged me not to
+interfere with the trailing blackberry branches which crept about the
+roots and stems of the superb wild-rose trees, making sweet but
+impenetrable thickets interwoven with honeysuckle, even in the midst of
+the alleys and lawns.
+
+And now to return to the domestic arrangements arrived at by mutual
+consent. Upon me devolved the housekeeping, provisioning, and care of
+the garden, with the help of a maid, occasionally that of Dugald's wife
+as charwoman, and pretty regularly that of Dugald himself for a certain
+portion of the day; that is, when he was not required by my husband to
+man the boat or to help in a camping-out expedition. It was agreed that
+Thursday should be considered as his master's private servant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+1858.
+
+Money matters.--Difficulties about servants.--Expensiveness of our mode
+of life.
+
+My husband had a little fortune, sufficient for his wants as a bachelor,
+which were modest; it would have been larger had his father nursed it
+instead of diminishing it as he did by his reckless ways, and especially
+by entrusting its management during his son's minority to a very kind
+but incapable guardian in business matters, and to another competent but
+dishonest trustee, who squandered, unchecked, many important sums of
+money, and made agreements and leases profitable to himself, but almost
+ruinous to his ward. As to the other trustee, he never troubled himself
+so far as to read a deed or a document before signing it. Still, what
+remained when my husband came of age was amply sufficient for the kind
+of life he soon chose, that of an artist; and he hoped, moreover, to
+increase it by the sale of his works.
+
+He was, however, aware of the future risks of the situation when he
+asked in marriage a girl without fortune, and he told me without reserve
+what we had to expect.
+
+An important portion of his income was to cease after fourteen
+years--the end of the lease of a coal-mine; but he felt certain that he
+would be able by that time to replace it by his own earnings, and
+meanwhile we were to live so economically and so simply that, as we
+thought, there was no need for anxiety; so we convinced my parents--with
+the persuasion that love lent us--that after all we should not be badly
+off.
+
+Soon after the completion of our household organization, however, I
+began to fear that a very simple way of living might, under peculiar
+conditions, become expensive. A breakfast consisting of ham and eggs is
+not extravagantly luxurious, but if the ham comes to thrice the original
+price when carriage and spoilage are allowed for, and if to the sixpence
+paid for half-a-dozen eggs you add the wages of a man for as many hours,
+you find to your dismay that though your repast was simple, it was not
+particularly cheap. Whichever way we turned we met with unavoidable and
+unlooked-for expenses. Perhaps an English lady, accustomed to the
+possibilities of such a place, and to the habits of the servants and the
+customs of the country, might have managed better--though even to-day I
+don't see clearly what she could have done; as for me, though I had been
+brought up in the belief that Paris was one of the most expensive places
+to live in, and though I was perfectly aware of its prices,--having kept
+my father's house for some years, on account of my mother's weak state
+of health,--I was entirely taken by surprise, and rather afraid of the
+reckoning at the end of the year. No one who has not attempted that kind
+of primitive existence has any idea of its complications. A mere change
+of servant was expensive--and such changes were rather frequent, on
+account of their disgust at the breach of orthodox habits, and the lack
+of followers; or their dismissal was rendered inevitable by their
+incapacity or unwillingness, or their contempt for everything out of
+their own country. We had a capital instance of this characteristic in a
+nurse who came from Greenock, and who thoroughly despised everything in
+the Highlands. One night, my husband and myself were out of doors
+admiring a splendid full moon, by the light of which it was quite easy
+to read. The nurse Katharine was standing by us, holding baby in her
+arms, and she heard me express my admiration: unable to put up with
+praises of a Highland moon, she exclaimed deliberately, "Sure, ma'am,
+then, you should see the Greenock moon; this is nothing to it."
+
+This change of servants was of serious moment to us, both in the way of
+time and money, for we had to go to Glasgow or Greenock to fetch new
+ones, besides paying for their journeys to and fro, and a month's wages
+if they did not give satisfaction, which was but too often the case.
+
+Once it happened that a steamer, bringing over a small cargo of
+much-needed provisions, foundered, and we were in consequence nearly
+reduced to a state of starvation.
+
+Also, after paying princely prices for laying hens, we only found empty
+shells in the hen-coop, the rats having sucked the eggs before us.
+Gilbert, to save our eggs, bought a vivacious little terrier, who killed
+more fowls than rats; and as to the few little chickens that were
+hatched--despite the cold and damp--they gradually disappeared, devoured
+by the birds of prey, falcons and eagles, which carried them off under
+my eyes, even whilst I was feeding them.
+
+Another very important item of expense lay in the different materials
+required for my husband's work of various kinds, and of which he ordered
+such quantities that their remnants are still to be found in his
+laboratory as I write. Papers of all sorts of quality and size--for
+pen-and-ink, crayons, pastel, water-color, etching, tracing; colors dry
+and moist, brushes, canvases, frames, boards, panels; also the
+requisites for photography. It was one of my husband's lasting
+peculiarities that, in his desire to do a great quantity of work, and in
+the fear of running short of something, he always gave orders far
+exceeding what he could possibly use. He also invariably allowed
+himself, for the completion of any given work, an insufficiency of time,
+because he did not, beforehand, take into account the numerous
+corrections that he was sure to make; for he was constantly trying to do
+better.
+
+Our journeys also contributed to swell considerably the total of our
+expenditure. Before we were married he promised my parents that he would
+bring me over once a year, for about a month; for it was a great
+sacrifice on their part to let their eldest child go so far away, and,
+even as it was, to remain separated for so long at a time. My husband's
+relations had also to be considered, and he decided that every time we
+went to France we would stay a week at least with his maiden aunts, who
+had brought him up, and a few days with the family of his kind uncle,
+Thomas Hamerton of Todmorden; then a short time in London to see the
+Exhibitions and his friends. The same itinerary was to be followed on
+our return.
+
+My parents living then in Paris, where even at that time rents were high
+and space restricted, my husband's dislike to confinement did not allow
+him to remain satisfied with the single room they could put at our
+disposal; moreover, in order to work effectively, peace and perfect
+quiet were absolutely indispensable to him; so he took lodgings close to
+my parents', and whilst I spent as much of my time with them as I could
+spare, he wrote or read in the noiseless rooms we had taken _entre cour
+et jardin_. Of course the rent of the lodgings was an additional
+expense. Altogether, when we summed up the accounts after the first
+year, we were dismayed to see what was the cost of such an unpretentious
+existence; but with youthful hope we counted upon the income that art
+could not fail to bring shortly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+1858.
+
+Painting from nature.--Project of an exhibition.--Photography.--Plan of
+the "Painter's Camp."--Topographic Art.--Charm of our life in the
+Highlands.
+
+Mr. Hamerton has himself explained in his autobiography what were his
+artistic tendencies and aims: he meant to be topographically true in his
+rendering of nature, and was unluckily greatly influenced by the
+Pre-Raphaelites, who were, at the time of our marriage, attracting great
+attention. I was totally unprepared for that kind of art, and the most
+famous specimens of it which my husband took me to see in London only
+awoke an apprehension as to what I might think of his own pictures when
+they were shown to me. The old masters in the Louvre, even the yearly
+Salons, where, under my father's guidance, I had learned to admire
+Troyon, Corot, and Millet, had given me an education which fell short of
+enabling me to recognize the merits of the new school. It was in vain
+that my husband pointed out the veracity of the minutest detail, in vain
+that he attempted to interest me in the subjects or praised the scheme
+of color; I did not understand it as art, and I received an impression,
+perfectly remembered to this day, and which I hardly hope to convey to
+others in words: it was for my eyes what unripe fruit is for the teeth.
+
+It was a long time before my husband completed a picture at
+Innistrynich, because he had resolved, at first, to paint only from
+nature, and was constantly interrupted by changes of effect. After many
+attempts, he came to the conclusion that he would only paint local color
+out-of-doors, and in order to study effects rapidly, he made hasty
+sketches with copious notes written in pencil. Still, he was not
+satisfied, the sketch, however quickly traced, retarding the taking of
+notes, so that the effect had vanished before they were completed. After
+giving mature consideration to another scheme of study, he decided to
+make careful pen-and-ink topographical drawings of the most striking
+features of the scenery, such as Ben Cruachan, Glen Etive, Ben Vorlich,
+Glencoe, etc., and to have them reproduced in large quantities, so that,
+when upon the scene represented by any of them, he would only have to
+note the most impressive effects, the sketch having become unnecessary.
+I wished him to take these memoranda in water-colors or pastels, for it
+seemed to me very difficult, when the effect was out of the memory, to
+revive it in its entirety by hundreds of minute observations covering
+the whole sheet of paper. I had another reason for wishing to see him
+work more in colors--it was his want of dexterity with them, which I
+thought practice only could give; but he said it was too slow for
+out-of-door study, and should be reserved for winter-time and bad
+weather. Another point upon which we could not agree was the amount of
+truth to which an artist ought to bind himself; he said "nothing less
+than topographic truth," and he took infinite pains in the measurement
+of mountain peaks, breadth of heather-patches, and length of running
+streams. To his grievous disappointment, when the conscientious and
+labored study was shown to me, I could not but repeat that if it were
+true it did not look so to me, since it produced none of the sensations
+of the natural scene. "You would like me to exaggerate, then?" he asked.
+"Yes," I answered, "if that is the way to make it _look_ true." But he
+persevered in his system. He used to camp out a week, sometimes a
+fortnight, wherever he made choice of a subject, and returned to the
+same spot several times afterwards, with his printed studies of outlines
+to take notes of effects.
+
+He was fond of elaborating schemes, and I told him sometimes that I
+wished he would allow things to go on more simply, that he would paint
+his pictures straightforwardly, and try for their reception in the
+Academy; but he answered that most certainly they would be rejected if
+painted with so little care, and that he thought the best plan was to go
+on patiently during the summer as he had begun, then to paint in winter
+from his studies, and produce, not an odd picture now and then, but a
+series of pictures illustrating the most remarkable characteristics of
+Highland scenery, which he would put before the public in a private
+exhibition of his own, under the title of "Pictures from the Highlands,
+by P. G. Hamerton." And before one of the pictures was begun, he had
+made the model of a die bearing this inscription, to be stamped on the
+frames of the pictures, as well as on the studies. Mr. Hamerton had
+taken lessons from a photographer in Paris, at the time of his first
+visit there, thinking it might be a help in the prosecution of his
+scheme, and now he was always trying to get some photographs of the
+scenes among which he camped. They were generally very poor and feeble,
+the weather being so often unpropitious, and the process (paper process)
+so imperfect and tedious. Still, it was the means of giving pleasure to
+our relations and friends by acquainting them with our surroundings.
+Here is a passage from one of my father's letters in acknowledgment of
+the photograph of our house: "J'ai reçu avec infiniment de plaisir votre
+lettre et la photographie qui l'accompagnait. Cette petite image nous
+met en communication plus directe, en nous identifiant pour ainsi dire,
+à votre vie intérieure. Merci donc, et de bon coeur."
+
+Although my husband firmly believed that nature had meant him to be an
+artist, and helped nature as much as he could by his own exertions, the
+literary talent which was in him would not be stifled altogether, and
+under pretext of preparing a way for his artistic reputation, made him
+undertake the "Painter's Camp."
+
+It may be easily realized that with his elaborate system of study, which
+required journeys and camping out, the taking of photographs, painting
+indoors in wet weather, together with a course of reading for culture
+and pleasure, and in addition literary composition, Gilbert's time was
+fully occupied; still he was dissatisfied by the meagre result, and
+fretted about it. He had, at the cost of much thought and money,
+organized a perfect establishment, with wagons, tents, and boats, to go
+and stay wherever he pleased; but wherever he went or stopped he almost
+invariably met with rain and mist, and though he could draw or paint
+inside the tent, he still required to see his subject, and how could he
+possibly when the heavy rain-clouds enveloped the mountains as if in a
+shroud, or when the mist threw a veil over all the landscape? I remember
+going with him to camp out in Glencoe in delightful weather, which
+lasted (for a wonder) throughout the journey and the day following it,
+after which we were shut inside the tents by pouring or drizzling rain
+for six consecutive days, when the only possible occupation was reading,
+so that at last we were beaten back home with a few bad photographs and
+incomplete sketches as the fruits of a week's expedition.
+
+At first we did not attach much importance to the weather, even if it
+wasted time. My husband had taken the island on a lease of four years,
+and it seemed to us that almost anything might be achieved in the course
+of four years; we were so young, both of us--he twenty-four, and I
+nineteen--that we had not yet realized how rapidly time flows--and it
+flowed so delightfully with us as to make everything promising in our
+eyes. The rain might be troublesome and interfere with work, but were
+not the splendid colors of the landscape due to it? The lake might be
+stormy, and the white foam of its waves dash even upon the panes of our
+windows, but the clouds, driven wildly over the crests of the hills, and
+rent by peaks and crags, cast ever-hanging shadows along their swift
+course, and the shafts of the sun darting between them clothed the
+spaces between in dazzling splendor. Our enjoyment of natural beauty was
+not marred by considerations about the elements which produced it:
+whether the rich color of the shrivelled ferns on the hillside had been
+given by the fierce heat of a sun which, at the same time, had dried up
+the streams and parched the meadows, we did not inquire; and if the
+grandeur of the stormy lake on a dark night, with the moaning of the
+breakers on the rocky shore, and the piercing shrieks of the blast,
+involved the fall and ruin of many a poor man's cottage and the
+destruction of hundreds of uprooted trees, we were so entranced in
+admiration as to give no thought to the consequences. We derived
+pleasure from everything, study or contemplation, fair weather or foul;
+a twilight ramble on the island by the magnificent northern lights, or a
+quiet sail on the solitary lake perfumed with the fragrance of the
+honeysuckle or of the blue hyacinths growing so profusely on Inishail
+and the Black Isles.
+
+Well, we were happy; we did not stop to consider if we were _perfectly_
+happy; but it was, without a doubt, the happiest time of our lives, for
+we have always turned back to it with deep regret, and, as my husband
+has expressed it in the "Painter's Camp"--"It is so full of
+associations and memories which are so infinitely dear and sweet and
+sacred, that the very word 'Highlands' will lay a sudden charm on my
+heart forever."
+
+Although we made no dissection of our happiness to know what it was made
+of, there was a powerful element in it which I discern clearly now: we
+were satisfied with ourselves, thinking we were fulfilling our duty to
+the best of our understanding; if we erred, it was unconsciously. Since
+then we have not been so positive, and sometimes have questioned the
+wisdom of those days. But who can tell?... If my husband had not lived
+those four years of Highland life he would not have been the man he
+became, and his literary gift, though perhaps developed in some other
+way, would never have acquired the charm which influenced afterwards so
+many minds and hearts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+1858.
+
+English and French manners.--My husband's relatives.--First journey to
+France after our marriage.--Friends in London.--Miss Susan Hamerton.
+
+The summer of 1858 had been unusually warm and pleasant in the
+Highlands, and my husband had put many a study in his portfolios, in
+spite of the interruptions to his work caused by a series of boils,
+which, though of no importance, were exceedingly painful and irritating,
+being accompanied by fever and sleeplessness: they were the result of a
+regimen of salted meat and an insufficiency of fresh vegetables; for of
+course those we succeeded in growing the first year were only fit for
+the table towards the end of summer.
+
+We had not been so solitary as I had expected, for with the warm weather
+a few families had come back to their residences on the shores of the
+lake, and had called upon us. I had felt rather timid and awkward, as I
+could not speak English; but the ladies being kindly disposed, and
+generally knowing a little French, we managed to get on friendly terms,
+particularly when left to ourselves, for I was very much afraid of
+Gilbert's strictures--I will explain for what reasons in particular. He
+was, as I have said before, a very good and competent teacher, but very
+exacting, and he had repeatedly said that he could put up better with my
+faults were they the usual recognized mistakes of a foreigner, but that
+unluckily mine were vulgarisms. This was very humiliating, as I must
+confess I took a little pride in my French, which had been often praised
+as elegant and pure, and this had fostered in me a taste for
+conversation such as was still to be enjoyed in intelligent French
+society at that time, and of which I had never been deprived at home, my
+father being an excellent conversationalist, and receiving political
+friends of great talent as orators and debaters, such as Michel de
+Bourges, Baudin, Madier-de-Montjau, Boysset, and many others, as well as
+literary people.
+
+On the other hand, it must be explained that I was unknown to my
+husband's relations, and aware of some prejudices against me among them,
+particularly on the part of his Aunt Susan,--the younger of the two
+sisters who had brought him up. She only knew that I was French, a Roman
+Catholic, and without fortune; all these defects were the very opposite
+of what she had dreamt of for her nephew, and her disappointment had
+been so bitter when she had heard of his engagement that, to excuse it
+in her own eyes, she had convinced herself that a French girl could only
+be flippant, extravagantly fond of amusement, and neglectful of homely
+duties; a Roman Catholic must of necessity be narrow-minded and bigoted,
+and the want of fortune betrayed low birth and lack of education. These
+views had been expressed at length to my betrothed, together with severe
+reproaches and admonitions, and it was in vain that he had attempted to
+justify his choice; his aunt persisted in attributing it solely to a
+passion he had been too weak to master. At last our marriage drawing
+near, Gilbert wrote to his aunt that if her next letter contained
+anything disrespectful to me he would return it, and do the same for the
+following ones, without opening them; and the correspondence had ceased.
+
+It was quite different with his aunt Mary, who must also have been
+disappointed by his marriage, for with her aristocratic tastes and
+notions she had desired for her nephew a bride of rank, and an heiress
+to put him again in the station befitting the family name, to which his
+education and talents seemed to entitle him. But she had confidence in
+his judgment, and loved him with so generous a love that she
+congratulated him warmly when he was accepted, and wrote me an
+affectionate letter of thanks, and a welcome as a new member of the
+family.
+
+Of course my husband had often talked to me about his aunts; not much
+was said of Miss Susan, but a great deal of his dear guardian, who had
+been like a mother to him, and who now wrote encouragingly to me from
+time to time about my English, and my new life. He praised both his
+aunts for their good management of a small income, for the position they
+had been able to retain in society, and particularly for their lady-like
+manners and good breeding; explaining sometimes that I should probably
+find it different in some respects from French _comme-il-faut_, and
+mentioning in what particulars. I felt that he would be very sensitive
+about the opinions his aunts would form of me, and I dreaded that of
+Miss Susan Hamerton. He had put me on my guard on some points; for
+instance, about the French custom of always addressing people as
+Monsieur or Madame, which was hard for me to relinquish, as it seemed
+rude; and I was also told not to be always thanking servants for their
+services (as we do in France), if I wished to be considered well-bred.
+But besides what was pointed out to me, I noticed many other things
+which ought to be toned down in my nature and habits, if I meant to
+acquire what I heard called lady-like manners. I was at that time very
+vivacious, merry, and impulsive, and so long as I had lived in France
+this natural disposition had been looked upon as a happy one, and rather
+pleasant than otherwise; but I did not notice anything resembling it in
+our visitors, who were said to be real ladies, or lady-like. They looked
+to my French eyes somewhat indifferent and unconcerned: it is true that
+they were all my seniors by at least half-a-score of years, but the fact
+did not put me more at ease. However, as they showed great kindness, and
+frequently renewed their visits and invitations, I was led to think that
+their judgment had not gone against me, and this gave me some courage
+for the day of my meeting with my Aunt Susan. And that day was drawing
+near, my husband having promised his relations that we should visit them
+after six months, which was the delay granted to me to learn a little
+English; and although I could not and dared not speak it at the end of
+the allotted time, no respite was allowed.
+
+It was arranged that after our stay in Lancashire we should go on to
+Paris. This news was received with great joy and thankfulness in my
+family, where we had not been expected so soon, and where the sorrow for
+my absence was still so keen that my father wrote to my husband: "Chaque
+fois que je rentre je m'attends à la voir accourir au devant de moi et
+chaque désillusion est suivie de tristesse. Il n'est pas jusqu'au piano
+dont le mutisme me fait mal. J'ai beau me dire que ces impatiences, ces
+chagrins sont de la faiblesse: je le sais, je le sens, et je n'en suis
+pas plus fort."
+
+The love of improvements, which was one of Gilbert's characteristics,
+had led him to plan a road on the island, which should go from the house
+to the lowest part of the shore, where the lake dried up in summer, so
+as to facilitate the conveyance of goods, which could then be carted
+without unloading from Inverary to the barn or kitchen-door. He gave
+very minute directions to Thursday and Dugald, and set them to their
+work just before we left for France, telling them that he expected to
+find the road finished on our return.
+
+We started in November, and arrived at Todmorden on a wet day; and just
+before leaving the railway carriage we were much amused by a gentleman
+who answered the query "Is this Todmorden?" by letting down the window
+and thrusting his hand out, after which he gravely said: "It is raining;
+it must be Todmorden."
+
+My husband's uncle, Thomas Hamerton, with his two daughters, was
+awaiting us at the station to welcome us and take us to his house, where
+we found Mrs. Hamerton, who received us very kindly, but called me Mrs.
+Philip Gilbert, because she despaired of ever pronouncing my Christian
+name rightly. I begged her to call me "niece," and her husband gave the
+example by calling me "my niece Eugeneï." Our cousins Anne and Jane
+spoke French very creditably, although they had never been in France,
+and we were soon on friendly terms. When my husband was away, they
+translated my answers to their mother's numerous questions about our
+life in the Highlands, my occupations, tastes, French habits, and what
+not. Although my powers of expression in English were very limited, I
+understood the greater part of what was said, and Mrs. Hamerton and my
+cousins being so encouraging, I did not feel so timid, and if I had
+stayed longer I should most certainly have made rapid progress. On that
+score my husband--P. G., as they called him in the family circle--was
+taken to task and scolded for having been too severe with "his poor
+little foreign wife." His cousins, with whom he was on brotherly terms,
+were much pleased with the soft French pronunciation of the name
+Gilbert, and dropped the P. G. decisively, to the great wonder of their
+mamma.
+
+The following day was fixed by my husband as the day of our trial,--that
+is, for our visit to his aunts, who lived on a steep eminence above
+Todmorden, in a pleasant house, "The Jumps." Aunt Mary, in order to
+spare me, had offered to come down to meet us at her brother's; but as
+she suffered from some kind of heart complaint (the knowledge of which
+kept her loving nephew in constant alarm) we were afraid of the effect
+that fatigue and emotion might have, and preferred to encounter Miss
+Susan Hamerton.
+
+The reception was typical of the different dispositions towards us. Aunt
+Mary was standing at the door, straining her eyes to see us sooner, and
+came forward to embrace me and to receive the kisses of her beloved
+nephew; then she whispered that "she had hoped Susan would have gone
+away on a visit to her friends; but she had remained obdurate to all
+hints and entreaties." So there was nothing for it but to meet her,
+since she would have it so; and with a beating heart I was led to the
+drawing-room by my husband. That the reader may not be misled into
+believing that a life-long estrangement resulted from the following
+scene, I will quote a passage from the preface to "Human Intercourse,"
+which gives the unforeseen result of my acquaintance with Miss Susan
+Hamerton.
+
+"A certain English lady, influenced by the received ideas about human
+intercourse which define the conditions of it in a hard and sharp
+manner, was strongly convinced that it would be impossible for her to
+have friendly relations with another lady whom she had never seen, but
+was likely to see frequently. All her reasons would be considered
+excellent reasons by those who believe in maxims and rules. It was plain
+that there could be nothing in common. The other lady was neither of the
+same country, nor of the same religious and political parties, nor of
+the same generation. These facts were known, and the inference deduced
+from them was that intercourse would be impossible. After some time the
+English lady began to perceive that the case did not bear out the
+supposed rules; she discovered that the younger lady might be an
+acceptable friend.
+
+"At last the full, strange truth became apparent--that she was
+singularly well adapted, better adapted than any other human being, to
+take a filial relation to the elder, especially in times of sickness,
+when her presence was a wonderful support. Then the warmest affection
+sprang up between the two, lasting till separation by death, and still
+cherished by the survivor."
+
+But the first meeting held out no such promise. There, on the couch, was
+an elderly lady, sitting stiff and straight, with a book in her hands,
+from which her eyes were never raised, even when she acknowledged our
+entrance by a studiously slow, chilling, and almost imperceptible bend
+of the head. I saw my husband's face flush with anger as we bowed to my
+new relation; but I pressed his hand entreatingly, and we sat down,
+attempting to ignore the hostile presence, and to talk as if we found
+ourselves in ordinary circumstances. Poor Aunt Mary, thinking it must be
+unendurable to me, soon proposed that we should go to the dining-room
+for refreshments, and her proposition was accepted with alacrity. We
+left the dining-room with the same ceremonial which had followed our
+entrance, and were rewarded by the same frigid and distant movement of
+the silent figure on the sofa. We remained some time with Aunt Mary, and
+took an affectionate leave of her, my husband giving a promise that on
+our return journey we would stay a few days at "The Jumps," whether her
+sister chose to be at home or away.
+
+I have related this episode at some length, although it seems to concern
+me more than my husband, because the influence it had on his life was so
+important. It is almost certain that if Miss Susan Hamerton had behaved
+towards us like her sister, my husband would never have thought of going
+to live in France. At the end of our lease at Innistrynich, he would
+have chosen a residence in some picturesque part of England, and would
+have easily induced his aunts to settle as near as possible to us. Their
+example and advice in household matters would have been invaluable to
+me, whilst the affectionate intercourse would have grown closer and
+dearer as we came to know each other better. However, this was not to
+be.
+
+We soon left Todmorden after our visit to "The Jumps," and when we
+reached Paris there were great rejoicings in my family, where my husband
+was fully appreciated. He liked to talk of politics, literature, and art
+with my father, whose experience was extensive, and whose taste was
+refined and discriminating; he awoke in his son-in-law an interest in
+sculpture which hitherto had not been developed, but which grew with
+years. As to my mother, brothers, and sister, they loved him for his
+kindness, and also because he had made a life of happiness for me.
+
+In Paris we went to see everything of artistic interest, but especially
+of architectural interest. I knew nothing of architecture myself, but
+was naturally attracted by beauty, and my husband guided my opinions
+with his knowledge. I noticed with surprise his indifference to most of
+the pictures in the Museum of the Louvre, and he explained, later, that
+he could not appreciate them at that period in the development of his
+artistic taste, which was at that time retarded by the Pre-Raphaelite
+influence. There was certainly a great evolution of mind between this
+state of quasi-indifference and the fervid enthusiasm which made him say
+to me when we came to live in Paris: "At any rate there is for me, as a
+compensation for the beauty of natural scenery, an inexhaustible source
+of interest and study in the Louvre."
+
+The Museum of the Luxembourg containing several pictures by modern
+artists, whose merits he recognized, was frequently visited by us--and
+he admired heartily among others, Rosa Bonheur, Daubigny, Charles
+Jacque, and especially Troyon, whose works went far to shake his faith
+in topographic painting, and sowed the first seeds of the French
+school's influence on his mind.
+
+At the expiration of the month we returned to London, and stayed with
+friends; my husband introduced me to Mr. and Mrs. Mackay, to Mrs. Leslie
+and her family, to the sons and daughters of Constable, of whom he
+speaks in his autobiography, and they all received me very kindly, and
+told me what hopeful views they entertained of his future career. We
+also called upon Millais, for whose talent my husband had a great
+admiration. He received us quite informally, and we had a long talk in
+French, which he pronounced remarkably well; he explained it to me by
+saying that he belonged to a Jersey family.
+
+It was also during this London visit that Mr. Hamerton made the
+acquaintance of Mr. Calderon, who also spoke French admirably,--an
+acquaintance which was to ripen into friendship, and last to the end of
+my husband's life. He also went to all the winter exhibitions, public or
+private, where he stood rooted before all the works which could teach
+him something of his difficult art; and when we left he was certain of
+having acquired new knowledge.
+
+Miss Susan Hamerton having said to Aunt Mary that she had no objection
+to our being her sister's guests, we went straight to "The Jumps" after
+leaving London. This time she received us with polite coldness,--like
+perfect strangers,--but she was not insulting, only at times somewhat
+ungenerously sarcastic with me, who was not armed to parry her thrusts.
+I felt quite miserable, for I did not wish to widen the gap between her
+and her nephew, and on the other hand I did not see how our intercourse
+could be made more pleasant by any endeavors of mine, for I was ignorant
+of the art of ingratiating myself with persons whom I felt adverse to
+me, and I must avow that I had also a certain degree of pride which
+prevented me from making advances when unfairly treated. I had always
+lived in an atmosphere of confidence, love, and goodwill,--perhaps I had
+been a little spoilt by the kindness of my friends, and now it seemed
+hard to be a butt for ill-natured sarcasms. These shafts, however, were
+seldom, if ever, let loose in the presence of my husband, who would not
+have tolerated it; the want of welcome being as much as he could bear.
+Still, there was no doubt that matters had slightly mended since our
+first visit, and an undeniable token of this was the fact of Miss Susan
+Hamerton extending her hand to each of us at parting. Had I been told
+then that this reluctant hand would become a firm support for me; that
+these cold eyes would he filled with warm tears of love, and that I
+should be tenderly pressed to this apparently unsympathizing bosom, I
+could not have believed it. Yet the day came when Aunt Susan proved my
+dearest friend, and when Mr. Thomas Hamerton said to his nephew, "Susan
+loves you much, no doubt, but Eugénie is A1 for her."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+1859.
+
+Visits from friends and relatives.--A Frenchman in the Highlands.--
+Project of buying the island of Innistrynich.
+
+When we arrived at Innistrynich from the Continent, all our neighbors
+had left Loch Awe, and we had only as occasional visitors the doctor and
+our landlord--the rare and far-between calls of the minister ceasing
+with the fine days; but we were not afraid of our solitude _à deux_, and
+we had the pleasant prospect of entertaining Aunt Mary and Anne Hamerton
+early in the summer, as well as the husband of my godmother, M.
+Souverain, a well-known Parisian publisher, whose acquaintance Mr.
+Hamerton had made through my father, and who had promised to come to see
+us. Meanwhile, we resumed our usual rules of work, and my husband began
+several oil pictures at once, so as to lose no time in having to wait
+for the drying of the colors.
+
+As he had made great progress in his French, he proposed that we should
+change our parts, and that nothing but English should be spoken, read,
+or written by me, except my letters to French correspondents. I delayed
+my submission a while, for it seemed that if I could not speak--even to
+him--confidentially and with perfect ease, that indeed would be
+solitude. At last I yielded to his entreaties, strengthened by my
+father's remonstrances, and some months of constantly renewed endeavors
+not always successful, and sometimes accompanied by weariness,
+discouragement, and tears--began for me, my teacher never swerving from
+his rule, not even when, despairing of making myself understood, I used
+a French word or expression. On such occasions he invariably shook his
+head and said: "I do not understand French; speak English," at the same
+time helping me out of my difficulty as much as he could.
+
+Aunt Mary and Anne Hamerton had promised to come to see us during the
+summer, and we had repeated our invitation in the beginning of the
+spring of 1859, but Aunt Mary wrote to her nephew: "I am looking forward
+with great pleasure to my visit to you and Eugénie, but I think I had
+_better_ NOT come till the little cherub has come, because anybody would
+know better what to do than I should."
+
+She wrote again on June 6, 1859: "I am very glad indeed that Eugénie and
+the dear little boy are doing well; give my very best love to Eugénie,
+and tell her that now Anne and I are looking forward with great pleasure
+to visiting you as soon as we can."
+
+They came in July, and Aunt Mary was delighted with the beauty of the
+scenery, with the strong and healthy appearance of her little
+grand-nephew, whom she held in her arms as much and as long as her
+strength allowed, but especially by the recovered affectionate intimacy
+with my husband, and also by the certainty of our domestic happiness.
+
+Anne Hamerton greatly enjoyed the excursions on land and water, and so
+the days passed pleasantly. When my husband was painting, either in his
+studio or out-of-doors, we sat near him and read aloud by turns. Aunt
+Mary was very fond of Moore's poetry, and read it well and feelingly,
+though her voice was rather tremulous and weak. To Anne were given
+passages of "Modern Painters" as examples of style, and Lamartine's
+"Jocelyn" for French pronunciation. I fear that Aunt Mary's appreciation
+of it was more imaginary than real. "The Newcomes" fell to my lot, being
+easier than poetry, and gave rise to many a debate about its superiority
+or inferiority to Thackeray's other works. As an author he was not
+justly appreciated by Aunt Mary, who, on account of her aristocratic
+loyalty, did not forgive him for "The Four Georges."
+
+We had also a good deal of music; my husband, having been accustomed to
+play duets with his cousin, soon resumed the practice, and though I had
+not encouraged him as a solo-player, I liked well enough to listen to
+his violin with a piano accompaniment. Anne's playing was only mediocre,
+but as she did not attempt anything above her skill, it was pleasant
+enough; she accompanied all the French songs I had brought with me, and
+they were numerous, for at that time there was no _soirée_ in
+Paris--homely or fashionable--without _romances_; the public taste was
+not so fastidious as it has since become, and did not expect from a
+school-girl the performance of an operatic prima donna. When out in the
+boat on a peaceful and serene night, my husband rowing us slowly on the
+glassy water, it seemed that the melodies which rose and spread in the
+hazy atmosphere were the natural complement to these enchanted hours.
+Anne often sang "Beautiful Star" or "Long Time Ago," and I was always
+asked for "Le Lac" or "La Chanson de Fortunio."
+
+The arrival of Monsieur Souverain added a new element of cheerfulness to
+our little party: he was so thoroughly French--that is, so ignorant of
+other habits than French ones, so naïvely persuaded of their superiority
+to all others, so keenly alive to any point of difference, and so openly
+astonished when he discovered any, always wondering at the reason for
+this want of similarity--that he was a perpetual source of interest to
+our lady visitors. He could not speak English, but he always addressed
+Aunt Mary in his voluble and rapid Parisian French, and she was all
+smiles, and appeared to enjoy extremely his run of anecdotes about
+French celebrities she had never heard of. Now and then she let fall a
+word or sometimes a phrase totally irrelevant to what he had been
+saying, but which in his turn he politely pretended to appreciate,
+although he had not understood a single syllable of it. It was most
+amusing to see them walking side by side, evidently enjoying each
+other's society and animated conversation; only we remarked that they
+were careful to remain well out of profane hearing by keeping a good
+deal in front of us, or else loitering behind.
+
+We had been awaiting M. Souverain for some days, no date having been
+fixed, when one morning our attention was aroused by loud and prolonged
+shouts coming from that part of the road which affords a view of
+Innistrynich, before descending to the bay. With the help of his
+telescope, my husband soon discovered a small, spare human form, now
+waving a pocket-handkerchief, and now making a speaking-trumpet of both
+hands to carry its appeal as far as the island. "It must be M.
+Souverain," Gilbert said, as he sent a shout of welcome, and ran to the
+pier to loosen the boat and row it across the bay.
+
+He had scarcely landed our visitor when enthusiastic ejaculations met
+our ears: "Mais c'est le Paradis terrestre ici!" "Quel pays de rêve!"
+"Quel séjour enchanteur!" Then, with a change of tone habitual to him,
+and a little sarcastic: "Yes, but as difficult to find as dream-land; I
+thought I should have to turn back to France without meeting with you,
+for no one seemed to be aware of the existence of the 'lac Ave' any more
+than of 'Ineestreeneeche,' and I was beginning to suspect your
+descriptions to have been purely imaginary, when _un trait de lumière_
+illuminated my brain. I bought a map of Scotland, and without troubling
+myself any longer with the impossible pronunciation of impossible names,
+I stuck a pin on the spot of the map that I wanted to reach and showed
+it either to a railway _employé_ or to a _matelot_, and I was sure to
+hear 'All right,'--I have learnt that at least. But upon my life, to
+this day I can't explain why no one seemed to understand me, even at
+Inverary, at the hotel. I asked: 'Quel chemin doit on prendre pour aller
+chez Monsieur Amertone, dans l'île d'Ineestreeneeche sur le lac Ave?'
+That was quite plain, was not it?... Well, they only shook their heads
+till I gave them the address you had written for me, then of course they
+came out with 'All right,' and a good deal besides which was of no
+consequence to me, and at last I am here 'all right.' But why on earth
+do they spell Londres, London; Glascow, Glasgow; and Cantorbéry,
+Canterbury? It is exceedingly puzzling to strangers." My husband was
+greatly tickled, and rather encouraged this flow of impressions; he
+thought it extremely interesting in a cultivated and intelligent man who
+was far from untravelled, for he had been in Spain, Belgium, Germany,
+Italy, and Algeria, and who still evinced a childlike wonder at every
+unfamiliar object. For instance, he would say: "Now, Mr. Hamerton, I am
+sure you can't justify this queer custom in English hotels, of putting
+on the table a roast of eight pounds' weight, _at least_, or a whole
+cheese. I can't eat all that, then why serve it me?... And why also
+those immense washing-basins? They are so cumbersome and heavy that it
+is almost as much as I can achieve to empty them: I don't take a bath in
+them, I take it in a _baignoire_, and I have not to empty it."
+
+The conversation, however, often ran on serious subjects, and M.
+Souverain heard with deep interest from my husband an account of his
+plans, both literary and artistic, and said once: "If you intend to
+devote your life to painting Highland scenery, and since your wife loves
+this admirable island as much as you do, why should not you buy it and
+secure the benefit of the improvements you are carrying on? It is
+somewhat solitary at times, no doubt, but as you will be obliged to go
+to London and Paris every year at least, you might arrange to do so in
+winter and enjoy society there, and a change at the same time. You tell
+me that your property yields at present but a very poor income,--why
+not sell it, or part of it, since it has no attraction for you, and live
+here, on your own property, free of rent?"
+
+Gilbert himself had entertained the idea, and had developed it to me
+with flattering possibilities and speculations, but I was already
+beginning to fear that our present existence was too exquisite to last.
+We had received bad news from Uncle Thomas about the rents; the mill was
+not let, and would require a heavy outlay before it could find a tenant;
+the machinery was old, out-of-date, and would have to be replaced by new
+with the modern improvements, and the cottages surrounding the mill were
+likely to remain tenantless so long as the mill did not work, or the
+rents be but irregularly forthcoming. In fact, our income was already
+insufficient, and my husband was seriously considering whether he ought
+to borrow in order to set up the mill again, or whether it would be more
+profitable to sell the property and draw upon the capital as we required
+it, till he could sell his pictures. At last he decided to consult his
+uncle, who was a prudent man of business, and had a long experience as
+landed proprietor. After due consideration Mr. T. Hamerton advised him
+to go to the necessary expense for repairs to the mill.
+
+Meanwhile M. Souverain was growing more enchanted with Loch Awe day by
+day, and could not bear the idea that we might be turned out of
+Innistrynich some day by a new owner (for the present one was getting
+old, and had said that at the end of our lease he would put it up for
+sale), so he tempted my husband by the almost irresistible offer of a
+third of the purchase money, in consideration of having two rooms
+reserved for himself and his wife--my godmother--during two of the
+summer months. But Aunt Mary's secret desire--and perhaps hope--of
+seeing us established at a future time nearer to herself, suggested some
+very weighty considerations against the project. "When your child or
+maybe children grow up and have to attend school, will you resign
+yourselves to send them so far as will be inevitable if you are still
+here?" she said; "and will your healths be able to stand the severity of
+the climate when you are no longer so young? The distance from a doctor
+is another serious affair in case of sickness, and I myself, as well as
+Eugénie's parents, am on the downward course, and may soon be deprived
+of the possibility of undertaking so fatiguing a journey." All this had
+been foreseen by her nephew, of course, but his attachment to the place
+was such that he found ready answers to all objections. "Our children
+would be educated at home--the climate, though damp, was not more
+severe or unhealthy than the average--doctors were of no good, generally
+speaking--and we might visit our relations more frequently in case they
+were unable to come to us."
+
+So the question remained open.
+
+Gilbert, thinking it desirable to give his guests a more extensive
+acquaintance with the surrounding country than his boats could afford,
+proposed to take a carriage, which would be ferried from Port Sonachan
+to the other side of the lake, after which we might drive as much as
+possible along the shores till we reached Ardhonnel Castle. If we
+arrived early we would visit the ruins and the island; if too late, it
+would be reserved for the following morning, as we intended to spend the
+night at the inn, and to resume our drive in time to be back at
+Innistrynich for dinner.
+
+We started merrily,--Aunt Mary, Anne Hamerton, M. Souverain, my
+husband, myself, and baby; for our guests kindly insisted upon my being
+one of the party, in spite of my small encumbrance, which I could not
+leave behind. I did my best to be excused, but they were unanimous in
+declaring that they would not go if I stayed.
+
+"You need not walk unless you like," they said, "for there will always
+be the carriage, the boat, or the inn for you."
+
+It was a splendid day of bright sunshine in a tenderly blue sky, with a
+pure, soft breeze hardly rippling the lake. We all took our seats inside
+the roomy, open carriage, my husband leaving the management of the
+horses to the driver that he might be free to enjoy the scenery. M.
+Souverain remarked that if the Highlanders were a strong race, their
+horses hardly deserved the same epithet; and indeed the pair harnessed
+to our carriage appeared very lean and somewhat shaky, but the driver
+affirmed that they were capital for hill-work, though he would not swear
+to their swiftness, and as we did not want to go fast, it was again "all
+right" from M. Souverain when the explanation had been translated to
+him.
+
+Fast we certainly did not go, and, moreover, we often stopped to admire
+the changing views, but the poor starved beasts did not pick up any more
+spirit during their frequent rests; they painfully resumed their dull
+jog-trot for a short time, which soon dwindled to slow, weary paces that
+even the whip in no way hastened. However, with plenty of time before
+us, we only turned it into a joke, pretending to be terrified by the
+ardor of our steeds.
+
+My husband had to tell M. Souverain all the legends of the places we
+were passing, and as he himself "courtisait la Muse," he listened with
+rapt attention, so as to be able to treat the subjects in French verse.
+"This country is a mine for a poet!" he frequently exclaimed.
+
+Luckily we had packed some provisions in the carriage, for the sun was
+already declining,--like the pace of the horses,--and we were not yet at
+the end of the drive by a good distance.
+
+The fresh air had sharpened our appetites, and Gilbert proposed that we
+should have something to eat whilst the horses were taken out of harness
+and given a feed to refresh them and give them a little more vigor for
+the rest of the journey.
+
+By the time we had finished our collation the air had freshened, and it
+was twilight; we agreed that now it was desirable to get within shelter
+as soon as possible, although the charm of the hour was indescribable;
+but the thin white mist was beginning to float over the lake, and the
+last remnants of the afterglow had entirely died out. What was our
+dismay when we found that all my husband's efforts, joined to those of
+the driver, to make the horses get up were ineffectual; there they lay
+on the grass, and neither expostulations, pulls, cracks of the whip, or
+even kicks, I am sorry to say, seemed to produce the slightest effect
+upon their determination to remain stretched at full length on the
+ground. What were we to do? The driver vociferated in Gaelic, but the
+poor brutes did not mind, and they would have been cruelly maltreated if
+we had not interfered to protect them. Gilbert said to the man: "You see
+well enough that they have no strength to work, therefore allow them to
+rest till they are able to go back. I leave you here, and as I have
+ladies with me I must try to find some sort of shelter for the night."
+The man was almost frantic when he saw us go, but we all agreed with my
+husband, and in the hope of finding a cottage set forth resolutely on
+foot.
+
+It was now almost dark, but our spirits were not damped yet, and, as M.
+Souverain remarked, it was "une véritable aventure." Still, I was
+beginning to find my baby somewhat heavy after walking for
+three-quarters of an hour, when the gentlemen in front of us cheerily
+encouraged our exertions by calling out, "A cottage, a cottage!" and
+when we came up to them they were loudly knocking at the door, unable to
+obtain a sign of life from within; however, the smell of burning peat
+clearly indicated that the cottage was inhabited, and my husband shouted
+our story, begging that the door might be opened and the ladies allowed
+to rest. Then on the other side of the door, which remained closed, a
+voice answered in Gaelic we knew not what, except that the tone of it
+was unmistakably angry, and unbroken silence ensued.
+
+There was nothing left to us but to resume our walk, enlivened by M.
+Souverain singing the celebrated song, "Chez les montagnards Écossais
+l'hospitalité se donne," etc. Every one in turn offered to hold the
+baby; but Aunt Mary, I knew, had enough to do for herself, Anne was not
+strong, and my confidence in the fitness of the gentlemen for the
+function of nurse was very limited. My husband kept up our courage by
+affirming that we were not far from Ardhonnel, and consequently within a
+short distance of the inn; indeed, he called us to the side of the road,
+from which we could see the noble ruin with our own eyes, now that the
+new moon had risen and was peeping between the clouds occasionally. It
+was a welcome sight, for by this time we were really weary; but alas!
+the inn was on the other side of the lake, and we had no boat; still,
+Gilbert felt sure there must be one not very far off, to take the people
+across, and after surveying the shore for a while he discovered a little
+pier, with a rowing-boat chained to it, and a very small cottage almost
+close to where we stood; so he went to knock at the door, and again
+Gaelic was given in answer. But this time the door was opened by a woman
+who had only taken time to put on a short petticoat, and to throw a
+small shawl over her head; her feet, legs, and arms were bare, and she
+looked strong and placid; her English was scanty, but she understood
+pretty well what we wanted, and declared herself willing to row our
+party to the other side if any one could steer, for her "man" was asleep
+in bed and too tired for work; so my husband took a pair of oars, the
+woman another, and I steered from indications frequently given. At last
+we stood in front of the inn, and it was past midnight. Not a light was
+visible, not a sound was heard, and there was no sign of life except a
+faint blue wreath of peat-smoke; but it was enough to revive our
+energies and hopes. In response to our united appeals a dishevelled head
+of red hair cautiously looked down from a half-opened window, and our
+story had to be told again. Well, this time we were let in and allowed
+to sit down, whilst the ostler's wife was being roused as well as the
+servant, for we were told that the tourists' season, being already over,
+the inn was no longer in trim for customers. This was bad news, for the
+good effects of the luncheon had passed off, and as soon as we could
+rest and forget our fatigue we became sensible of ravenous hunger. The
+good innkeeper and his wife were so obliging and good-hearted that they
+kept deprecating the absence of all the comforts they would have liked
+to give us. However, my husband had brought a large basket of dry peat,
+and M. Souverain heaped it up dexterously, and blew upon what remained
+of red ashes under his pile, whilst a kettle was placed upon the glowing
+embers. "I am afraid I can't offer you the same cheer that you would
+give me at the _maison Dorée_," Gilbert said to his friend. "_Ça serait
+gâter la couleur locale_; oh! some bread-and-cheese, with a bottle of
+beer, will do very well for me." But there was neither bread nor cheese
+nor beer; and no kind of abode, however miserable, had M. Souverain ever
+known to be without bread. "What do they live upon then?" he asked.
+"Porridge, and they occasionally make scones," was the reply. Luckily
+for us there happened to be an ample supply of them, freshly made, and
+with these, boiled eggs, and fried bacon, we had one of the best
+appreciated meals we ever tasted. It was followed by hot whiskey-toddy
+and cigars for the gentlemen, by tea and clotted cream for the ladies,
+and for a while we quite revived; but sleep would have its way, and
+there being only two beds, occupied by the owners of the inn, they
+charitably yielded them to us; and when the sheets had been changed,
+Aunt Mary and Anne shared one, whilst I thankfully retired to the other
+with baby. The gentlemen remained near the fire in the dining-room, one
+of them stretched on the sofa, and the other using its cushions as a
+mattress.
+
+On the following morning I learned the meaning of the word "smart" for
+the first time, it being so frequently repeated by our good hostess, who
+had made room for me by the kitchen fire to dress my child. "How smart
+is the sweet baby!" she constantly exclaimed with honest admiration, as
+she made him laugh by tickling his little feet or chucking his chin.
+
+Our breakfast was a repetition of the supper in every detail, and our
+enjoyment of it more limited. My husband soon went out to hire a boat
+and a couple of men to row us back again. They took us first to
+Ardhonnel, of which he has given a description in "The Isles of Loch
+Awe,"--
+
+  "A gray, tall fortress, on a wooded isle,
+  Not buried, but adorned by foliage."
+
+The day was fine again, and the return home ideal; Gilbert steered and
+relieved each rower in turn, while they sang their Scotch melodies with
+voices strong and clear, and we all joined in the chorus. When we
+reached Port Sonachan we heard that our driver had only arrived towards
+mid-day, and that his horses not being strong enough to stop the
+carriage on the slope to the ferry, had fallen into the lake, from which
+they were rescued with great difficulty. We saw the carriage still
+dripping wet, which had been left out to dry, and for the repairs of
+which Gilbert later on received a bill that he indignantly refused to
+pay.
+
+This "romantic excursion," as M. Souverain called it, had so much
+developed his fancy for Loch Awe that, before taking leave of us, he
+offered to go halves with my husband in the purchase of Innistrynich;
+but there was plenty of time for reflection, as the lease had four years
+to run, so no decision was taken then.
+
+A fortnight after the departure of our Parisian guest, Aunt Mary and
+Anne left us regretfully,--the former especially, who was going back
+reluctantly to the jealous remarks of her sister, and did not feel
+disposed to listen patiently to criticisms on her nephew's character and
+conduct or on mine. From her letters afterwards she had not a pleasant
+time of it, but relieved the painfulness of it as much as possible by
+accepting at intervals several invitations from her friends in the
+neighborhood. This state of affairs made my husband very miserable, for
+he would have done anything to secure his Aunt Mary's happiness and
+tranquillity of mind; and to help him in his endeavors, I proposed that
+she should come to live with us. This is part of her answer:--
+
+"I hope to return with you in May next. Give my very best love to dear
+Eugénie, and tell her that I thank her very much for proposing to
+gratify your affection to me by proposing that I should live with her
+and you; but Susan and I have taken each other for better and worse,
+unless some deserving person of the other sex should propose, and the
+one he proposes to _should_ say, Yes, if you please. But I think we
+shall never separate."
+
+It is with regret that I have to recall Miss Susan Hamerton's unamiable
+temper at that time; one thing comes in mitigation, but I only knew of
+it years afterwards: she was suffering much from unavowed nervousness.
+Her nephew told me that when living in the same house with her he had
+sometimes noticed that she ate hardly anything and looked unwell; but to
+his affectionate inquiries she used to answer: "My health is good
+enough, thank you; and I know what you imply when you pretend to be
+anxious about it--you mean that I am cross and ill-tempered." She made
+it a point never to plead guilty to any physical ailment, as if it were
+a weakness unworthy of her, and also to discourage all attempts at
+sympathy.
+
+Another thing I learned too late was her jealous disposition, which
+explained her attitude towards her nephew at the time of his marriage;
+it was love turned sour, and although we tried to discover the cause of
+her bitterness in her worldly disappointment, we became convinced that
+she would have felt as bitter had the bride been wealthy and of noble
+lineage, because her jealousy would have tortured her as much, if not
+more. She became jealous of her sister when we invited her; and long
+afterwards, when her brother became a widower, and she went to live with
+him, he confided to his nephew that he had had to bear frequent
+outbursts of jealousy. It was merely the exaggeration of a tender
+sentiment which could not brook a rival.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+1859-1860.
+
+Financial complications.--Summer visitors.--Boats and boating.--Visit to
+Paris.--W. Wyld.--Project of a farm in France.--Partnership with M.
+Gindriez.
+
+While the "Painter's Camp" was progressing, which was to be the
+foundation of my husband's success, three pictures had been sent to the
+Academy and rejected; but after the first feeling of disappointment he
+was cheered up again by a favorable opinion from Millais about those
+pictures--one of them in particular, a sailing-boat on Loch Awe in the
+twilight, which was pronounced true in effect and color. Aunt Mary wrote
+to him soon after: "I am so very glad of the account you give of your
+pictures, and of Millais' opinion of them; it is very encouraging. I do
+hope truly that they will attract gain, good-will, and success for you."
+
+As it would have been very expensive to have the pictures sent to and
+fro, with the deterioration of the frames, packing, etc., Mr. Hamerton
+begged a friend who lived in London to keep them in one of his empty
+rooms (he had a whole floor unfurnished) till there were a sufficient
+number of them for a private exhibition, in which he intended to give
+lectures on artistic subjects.
+
+The mill, after thorough and expensive repairs, had been let, but there
+was bad news from the tenant of the coal-mine, who refused to pay the
+rent any longer, under pretext that the mine was exhausted. This looked
+very serious, as, after referring the matter to his uncle, who was a
+solicitor, my husband learned that the lease made during his minority
+did not specify the quantity of coal that the tenant was allowed to
+extract from the mine, and, of course, as much as possible had been
+taken out of it. Still, as there was an agreement to pay the rent during
+twelve more years, the tenant's right to withdraw from the signed
+agreement might be contested, and the affair had to be put into the
+hands of a lawyer. This was a cause of great anxiety, and it was not the
+only one. The health of my father had become very unsatisfactory of
+late, and his situation was no longer secure. He had been on most
+excellent terms with the English gentlemen who were at the head of the
+firm in which he was cashier, but they were retiring from business, and
+my father did not know what was coming next. He wrote on October 9,
+1859:--
+
+"Enfin je commence à respirer; depuis bientôt six semaines je ne savais
+pas vraiment où donner de la tête. Nous avons eu transformation de
+société, inventaire, assemblée d'actionnaires, tout cela m'a donné un
+effrayant surcroit de besogne et de fatigue, et je n'avais pas le
+courage de reprendre la plume lorsque je rentrais au logis, harassé et
+souffrant. Aujourd'hui nos affaires commencent à reprendre leur cours
+normal."
+
+On the 28th of the same month I find this phrase in one of his letters:
+"Ma position est plus tendue que jamais et les changements survenus dans
+notre administration me donnent des craintes sérieuses pour l'avenir."
+Then we learned that a project for lighting Bucharest with gas was on
+foot, and that my father was to go there to ascertain the chances of
+success. Some outlay was necessary, and my husband, who had heard of it
+through a friend, generously offered to defray the preliminary expenses;
+his offer, however, was declined for the time, there being as yet no
+certainty of profit.
+
+Early in 1860 Gilbert had to leave Innistrynich to visit his property
+and receive the rents. He always felt reluctant to go there, because of
+the painful reminiscences of his early youth, and of the dreariness of
+the scenery. There was also another reason, still more powerful,--he was
+not made to be a landlord, being too tender-hearted. How often did it
+happen that, instead of insisting on getting his rent from a poor
+operative, he left some of his own money in the hand of wife or
+child?--frequently enough in hard times, I know.
+
+He was staying at "The Jumps," and went from there to Shaw, Burnley, and
+Manchester; he never missed writing to me every day, either a short note
+or a long letter, according to his spare time. In one of them he says:--
+
+"Ma tante Marie est bien bonne, mais nous ne parlons jamais de choses
+sérieuses--toujours des riens. Comme la vie est étrange! à quoi bon
+aller loin pour voir ses amis quand ils vous disent simplement qu'il
+fait froid!... ma tante Susan est assez gracieuse, mais j'ai vu des
+_nuages_. Je suis allé hier à Manchester où j'avais à faire; j'y ai vu
+quelques tableaux et je suis de plus en plus convaincu que la meilleure
+chose pour moi est de peindre plutôt dans le genre des _vrais_ peintres
+Français que dans celui de nos Pré-Raphaelites, ces réalistes
+impitoyables qui ne nous épargnent pas un brin de gazon."
+
+This letter contains a strong proof of his mind's artistic evolution.
+
+In the course of the summer we had several unexpected visitors, among
+them Mr. and Mrs. Mackay, Mr. Pettie the artist, and the gentleman
+described in the "Painter's Camp" as Gordon, who frequently
+called,--sometimes with his son, sometimes alone, and on such occasions
+generally remained for the night. Being an early riser, and indisposed
+to remain idle till breakfast time, he was found in the morning knitting
+an immense woollen stocking, which he afterwards took into use, and
+found most comfortable wear for grouse-shooting, as he took care to
+inform me.
+
+We had once another visitor, who had come to paint from nature, and was
+staying at the Dalmally inn; his name I will not mention on account of
+a little adventure which made him so miserable that he left our house
+breakfastless, rather than face me after it. He had been offered a
+bedroom, and had slept soundly till about five in the morning, when
+his attention was attracted by a small phrenological bust on the
+chimney-piece, which he took into his bed, with the intention of
+studying it at leisure. As he lay back on the pillow, however,
+holding up the bust and turning it sideways to read the indications,
+he became aware of a black dribble rapidly staining the sheets and
+counterpane. Horrified at such a sight, he sprang out of bed, and
+discovered--too late--that he had totally emptied the inkstand.
+
+About the same time we had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with
+Captain Clifton and his wife, Lady Bertha Clifton, who had rented a
+large house on the other side of the lake, and proved very friendly
+neighbors. Lady Bertha was extremely handsome; her voice was splendid,
+and she sang readily when she was asked. Our neighbors had speculated a
+good deal about her probable appearance, ways, and disposition, and the
+news that a _lady in her own right_ was coming had created quite a
+commotion. I asked to be enlightened on so important a subject, and soon
+heard all the details from very willing lips. She was very simple in
+dress, and often came to call upon us in a fresh cotton-print gown and
+straw hat, with only the feather of a heron or a woodcock in it. Her
+husband, Captain Clifton, retired from the army, spoke French fairly
+well, and although he had little in common with Gilbert--being an
+enthusiastic sportsman--soon became his most constant visitor. Both of
+them liked the country and were fond of boating, and they both took an
+interest in politics.
+
+A very pleasant feature had been added to the lake by the appearance of
+a small steamer belonging to a proprietor beyond Port Sonachan, who came
+with his wife to Loch Awe every summer. They invited us from time to
+time to join a fishing party, and we had either lunch or supper on
+board. There was a cabin for shelter, and the ladies, being thus
+protected against the almost unavoidable showers, readily joined the
+salmon-fishers.
+
+In this summer of 1860 Aunt Mary came with our cousin Jane, whose sweet
+disposition and charm of manner greatly disturbed the peace of mind of a
+bachelor visitor, a distant relation of my husband, who was looking
+about for a shooting. Everything in his behavior seemed pointing to a
+not distant offer; but Gilbert, who was already a good judge of
+character, strongly doubted the final step. He said to me: "If Henry is
+too sorely tempted, he will run away rather than expose his wealth to
+the perils of matrimony; he does not spend his money, he is constantly
+earning more and accumulating, but he has told me that no amount of
+conjugal happiness could be a compensation to him if, at the end of the
+year, he found out that he had spent a thousand pounds more than what he
+was accustomed to spend regularly." And it happened that he left
+abruptly, just as my husband had foretold, but not without promising a
+future commission for two pictures when his billiard-room should be
+finished.
+
+The love of boating was very strong in Gilbert, but the love of planning
+new boats _with improvements_ was still stronger; in fact, he always had
+in a portfolio plans more or less advanced for some kind of boat, and he
+very often made models with his own hands. I was in constant fear of the
+realization of these plans, of which I heard a great deal more than I
+could understand. He was well aware of it, and sometimes stopped short
+to say with a smile: "Now, don't go away; I won't bother you any longer
+with boats." Unable to resist the temptation of devising improvements,
+even when he resisted that of testing them for his own use, he gave the
+benefit of his thoughts to his friends when they seemed likely to prove
+useful. In the course of the spring, however, he had been at work
+planning a much larger boat than those he already possessed; one which
+might, when needful, carry a cart-load of goods across the bay, or the
+whole camp to any part of the lake. I offered some timid remonstrances
+about the probable cost, but he met them by affirming that it would be
+an economy _in the end_, by saving labor. So two carpenters were fetched
+from Greenock, and began to work under his direction.
+
+The building of the boat, which of course took more time than had been
+expected, delayed our departure for France, but at last we set off to
+introduce our baby-boy to his relations.
+
+Once in Paris, Mr. Hamerton saw a great deal of his kind friend, William
+Wyld, whose advice he was better able to appreciate now that his ideas
+about art were no longer topographic. He began at this stage of artistic
+culture to enjoy composition and harmony of color; and though he still
+thought that his friend's compositions were rather too obviously
+artificial, he did not remain blind to their merit. He also saw more of
+Alexandre Bixio, brother of the celebrated Garibaldian general, at whose
+house he met renowned artists, men of letters, and politicians.
+Alexandre Bixio had been one of the founders of the "Revue des Deux
+Mondes," with Bulwer Lytton. He had acted as Vice-President of the
+Assemblée Nationale, and had been sent to the Court of Victor Emmanuel
+as Minister Plenipotentiary, and was an intimate friend of Cavour. One
+evening, after dinner at his house, he took Mr. Hamerton aside, and
+pointing to a young man engaged in an animated conversation with several
+other guests, he said: "I am very much mistaken if that is not a future
+Minister of State." "He looks very young," answered my husband, very
+much astonished. "He is young, he was born in 1827; but remember his
+name, and in a few years you will see if I am right: it is Signor
+Sella." Four years later Signor Sella was Minister of Finance.
+
+As my husband has told in his autobiography, I had a sister younger than
+myself by seven years, very pretty and winning, about whose future we
+were very anxious, on account of the recurring interruptions in her
+studies, owing to my mother's distressing state of health. When periods
+of illness came on, the whole duty of attendance upon her devolved on my
+sister, disastrous as such breaks in her education might prove as the
+girl grew up. During the intervals of sickness my mother yielded to our
+entreaties, and Caroline was sent to school; but as a day-scholar she
+often missed classes for one reason or another, being so often wanted,
+and after becoming a boarder she never remained in the same institution
+for more than a few months at a time. My mother kept hoping that the
+trouble would not return, and tried to persuade us that now Caroline's
+studies would be regular, and that being very intelligent, she would
+soon be on a par with girls of her own age; but this state of things had
+lasted ever since I was married, and I could not foresee the end of it.
+We often talked about it, my husband and myself, and he soon guessed
+that I wished to have her with us, but that knowing how much he liked
+having our home to ourselves I would not ask him to bring another into
+it, even though it were my sister. He was, however, with his usual
+generosity, the first to offer it. Aware of how much it cost him I
+accepted nevertheless, for we were both of one mind, and considered it
+as a duty to be done. I looked upon my sister as my child, for my
+mother's illness had begun when Caroline was so young that almost all
+motherly cares had devolved upon me, who was the eldest. We kept our
+project secret to the last, not to disturb the family peace, and being
+sure of my father's acquiescence and of Caroline's delight. When the day
+came, my husband's persuasion prevailed, and my sister was entrusted to
+our care.
+
+This time, while staying at "The Jumps," we noticed a great change in
+Aunt Susan's behavior towards us; it was decidedly friendly, with now
+and then an almost affectionate touch, and I was told privately that she
+had thrown out hints about the pleasure that an invitation to
+Innistrynich would give her, so the invitation was given before we left.
+
+My husband applied to Caroline's teaching the system which had proved
+effective with me, and made her read English aloud to him whilst he was
+painting; I undertook the French and musical part of her education, and
+her progress was rapid. For my sake Gilbert was very glad that I had
+Caroline with me, because in the course of that year he camped out a
+great deal, and it had become impossible for me to accompany him,
+another little boy having been born in the beginning of February, and
+his delicate health requiring constant care.
+
+Our pecuniary troubles were increasing. The American war having broken
+out, the mill, which had been repaired at great cost, was stopped in
+consequence, and of course we got no rent either from it or from the
+cottages, whilst the expenses of the little farm were heavy--hay being
+at an extravagant price, because of the persistent rains, which in the
+previous summer had rotted all the cut grass, and made it necessary to
+bring hay from England. Although we kept two cows, our supply of milk
+and cream was insufficient, and my husband made the calculation that
+each cow consumed daily seven shillings' worth of hay in this spring,
+though put on short rations. In fact, the state of our affairs greatly
+alarmed us, for we did not see any prospect of speedy earnings, and we
+began to think of a total change in our way of living which would
+materially reduce our expenses. My husband would have been inclined to
+remove to the English Lake District, but remembered in time that it was
+nearly as wet as the Highlands, and what he wanted as a compensation, if
+we left Scotland, was a dry climate which would allow much more time for
+out-of-door work.
+
+It so happened that my father, who was now Directeur de l'Usine à Gaz at
+Beaucaire, had suffered in health, catching frequent colds through
+having to get out of bed to look after the puddlers, to stand before the
+fires whilst they were replenished, and to cross a cold, draughty
+courtyard in coming back. He had never complained, but my mother thought
+it extremely dangerous, and wished that he had a more healthy
+occupation.
+
+On the other hand, I had diligently applied myself to our small farm
+and garden, with the help of a most valuable and simple guide,
+"La Maison Rustique des Dames," by Madame Millet-Robinet, which
+had been sent to me as a present by M. Bixio, and I had often thought
+that if my efforts were not always thwarted by the inclemency of the
+weather, I might count upon a fair return. All this led me to fancy that
+if we were to buy a farm in France it might prove a profitable
+investment, and I talked the project over with Gilbert. This is the
+conclusion he arrived at. He would sell his property, rent a farm in
+France, which I should manage with my father, himself remaining entirely
+faithful to his artistic and literary studies. If my mother were strong
+enough, and my sister willing, they would have a share in the direction,
+and even my brothers, later on, if it were to their taste. There were
+now many gentlemen-farmers who did not neglect either their work on the
+land or their own culture--M. and Madame Millet-Robinet might be cited
+as examples.
+
+When the project was communicated to my father, he was very happy at the
+idea of living near us, and grateful for the delicate thoughtfulness
+which had devised this means of coming to his help under pretext of
+asking help from him. Here is part of his answer:--
+
+"MON CHER FUTUR ASSOCIÉ,--Ah ça! pensez-vous donc que j'aie tout à fait
+la berlue pour n'avoir pas découvert de prime abord tout l'insidieux de
+votre proposition? Il vous faudrait, dites-vous naïvement, pour associé,
+un homme actif, exercé, connaissant bien les affaires, la culture, pour
+exploiter votre ferme et, plus heureux que Diogène, vous braquez votre
+lanterne sur un homme qui dans trois ans sera un quasi vieillard, dejà
+valétudinaire aujourd'hui et sachant à peine distinguer le seigle du
+froment! Oh! l'admirable cultivateur modèle que vous aurez là! Soyez
+franc, mon cher Gendre, vous avez ruminé ce prétexte avec ma fille pour
+m'assurer des invalides et donner à ma vieillesse un repos et un abri
+que mon labeur n'a pas voulu conquérir au prix de mon honnêteté.
+[Footnote: My father had been offered a very important post in the
+government of Napoleon III., on condition of accepting his policy, after
+the Coup d'État.] Je vous vois venir et j'ai beau être un âne en
+agriculture, tout ce qui reussira me sera attribué; mon incapacité sera
+couverte d'un manteau de profonde habileté et vous me persuaderez que,
+livrés à vos propres lumières, vous ne feriez rien de bon, tandis qu'en
+me confiant le soc, c'est à moi que le sillon devra sa richesse."
+
+My mother and my brothers also wrote warmly and gratefully, whilst all
+the details of the project were discussed at length in every successive
+letter. My father inclined for the purchase of a farm, but Gilbert was
+afraid of a possible confiscation of property in case of a war between
+England and France.
+
+Meanwhile, Aunt Susan had entered into a regular and friendly
+correspondence with me and her nephew, and she wrote on June 27, 1861;--
+
+"MY DEAR NIECE,--My sister and myself are quite annoyed to seem so
+dilatory in fixing our time for visiting you; however, we hope (D. V.)
+to be with you on Saturday, the sixth of July. I hope your little olive
+branches are both quite well, and also your sister; we shall be glad to
+renew and make fresh acquaintance amongst the young ones. I suppose
+Philip Gilbert will ere this be returned from his long camping
+expedition, and I hope he has had a most satisfactory outing. Will you
+all accept our united love, and believe me
+
+"Your affectionate aunt,
+
+"SUSAN HAMERTON."
+
+My husband was at home to receive his aunts, and pleased to notice how
+amicably we got on together, but he was not prepared for what took place
+shortly before their departure. One morning I was gathering strawberries
+in the garden, and it was slow work because they were very small, being
+the wild species, which had been transplanted for their delicious
+flavor. Aunt Susan came up, and offered to help me. Never shall I forget
+the scene when we both rose from the strawberry-beds, with our fragrant
+little baskets well filled. We turned towards the lake, whose soft, hazy
+glamour matched that of the tender sky; the air was still, and there
+reigned a serene silence, as if a single sound might have desecrated the
+almost religious peace of earth and heaven; yet a smothered sob was
+heard as I felt myself caught in a close embrace, my head laid upon a
+heaving bosom, my hair moist with warm tears, a broken voice murmuring:
+"My child, how I have wronged you!... and I love you so--" "Oh! Aunt
+Susan," I said, "don't cry; I will love you too; my husband will be so
+happy." We kissed each other, and said no more, and from that time Aunt
+Susan became my most faithful friend.
+
+The farm project having been seriously considered by my father, he at
+last declared it too hazardous for him to undertake the direction of it.
+From the first he had felt unequal to it, for want of the proper
+knowledge and preparation; and so much would depend upon its
+success--the future of two families. But having had formerly a long
+experience in the wine trade, and being a particularly reliable
+authority on the qualities and values of Burgundy wines (he was able to
+name the _cru_--that is, the place where the grapes were cultivated--of
+any wine he tasted, as well as the _cuvée_, namely the year in which it
+had been made); and having been in his youth the representative of an
+important wine firm in Burgundy, he was more inclined to undertake the
+management of a wine business than anything else. He said so to my
+husband, adding that the relatives and acquaintances we had in England
+might form the beginning of a good connection, and that his own name as
+head of the firm would secure a good many customers both in France and
+Belgium. His son-in-law was soon convinced of the wisdom of these
+reasons, and it was decided that towards the end of the year we would go
+to France to choose a new residence, suited to the requirements of the
+wine business, and situated in a part sufficiently picturesque to lend
+itself to artistic representation. It was stipulated that the name of
+Hamerton should not be used; the title of the firm was to be "Gindriez
+et Cie.," my husband being sleeping partner only.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+1861-1863.
+
+Effects of the Highland climate.--Farewell to Loch Awe.--Journey to the
+South of France.--Death of Miss Mary Hamerton.--Settlement at
+Sens.--Death of M. Gindriez.--Publication of the "Painter's
+Camp."--Removal to Pré-Charmoy.
+
+Very few people can stand the climate of the Highlands without suffering
+from it; it is so damp and so depressing in winter-time, when the wind
+howls so piteously in the twisted branches of the Scotch firs, and when
+the rain imprisons one for weeks within liquid walls of unrelieved
+grayness. Mr. Hamerton, since he came to Innistrynich, had repeatedly
+suffered from what he believed to be toothache, although his teeth were
+all perfectly sound, and the pain being always attended by insomnia, was
+a cause of weakness and fatigue detrimental to his general health. The
+doctor said it was congestion of the gums, due to the excess of moisture
+in the climate, which had not been favorable to either of us; for I had
+also discovered that my hearing was becoming impaired, and these were
+weighty additional reasons for removing elsewhere. I had been somewhat
+anxious at times, when I saw him fall suddenly into a state of
+listlessness and prostration, but as he always recovered his energy and
+resumed his usual avocations after a short sleep, I thought it must be
+the result of temporary exhaustion, for which nature kindly sent the
+best remedy--restoring sleep; and as he had told me he had always
+experienced the greatest difficulty in getting to sleep before midnight
+or at regular hours, and especially in getting a sufficiency of sleep in
+the course of the night, it seemed a natural compensation for the
+system, that an occasional nap should now and then become
+irrepressible,--the more so on account of his customary nocturnal rides,
+sails, or walks. To the end of his life the hours of the night seemed to
+him quite as fit for any sort of occupation as those of the day, and it
+made little difference to him whether it was dark or light; indeed at
+one time, years later, when at Pré-Charmoy, he began, to the
+stupefaction of his country neighbors, to call upon them at nine or ten
+in the summer evenings, and then to propose a row on the pond or a walk
+by moonlight; but it happened not unfrequently that he could get no
+admittance, rural habits having sent the inhabitants to their early
+beds; or else if they were still found in a state of wakefulness, they
+did not evince the slightest desire to be out with a _noctambule_, and
+even hinted that it might look objectionable and vagabondish in case
+they were seen. He was greatly astonished at this new point of view; for
+it was merely to spare the working hours of the day that he took his
+relaxation in the night.
+
+A good many more pictures had been painted in the course of the year,
+and had suggested many "Thoughts about Art," which had been duly
+consigned to the manuscript of the "Painter's Camp." Aunt Mary, who was
+kept _au courant_, wrote: "How can you, dear Philip Gilbert, find time
+to paint so much, and to write so much?" It was now necessary to be more
+industrious than ever, in order to have a sufficient number of works to
+cover the walls of the exhibition room, the project being near its
+realization and matured in all its details. My husband was to take me,
+our children, and Caroline to my parents at Beaucaire, and leave us
+there while he went in search of a house, then back again to the
+Highlands for the removal, and before joining me again he was to
+organize the exhibition in London with the help of Thursday, and leave
+him in charge of it.
+
+About the middle of October, 1861, we started for our long journey
+southwards, with mingled feelings of deep regret for what we left
+behind,--the country we still loved so much, the associations with the
+births of our children and the laborious and hopeful beginnings of an
+artistic and literary career, as well as the tender memories of the
+growth of our union, which solitude had tested and strengthened and made
+so perfect and complete; then if we looked forward, it was with joyful
+feelings for the lasting reunion of the family, for the peace and
+happiness we were going to give to my father's old age, and also for
+future success and easier circumstances.
+
+We stopped at Todmorden to say farewell to our relations, and also paid
+farewell visits to some friends, amongst them Mrs. Butler and her
+husband--Mr. Hamerton's Burnley schoolmaster; to Mr. Handsley, for whom
+he had as much esteem as affection, and to his half-cousins Abram and
+Henry Milne, who had agreed to purchase his property, and had given him
+a commission for the two pictures already spoken of at Loch Awe, and
+destined for the billiard-room, which had been built in the meantime,
+and was now used daily.
+
+On arriving at Beaucaire, we found my mother in much better health than
+formerly, but my father looked aged, we thought; however, he was much
+cheered by our prospects, and entered heartily into every detail
+concerning them.
+
+My husband had not much time to spare, and he made the most of it;
+together we saw Arles, Nîmes, the Pont du Gard, and Montmajour, and
+called upon Roumieu, the Provençal poet, to whom we were introduced by
+friends. We used to roam along the shores of the Rhône in the twilight,
+the noble river affording us a perpetual source of admiration, and one
+evening, when we were bending over one of its bridges looking at the
+swollen and tumultuous waves after a storm, we became spellbound by the
+tones of a superb voice, coming as it seemed from the sky, and singing
+with happy ease and unconcern, one after the other, some of the most
+difficult parts in the opera of "William Tell." We dared not speak for
+fear of losing a few notes, for the rich, full voice hardly paused
+between two songs, never betraying the slightest effort or fatigue;
+half-an-hour later it ceased altogether, and we went to my father's full
+of our discovery.
+
+"Oh! it's Villaret of the brewery; yes, a splendid tenor, but he has
+long been discovered; only he has no musical education, and his
+relatives won't hear of his going on the stage. Alexandre Dumas, after
+listening to him, offered to pay all necessary expenses to enable him to
+attend the Conservatoire, but it was of no use: they are very religious
+in the family, and have an insurmountable horror of theatres. He is,
+himself, a very simple, good-natured fellow, and does not require much
+pressing to sing whenever he is asked. I know some of his friends, and
+the lady organist of the church particularly; and if you wish to hear
+him at her house, I dare say she would give a _soirée_ to that end."
+
+Two days later we were invited by the lady to meet him, and with evident
+pleasure, but without vanity, he sang several pieces, with very great
+power and feeling. At last, when the company were leaving, the lady of
+the house took Gilbert aside to beg him to remain a little longer with
+Villaret, and when everybody else had left, she said: "Now, Monsieur
+Villaret, I count upon the pleasure of listening to my favorite piece in
+'La Muette de Portici.' I am going to play the accompaniment." "I would
+if I could, to oblige you," he answered; "but you are aware of my
+weakness. I never can do justice to it, because I can't master my
+emotion." "Never mind; you must fancy we are alone together. Mr.
+Hamerton and his wife will remain at the other end of the salon, behind
+your back; and what then if you break down?... no one will be any the
+worse for it." She sat down and began the accompaniment of that most
+exquisitely tender song,--
+
+  "De ton coeur bannis les alarmes,
+  Qu'un songe heureux sèche les larmes
+  Qui coulent encore de tes yeux."
+
+The words were hardly audible; but we were so moved by the marvellous
+purity of the pathetic voice that tears stood in our eyes. As for the
+singer, tears rolled down his face. It was one of those rare and perfect
+pleasures that are never forgotten. A few years later Villaret made his
+_début_ as first tenor at the Opéra in Paris with great success. He was
+very generous with tickets to his early friends and fellow-citizens;
+some of his most intolerant relatives had died, and he had yielded at
+last to the general wish.
+
+Now came for my husband and myself the longest separation in our married
+life. It lasted two months, and seemed at least two years, so sad and
+wearied did we grow. He wrote every night succinctly what had been done
+in the course of the day, and sent me his letters three times a week.
+
+When beds had been packed up or sold, our kind neighbors, Mr. and Mrs.
+Whitney, offered him hospitality, which he gratefully accepted, till
+everything was cleared out of Innistrynich and on its way to Sens, in
+the department of the Yonne, where our new residence was to be.
+
+On his way to Sens, Gilbert stayed a few days with his aunts, but left
+them for a short time, and concluded the sale of his property to Henry
+Milne. It was but a poor bargain, the times being bad for the cotton
+district on account of the American war; but he had no alternative,
+having engaged to find capital for the wine business, and even needing
+money for daily expenses, for as yet he earned nothing.
+
+What he had been in dread of for so many years, on account of his Aunt
+Mary's state of health, happened just as he was returning to "The
+Jumps," and when he saw his uncle Thomas awaiting him at the station he
+had a foreboding of the truth. "Aunt Mary is dead?" ... "Not dead yet,
+but unconscious, and there is no hope. This morning when Susan was in
+the breakfast-room, waiting for her sister, she heard a stamping
+overhead, followed by a dull, heavy thud, and on rushing upstairs found
+Mary stretched on the floor and moaning, but unconscious. She has been
+put to bed and attended by doctors; but there is nothing to be done, and
+they say that she does not suffer." Mournfully my husband ascended
+alone, in the dark night, the steep hill up which he had so often walked
+gayly to see his beloved guardian; tenderly he watched at her bedside
+for forty-eight hours, till she breathed no more, and at last reverently
+accompanied her remains to the chosen place, which he never omitted to
+visit afterwards, every time he came to Todmorden. He wrote to say what
+a satisfaction it was to think that his aunt had seen him only a few
+hours before the attack, and when it came she must have felt him so near
+to her.
+
+I remember an incident which took place on the day we took leave of Aunt
+Mary to go to Innistrynich; she had invited two of her nieces to lunch
+with us at "The Jumps." When we left the house, some time in the
+afternoon, I went first with my cousins, leaving nephew and aunt
+together for more intimate communing, and when my husband reached us,
+his eyes were still moist and his voice tremulous. The girls
+thoughtlessly teased him about it, and twitted him with his weakness;
+but he did not allow them to amuse themselves long, he cowed them with a
+violence of contempt which terrified me, whilst I could not help
+admiring it. "Yes," he said, "I have shed tears--not unmanly tears--and
+if you are not capable of entering into the feelings of grateful love
+and regret which wring these tears out of my heart, I despise you for
+your heartlessness." His voice had recovered its firmness and rang loud,
+his eyes shot flames, he looked more than human. These startling
+outbursts of generous or honest passion were one of his most marked
+characteristics; they occurred but rarely, but when they did occur
+nothing could abate their terrific violence; a single word in mitigation
+would have acted like oil on the flames. It must be explained that they
+were always justified by the cause, and it was impossible not to admire
+such genuine and high-minded resentment against meanness or dishonesty,
+or in some cases against what he considered insulting to his sense of
+honor. For instance, on one occasion a very important sale of works of
+art was to take place abroad, and he was asked to contribute some notes
+to the catalogue. It was hinted--clearly enough--that any words of
+praise would be handsomely acknowledged. He resented the offer like a
+blow on the face, blushed crimson with ardent indignation, and almost
+staggered to the writing-table; there he seized a postcard, and in
+large, clear, print-like letters threw back the insult with cutting
+contempt. The sense of having cleared his honor somewhat relieved him,
+and after waiting for a propitious moment I tried to persuade him,
+before the card was posted, that the offence was not so heinous as it
+looked, the writer not knowing him personally, and merely imagining
+himself to be acting in conformity with a prevalent custom, which some
+critics were far from resenting. All I could obtain, however, was an
+envelope for the terrible postcard.
+
+Now to resume the narrative. I left Beaucaire to join my husband at
+Havre on his return, and after visiting the town together we hastened to
+our new house at Sens, which I longed to see, for it had been chosen in
+my absence, and though I had received minute descriptions of it, I was
+not able to realize its appearance or surroundings. It was one of the
+large, roomy _maisons bourgeoises_, so numerous in French provincial
+towns at that time, built for the convenience of the owner, and not in
+order to be let as an investment. It was perfectly suitable for the
+double purpose Gilbert had in view--with a spacious carriage entrance,
+courtyard, cellars, barns, and stable for the wine trade, and large,
+commodious, well-lighted rooms for residence. But to my regret there was
+no garden,--a great privation for me; however, my husband told me that
+our landlord had promised to make one if I cared so much for it. I did
+care very much, as the only view from the house was that of other houses
+and walls on the other side of the street; but when asked to fulfil his
+promise, the landlord said it was a misunderstanding, he had merely
+given leave for _us_ to make a garden in the courtyard if we liked, or
+else he would let us have one for a moderate rent, outside of the town,
+a common habit at Sens. However, as I did not appreciate the pleasure of
+an hour's walk every time I wished to smell a flower in my garden, we
+declined the offer, and my husband kindly planned a narrow flower-bed
+all along the base of the walls in the courtyard, which looked gay
+enough when the plants were in full bloom, and the walls were hidden by
+convolvulus, nasturtiums, and Virginia creepers.
+
+Even before the house was furnished and in order, Gilbert was eager to
+begin his commission pictures; but he soon found that even our large
+rooms were too small for a studio, and the light was not good for
+painting; but at the same time, I believe he was not _really_ sorry,
+because it gave him a plausible excuse for turning one of the barns into
+a capital studio.
+
+This outbuilding offered great and tempting advantages; it was isolated
+from the house, therefore silent and private; it might be lighted from
+the north, and was sufficiently spacious to allow a part to be divided
+off for a laboratory. Being greatly interested in architecture and
+building, my husband derived great pleasure from the execution of his
+own plans, even in such a small matter. I vainly attempted to reconcile
+him to the idea of using one of the large rooms, standing in fear of the
+expense; but I could not help admitting that with his propensity for
+large canvases, which I deprecated all my life, a studio was
+indispensable; and, after all, as it seemed almost certain that we
+should stay there a great many years, it was not of much importance,
+especially after having lived in terror of seeing him undertake the
+building of a tower, or the restoration of an old castle like
+Kilchurn,--a dream that he often indulged, as numerous designs bore
+testimony.
+
+The first thing considered by Gilbert when he settled at Sens was the
+choice of subjects for his commission pictures, which he intended to
+paint directly from nature; and he soon selected panoramic landscape
+views from the top of a small vine-clad hill, called St. Bon, which
+commands an extensive prospect of the river Yonne, and of the plains
+about it. On the summit of this eminence there is a kiosk belonging to
+the archbishop, who readily granted the use of it to the artist for
+sheltering his pictures, brushes, colors, etc. But the artist was not
+one who could bear confinement, and the kiosk was but a tiny affair, and
+not movable, so two of the tents were set up at its foot, and formed a
+painter's camp, which attracted so many curious visitors that it was
+thought unsafe to leave it at their mercy; and when Gilbert went back
+home for the night a watchman, well armed with pistols and a gun, took
+his place. Every day, when the great summer heat had abated, I used to
+set off with the children to go and meet my husband at the foot of the
+hill, and we returned together to the house, attempting on the way to
+make the boys speak English, but without success, for the eldest, who
+spoke _nothing_ but English when I had left him two months before at
+Beaucaire, now chose to gabble in Provençal, which he had picked up from
+his nurse, regardless of his Aunt Caroline's efforts to make him talk in
+his native tongue. Subsequently, when he perceived that no one
+understood him, he quickly dropped his Provençal and replaced it by
+French, but would not trouble himself to speak two different languages
+together.
+
+By the care and thoughtfulness of Gilbert, a pretty little house and
+garden had been prepared for his father-in-law and family, at a short
+distance from our own dwelling, where the office of the business was now
+ready on the ground-floor, completely fitted up, and separated from the
+private dwelling.
+
+My mother had come first with my brothers and sister, whilst my father
+remained a little longer to put his successor _au courant_. But it
+seemed to me that the delay was longer than we had foreseen, and I began
+to grow anxious on account of my letters remaining unanswered; then I
+was told that my father was very busy, not very well, and that he could
+not write. About a month later he wrote that he was now well enough to
+undertake the journey, and with great rejoicings we prepared to receive
+him; but when I noticed how altered he was, how thin, how weak, all my
+joy forsook me, and it was almost beyond my power not to let him read it
+in my face. Courageous as ever, he tried to be and to _look_ happy, and
+talked of setting to work immediately. I learned now that he had been
+dangerously ill, but that his malady had been kept secret to spare me.
+
+A few trying months followed, during which we passed alternately from
+hope to fear, the most distressing feature of this sorrowful time being
+my poor father's desperate struggle for life. "I must and I will live to
+work; it is my duty to get well; I have a heavy debt and responsibility
+now that you are involved in this business," he used to say to his
+son-in-law. He had the greatest confidence in his friend, Alphonse
+Guérin, the celebrated discoverer of the antiseptic method of dressing
+wounds, and thought that if any one could cure him it was A. Guérin, who
+had prescribed for him throughout his life in Paris. Accordingly to
+Paris he went, and died there shortly after, notwithstanding the devoted
+care of his doctor.
+
+Everything seemed to turn against my husband's wisest plans, but nothing
+daunted by this last fearful blow, he at once offered his mother-in-law
+a pension sufficient to enable her children to carry on their education;
+this pension would gradually be diminished as the children became able
+to earn money for themselves and to take their share in the maintenance
+of their mother. The fact was, that from that time he had two families
+to keep.
+
+Besides the studies at St. Bon, he had begun two pictures of large
+dimensions in his studio, and worked at them steadily. As he could not
+sit down, this excess of fatigue brought on a very serious illness,
+which kept him in bed for nearly a fortnight, and it was the only
+instance of his submission to such an order from a physician during the
+whole course of our married life, but it was rendered imperative by the
+nature of the disorder. He hated remaining in bed when awake, at all
+times, and he could not stand it at all in the hours of day; later on he
+had the measles, and still later he suffered from gout, but he would not
+stay in bed in either case, and during the first attack of gout, which
+was as severe as unexpected, he remained for twenty-one nights without
+going to bed.
+
+This illness prevented him from attending the marriage of his eldest
+cousin Anne Hamerton, about which her sister wrote on July 22, 1862,
+that it was to take place on August 6, and after giving a good many
+details she observed: "You may be above such vanities, but I think
+Eugénie may be a little interested; poor Eugénie, how anxious she must
+have been, having you in your room so long! How are your pictures
+progressing? It must decidedly be a punishment to you to be limited to
+time at your easel, particularly now, when you must feel so wishful to
+get on with your commissions."
+
+After his recovery, my husband arranged his work in a manner which
+divided the hours into sitting ones and standing ones, to avoid a return
+of the late inflammatory symptoms; and there never was a recurrence of
+them.
+
+The pictures were in a fairly advanced stage when Mr. William Wyld came
+on a visit of a few days and gave him valuable advice about them. His
+Aunt Susan said in a subsequent letter: "I am very glad Mr. Wyld has
+been to see your pictures, and though you may be a little dissatisfied
+that your present works will be 'dirt cheap,' still the cheering opinion
+of them will give you great courage, I hope. I shall certainly go to see
+them as soon as they get to Agnew's."
+
+So much for the art department. For the literary one the "Painter's
+Camp" had been accepted by Mr. Macmillan, and we were in a fever of
+excitement awaiting its publication. As to the wine business, after
+remaining irresolute for some time, Gilbert had accepted the proposition
+of a friend to assume what should have been my father's part,--with this
+alteration, however, that he would pay interest on the funds confided to
+him, and share the clear profits with the sleeping partner.
+
+This episode in my husband's life was so bitter, and involved him in
+such difficulties, that I will cut it short. Suffice it to say, that
+though the partnership was continued for a few years, during which the
+interest of the money came but irregularly, the capital was entirely and
+irremediably lost in the end.
+
+When autumn came, the commission pictures were sent to Manchester for
+exhibition, and shortly after Mr. Milne declined to accept them, on the
+plea that he did not care for the subjects: the real reason being that
+his sensitive heart had been again impressed--this time by a young
+governess, of whom he had bought two copies after Greuze, which were now
+occupying the place formerly destined for his cousin's works. However,
+another friend soon became their purchaser, but for the artist the
+disappointment remained.
+
+Sadness for the loss of his aunt, Mrs. Thomas Hamerton, which happened
+just at that time, and sympathy with his uncle in these trying moments,
+spoilt the pleasure Gilbert had anticipated from the visit to his
+relations which we made that year. We were to go back to France with
+return tickets; and the time allowed being nearly over, we went to take
+leave of our friends at West Lodge, when we learned that Mrs. T.
+Hamerton, who had lately been suffering from an attack of gout, had
+succumbed to its weakening effects. Regardless of the pecuniary loss, my
+husband immediately expressed his determination to stay as long as he
+could be of any help to his uncle. We therefore sacrificed our tickets,
+and went back to "The Jumps," whence he came down every day to spare his
+uncle all the painful formalities of a funeral. We only left when the
+run of ordinary habits had been re-established at West Lodge, but even
+then we felt that a new misfortune was lurking in the silent house, for
+the health of Jane Hamerton, who had never been very strong, now began
+to disquiet her friends, particularly my husband, whose affection for
+her was very true and tender. Aunt Susan, who was her devoted but
+clear-sighted nurse, wrote to us in the course of the summer that her
+case was very serious, notwithstanding the short periods of improvement
+occurring at intervals. The poor girl had grown very weak and lost her
+appetite; almost constantly feverish, she longed for fruit to refresh
+her parched mouth and quench her thirst. As soon as he became aware of
+this longing, Gilbert began to plan how he might gratify it, and it
+appeared easy enough, as we were in a land of plenty; but the time
+required for the transport of such delicacies as grapes and peaches
+threatened ominously their safe arrival. However, we would run the risk
+to give a little relief to our dear invalid, and we would take the
+greatest precautions in the packing. So we went to a fruit-grower,
+taking with us a large box filled with dry bran and divided into
+compartments: one was filled with melons, another with grapes, the last
+with peaches, every one taken from the tree, vine, or plant with our own
+hands, then wrapped in tissue-paper and protected all round with bran.
+The result will be seen in the following letter from Jane:--
+
+"MY DEAR EUGENIE AND P. G.--A thousand thanks for the enormous box of
+fruit, which arrived here to-day about noon: it is quite a honey-fall to
+the inhabitants of West Lodge, more especially to me. I am very happy to
+tell you that the grapes have arrived in perfect condition, and that the
+melons seem to have suffered only outwardly, as the one cut into is
+quite luscious and good. The sausage (_saucisson de Lyon_) also appears
+to have borne the journey well, but has not yet been tasted, so the next
+letter from Todmorden must give the opinion upon it, but it certainly
+looks to me a most comical affair; and to tell last the only
+disagreeable thing, it is about the peaches, which were all in a
+dreadful mess, and quite mixed up with the bran and scarcely fit to
+touch, though Aunt Susan did take out one or two to see the extent of
+the decay. How very provoking for you both when you heard of the
+detention at Havre, particularly when P. G. had taken such precautions
+with regard to the outside directions."
+
+If I have given such apparently trivial details at length, it was to
+show how generous of his time and thought was my husband in everything
+concerning affection or pity; his sympathy was always ready and active,
+and he never begrudged his exertions to give relief or comfort to those
+in need of either.
+
+It had been most fortunate for the young author of the "Painter's Camp
+in the Highlands" that the MS. of the book happened to come under the
+eyes of Mr. Macmillan himself, who, being in want of rest, and attracted
+by the title, had taken it with him in the country and had read it with
+great delight. Being a Scotchman, he was in immediate sympathy with so
+fervent an admirer of the Highlands as my husband, and had at once
+agreed to publish the book.
+
+From the first it was a success: the freshness of the narrative, the
+novelty of the subject, the truthfulness and charm of the descriptions
+were duly appreciated, together with the earnest (if still immature)
+expressions of the "Thoughts about Art." The book soon found its way to
+America, where it attracted the notice of Roberts Brothers' publishing
+house. They were charmed with it, and published an edition in America.
+The "Painter's Camp" was well received by the Press of both nations, and
+the reviews were numerous. It was compared to "Robinson Crusoe" and
+called "unique." The author was very much amused to hear that "Punch"
+had given an illustrated notice of it under the title of "A Painter
+Scamp in the Highlands."
+
+This success--almost unexpected--led my husband to accept proposals for
+other literary productions, the most important at that time being
+contributed to the "Fine Arts Quarterly Review," and beginning with an
+elaborate criticism of the Salon of 1863. He also began to write for the
+"Cornhill" and "Macmillan's Magazine," much against his wish, merely
+because painting was a source of expense without a return.
+
+Although, my husband had himself chosen Sens for his residence, his
+choice had been dictated by necessity, to a great extent, rather than by
+preference. It was a combination of conveniences for different purposes,
+but the kind of scenery was so far from giving entire satisfaction to
+his artistic tastes that he began to suffer seriously from mountain
+nostalgia. He admired the river, and had upon it a lovely rowing-boat,
+bought of the best boat-builder at Asnières, and he used it often, but
+without finding river landscape a compensation for mountain scenery. In
+fear of a serious illness, we thought it better to gratify the longing,
+and devised a plan for a journey to Switzerland which would greatly
+reduce the expense without spoiling the pleasure. It was this: The new
+line of railway from Neufchâtel to Pontarlier had just been opened, and
+passed through the most beautiful scenery. Gilbert offered the company
+an article in an English paper in return for two travelling tickets, for
+himself and his wife, and the offer was accepted.
+
+It was a charming holiday. We stayed a few days at Neufchâtel with
+friends, and visited at our leisure Geneva, Lausanne, Lucerne, Bâle, and
+Berne, and after feasting his eyes on Mont Pilatus, the Jungfrau, and
+Mont Blanc, my husband came back cured. He had sometimes spoken of the
+possibility of a removal to Geneva (before we had been there), on
+account of the lake and Mont Blanc; but I objected that we did not know
+the place. To this objection he had a very characteristic answer: "_You_
+don't know the place, but I know it as well as if I had dwelt there,
+after reading so many descriptions of it, and being aware of its
+geographical situation." When I remarked that it was quite different
+from what I had anticipated, he said: "It is exactly what I had
+imagined." He often used to tell us that he had no need of going to
+Rome, or Vienna, or to any other celebrated town, to know its general
+aspect, for he had studied their monuments in detail, the prevailing
+character of their architecture, that of the inhabitants with their
+costumes and manners, and he was even acquainted with the names and
+directions of the principal streets.
+
+At the end of the year, our sweet cousin Jane died with great
+resignation, thankful to be delivered from her long, wearying,
+consumptive pains. Aunt Susan had volunteered to be her bed-fellow from
+the month of June, in order to move her gently, and to support the poor
+wasted frame upon her own, to relieve the bed-sores by a change of
+posture; her devotion had been indefatigable and unrelieved, for her
+invalid niece would accept attendance from no one else.
+
+This loss was keenly felt by my husband, whose little playfellow she had
+been; the threatening symptoms of the disease had prevented her coming
+to us, together with her father and aunt, as it was proposed they should
+do in the summer, and now grief did not allow her bereaved relatives to
+entertain the idea of a change.
+
+It is likely enough that the series of sorrows and disappointments we
+had experienced since we came to Sens prevented our growing attached to
+the place; it may be also that our roomy but thoroughly commonplace
+house, being one of a row in a street devoid of interest, never answered
+in the least to our need of poetry or even of privacy, particularly with
+our minds and hearts still full of dear Innistrynich; but certain it is
+that we did not feel the slightest regret at the idea of leaving it
+forever; nay, we even longed to be away from it. This feeling was common
+to both of us, yet we both refrained from mentioning it to each other
+for some time, thinking it unreasonable, till we came to discuss it
+together, and to agree that it would not be unreasonable to exchange a
+house too large for our wants for a smaller one at a lower rent, and a
+town life that neither of us enjoyed for a simpler mode of living in
+some picturesque country-place more suitable for my husband's artistic
+taste.
+
+It must be explained that our partner had decided to take a house in the
+very heart of Burgundy to carry on the business, on the plea that the
+name of the renowned vineyards surrounding it, being on the address,
+were likely to inspire confidence in the customers. He added that the
+situation would also be more favorable for his purchases, sales, and
+business journeys, and of course, being the only working partner, he
+acted as he liked. Then what was the use now of those empty cellars,
+dreary paved courtyard, and formal office? We had no pleasant
+associations there, having made no friends on account of our
+mourning--why should we remain against our inclination?
+
+We decided to remove as soon as we had discovered something for which we
+might form a real liking, and the result of our experience has been
+given at length by Mr. Hamerton in "Round my House," to which I refer
+the reader for details which could not find place in the following brief
+account of our search.
+
+It was begun on the shores of the Rhône, whose noble landscape my
+husband so much admired. But although the scenery was very tempting to
+an artist, _that_ was not the only condition to be considered, and we
+were soon discouraged by the prevailing dirtiness and slovenliness of
+the people, and by what we heard of the disastrous inundations. We were
+also afraid of our children catching the horrid accent of the country.
+So we thought of the Saône district, Gilbert being unable to bear the
+idea of being at a remote distance from an expanse of water of some
+kind.
+
+Here again the landscape was appreciated, though for charms different
+from those of the Rhône. Unluckily we could not find a suitable house in
+a good situation, and we also learned that intermittent fevers were very
+prevalent, on account of the periodical overflows of the Saône.
+
+We tried after that the vine-land of Burgundy, where Gilbert told me
+what he has repeated in "Round my House": "There is no water, with its
+pleasant life and changefulness, here." I also agreed with him in
+thinking the renowned vineyards of the Côte d'Or most monotonous, except
+during a very short time indeed, when they are clothed in the splendor
+of gold and purple, just before a cruel night of frost strips them bare,
+and only leaves the blackened _paisceaux_ visible, for more than six
+months at a time. Then we turned to the beautiful valley of the Doubs,
+and discovered the very dwelling of our dreams, in which were found all
+the conditions that we thought desirable. However, we were doomed to a
+new disappointment, for the owner, when we offered to take it, changed
+her mind and coolly declined to let.
+
+Fortunately, some time later, a friend directed us to quite another
+region, that of the Autunois, to see a very similar house, offering
+about the same advantages. There were a few points of difference; for
+instance, the little river encircling the garden was only a
+trout-stream, instead of the broad and placid Doubs; the building was
+also of more modest appearance. As compensations, however, there were
+picturesque and extensive views from every window; the situation was
+more private, and the solitude of the small wild park with its beautiful
+trees at once enchanted Gilbert. So we decided to take Pré-Charmoy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+1863-1868.
+
+Canoeing on the Ternin.--Visit of relatives.--Tour in Switzerland.--
+Experiments in etching.--The "Saturday Review."--Journeys to
+London.--Plan of "Etching and Etchers."--New friends in London.
+--Etchings exhibited at the Royal Academy.--Serious illness in
+London.--George Eliot.--Professor Seeley.
+
+NOT to waste his time in the work of removal and fitting up, Mr.
+Hamerton remained behind at Sens, to finish the copying of a window by
+Jean Cousin in the cathedral and some other drawings, begun to
+illustrate an article on this artist. We had all gone forward to
+Pré-Charmoy, and when he arrived there, everything being already in
+order, he continued his work without interruption. He was delighted with
+the unpretentious little house, and with its views from every window;
+with the silent, shady, wild garden, and its group of tall poplars by
+the clear, cool, winding river which divided it from the pastures on the
+other side, and he often repeated to us with a smile, "Pré-Charmoy
+charme moi." Although the house was small, there were a good many rooms
+in it, and the master had for himself alone a studio (an ordinary-sized
+room), a study, and a carpenter's shop--for he was fond of carpentry in
+his leisure hours, and far from unskilful. He liked to make experimental
+boats with his own hands, and moreover he found out that some kind of
+physical exercise was necessary to him as a relief from brain-work, for
+if the weather was bad and he took no exercise he began to feel liable
+to a sort of uncomfortable giddiness. I wished him to consult a doctor
+about it, but he believed that it would go away after a while, for it
+had come on quite lately while painting on an open scaffolding inside
+the cathedral at Sens, when he could see through the planks and all
+round far below him, and this had produced, at times, a kind of vertigo.
+
+The pretty little boat bought at Asnières was all very well for the
+Arroux which flows by Autun, but for the narrow, shallow, winding Ternin
+and the Vesure, some other kind of craft had to be devised, and paper
+boats were built upon basket-work skeletons, and tried with more or less
+success. My eldest brother Charles, who had finished his classical
+studies and was now preparing to become an architect, used to come from
+Mâcon for the holidays, sometimes bringing a friend with him, and
+together with Gilbert they went exploring the "Unknown Rivers." They
+generally came home dripping wet, having abandoned their canoes in the
+entanglement of roots and weeds after a sudden upset, and having to go
+and fetch them back with a cart, unless the shipwreck was caused by an
+unsuspected branch under water, or by the swift rush of a current
+catching the frail concern and carrying it away altogether, whilst the
+venturesome navigator was gathering his wits on the pebbles of the
+river-bed.
+
+Towards the end of August, Mr. Thomas Hamerton and his sister Susan came
+to visit us. They liked the Autunois--at least what they saw of it--
+exceedingly, but they suffered much from the heat, particularly our
+uncle, who had remained true to his youthful style of dress: high shirt-
+collar sawing the ears and stiffened by a white, starched choker, rolled
+several times about the neck; black cloth trousers, long black
+waistcoat, and ample riding-coat of the same color and material. He was
+also careful never to put aside either flannel undergarments or woollen
+socks. Our kind uncle was a pattern of propriety in everything, but the
+fierce heat of a French August on a plain surrounded by a circle of
+hills was too much even for Mr. T. Hamerton's propriety, and he had to
+beg leave to remove his coat and to sit in his shirt-sleeves. There was
+a stone table under a group of fine horse-chestnuts in the garden, not
+far from the little river, to which we used to resort after dinner with
+our work and books in search of coolness, and there even my husband did
+his writing. One afternoon, when we were sitting as usual in this shady
+arbor, all silent, uncle dozing behind the newspaper, and his nephew
+intent on literary composition, what was our astonishment at the sight
+of sedate Aunt Susan suddenly jumping upon the table and remaining like
+a marble statue upon its stone pedestal, and quite as white. We all
+looked up, and uncle pushed his spectacles high on his forehead to have
+a better sight of so strange an attitude for his sister to take. At last
+Aunt Susan pointed to something gliding away in the grass, and gasped:
+"A serpent! oh, dear, oh, dear, a serpent!" Vainly did my husband try to
+calm her fright by explaining that it was only an adder going to seek
+the moisture of the river-bank and never intending to attack any one,
+that they were plentiful and frequently to be met with, when their first
+care was to pass unnoticed; our poor aunt would not be persuaded to
+descend from her pedestal for some time, and not before she was provided
+with a long and stout stick to beat the grass about her as she went back
+to the house.
+
+Mr. T. Hamerton's intention, as well as his sister's, was to go to
+Chamouni and the Mer de Glace, and to ask their nephew to act as guide.
+He was glad enough to avail himself of the opportunity for studying
+mountain scenery, but felt somewhat disappointed that I declined being
+one of the party, from economical motives.
+
+The letters I received during their tour bore witness to a fervent
+appreciation of the landscape, of which a memento was desired, and
+Gilbert undertook to paint for his relatives a small picture of Mont
+Blanc after reaching home; meanwhile, he took several sketches to help
+him. As he was relating to me afterwards the incidents of the journey,
+he remembered a rather amusing one. At Bourg, where they had stopped to
+see the church of Brou, he came down to the dining-room of the hotel and
+found his uncle and aunt seated at their frugal English breakfast of tea
+and eggs, which he did not share because tea did not agree with him, but
+took up a newspaper and waited for the _table d'hote_.
+
+"My word!" exclaimed his uncle, when _déjeuner_ was over, "but you do
+not stint yourself. I counted the dishes: omelette, beef-steak and
+potatoes, cray-fish and trout, roasted pigeons and salad, cheese,
+grapes, and biscuits, without mentioning a full bottle of wine. Excuse
+my curiosity, but I should like to know how much you will have to pay
+for such a repast?"
+
+"Exactly two francs and fifty centimes," answered his nephew; "and I
+dare say your tea, toast, butter, and eggs will come to pretty near the
+same amount, for here tea is an out-of-the-way luxury, and also you had
+a separate table to yourselves, whilst the _table d'hôte_ is a
+democratic institution."
+
+"Then let us be democrats as long as we remain in France, if the thing
+does not imply being deprived of tea."
+
+From London, on her way back, Aunt Susan wrote:--
+
+"We went to the Bedford Hotel, Covent Garden, and bespoke beds, got
+something to eat, and then set out. Our first visit was to 196
+Piccadilly, where Thursday was glad to see us, and where we stayed a
+long time, well pleased to look at your pictures. I like them all
+exceedingly, and could not decide on a choice; they each had in them
+something I liked particularly. When we had been gone away some time, we
+remembered we had not paid our admission, so we went back; this afforded
+us another looking at the pictures and also a pleasing return of a small
+etching; our choice was 'Le four et la terrasse de Pré-Charmoy!' We were
+well contented with what we got, but I did think the proofs beautiful."
+
+Mr. Hamerton's strong love of etching had now led him to the practice of
+it, and for several hours every day he struggled against its technical
+difficulties. Full of hope and trust in a final success, he turned from
+a spoilt plate to a fresh one without discouragement, always eager and
+relentless. His main fault, as I thought, was attempting too much finish
+and effect, and I used to tell him so. He acknowledged that I was right,
+and when taking up a new plate he used to say playfully: "Now _this_ is
+going to be a good etching; you don't believe it because you are a
+little sceptic, but you'll see--I mean not to carry it far." Then before
+biting he showed it me with "Look at it before it is spoilt." It was
+rarely spoilt in the biting, but by subsequent work. Many charming
+proofs I greatly admired. "Oh! this is only a sketch; you will see the
+improvement when I have darkened this mass." Then I begged hard that it
+should be left as it was, and I was met by arguments that I could not
+discuss,--"the effect was not true so," "the lights were too strong," or
+"the darks too heavy;" "but _very little_ retouching was necessary," and
+it ended in the pretty sketch being destroyed after having been
+re-varnished and re-bitten two or three times. When it was no longer
+shown to me, I was aware of its fate. The amount of labor bestowed upon
+etching by my husband was stupendous, as he had to seek his way without
+help or advice. A plate once begun, he could not bring himself to leave
+it--not even in the night, and at that time he always had one in hand.
+Heedless of his self-imposed rules about the division of hours for
+literary work and artistic work, he devoted himself almost entirely to
+the pursuit of etching. This made me very uneasy, for it had become
+imperative that he should make his work pay. The tenant of the coal-mine
+had reiterated his decision not to pay rent any longer, and when
+threatened with a law-suit answered that he would put it in Chancery. I
+had been told that a suit in Chancery might last over twenty years, and
+we had no means to carry it on. We were therefore obliged to abandon all
+idea of redress, and were left _entirely_ dependent upon the earnings of
+my husband, which were derived from his contributions to the "Fine Arts
+Quarterly Review," and to a few periodicals of less importance. From
+that period of overwork and anxiety dates the nervousness from which he
+suffered so much throughout his life; though at that time he believed it
+to be only temporary. He sought relief in outdoor exercise, especially
+in canoeing, and this suggested the "Unknown River," published later,
+but based on the excursions undertaken at that time, and on sketches and
+etchings done on the way.
+
+The picture painted in remembrance of the journey in Switzerland had
+been finished and dispatched, and this is what Aunt Susan wrote about
+it:--
+
+"We are now in possession of our picture, which we received from Agnew
+yesterday morning, and we are very much pleased with it; my impression
+is that it is a very good, well-finished painting: we have not yet
+concluded where to hang it for a proper and good light. We are very glad
+to hear that _Mamzelle_ Mary Susan Marguerite (as Uncle Thomas called
+her) is thriving and good; be sure and give her a kiss for each of us."
+
+_Mamzelle_ Mary Susan Marguerite had been born early in the spring, and
+to the general wonder of the household, seemed to have reconciled her
+father to the inevitable cries and noises of babyhood. Brought up by two
+maiden aunts in a large, solitary house in the country, and addicted
+from early youth to study, my husband had a perfect horror of noises of
+all kinds, and could not understand that they were unavoidable in some
+circumstances; he used to call out from the top of the stairs to the
+servants below "to stop their noise," or "to hold their tongues,"
+whenever he overheard them singing to the babies or laughing to amuse
+them, and if the children's crying became audible in the upper regions,
+he declared that the house was not fit to live in, still less to work
+in. One morning when the youngest boy was loudly expressing his distaste
+for the ceremonies of the toilet, his father--no less loudly--was giving
+vent to his irritation at the disturbance, and calling out to shut _all_
+the doors; but he could not help being very much amused by the resolute
+interference of the eldest brother--three years old--who, crossing his
+little fat arms, and standing his ground firmly, delivered this oracle:
+"Papa, babies _must_ cry." I suppose he had heard this wise sentence
+from the nurse, but he gave it as solemnly as if it were the result of
+his own reflections. Whether a few years' experience had rendered his
+father more patient generally, or whether he had become alive to the
+charm of babyhood--to which he had hitherto remained insensible--it was
+a fact first noticed by the nurse that "Monsieur, quand la petite
+criait, voulait savoir ce qu'elle avait, et la prenait même dans ses
+bras pour la consoler."
+
+A very important event now occurred: Mr. Hamerton was appointed art
+critic to the "Saturday Review," where he succeeded Mr. Palgrave at his
+recommendation. He did not accept the post with much pleasure, but it
+afforded him the opportunity of studying works of art free of expense,
+and that was a weighty consideration, besides being an opening to
+intellectual and artistic intercourse of which he was greatly deprived
+at Pré-Charmoy.
+
+The visits to the London exhibitions necessitated two or three journeys
+every year, and we both suffered from the separations; but I could bear
+them better in my own home--surrounded by my children, visited by my
+mother, sister, and brothers--than my husband, who was alone amongst
+strangers, and who had to live in hotels, a thing he had a great dislike
+for. In order to make these separations as short as possible, he
+travelled at night by the most rapid trains; saw the exhibitions in the
+day, and went to his rooms to write his articles by gas-light. For some
+time he only felt fatigued; afterwards he became nervous; but he found
+compensation in the society of his newly made friends, and in the
+increasing marks of recognition he was now meeting everywhere.
+
+He soon gave up hotel life, and took lodgings in St. John's Wood, where
+he had many acquaintances, and from there he wrote to me:--
+
+"I have seen Palgrave, Macmillan, Rossetti, Woolner, and Mr. Pearce
+to-day. Palgrave says the 'Saturday Review' 'is most proud to have me.'
+Woolner says it is not possible to succeed as an art critic more than I
+have done; that Tennyson has been very much interested in my articles,
+and has in consequence urged his publishers to employ Doré to illustrate
+the "Idylls of the King." They have offered the job to Doré, who has
+accepted.
+
+"The best news is to come.
+
+"The 'Painter's Camp' is a success after all. It has fully cleared its
+expenses, and Macmillan is willing to venture on a second edition,
+revised, and I think he will let me illustrate it; he only hesitates.
+
+"_Macmillan has positively given me a commission for a work on Etching_.
+
+"I am to be paid whether it succeeds or not. I cannot tell you the exact
+sum, but you shall know it soon.
+
+"It is to be made up of articles in different reviews. It is to be a
+guinea work of 400 pages, beautifully got up, with 50 illustrative
+etchings by different masters, and is to be called 'Etching and
+Etchers.'
+
+"Macmillan said that as to my capacity as a writer there existed no
+doubt on the subject. He fully expects this work on Etching to be a
+success. It is to be out for Christmas next.
+
+"Macmillan is most favorably disposed to undertake other works, on
+condition that each shall have a special character like that. One on
+'Painting in France' and another on 'Painting in England' looms in the
+future. He prefers this plan to the Year-book I mentioned to you.
+
+"The great news in this letter is that I have written a book which has
+paid its expenses. Is not that jolly? The idea of a second edition quite
+elates me. So you see, darling, things are rather cheering. I must say,
+everybody receives me pleasantly. Woodward is going to give me a whole
+day at Windsor. Beresford-Hope is out of town, but called to-day at
+Cook's and said 'he was most anxious to see me.'"
+
+My husband wrote to me sometimes in French and sometimes in English;
+when my mother came to keep me company during his absence, he generally
+wrote in French, to enable me to read aloud some passages of his letters
+that she might find interesting. The following letter was written on his
+first journey to London for the "Saturday Review ":--
+
+"CHÈRE PETITE FEMME,--Me voici installé dans un fort joli appartement
+tout près de chez Mr. Mackay, à une guinée par semaine; j'y suis
+tout-à-fait bien.
+
+"Samedi dernier je suis allé d'abord chez Mr. Stephen Pearce que j'ai
+trouvé chez lui; c'est un homme parfaitement comme il faut; il m'a reçu
+bien cordialement et il m'a invité à dîner demain. J'ai dîné chez Mrs.
+Leslie hier et j'ai passé tout le tantôt d'aujourd'hui chez Lewes qui
+habite une fort belle maison à cinq minutes d'ici. J'ai beaucoup causé
+avec l'auteur de 'Romola;' c'est une femme de 45 ans, pas belle du tout,
+mais très distinguée, elle m'a fort bien reçu. Lewes lui-même est laid,
+mais très cordial. Voilà quelque chose comme sa physionomie. [Sketch of
+Lewes]. Je vais te donner George Eliot sur l'autre page. Il est très
+gentil avec elle. [Sketch of George Eliot.] Ce portrait n'est pas très
+ressemblant, mais il donne une bonne idée de l'expression--elle en a
+énormément et parle fort bien. Son salon est un modèle de gôut et
+d'élégance, et toute sa maison est aussi bien tenue que celle de
+Millais, par exemple. Nous avons causé de beaucoup de choses, entre
+autres précisément de cette curieuse question de prière selon Comte.
+Elle soutient que c'est raisonnable dans le sens d'expression de vif
+désir, de concentration de l'esprit vers son but. Son argument était
+bien fortement soutenu par sa manière énergique de raisonner, mais je
+lui ai tenu tête avec beaucoup d'obstination, et nous avons eu une
+véritable lutte. Elle a une singulière puissance, quelque chose qui ne
+se trouve jamais que chez les personnes d'un génie extraordinaire. Quand
+elle a voulu me convaincre, elle y mettait tant de persuasion et de
+volonté qu'il me fallait un certain effort pour garder la clarté de mes
+propres idées. Je te dirai cela plus en détail quand nous nous
+reverrons.
+
+"Lewes m'a dit qu'il serait content d'avoir d'autres articles de moi
+pour la 'Fortnightly Review.'"
+
+Two days later he wrote:--
+
+"I dined with the Mackays yesterday; Mr. Watkiss Lloyd was there, and
+other friends came in the evening. I spent the day at home, writing, but
+I have an engagement for every night this week--I am becoming a sort of
+professional diner-out.
+
+"I have been talking over the illustrations of the 'Painter's Camp' with
+George Leslie. He has promised to do twenty etchings of figure-subjects
+to illustrate it, and I shall do twenty landscapes. I have learned a
+great deal from Haden here, and I feel sure now of grappling
+successfully with the difficulties which plagued me before. Besides, I
+am anxious to have a book with etchings in it out in time to appear with
+the work on Etching. I am sure this new edition of the 'Painter's Camp'
+will be something jolly. It's nice to think I shall have two beautiful
+books out at Christmas. It will give my reputation a fillip. It appears
+that Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, and George Eliot are amongst my
+most assiduous readers. Isn't it pleasant to have readers of that
+class?..."
+
+I will give here a few more extracts from his letters at that time; it
+is the best way of becoming acquainted with his method of work, as well
+as with the state of his mind.
+
+"Yesterday I went to see some exhibitions and Mrs. Cameron's
+photographs; they are really very fine, quite different from anything
+one ever saw before. You will be very much struck with them, I am sure.
+
+"Mr. Palgrave and I spent a delightful evening together yesterday; we
+talked till midnight. I found him a pleasant companion. We had some
+music; Mrs. Palgrave plays well. He has a nice collection of Greek
+vases, which would delight Mariller. [A figure-painter who lived at
+Autun, and who drew the figures for the 'Unknown River.']
+
+"The more I reflect on matters, the more I rejoice to live far away from
+here. Known as I am now, I am sure that if I lived in or near London I
+should be exposed to frequent interruptions, and gradually our dear
+little private life would be taken away from us both. Besides, this
+continued excitement would kill me, I could never stand it; I really
+need quiet, and I get it at Pré-Charmoy. Just now I bear up pretty well,
+but I know I could not stand this for three months--out _every_ evening,
+working or seeing people, or going in omnibuses. And then I need the
+great refreshment of being able to talk to thee, and to hear thee talk,
+and play with the children a little; all that is good for me,--in fact,
+I live upon it. I want to be back again. My breakfast in the morning is
+a difficulty; as you know, I never can eat an English one, and if I
+don't I am not fit for much fatigue. The distances, too, are terrible.
+Still, on the whole, I keep better than I expected to do. I hope the
+dear little boys are both quite well, and my little daughter, who is the
+apple of my eye."
+
+About the difficulty of eating an English breakfast, it must be
+explained that since Gilbert had begun to suffer from nervousness he had
+given up coffee and tea; besides, he only liked a very light breakfast,
+and we had tried different kinds of food for the morning meal: chocolate
+he could not digest, although it was to his taste; cocoa he did not care
+for; beer and dry biscuits succeeded for a time, but at last we
+discovered that soup was the best breakfast for him, vegetable soup
+(_soupe maigre_) especially, because it must not be too rich. At home I
+always made his soup myself, for, being always the same--by his own
+choice--he was particular about the flavor; it was merely onion-soup
+with either cream and parsley, or onion-soup with Liebig and chervil. In
+the great summer heat he took instead of it cold milk and brown bread.
+It may be easily surmised that such a frugal meal could not last him far
+into the day, particularly as he was a very early riser, and often had
+his bowl of soup at six in the morning; then, when he felt hungry
+again--at ten generally--he drank a glass of beer and ate a slice of
+home-made _brioche_, which allowed him to await the twelve o'clock
+_déjeuner à la fourchette_.
+
+The following passage is extracted from a letter written a few days
+after those already given:--
+
+"J'ai dîné chez Woolner hier. Quel brave garçon! Ses manières avec moi
+sont tout-à-fait affectueuses, et je me sens avec lui sur le pied de la
+plus parfaite intimité. Il n'y a pas un homme a Londres qui possède un
+cercle d'amis comme le sien: tout ce qu'il y a de plus distingué _en
+tout_. Palgrave dit que Woolner fait un choix sérieux dans ses amitiés.
+Sa femme est jolie, délicate, gracieuse, intelligente; elle me fait
+l'effet d'un lys.
+
+"J'ai reçu la visite de Haden hier, il m'a plus enseigné relativement à
+l'eau-forte en une demi-heure de conversation que dix ans de pratique ne
+l'auraient fait. Voici mes engagements:--
+
+"Samedi, dîner chez Leslie.
+Dimanche, tantôt chez Lewes.
+Lundi, dîner chez Pearce.
+Mardi, " " Mackay.
+Mercredi, " " Shaw.
+Jeudi, " " Woolner.
+Vendredi, toute la journée avec Woodward.
+Samedi, soirée chez Marks.
+Lundi, dîner chez Haden.
+Mardi, " " Constable fils:
+
+"et il n'y a pas de raison pour que cela s'arrête, excepté mon depart
+pour West Lodge qui sera, je crois, pour mercredi."
+
+However, he had to postpone his departure on account of a distressing
+and alarming disturbance of his nervous system. Mr. Haden recommended
+him to give up all kind of work immediately, which he did, and for a few
+days he only wrote short notes.
+
+"NORTHUMBERLAND STREET. _Wednesday Morning_.
+
+"Je suis toujours faible, mais je crois que je puis supporter le voyage
+aujourd'hui. Si j'étais une fois à West Lodge je m'y reposerais bien. Si
+je me sentais fatigué je m'arrêterais n'importe où. La surexcitation
+cérébrale est _complètement passée_, mais je n'espère pas être remis
+avant un mois."
+
+From West Lodge he wrote, in answer to one of my letters:--
+
+"Our present business is to look simply to the question, what will be
+most economical? I have no objection to any arrangement which will save
+my keeping a man, but I have a decided objection to that. [It was about
+the garden, one half of which I proposed to cede on condition of having
+the other half cultivated free of charge.] Any arrangement you make
+_that does not involve my keeping a man_ has my approbation beforehand.
+
+"I saw Macmillan again before leaving, and now he is for bringing out
+the new edition of the 'Painter's Camp' in May. It will be a pretty
+little book, but I can't get Macmillan to go to the expense about
+illustrations. Colnaghi will publish etchings for me, and after all the
+hints and instructions received from Haden, I feel quite sure that I
+shall succeed in etching.
+
+"I expect to be at Pré-Charmoy in a few days, when I shall be delighted
+to see you all, my treasures."
+
+Having returned to London, he writes:--
+
+"I spent last evening with Beavington Atkinson, who was to have come to
+see us in France; you remember Woodward wrote about him. He and his wife
+are most agreeable people, and I like him really; there is something so
+intelligent and pleasing in his manner.
+
+"Yesterday I went through Buckingham Palace to see the pictures. There
+is a fine Dutch collection. Then I went to the British Museum to see the
+Rembrandt etchings, and was accompanied by a collector, Mr. Fisher. This
+evening I am to spend with Haden again; he has a magnificent collection
+of etchings, and will help me very much with my book. So now I am sure
+of the right quantity of assistance in my work.
+
+"I was with the editor of the 'Saturday' this afternoon; nothing could
+exceed his kind, trustful way.
+
+"Still, I wish I were back with you; but I shall hurry now and come back
+fast."
+
+Two days later:--
+
+"Je me sens de nouveau fatigué. J'ai causé aujourd'hui avec l'aubergiste
+de Walton-on-Thames, et il m'a dit qu'il nous nourrirait et nous
+logerait tous les deux pour £2 par semaine. On y est très bien, il y a
+un jardin, et des études à faire en quantité. Mr. Haden pense que la
+peinture ne fatiguerait pas autant le cerveau que la littérature.
+
+"Si je t'avais avec moi, et si je restais plus longtemps, je n'aurais
+pas besoin l'année prochaine de revenir au mois de juillet. Voilà le
+rêve que j'ai fait. Je viendrais à Londres une ou deux fois par semaine
+seulement, et je t'aurais là-bas. Je ne pense pas vivre sans toi, je
+meurs d'ennui."
+
+The kind of life we led at Pré-Charmoy suited perfectly my husband's
+tastes, and he was soon restored to health. He would have been entirely
+happy but for pressing cares; still, thanks to his philosophical
+disposition, he contrived to enjoy what was enjoyable in his life. He
+was extremely fond of excursions in the country, and we often used to
+set off with nurse and children in the farmer's cart, to spend the day
+in some picturesque place, where he could sketch or paint. We had our
+provisions with us, and both lunched and dined on the grass under the
+fine chestnuts or oaks, so numerous in the Morvan, by the side of a
+clear stream or rivulet; for running water had a sort of magic influence
+upon Gilbert, and instinctively, when unwell from nervous exhaustion, he
+sought its soothing influence. We generally rambled about the country
+after each meal, and whilst he drew I read to him, leaving the children
+to their play, under the charge of the nurse.
+
+So far we had taken upon ourselves the teaching of the boys, but for
+some time past I had perceived that it was becoming inadequate to their
+present requirements, and I told their father that I thought they should
+be sent to college,--any rate the eldest, who was nearly eight years
+old; but he demurred, not seeing the necessity for it. He had a notion
+that they could be much better educated at home, according to a plan of
+his own: Latin and Greek would be reserved for their teens, because it
+was a clear loss of time before, and they would be taught modern
+languages early, together with science and literature. To this I
+objected, that, if successful, it might be a very good education for
+boys who were certain of an independence, but that it did not seem a
+good way towards the degrees necessary for almost every one of the
+liberal professions. Besides, who was to teach the boys when he was
+away? and would he always find spare time to do it, and regular hours
+also? I was certain he would never be punctual as to time; only he did
+not like to be told so, because, being aware of this shortcoming, he
+made earnest efforts to correct it, and constantly failed. It was
+difficult to him to bear any kind of interruption, or any compulsory
+change of work--involving loss of time--and on that score very trying to
+one who wanted always to finish what he had in hand. He hardly ever came
+down at meal-times without the bell being rung twice, and often when he
+did come down, he used to say: "That bell was getting angry," and he was
+met with this stereotyped phrase from us: "And it made you abandon the
+refractory sentence at last!"
+
+Well, he acknowledged there was some weight in my objections to home
+instruction, but "he could give tasks to be done in his absence, and
+correct them afterwards." I asked, who could help the young students
+when they were in a fix? and would they be always inclined to apply
+themselves steadily to their tasks without supervision? That was
+expecting too much, but it seemed natural to him to expect it, as study
+and work had ever been both a necessity and a pleasure to him. However,
+he yielded, but so strong was his disapproval of public school teaching
+as it was carried on, that at first he would have nothing to do with it.
+I had to go to the principal of the college, and make terms and
+arrangements; the only condition he made was that the boys should come
+home every Saturday night, and remain till Monday morning, and the same
+from Wednesday to Friday regularly, for their English lessons and for
+their health. I desired nothing better, and the principal agreed to it.
+Whenever the boys complained of anything about their college life
+afterwards, their father used to say good-humoredly: "I have no
+responsibility in the matter; _I_ did not want you to go to college, you
+know--it was your mother."
+
+Pré-Charmoy being four kilomètres distant from the town of Autun, and
+five from the college, where the boys had to be in time for the eight
+o'clock class, summer and winter, it became necessary to have some means
+of conveying them to and fro, for they were still very young,--Stephen a
+little over eight, and Richard hardly seven. The eldest boy went alone
+at first, but his brother soon insisted on going too. We decided to do
+like most of our country neighbors, that is, to have a little
+donkey-cart, because it would have been both inconvenient and expensive
+to hire the farmer's so frequently. Accordingly we bought a small,
+second-hand carriage with its donkey, and I was taught to drive; my
+husband would have preferred a pony, but I was nervous at the idea of
+driving one, although I had been told that it was much easier to manage
+than a donkey, and discovered afterwards that it was the truth.
+
+The little cart proved a great convenience for my husband's studies, as
+he could start with it at any time, and there was no trouble about the
+care of the donkey, the servant-girls being accustomed to it from
+infancy--almost every household in the vicinity being in possession of
+this useful and inexpensive animal. There is a Morvandau song, known to
+all the little shepherdesses, in illustration of the custom:--
+
+  "Mes parents s'y mariant tou
+  Mé j'garde l'âne (_bis_).
+  Mes parents s'y mariant tou
+  Mé j'garde l'âne taut mon saoûl!
+
+  "Mais quand mon tour viendra
+  Gardera l'âne (_bis_).
+  Mais quand mon tour viendra
+  Gardera l'âne qui voudra."
+
+At first we had a swift little animal, which could not be stopped at all
+when he was behind another carriage, till that carriage stopped first.
+It was an advantage in some cases,--for instance, when preceded by a
+good horse; but if the horse went further than our destination, one of
+us had to jump out and hold back the fiery and stubborn little brute by
+sheer force, till his sense of jealous emulation was appeased.
+
+The load upon the cart, when we were all together, was found excessive
+for the animal, and my husband, who was always deeply concerned about
+the welfare of dumb creatures, decided to have a bigger and stronger
+donkey. He bought a very fine one, strong enough to pull us all, but he
+did it in such a leisurely fashion that he received the expressive name
+of "Dort-debout." This led my husband to write to me sometimes from
+London, after a hard day's work: "Here is a very short note, but I am
+like our donkey, je dors debout."
+
+The editor of the "Saturday Review" asked Mr. Hamerton to be present at
+the opening of the Paris Exhibition of 1867, and to write a series of
+articles on the works of art exhibited; then to proceed to London for a
+review of the Academy. He wished me very much to go with him, and I
+being nothing loth, we started together, and received in Paris the
+following letter from Aunt Susan:--
+
+"WEST LODGE. _April_ 20, 1867.
+
+"MY DEAR NEPHEW,--I am very glad indeed to hear from you, as I now know
+where to direct my long-intended epistle to you; your uncle thought you
+would not like to come to the exhibition in its very unfinished state,
+and I thought you would like to be at the opening of it, and so the
+matter was resting quite unacted upon. I grieve very much to tell you of
+the sad tidings we have of poor Anne Gould; there has been a
+consultation with her medical men, and they pronounce her case very
+serious,--in fact, incurable. She grows thinner and weaker almost every
+week, and one lung is said to be affected. A confinement is expected in
+July, and I cannot but still hope that she may possibly come round
+again; but it has been sorrowful news. We shall be very glad to see you
+_both_ at West Lodge when you can make it convenient, and I do hope and
+trust we shall be able to enjoy the anticipated pleasure of your
+company. You will have left home with comparative comfort, the boys
+being both at college, and, I expect, grandmamma with the little sister.
+I was very glad when you wrote 'before _we_ can be in England,' as it
+assured me the little wife was not to be sent homeward from Paris,
+instead of accompanying you to West Lodge, where we shall be very glad
+to see her."
+
+Nevertheless, I had to go homewards, for about three weeks after our
+arrival in Paris I heard that my little daughter Mary was ill with
+bronchitis, and I hastened to her whilst my husband was leaving for
+London. I was doubly sorry, because he was very reluctant to go alone;
+but although he felt a sort of instinctive dread of the journey he did
+not attempt to detain me. He had borne the sight-seeing very well, and
+the crowds, which he disliked; but it was mainly because he had been
+spared hotel life, for we had lodged with a former servant of ours, who
+was married at Pré-Charmoy, and now lived at La Glacière, in Paris. It
+was by no means a fashionable quarter, and our lodgings left much to be
+desired in the way of comfort, but it will be seen how much he regretted
+it all when alone at Kew, where he had taken lodgings after much
+suffering from fatigue, over-work, and depression. Still, the first news
+from London was very gratifying:--
+
+"Un mot seulement pour te dire que _toutes les huit eaux-fortes_ sont
+reçues à l'Académie et bien placées. Ces Académiciens commencent à
+devenir gentils.
+
+"Ce matin je suis allé de bonne heure à l'Académie, comme d'habitude;
+j'ai maintenant ma carte d'exposant dont je suis très fier."
+
+But after a fortnight he wrote:--
+
+"PETITE CHÉRIE,--Aujourd'hui je vais me donner le plaisir de
+m'entretenir longuement avec toi. Combien je préférerais te parler de
+vive voix. Je suppose que je suis très bien ici; c'est-à-dire j'ai tout
+ce que j'aime matériellement: le bon air, la belle nature, un petit
+appartement d'une propriété vraiment exquise, une belle rivière tout à
+côté, et des canots à ma disposition. Et cependant, malgré cela je suis
+d'une tristesse mortelle, et j'ai beau me raisonner là-contre. Nous
+avons été si heureux ensemble à Paris, malgré notre sale petite rue que
+je vois bien la vérité de ce que tu m'as dit qu'il vaudrait mieux vivre
+dans n'importe quel tandis, ensemble, que dans des palais, et sépares.
+Si je croyais à l'immortalité de l'âme, je regarderais avec effroi la
+possibilité d'être au ciel pendant que tu resterais sur la terre. Je
+crois que ma maladie est due principalement à la tristesse et je tâche
+de lutter là-contre. Je vais faire quelques eaux-fortes et aquarelles
+dans mes moments de loisir pour m'empêcher, autant que possible, de
+penser à ma solitude.
+
+"J'ai eu un peu de fièvre dans la nuit, et ce matin je suis calme, mais
+fatigué. Il ne faut pas t'en alarmer cependant; le voyage et
+l'exposition réclamaient une réaction, et elle arrive naturellement au
+premier moment où j'ai la possibilité du repos. Quant au repos, je m'en
+donne aujourd'hui pleinement; je ne fais rien; mais je me reposerais
+mieux si tu étais ici pour me dire que tu m'aimes et pour mettre tes
+douces mains sur mon front. Je deviens par trop dépendant de toi, je
+voudrais être plus fort--et pourtant je crois qu'on est plus heureux
+étant triste à cause d'une séparation d'avec la femme aimée que si l'on
+était insensible à cette séparation. Allons! je ne voudrais pas vendre
+ma tristesse pour beaucoup! elle s'en ira le jour où je te verrai; en
+attendant je la garde volontiers."
+
+Then follows a minute description of his lodgings, of Kew itself--the
+gardens, the river, the different boats upon it--and he concludes:--
+
+"Tiens, voilà que je redeviens un peu gai, ce qui est bon signe; peut-
+être, quand j'aurai reçu une lettre de toi cela ira mieux. Ainsi, ta-ta,
+good-bye; embrasse bien les chers enfants pour moi et dis à ma petite
+Marie que je lui rapporterai une pépem [for _poupée_, which she could
+not yet pronounce clearly] ou autre chose de beau."
+
+A few days later:--
+
+"Je suis allé aujourd'hui au musée Britannique continuer mes études. Le
+système que j'ai adopté parait bon, et ça va bien. Je limite
+rigoureusement mes travaux en choisissant seulement la crême de la crême
+des planches.
+
+"Je me suis promené ce soir au jardin de Kew; ces promenades me rendent
+toujours triste, parce qu'à chaque bel arbre ou jolie fleur, je me
+figure combien tu en jouirais si tu étais avec moi. Quand on s'est si
+bien habitué à vivre à deux il est difficile de redevenir garçon. Dans
+ces moments de tristesse je pense toujours à la séparation éternelle, et
+au sort de celui de nous qui restera. Enfin j'apprends ici une chose qui
+me servira toujours, c'est que pour moi maintenant tout est vanité sans
+toi. J'ai un jardin Royal à ma disposition, des collections d'oeuvres
+d'art superbes, les plus jolis canots, une belle rivière, de bons livres
+à lire, du succès avec les éditeurs et une réputation en bonne voie, et
+pourtant cette existence ne vaut pas la peine de vivre. Il est bon de
+savoir ces choses là et de se connaître. À Paris où notre existence
+matérielle était pleine d'ennuis, j'étais pourtant heureux. Il ne faut
+pas de ton côté être triste parce que je le suis, du moins si tu peux
+l'éviter. C'est une affaire de deux ou trois semaines, voilà tout. De
+mon côté je suis si occupé que je n'ai pas le temps de penser à moi-
+même, et je travaille avec la régularité d'un homme de bureau. C'est
+lorsque je rentre chez moi que je souffre de ne point t'avoir.
+
+"Quant à ma santé, elle va mieux. Je connais l'état de mon système
+nerveux et l'effet que le chemin-de-fer lui produit. Aujourd'hui je n'en
+ai rien ressenti du tout. Quand je suis malade, la vibration et le
+mouvement des objets me font souffrir un peu."
+
+On the following Sunday:--
+
+"DEAR LITTLE WIFE,--Last night I passed the evening with a set of
+artists, friends of George Leslie, at the house of one of them, Mr.
+Hodgson. They acted charades, and as their costumes (from their own
+ateliers) were numerous and rich, it was very good. Among them were
+Calderon and Frederick Walker. This morning we all set out for a walk on
+Hampstead Heath; I have no doubt the walk will do me good, but I am very
+well now, and feel better every day.
+
+"I called on Rossetti the painter; he lives in a magnificent house,
+furnished with very great taste, but in the most extraordinary manner.
+His drawing-room is very large indeed and most curious; the general
+effect is very good. He was very kind in receiving me, and I saw his
+pictures, which are splendid in color, and very quaint and strange in
+sentiment. His own manners are singularly soft and pleasant. I called on
+Mr. Barlow the engraver, and spent some time with him about the
+etchings. He will lend me some; Marks will lend me some also. The worst
+of the way I go on in London now is that society absorbs too much time.
+I must restrict it in future very much."
+
+After the walk to Hampstead he wrote:--
+
+"Yesterday, Sunday, I went on a long walk to Hampstead with
+several artists who live close together, and I never met seven more
+agreeable and more gentlemanly men; I enjoyed our conversation
+extremely. George Leslie and I got some lunch at the inn and walked back
+together.
+
+"Calderon's studio that I saw a few days ago is richly tapestried and
+very lofty; it is quite as fine as that of Millais. It seems Leighton
+has built himself a studio forty feet long. Mr. Barlow, the engraver,
+has a fine studio attached to the one you saw him in, and far larger.
+All these artists complain of nothing but the too great prosperity of
+the profession in these days; they tell me an artist's life is a
+princely one now. They live and dress like gentlemen, and their
+daughters might be 'clothed in scarlet.'
+
+"The reason for my staying in London longer than I intended is the time
+I have spent in society--a thing I certainly shall never do again--
+because I go to bed so late, _always_ after twelve, whereas if I were
+not in society I should go to bed at nine or ten, and keep my strength
+up easily. Another thing I am sure of is that, _on the whole_, the
+advantages of being isolated, as I am at Pré-Charmoy, counterbalance and
+more than counterbalance the disadvantages. I certainly would not, if I
+could, have a house in London; the loss of time is awful. The only good
+in it for a painter is that the dealers are always after him for
+pictures as soon as he succeeds.
+
+"Mind you have a man from the farm to sleep in the house every night. It
+would be well for him to have the gun loaded, only take care the
+children don't get at it. My health is still tolerably good,
+sufficiently so for me to get easily through what I have to do."
+
+But the next news was far from being so satisfactory.
+
+"J'ai des nouvelles de West Lodge qui sont vraiment tristes. Anne est
+accouchée prématurément, et l'enfant--une fille--est morte après avoir
+vécu deux nuits et un jour. On l'a baptisée Annie Jane Hamerton Gould.
+Anne est dans un état de faiblesse tel qu'on n'espère pas la conserver
+au-delà de quelques semaines, et mon pauvre oncle est dans l'île de
+Wight avec elle, où tout cela se passe. La tante Susan, de son côté, est
+malade d'une fièvre gastrique--maladie bien dangereuse, comme tu sais;
+elle a pu m'écrire quelques mots au crayon; elle se trouve un peu mieux,
+ce qui me fait espérer que probablement sa bonne constitution triomphera
+du mal. Je voudrais aller la voir de suite, mais je suis tellement
+retenu par mon travail; et puis le bon arrangement de ce travail et son
+heureux succès m'avaient fait regagner un peu ma sérénité d'esprit, et
+maintenant je souffre de nouveau pour mon oncle et ma tante. Vraiment
+c'est pénible d'être là avec son dernier enfant qui s'en va si vite. Si
+encore la pauvre petite avait vécu, mon oncle aurait eu une fille peur
+remplacer les siennes, car il faut bien parler d'Anne comme d'une
+personne morte.
+
+"Je me félicite des résultats de mon nouveau système: je me lève de fort
+bonne heure, j'ai fini dans l'Académie à 10 h. 1/2; alors je fais une
+course, et immédiatement après je me rends au Musée où je déjeune. On y
+déjeune très bien et pas cher; tu comprends que c'est pour les gens de
+lettres qui travaillent à la bibliothèque. Je rentre ici à six heures,
+et le soir je me promène un peu au jardin, ou sur l'eau; après quoi
+j'écris à la petite femme chérie et je me couche. Aujourd'hui, comme
+hier, j'ai étudié et décrit dix tableaux et dix planches. Je crois que
+mes notes sur les aquafortistes iront plus vite que je ne l'avais
+espéré. J'ai déjà terminé Claude, Salvator, Wilkie, Geddes, Ruysdaël,
+Paul Potter. J'arriverai à ma vingtaine si ma santé se maintient pendant
+tout mon séjour. Je réserve le samedi et le dimanche à Kew pour écrire
+ou dessiner.
+
+"Je m'étonne _du mauvais_ de certains aqua-fortistes célèbres. Dans
+toute l'oeuvre de Ruysdaël je ne trouve que deux bonnes planches, et
+encore si elles étaient publiées dans l'ouvrage de la Société Française,
+je les trouverais peut-être mauvaises. Dans Salvator il y en a également
+deux ou trois bonnes. L'oeuvre de Claude est belle en somme, avec
+plusieurs mauvaises choses toutefois.
+
+"Adieu, petite chérie, le temps de mon exil diminue, et alors je te
+reverrai, toi et les enfants."
+
+But he was suddenly and violently seized by a mysterious illness, which
+threatened not only his life but his reason, as he told me afterwards.
+He longed to have me near him, yet he was so courageous that, to spare
+me, he only wrote that he was suffering from fatigue:--
+
+"CROWN INN, WALTON-ON-THAMES.
+
+"Ça va toujours tout doucement. Je me promène tranquillement. Je reste
+encore ici deux nuits pour gagner un peu de force. Je suis toujours très
+faible, mais le cerveau va mieux, je n'ai point de surexcitation
+cérébrale. Je ne dois pas beaucoup écrire. Ainsi tata, ma bien aimée.
+
+"_Lundi soir._
+
+"Puisque je sais que tu dois être inquiète je t'écris une deuxième fois
+aujourd'hui pour te dire que je vais _beaucoup mieux_. La force commence
+à me revenir. Je me suis bien promené, lentement, toute la journée. Je
+n'ai pas osé te dire combien j'ai désiré ta chère présence ces jours-ci.
+Si je l'avais dit tu aurais été capable de te mettre en route. C'est
+toujours triste d'être malade, mais c'est terrible quand on est seul
+dans une auberge. [He had gone to Walton-on-Thames for quiet and rest.]
+
+"Enfin j'espère que c'est à peu près passé pour cette fois, et je me
+promets bien de ne plus jamais travailler au-dessus de mes forces. Mr.
+Haden dit que je n'ai point de maladie, mais que je suis incapable de
+supporter tout travail excessif. Il va falloir régler tout cela."
+
+"J'ai dû renoncer à mon travail pendant deux jours parce que j'ai besoin
+de repos, et il me semble plus sage de le prendre à temps que de me
+rendre malade. Lorsque je suis malade je ne puis pas me reposer, tandis
+que maintenant, je suis simplement fatigué. Je dors bien, mais comme je
+suis seul dans mon logement, je deviens tout triste. Je n'ose pas penser
+du tout à Pré-Charmoy parce que cela me donne une telle envie de te voir
+que j'en serais malade. Ah! si la force physique voulait seulement
+répondre à la force morale! Moralement, je n'ai jamais été plus fort,
+plus disposé à la lutte; et puis ces jours de fatigue arrivent et
+m'accablent, et je souffre dix fois plus qu'un paresseux s'y
+résignerait.
+
+"Beaucoup de baisers aux enfants, et beaucoup pour toi, petite femme
+trop chérie. Je n'ose penser combien ce serait gentil si tu étais ici
+auprès de moi."
+
+In answer I immediately proposed to go to him, as our little daughter
+was convalescent, and her grandmother would take care of her during my
+absence, but he declined.
+
+"PETITE CHÉRIE DE MON COEUR,--Je viens de recevoir ta bonne lettre, il
+n'est pas nécessaire que tu viennes; je gagne graduellement. J'ai passé
+la soirée avec Mr. Pearce qui sait que je suis malade. J'ai échappé sans
+doute à un grave danger, j'ai même eu peur de perdre la raison; mais
+tout cela est passé; je suis calme et quoique faible encore--plus fort.
+C'est surtout mentalement que je vais mieux, ce qui est le plus
+essentiel: le corps suivra. Je n'ai pas osé entreprendre le voyage de
+Todmorden aujourd'hui, mais j'ai l'espoir de pouvoir partir demain.
+Quoique en état de convalescence, je suis obligé d'être prudent et
+d'éviter les grandes fatigues. Le médecin dit qu'il faudra un changement
+dans ma manière de vivre. Le fait est que je me tue en travaillant et je
+sens que je n'irais pas trois ans comme cela. Enfin je me dis que
+puisque ma mort ne te ferait pas de bien, je dois tâcher de me
+conserver; si ma mort pouvait t'être utile je mourrais bien volontiers.
+Ta chère lettre, toute pleine d'affection, m'a fait du bien. Dis à mon
+bon petit Stephen que je le remercie de toute sa tendresse pour moi et
+que je vais mieux. J'ai beaucoup pensé à mes chers enfants, ne sachant
+pas si je les reverrais.
+
+"Je t'ai tout dit; ça a été seulement un état d'abattement complet
+accompagné d'excitation des centres nerveux."
+
+"KEW. _Thursday_.
+
+"Le temps est si mauvais que je n'ai pas pu faire une seule esquisse. Ma
+tante Susan t'a écrit pour te dire que la pauvre Anne a cessé de
+souffrir. J'ai reçu une lettre de son mari qui me dit que les derniers
+jours ont été bien pénibles. Je ne vais toujours pas bien à cause de la
+tristesse et de l'inquiétude que tout cela m'a causé, mais il ne faut
+pas être inquiète pour moi; ça se passera dans un jour ou deux, tu sais
+que je suis très impressionnable.
+
+"Il me prend de temps en temps d'angoissantes envies de te voir. Dans
+ces moments-là il me semble que je réalise chaque mètre, chaque
+centimètre de l'effroyable distance qui nous sépare. Je suis obligé de
+lutter fortement contre ces idées qui finiraient par me rendre malade.
+
+"Je dois maintenant aller au train; à demain donc."
+
+"WEST LODGE. _Vendredi_.
+
+"Je suis bien arrivé chez ma tante que j'ai trouvée en bonne santé, mais
+je suis toujours horriblement triste ici, et je me le reproche, car ma
+tante est toujours si bonne. Elle nous avait destiné la belle
+chambre-à-coucher, et j'ai la chambre tout seul, ce qui ne contribue pas
+à diminuer ma tristesse. Une chose au moins me console: j'ai le matériel
+pour mon livre sur l'eau-forte, c'est beaucoup. Je crois la publication
+de ce livre si essentielle à mon avenir, comme soutien de ma réputation,
+que j'aurais été vraiment désolé de ne pas pouvoir le faire maintenant.
+Ayant tout le matériel dans ma tête, je ferai l'ouvrage très vite, et je
+suis convaincu qu'il sera bon et tout-à-fait nouveau. J'ai bien besoin
+maintenant d'un peu de bruit pour augmenter ma réputation, car ces
+articles anonymes ne l'aident point.
+
+"Dans ta tristesse, ma chérie, il faut toujours avoir la plus grande
+confiance en la durée de mon amour pour toi. Je crois que mon amour et
+ma loyauté sont au moins aussi forts que le sentiment de l'héroïsme
+militaire. Il me semble que si les soldats peuvent supporter toutes les
+privations pour leur roi ou pour leur patrie, je dois pouvoir en faire
+autant pour ma femme. Compte sur ma tendresse, même dans les
+circonstances les plus difficiles, tu l'auras toujours. Grâce à ton
+influence, je suis beaucoup plus capable qu'autrefois de supporter les
+difficultés de la vie, et si nous avions à vivre dans une pauvre
+chaumière, je t'aiderais gaiement à faire les travaux du petit ménage en
+y consacrant deux ou trois heures par jour, et quand tu coudrais je te
+ferais un peu la lecture, et toujours je t'aimerais. Ainsi crois que,
+loin de souffrir des devoirs que je me suis imposés, j'y trouve la plus
+profonde satisfaction, et que je me trouve plus respectable que si je ne
+faisais rien."
+
+"WEST LODGE. Vendredi.
+
+"J'avais l'intention de partir aujourd'hui mais la tante Susan paraît
+tellement triste quand je parle de m'en aller que j'ai dû reculer mon
+départ jusqu'à lundi. Du reste j'ai fait trois planches que je crois
+bonnes; j'y ai bien travaillé; j'ai aussi écrit trois articles, mais mon
+travail pour la Revue ne gagne pas grand'chose, et du moment où la
+peinture rapportera, je quitterai la revue; je n'aime pas ce genre de
+travail, quoiqu'on dise que je le fais bien. J'aimerais autant être
+cocher de fiacre. Ce que j'ai toujours désiré faire c'est de la
+peinture; mes efforts dans cette direction n'ont pas abouti jusqu'à
+présent, mais si j'avais un peu de temps libre, je saurais mieux faire à
+cause de mon expérience de critique; je vois maintenant dans quel sens
+il faut travailler.
+
+"Je vis à Londres aussi simplement que possible et pourtant mes séjours
+y sont très coûteux. Quant à la réputation, en comparaison du bonheur de
+vivre tranquillement avec toi, elle m'est absolument indifférente. Il me
+semble que lorsque le mari et la femme sont si parfaitement d'accord sur
+le but de la vie, il doit être facile d'y parvenir. Notre plus grand
+désir à tous les deux c'est d'être ensemble; eh! bien, du moment où les
+choses nous seront propices, nous réaliserons notre désir, et même par
+la volonté nous forcerons les circonstances, c'est-à-dire que nous
+supporterons des inconvénients pour y arriver. Déjà Wallis et Colnaghi
+consentent à exposer mes ouvrages; mes eaux-fortes sont appréciées.
+Peut-être dans un temps comparativement rapproché serai-je en position
+de donner ma démission--non seulement à la Saturday, mais à la
+littérature, et à me dévouer exclusivement à l'Art. Du moment où cela
+arrivera il sera infiniment plus facile d'être ensemble, car je tâcherai
+de faire un genre d'Art qui me permettra d'étudier chez nous, ou dans un
+petit rayon. Enfin regardons la situation actuelle comme pénible, mais
+pas du tout permanente. Tu peux compter que du moment où je le pourrai
+je quitterai la Revue; j'y suis bien décidé."
+
+After this letter, my husband, feeling much better, came back to London
+to resume his work, and wrote about what he thought most important or
+most interesting to me. I shall quote from his letters in their order
+according to dates.
+
+WATERLOO PLACE, KEW. _Lundi soir_.
+
+"Mr. Macmillan m'a reçu parfaitement, presque affectueusement; il m'a
+invité à dîner. Je suis allé voir Mr. Seeley, mon nouvel éditeur, que
+j'ai trouvé intelligent, comme il faut, jeune encore, et parfaitement
+cordial. Je crois que mes relations avec lui seront tout-à-fait faciles.
+[Footnote: Mr. Seeley had asked him to write some notes on Contemporary
+French Painters, to be illustrated with photographs.]
+
+"L'exposition, en somme, est belle. Il y a plusieurs tableaux
+remarquables, entre autres une Vénus de Leighton que je trouve superbe.
+La contribution de Landseer est importante, c'est un portrait de la
+Reine, à cheval, en deuil; cheval _noir_, _trois chiens noirs_, groom
+_noir_, _ciel noir_.
+
+"C'est agréable de rentrer le soir en pleine campagne; ça me fait du
+bien. Je n'ose pas penser combien ce serait gentil si ma chérie était
+avec moi, parceque cela me rend triste tout de suite; mais je t'écrirai
+_presque_ tous les jours, quelquefois brièvement quand je serai trop
+pressé. Sois gentille toi, et écris souvent; les bonnes nouvelles que tu
+m'envoies de ta santé et de celle des enfants m'ont rendu mon courage
+et--ce que je puis avoir de gaieté."
+
+"_Samedi_.
+
+"Il paraît que j'avais encore besoin de repos, car aujourd'hui je suis
+très fatigué. J'espère que lundi j'irai mieux; un ou deux jours de repos
+me sont nécessaires: voilà tout. _Je n'ai point de surexcitation
+cérébrale_; je dors bien et je me repose pleinement, ce qui ne doit pas
+tarder à rétablir mes forces. Je souffre d'être seul. Mr. Gould va venir
+passer huit jours ici; je trouve amiable de sa part de bien vouloir
+venir s'établir à Kew pour être près de moi; mon oncle viendra peut-être
+aussi.
+
+"Je vais me plaindre un peu, tout doucement, de la petite chérie de
+Pré-Charmoy; elle n'écrit pas assez souvent à son mari qui reçoit
+toujours ses lettres avec tant de plaisir. Il y a pourtant une de ces
+lettres qui a donné tant de bonheur qu'elle peut compter pour une
+douzaine. Pauvre chérie! comme je voudrais toujours réussir à rendre ta
+vie douce et agréable! Depuis que je ne vis plus pour moi, mais pour toi
+et les enfants, j'ai goûté moi-même un nouveau genre de bonheur mêlé de
+nouvelles tristesses. Ces tristesses sont dues à la pensée que je fais
+si peu, et que, avec plus de forces je ferais tant et si bien! Avec la
+force je serais sûr maintenant de réussir pleinement. Je tiens la
+réputation par un petit bout, mais je la tiens, et elle augmentera. Tout
+me prouve que notre avenir serait assuré si j'avais autant de force que
+de volonté."
+
+"_Dimanche_.
+
+"Je suis allé voir George Eliot et Lewes qui a été charmant; il est venu
+s'asseoir à côté de moi où il est resté tout le temps de ma visite, et
+lorsque je suis parti, il s'est beaucoup plaint de ne pas me voir
+davantage. Il me traite d'une façon très affectueuse, et en même temps
+avec un respect qui, venant de lui, me flatte beaucoup. Quant à George
+Eliot elle est très aimable, mais elle a le défaut de rester toujours
+assise an même endroit, et quand il y a du monde, la seule personne qui
+puisse causer avec elle, est son voisin. Quand j'y retournerai, je
+m'installerai auprès d'elle, parce que je tiens à la connaître un peu
+mieux. J'y ai rencontré Mr. Ralston qui s'était assis modestement un peu
+en dehors du cercle où j'étais et pendant tout le temps de sa visite, il
+n'a presque rien dit et c'est à peine si on lui a parlé. J'ai trouvé ces
+arrangements mauvais. Les gens qui reçoivent doivent souvent changer de
+place, de façon à causer avec tous leurs visiteurs.
+
+"Lundi dernier j'ai dîné chez Mr. Craik--le mari de l'auteur de 'John
+Halifax.' Il habite un charmant cottage à Beckenham, un endroit à quatre
+lieues de Londres où il vient tous les jours en chemin-de-fer. Tu sais
+qu'il est l'associé de Macmillan. Nous avons passé une soirée fort
+agréable; c'est un homme très cultivé, qui autrefois était auteur, et
+qui a occupé une chaire de littérature à Edimbourg. Sa femme, quoique
+célèbre, est simple et très aimable; elle m'a dit que quand tu
+viendrais, elle désirait te connaître.
+
+"Mardi j'ai dîné chez le Professeur Seeley, le frère de mon éditeur; il
+a occupé la chaire de Latin à l'Université de Londres. C'est l'auteur
+d'_Ecce Homo_. Macmillan m'ayant donné ce livre, je l'ai trouvé très
+fort comme style et d'une hardiesse étonnante. L'auteur est des plus
+sympathiques; il a des manières charmantes--si modestes et si
+intelligentes, car les manières peuvent montrer de l'intelligence.
+J'aime beaucoup les deux frères, et dans le peu de temps que je les ai
+vus j'en ai fait des amis.
+
+"Mercredi j'ai dîné chez moi, ayant un article à écrire. Jeudi chez
+Stephen Pearce. Vendredi chez Mr. Wallis, le marchand de tableaux. C'est
+un homme très délicat et très fin. Il avait invité Mr. Burgess, un
+artiste intelligent et agréable que j'avais déjà rencontré au Salon de
+l'année dernière. J'ai rencontré Tom Taylor à l'exposition. Wallis et
+nous avons causé quelque temps ensemble. J'ai rencontré Clifton et dîné
+avec lui à son Club."
+
+_"Lundi matin_.
+
+"Je suis allé hier passer le tantôt chez Lewes, on a été enchanté de mes
+eaux-fortes. George Eliot s'est plainte de ne pas avoir assez causé avec
+moi à ma dernière visite, et m'a invitè à prendre place à côté d'elle.
+Nous avons parlé d'art, de littérature et d'elle même. Elle m'a dit que
+personne n'avait eu plus d'inquiétudes et de souffrances dans le travail
+qu'elle, et que le peu qu'elle fait lui coûte énormément.
+
+"J'ai discuté avec Lewes l'idée de faire la réimpression de mes
+articles, et il m'a conseillé de ne pas le faire si je puis fonder un
+livre sur ces articles. J'avoue que je serais assez tenté de faire un
+ouvrage sérieux sur la peinture, pour lequel mes articles serviraient de
+matériel."
+
+"_Samedi soir._
+
+"J'ai dîné hier soir chez Mr. Macmillan, nous étions seuls d'hommes. Il
+y avait sa femme, ses enfants, et une grand'mère. Il a une famille
+nombreuse, de beaux enfants. Sa femme est bonne, et si simple que j'ai
+rarement vu un comme-il-faut plus achevé sans être de la distinction. La
+maison est très spacieuse et entourée d'arbres magnifiques. Ce qu'il y a
+de particulier dans cette maison, c'est un caractère intime et d'aisance
+ancienne. Macmillan a su éviter avec un tact parfait, tout ce qui
+pouvait rappeler le nouveau riche. On se croirait dans une grande maison
+de campagne, à cinquante lieues de Londres, et dans une ancienne famille
+établie là depuis plusieurs générations.
+
+"Nous avons passé toute la soirée ensemble. Il laisse entièrement à mon
+jugement tout ce qui regarde l'illustration de mon livre. Ce que j'ai
+aimé dans cette maison, comme dans toutes les personnes que j'y ai
+trouvées, a été l'absence complète de toute affectation. Tout est
+homogène et je n'ai encore jamais vu une maison de campagne ayant cet
+aspect-là. Mon respect pour Macmillan s'est considérablement augmentée
+de ce qu'on ne rencontre chez lui aucune splendeur vulgaire: rien ne
+parle d'argent chez lui.
+
+"La conversation a été très générale. Quand je suis parti, il m'a
+reconduit à travers un champ pour abréger mon chemin à la station. Il a
+chanté quelques vieilles chansons avec beaucoup de caractère; j'ai
+chanté un peu aussi--et pourtant je ne suis guère disposé à chanter.
+Anne avait montré tant de contentement quand je suis allé la voir à
+Sheffield--et penser que je ne la reverrai plus. Je souffre aussi pour
+mon oncle, je me mets à sa place en pensant à ma petite Mary; si je la
+perdais plus tard!... et puis--et puis, tu sais comment viennent les
+idées noires, et combien un malheur vous en fait craindre d'autres."
+
+"_Dimanche_.
+
+"Je me sens de nouveau fatigué et cette fatigue semble persister. Il est
+bien possible que l'ennui et la nostalgie y soient pour quelque chose.
+
+"Figure-toi qu'il y a une jeune _peintresse_ qui m'a été recommandée, et
+dont la situation est bien précaire; j'ai eu la faiblesse de lui écrire
+une petite lettre gentille et encourageante et me voilà en butte à des
+éclats de désespoir ou de reconnaissance; de reproches et de
+remerciements. Le plaisir de faire du bien à ceux qui souffrent est tel,
+que l'on voudrait s'en donner, et le critique est souvent tenté de
+manger de ce sucre-là.
+
+"Je ne regrette pas de m'être établi à Kew; il n'y a qu'une chose contre
+Kew, c'est que je n'y connais personne, tandis qu'à St. John's Wood j'ai
+plusieurs amis. Mais la solitude a aussi ses avantages et quand on voit
+du monde tous les jours, on peut bien passer la soirée chez soi. Si la
+petite femme était seulement ici, ce serait parfait."
+
+"_Mardi_.
+
+"Petite femme chérie qui a été gentille puisqu'elle a écrit deux
+lettres.
+
+"Celle-ci est simplement pour te dire que mon repos a enfin produit son
+effet et que je suis rentré dans mon état ordinaire. Aujourd'hui je me
+rends au Musée, et j'ai pu écrire.
+
+"Mon oncle est arrivé hier soir, il partage mon salon, mais je lui ai
+loué une chambre-à-coucher dans la maison voisine. Il ne paraît pas trop
+abattu; nous causons beaucoup et je tâche de l'égayer autant que sa
+position le permet. Il est moins réservé qu'autrefois et me laisse voir
+davantage le cours de ses pensées qui vont souvent à ses filles et à sa
+femme. Je l'emmène aujourd'hui à l'Académie. Il y a une chose qui doit
+te rassurer quant à l'état de ma santé, c'est que je n'ai jamais ces
+sensations au cerveau dont j'ai souffert. Le cerveau n'est pas fatigué
+et en me reposant à temps, je répare rapidement mes forces. Ce qui est
+vraiment insupportable ce sont les séparations, et j'ai bien de la peine
+à m'y résigner, et je ne m'y résignerais pas du tout si la peinture
+rapportait. Mais en mettant les choses au pis pour les affaires
+d'argent, j'espère que tu me verras toujours courageux et affectueux
+dans l'adversité; je me figure que depuis quelque temps j'ai appris à la
+supporter sans qu'elle puisse m'aigrir. Si je dois vivre de
+pommes-de-terre, ou même mourir de faim, tu me verras toujours dévoué
+jusqu'à la mort. Celles-ci ne sont pas de vaines paroles; je suis prêt à
+les soutenir dans une pauvre cabane ou sur le lit d'un hôpital."
+
+"_Lundi_.
+
+"T'ai-je dit que j'avais trouvé ici-même un locataire étudiant la
+botanique à 'l'herbarium' tous les jours, et qu'en nous promenant
+ensemble au jardin, les soirs, il m'apprend les noms des arbres qui ne
+sont pas indiqués. J'ai aussi des fleurs sur ma fenêtre: je t'en donne
+une. Je ne connais pas le langage des fleurs, mais si celle-ci ne te dit
+pas que je t'aime beaucoup--beaucoup--elle interprète bien mal mes
+sentiments.
+
+"J'ai lu un peu du livre de Max Müller sur l'étude _comparative_ des
+langues. C'est excessivement curieux. Tu n'as aucune idée de combien
+l'étymologie est intéressante quand elle est basée sur la connaissance
+de tant d'idiômes; on peut tracer la parenté les mots d'une manière
+étonnante; les changements dans la façon de les écrire ont pour résultat
+de les dénaturer tellement que nous avons beaucoup de peine à les
+reconnaître sans _retracer_ toute leur histoire dans la littérature. Mr.
+Max Müller retrace ainsi, d'une manière ingénieuse, mais bien
+convainçante, l'usage des mots pour arriver à leurs racines primitives,
+et puis il forme des théories d'après ces comparaisons--qui sont au
+moins toujours intéressantes. Ce qu'il y a de remarquable c'est qu'on
+retrouve les mêmes mots dans les endroits les plus éloignés, des mots
+Anglais et Français qui ont leur origine dans le Sanskrit; et de même
+pour d'autres idiomes. Max Müller diffère des philologues anciens en
+ceci que tandis qu'ils étudiaient seulement les langues classiques, lui
+trouve la lumière et le matériel partout, même dans le Patois: ainsi le
+Provençal lui a été indispensable et bien d'autres langues encore que
+les amateurs des classiques négligent généralement."
+
+This interest in languages grew with years. When at Sens, we studied
+Italian together, but my increasing deafness made me abandon it on
+account of the pronunciation, whilst my husband, on the contrary, made
+it a point to read some pages of it every day, and even to write his
+diary in that language. Later still, he used to send to Florence some
+literary compositions to be corrected. After the marriage of his
+daughter, he used occasionally to ask his son-in-law, M. Raillard, for
+lessons in German, and had even undertaken to write, with his
+collaboration, a work on philology which was to have been entitled,
+"Words on their Travels, and Stay-at-Home Words," which his unexpected
+death cut short. In the afternoon of the day on which he died, as he was
+coming back home from the Louvre in a tram-car, he took out of his
+pocket a volume of Virgil, and read it the whole way. "I furbish up my
+Latin and Greek when on a steamer or in omnibuses," he said to me; "it
+prevents my being annoyed by the loss of time."
+
+"_Jeudi soir_.
+
+"Je suis retourné chez Seeley où on m'a traité d'une façon tout-à-fait
+délicate; le Professeur est un des hommes les plus sympathiques que
+j'aie rencontrés. Je t'en parlerai plus longuement de vive voix, et
+quant à son frère Richmond je n'ai jamais connu quelqu'un avec qui je
+m'entende aussi facilement. Il y a une chose bien charmante en lui,
+c'est que, bien qu'il soit à la tête d'une grande maison, il n'a jamais
+l'air pressé et vous écoute avec une patience parfaite.
+
+"Ce que tu me dis de 'mon courage au travail et à la lutte' me paye pour
+bien des heures de besogne. Tout ce qui me décourage parfois, c'est ma
+faible santé qui m'oblige souvent à paraître paresseux sous peine d'être
+malade.
+
+"Il me tarde tant de te revoir que je suis comme un pauvre prisonnier en
+pays étranger, loin de la Dame de ses pensées. Alors, tu sais, il faut
+m'écrire et embrasser les enfants pour moi."
+
+"_Vendredi_.
+
+"J'ai été désolé de ne pas pouvoir t'écrire aujourd'hui; il est
+maintenant 1 h. du matin. Je vais _bien_, mais je suis accablé de
+travaux et pourtant je veux partir bientôt; je finirai à la maison.
+Aujourd'hui j'ai terminé mon article juste à temps pour l'impression.
+Comme notre âne 'Je dors debout'; aujourd'hui je tombais presque de
+sommeil dans les rues de Londres.
+
+"Les travaux sur l'eau-forte sont terminés cette fois. À bientôt!"
+
+"22 RUE DE L'OUEST PARIS. _Lundi_.
+
+"Je suis arrivé hier à 5 h. du soir. _Je ne suis pas du tout fatigué_,
+ce qui semble indiquer une augmentation de force, car tu sais que les
+longs voyages me fatiguent généralement beaucoup. Je suis allé ce matin
+dès 8 h. chez Delâtre oû j'ai fait tirer mes planches. On fait le tirage
+de suite et les livraisons paraîtront cette semaine.
+
+"Quant à mes pauvres enfants, je suis désolé de les savoir malades, mais
+ta lettre m'encourage à espérer qu'ils sont en bonne voie de
+convalescence. Tu as dû avoir un temps difficile à passer ainsi tout
+seule: chère petite femme, je crois que si j'y avais été c'eût été plus
+facile pour toi: les enfants de mon ami Pearce sont également malades de
+la scarlatine.
+
+"Hier soir j'ai dîné chez Froment [the artist who paints such beautiful
+decorative works for Sèvres]; ce matin j'ai déjeuné chez Froment, ce
+soir j'y dîne, et ainsi de suite."
+
+M. Froment had been most hospitable to both of us during our stay in
+Paris; he had given us a day at Sèvres, and had shown us the
+_Manufacture_ in all its details. He was a widower, and inconsolable for
+the loss of his wife, whose memory was as sacred to him as religion. His
+two daughters were at home; the eldest watching maternally over the
+younger sister, who, however, died a few years later. M. Froment's
+feelings, perceptions, and tastes were exquisitely refined, and my
+husband derived both benefit and pleasure from the friendly intercourse.
+In after years Gilbert met M. Froment occasionally, and found him always
+full of kindness and regard.
+
+After nursing the children through scarlatina I caught it myself, and
+when my husband knew of it, he wrote:--
+
+"I write just to say how sorry I am not to be able to set off _at once_,
+and be at your bedside. I shall certainly not be later than Saturday. I
+am of course very busy, and have no time for letter-writing. I have seen
+Docteur Dereims to-day, and told him of your illness. He insists on the
+necessity of the greatest care during your convalescence. You must
+especially avoid _cold drinks_, as highly dangerous.
+
+"Things are going on as I wish for my book on Etching. I am getting hold
+of plates which alone would make it valuable. Pray take care of
+yourself. I wish I were with you."
+
+On the following day:--
+
+"I am very sorry to hear you had such a bad night; but from all I can
+hear from Dr. Dereims you are only going through the usual course of the
+illness. I will be with you on Saturday without fail. You may count upon
+me as upon an attentive, though not, I fear, a very skilful nurse. But I
+will try, like some other folks, to make up in talk what I lack in
+professional skill. I am tolerably well, but rather upset by this news
+from Pré-Charmoy. I could not sleep much last night.
+
+"I am going to the exhibition to-day, and will be thinking of little
+wife all the time. I have met with a quantity of very fine paper for
+etching, of French manufacture, and have obtained Macmillan's authority
+to purchase it for the _text also_. It will be a splendid publication. I
+feel greater and greater hopes about that book.
+
+"Only forty-eight hours of separation from the time I write."
+
+The day after:--
+
+"Enfin il y a bien peu de chose à faire à mes planches, et j'espère que
+dans un jour ce sera terminé.
+
+"J'ai beaucoup de choses à te dire mais ce sera pour nos bonnes
+causeries intimes. Je voyagerai toute la nuit de vendredi afin d'arriver
+samedi dans la matinée. Quand je pense à toi et aux enfants, à la petite
+maison, à la petite rivière et à tous les détails de cette délicieuse
+existence que nous passons ensemble, il me faut beaucoup de courage pour
+rester ici seul à terminer mon travail."
+
+When my husband reached home, I was still in bed, and unwilling to let
+him come to me for fear of infection; but he would not hear of keeping
+away. "I never catch anything," he said gayly, "don't be anxious on my
+account;" and he insisted upon sleeping on a little iron bedstead in the
+dressing-room close to our bedroom, to nurse me in the night.
+
+He soon recovered his usual health, with occasional troubles of the
+nervous system; but he had grown careful about the premonitory symptoms,
+and used to grant himself a holiday whenever they occurred. Having been
+told whilst in London that novel-writing paid better than any other
+literary production, he now turned his thoughts towards the possibility
+of using his past experience for the composition of a story. It would be
+a pleasant change from criticism, he said, and would exercise different
+mental faculties. Very soon the plan of "Wenderholme" was formed, and we
+entertained good hopes of its success.
+
+In the month of September, 1866, the wedding of my sister
+Caroline took place quietly at our house, Mr. Hamerton being looked
+upon as the head of the family since the death of my father. Although he
+prized his privacy above everything else, he was ready to sacrifice it
+as a token of his affection for his sister-in-law, and went through all
+the necessary trouble and expense for her sake. She married a young man
+who had formed an attachment for her ever since she was fifteen years
+old,--M. Pelletier,--and they went to live at Algiers, where he was then
+Commis d'Économat at the Lycée. It was agreed that they should spend the
+long vacation with us every year.
+
+There are a good many days of frost in a Morvandau winter, and the snow
+often remains deep on the ground for several weeks together; there was
+even more than usual in 1867, so my husband devised a new amusement for
+the boys by showing them how to make a giant. Every time they came home,
+they rolled up huge balls of snow which were left out to be frozen hard,
+then sawn into large bricks to build up the monster. The delight of the
+boys may be imagined. Every new limb was greeted with enthusiastic
+shouts, they thought of nothing else; and, perched on ladders, their
+little hands protected by woollen gloves, they worked like slaves, and
+could hardly be got to eat their meals. But how should I describe the
+final scene, when in the dark evening two night-lights shone out of the
+giant's eyes, and flames came out of its monstrous mouth?... It was
+nothing less than wild ecstasy. Their father also taught them skating;
+there was very little danger except from falls, for they began in the
+meadows about the house, where they skated over shallow pools left in
+the hollows by rain-water or melted snow; but when they became
+proficient, we used to go to the great pond at Varolles. As my husband
+has said in one of his letters, all that was very good for him.
+
+In January, 1868, he left again for London, and felt but little
+inconvenience on the way and during his stay. Knowing that I should be
+anxious, he formed the habit of sending me frequent short pencil notes,
+to say how he was. I give here a few of them:--
+
+"LONDRES. _Vendredi soir_.
+
+"J'ai été très occupé aujourd'hui au musée Britannique. Demain j'irai
+voir des expositions. Je compte partir dimanche pour Paris."
+
+"_Samedi matin._
+
+"J'écris dans une boutique. Je vais bien. Je dîne au Palais de Cristal
+avec un Club."
+
+"_Samedi soir._
+
+"Je vais bien. Pauvre petit Richard! embrasse-le bien pour moi; tu as dû
+être bien inquiète."
+
+This was about a serious accident which had happened to our youngest
+boy. Whilst at play with his brother on the terrace, and in my presence,
+he ran his head against a low wall, and was felled senseless to the
+ground by the force of the blow; the temple was cut open, and his blood
+ran over my arm and dress when I lifted him up, apparently lifeless. The
+farmer's cart drove us rapidly to Autun, where we found our doctor in
+bed--it was ten at night. The wound was dressed and sewn up, and the
+pain brought back some signs of life. I asked if I ought to take a room
+at the hotel to secure the doctor's attendance at short intervals, but I
+was told that blows of that kind were either fatal or of little
+importance; the only thing to be done was to keep ice on the head and
+renew it constantly. The poor child seemed to have relapsed into an
+insensible state, and remained so all night. In the early morning,
+however, he awoke without fever, and was quite well in about three
+weeks.
+
+I had asked my husband to take the opinion of an aurist about my
+increasing deafness, and he tenderly answered:--
+
+"Sérieusement je ne crois pas que ta surdité augmente. Avant de te
+rendre compte combien tu étais sourde, tu ne savais pas quels bruits
+restaient pour toi inaperçus. Maintenant tu fais de tristes découvertes;
+moi qui suis mieux placé pour t'observer, puisque j'entends ce que tu
+n'entends pas, je sais que tu es très sourde, mais je ne vois pas
+d'augmentation depuis très longtemps et je crois que tu resteras à peu
+près comme tu es. J'en ai parlé aujourd'hui avec Macmillan dont une amie
+été comme toi pendant longtemps et qui éprouve maintenant une
+amélioration graduelle, mais très sensible. Tâche surtout de ne pas trop
+t'attrister, parce qu'il paraît que le chagrin a une tendance à
+augmenter la surdité. Quant à parler d'aimer mieux mourir, tu oublies
+que mon affection pour toi est bien au-dessus de toute infirmité
+corporelle, et que nous aurons toujours beaucoup de bonheur à être
+ensemble; du moins je parle pour moi. Et même si ta surdité augmentait
+beaucoup, nous aurions toujours le moyen de communiquer ensemble en
+parlant très haut: en France nous parlerions anglais, et en Angleterre,
+français."
+
+He sympathized so much with my trouble that, unlike many other
+husbands, who would have been annoyed at having to take a deaf
+wife into society, he urged me to go with him everywhere, kindly
+repeated what I had not heard, and explained what I misunderstood. He
+always tried his best to keep away from me the feeling of solitude, so
+common to those who are deprived of hearing.
+
+Just as I was rejoicing over the thought that my husband had
+prosperously accomplished this last journey, I had a letter from him,
+dated "Hôtel du Nord, Amiens," in which he said he was obliged to stop
+there till he felt better, for he could eat absolutely nothing, and was
+very weak. The worst was that I dared not leave my poor little Richard
+yet, to go to his father: the wound on the temple was not healed, and
+the doctor had forbidden all excitement, for fear of brain-fever after
+the shock. I was terribly perplexed when the following letter reached
+me:--
+
+"HÔTEL DE L'AIGLE NOIR, FONTAINEBLEAU. _Mercredi_.
+
+"Tu apprendras avec plaisir que j'ai regagné un peu d'appétit hier
+soir. J'ai mangé un dîner qui m'a fait tant de bien que ce ne serait pas
+cher à une centaine de francs. Cet hôtel est très propre et la cuisine y
+est faite convenablement sans mélange de sauces. Toute la journée de
+lundi à Amiens, j'ai vécu d'un petit morceau de pain d'épices. Le soir à
+10 h. 1/2 j'ai mangé une tranche de jambon. Je suis parti à minuit pour
+Paris où je suis arrivé à 4 h. du matin. Pour ne pas me rendre plus
+malade, je n'ai pas voulu rester dans la grande ville que j'ai traversée
+d'une gare à l'autre immédiatement. J'ai pris une tasse de chocolat et
+écrit quelques lettres en attendant le train pour Fontainebleau qui est
+parti de la gare à 8 h. C'était un train demi-express, mais je l'ai bien
+supporté. En arrivant à Fontainebleau je n'ai pas pu déjeuner et je n'ai
+rien mangé jusqu'au soir quand j'ai bien dîné. C'est très économique de
+ne pas pouvoir manger. J'ai sauté plusieurs repas, qui par conséquent ne
+figurent nullement dans les notes.
+
+"Hier soir je me suis promené un peu dans les jardins du palais qui est
+lui-même vaste, mais c'est un amas de constructions lourdes et de
+mauvais goût, du moins en général. Cela me fait l'effet d'une caserne
+ajoutée à une petite ville. Les jardins, les arbres sont magnifiques. Je
+me trouve bien ce matin, mais un peu faible par suite du peu de
+nourriture que j'ai pu prendre depuis quelques jours. Enfin, je suis en
+train de me refaire. Je désire vivement être chez moi, et j'y arriverai
+aussitôt que possible sans me rendre malade. Embrasse pour moi les
+enfants et ta mère; à toi de tout coeur."
+
+He reached home safely, but the fatigue and weakness seemed to last
+longer than previously, and insomnia frequently recurred. He did his
+best to insure refreshing sleep by taking more exercise in the open air,
+but it became clear that he must abandon work at night, because when his
+brain had been working on some particular subject, he could not quiet it
+at once by going to bed, and it went on--in spite of himself--to a state
+of great cerebral excitement, during which production was rapid and
+felicitous--therefore tempting; but it was paid for too dearly by the
+nervous exhaustion surely following it. It was a great sacrifice on his
+part, because he liked nothing better than to wait till every one had
+retired and the house was all quiet and silent, to sit down to his desk
+under the lamp, and write undisturbed--and without fear of
+disturbance--till dawn put out the stars.
+
+He now changed his rules, and devoted the evenings to reading.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+1868.
+
+Studies of Animals.--A Strange Visitor.--Illness at Amiens.--
+Resignation of post on the "Saturday Review."--Nervous seizure in
+railway train.--Mrs. Craik.--Publication of "Etching and Etchers."--
+Tennyson.--Growing reputation in America.
+
+In the course of the years 1865-67 Mr. Hamerton had made the
+acquaintance of several leading French artists,--Doré, Corot, Daubigny,
+Courbet, Landelle, Lalanne, Rajon, Brunet-Debaines, Flameng, Jacquemart,
+etc. The etchers he frequently met at Cadart's, where they came to see
+proofs of their etchings; the painters he went to see for the
+preparation of his "Contemporary French Painters" and "Painting in
+France." Together with these works he had begun his first novel,
+"Wenderholme," and had been contemplating for some time the possibility
+of lecturing on aesthetics. I was adverse to this last plan on account
+of his nervous state, which did not seem to allow so great an excitement
+as that of appearing in public at stated times; I persuaded him at least
+to delay the realization of the project till he had quite recovered his
+health, despite the invitations he had received both from England and
+America. He continued to paint from nature, with the intention of
+resigning his post on the "Saturday Review" in case of success, but now
+devoted more of his time to the study of animals, principally oxen, as
+he liked to have models at hand without leaving home.
+
+Desiring to be thoroughly acquainted with the anatomy of the ox, he
+bought one which had died at the farm, and had it boiled in parts till
+the flesh was separated from the bones, which were then exposed to dry
+in the sunshine. When thoroughly dried they were kept in the garret, and
+successively taken to the studio to serve for a series of drawings, of
+which I still possess several. As we had a goat, and sometimes kids, he
+also made numerous sketches from them, as well as from ducks, sheep and
+lambs, hens and chickens. There was also a Waterloo veteran who came
+weekly as a model, and who was painted in a monk's dress, which my
+husband used afterwards, and for a long time, as a dressing-gown.
+
+This habit of sketching animals whenever he had a chance gave rise to
+some amusing incidents before our peasant neighbors knew that he
+"painted portraits of dumb beasts, as well as of Christians." Some
+farmers' wives, alarmed at the sight of odd pennies in the pockets of
+their offspring, accused them of pilfering, but on being told that the
+"gros sous" had been given them by "le père anglais," came to our house
+to ascertain how and why; for, unlike the people of the South, they
+would not have tolerated begging. They were quieted by the assurance
+that the money had been honestly earned by the children for holding
+their goat or donkey whilst its portrait was taken; nay, they even felt
+a little proud that an animal of theirs should have been thought worthy
+of such an honor.
+
+Etching in all its forms was pursued at the same time with lithography
+and photography; even a new kind of transparent etching ground was
+invented by Mr. Hamerton, which made it possible for etchers to see the
+work already done upon a plate after having it grounded again for
+correction or additional work.
+
+A strange incident occurred during this winter. My husband's rising
+reputation had, it appears, given to many people a desire for his
+personal acquaintance, or for intercourse by correspondence. The first
+desire brought him many unexpected visitors, the second quite an
+appreciable increase of work, as he hardly ever left a letter
+unanswered. To give the reader an instance of the extraordinary notions
+entertained by some people, I shall relate the true history of one
+visitor amongst others. Some letters at short intervals, from England,
+signed--let us say--Beamish, mentioned a mysterious project which could
+not possibly be explained otherwise than by word of mouth, and which
+might be both profitable and agreeable to Mr. Hamerton, if realized. He
+was asked to call upon the correspondent for an explanation if he should
+happen to go to London soon; if not, Mr. Beamish begged leave to come
+over and see him. Of course the leave was given, and the gentleman
+having written that on such a day he would be at such an hotel in Autun,
+Gilbert went to fetch him in the pony-carriage--for Dort-debout had
+tired out our patience, and had been replaced by a beautiful and
+energetic little pony called Cocote.
+
+When we met Mr. Beamish, we found him a most prepossessing young man, of
+elegant manners and refined speech; in short, a gentleman. He begged me
+to allow his portmanteau to be placed in the carriage; and as I observed
+that he was not expected to dress for our family dinner, he answered
+that it only contained papers that he should want.
+
+Two other friends, understanding English, joined us at dinner. The
+conversation was animated, but Mr. Beamish never hinted at the
+mysterious project. In the evening, engravings and etchings were shown
+to our guest, but failed to excite his interest, for he soon fell asleep
+on the sofa, and let our friends go without awaking. Unwilling to
+disturb him, we remained till nearly one o'clock, when I decided to
+retire, whatever happened afterwards; and I was so tired that after
+going to bed I never awoke till morning, when I asked my husband at what
+time Mr. Beamish had gone. "Gone," he answered; "why, I don't know that
+he has gone at all, for I left him after three, just where he was." I
+hardly dared peep into the drawing-room; however, it was empty; but when
+the breakfast-bell was rung, Mr. Beamish came in unconcernedly to have
+his share of the simple meal, during which he talked pleasantly and
+intelligently of his experiences in India, where he had spent the
+greater part of eighteen years. Nothing was said of the project, and
+after vainly waiting for some mention of it, my husband returned to his
+study, after letting Mr. Beamish know that he was not to be disturbed
+till eleven o'clock, for it was the time of his morning work. "Very
+well," answered our guest; "meanwhile I shall put my books and papers in
+order." At the same time he requested me to send rather a large table
+into the room where he had slept (it was the room in which his
+portmanteau had been put), and to tell the servants to be careful not to
+interfere in any way with what he would leave upon it, not even to dust,
+_so long as he remained with us_. I then believed that Gilbert had
+invited him to stay some time, but I was undeceived in the course of the
+day, and told that the mysterious project had been unfolded at last, and
+was a proposition that he should undertake a journey to Palestine in the
+company of Mr. Beamish, to join Holman Hunt, who was painting studies in
+the Holy Land. "But what made you think I was ready to undertake such a
+pilgrimage?" Mr. Hamerton had asked in great astonishment. "Because I
+read that you liked camping out," was the reply; "and thought also that,
+being an artist, you would be glad to meet with Holman Hunt, who, like
+you in the Highlands, works directly from nature. I thought, moreover,
+that, as I intend to go myself, you would be agreeable and profitable
+society."
+
+Although my husband had declined to give the slightest consideration to
+this plan, Mr. Beamish still remained, and vaguely hinted that a still
+more mysterious project detained him at Autun.
+
+He went on foot, alone, to the college, on three successive afternoons,
+begged to see our boys, and tipped them so generously that the principal
+thought it his duty to ask their father whether he had authorized these
+visits--clearly implying that he doubted the soundness of the visitor's
+mind.
+
+We had learned in the course of conversation that our guest was of a
+benevolent and charitable disposition, and that he had spent much money
+in India in founding hospital-beds for poor women, whose sufferings he
+warmly compassionated. He was also full of sympathy for the Indian
+people, and spoke of their wrongs not without a certain degree of
+excitement, but still in a manner to arouse our interest. Altogether,
+although he was a self-imposed guest, we had already learned to like
+him, and were unwilling to remind him, with ever so little rudeness,
+that he was in the way. My husband said that his conduct might be
+explained by the fact that he had lived so long in India, where the
+dwellings of Europeans are often at great distances from each other, and
+where a visitor is always made at home and welcome; that Mr. Beamish was
+only acting as he had been accustomed to do for the greater part of his
+life, for he was still a young man of about thirty-six.
+
+After about a week's stay, he began to talk of leaving us within a short
+time, but did not say when--that would depend on _certain_
+circumstances. However, on a bitterly cold evening, with the snow deep
+on the ground, he requested to be driven to Autun, and took a friendly
+leave of us all without explanation. But the principal of the college
+related the following strange story to Mr. Hamerton:--
+
+"Your friend, Mr. Beamish, whom I had met at your house, came here under
+pretext of seeing your sons, but called upon me, and asked point-blank
+if I would give him my help in a charitable deed of some importance.
+'What is the nature of the deed?' was my first question. 'The salvation
+of a soul.' 'In what form?' I did not get a direct answer, but I was
+told that the idea had sprung from religious motives, and that knowing
+my strong attachment to religion--though it was the Roman Catholic
+religion--he hoped I should have sufficient moral courage to help him in
+his deed of mercy--in fact he had resolved to reclaim a fallen woman.
+Vainly did I attempt to turn him from his generous but impracticable
+resolution. He threatened to act alone if I refused him the sanction of
+my presence, but he hoped that the Aumônier would see his action in its
+true light, and putting himself above popular suspicion, would accompany
+him 'to the very den of sin to offer salvation to a lost but _repentant
+sheep_.' It was useless to try to make him understand that it was
+impossible for the Aumônier to risk his character, even with the hope of
+doing good, and at last Mr. Beamish expressed a desire to meet him in my
+presence on the morrow. Our worthy Aumônier was horrified at the idea of
+the kind of sinners he would have to meet, and declined to have anything
+to do with the wildly charitable scheme."
+
+The next news was brought to Autun four days later by the woman whom
+poor Mr. Beamish thought he had rescued at the cost of four hundred
+francs for her liberation from debt, and about two hundred more for
+decent clothing. He had taken her as far as Dijon, where he had left her
+in some kind of reformatory; but after enjoying the change, and with her
+purse replenished to carry her through the first difficulties of an
+honest life, she hastened back to the old haunt to gibe and jeer at her
+benefactor.
+
+Another queer visitor was an English gentleman, past middle age, who
+could never find his way back to our house, but invariably appeared at
+meal-times in the dining-room of some neighbor, who had to escort him to
+Pré-Charmoy.
+
+The opening of the Academy exhibition had come round again, and Mr.
+Hamerton had to go and criticise it as usual; but after reaching Amiens,
+he felt so poorly that he resolved to send his resignation to the
+"Saturday Review," and to return home as quickly as he could. Here is
+his letter to me:--
+
+"HÔTEL DU NORD, AMIENS. _Dimanche_.
+
+"Bonne chérie.--Je suis arrivé à Amiens samedi matin de bonne heure,
+ayant l'intention de me reposer un peu à l'hôtel et puis de continuer
+mon voyage le tantôt, mais en me levant j'ai senti que j'avais besoin
+d'un repos un peu plus prolongé après les fatigues de Paris. Le plus
+ennuyeux c'est que je peux à peine manger quelque chose. Comme ce manque
+d'appétit m'affaiblera inévitablement s'il continue longtemps et que
+l'affaiblissement amènerait probablement un mauvais état du système
+nerveux, je crois que le plus sage serait de renoncer pour cette fois au
+voyage en Angleterre et de revenir au Pré-Charmoy comme un faux billet
+indigne de circuler. Mon intention est donc de retourner, et pour
+changer je prendrai probablement la ligne de Dijon, en m'arrêtant un
+jour à Sens pour voir Challard. [An artist who had copied some drawings
+of Jean Cousin for the "Fine Arts Quarterly Review."]
+
+"Comme je te l'ai promis, je fais ce qui me semble être le plus sage. Je
+reviendrai le plus vite que je pourrai sans hasarder ma santé.
+
+"J'ai loué un petit bateau hier avec lequel j'ai exploré la rivière
+d'Amiens--la Somme--en haut de la ville. Il est impossible d'imaginer
+rien de plus pittoresque. Il y a une grande quantité de petites maisons
+et baraques au bord de l'eau et je vais prendre là le matériel d'une
+eau-forte. J'espère que cette retraite n'est pas trop ridicule. Un bon
+général, dit-on, se distingue tout autant dans la retraite que dans
+l'avance; et comme par le fait il y a manque de vivres--puisque je ne
+peux pas manger--il me semble que la prudence conseille ce que les
+Américains appelaient 'un mouvement stratégique' quand ils avaient été
+battus."
+
+"AMIENS. _Lundi matin_.
+
+"Comme je n'avais pas encore regagné d'appétit hier j'ai pensé qu'il
+serait plus sage de rester ici encore un peu et je suis allé
+canoter sur la rivière.
+
+"Mr. Cook avec une grande et charmante bonté m'a fait des remontrances:
+il me dit que le ton de ma lettre l'a blessé et que mes 'menaces' lui
+ont fait de la peine; qu'il n'a jamais manqué de largesse envers ses
+écrivains et que l'excédent de mes dépenses en livres, voyages, etc.,
+sera toujours défrayé par la Revue. J'ai été réellement touché de la
+manière affectueuse dont il m'a fait ses observations auxquelles il a su
+joindre des compliments, en me disant que j'avais découvert la meilleure
+façon de faire la revue des expositions et que mes articles sont
+précisément ce qu'il lui faut. J'ai répondu que quant à la peine que
+cela avait pu lui faire, je le regrettais sincèrement, mais que les
+'menaces' étaient tout simplement l'expression d'une résolution très
+décidément prise, et dans un moment où j'étais à la fois trop malade et
+trop pressé pour procéder avec plus de formes.
+
+"Comme ma promenade sur l'eau m'a fait du bien hier je vais la
+renouveler.
+
+"Ton mari, qui te reverra bientôt."
+
+I decided at once to go to him; my mother, who had come to stay with me
+during his absence, approved my resolution, and undertook the management
+of the house and the care of the children: so without asking for his
+leave, I wrote that I was on my way to Amiens.
+
+His joy was great when he saw me, and his progress towards recovery was
+so rapid that he abandoned the idea of retracing his steps, and
+encouraged by my presence, thought he could accomplish the journey to
+London without danger. It was of great importance that he should keep
+his post on the "Saturday Review," because it was his only _regular_
+income, everything else being uncertain; and we knew that if he could
+undertake the work again it would be readily entrusted to him.
+
+We only stayed two days at Amiens, and as my husband was never seasick
+or nervous on the sea, everything went on satisfactorily so far; but as
+soon as we had left Dover for London, I perceived signs of uneasiness in
+his behavior. He closed his eyes not to see the moving objects we
+passed; he uncovered his head, which seemed burning by the flushed face;
+he chafed his cold, bloodless hands, and shuffled his feet to bring back
+circulation. For a long time he attempted to hide these alarming
+symptoms from me, but I had detected them from the beginning; his eyes
+had a far-reaching look and unusual steely brilliancy; the expression of
+his countenance was hard-set, rigid, almost defiant, as if ready to
+overthrow any obstacle in his way; and indeed it was the case, for
+unable to control himself any longer, he got up and told me hoarsely
+that he was going to jump out of the train. I took hold of his hands,
+and said I would follow; only I entreated him to wait a short time, as
+we were so near a station. I placed myself quite close to the door of
+the railway carriage, and stood between it and him. Happily we _were_
+near a station, else I don't know what might have happened; he rushed
+out of carriage and station into the fields, whilst I followed like one
+dazed and almost heart-broken. After half-an-hour he lessened his pace,
+and turned to me to say, "I think it is going." I could not speak for
+fear of bursting into tears, but I pressed his hand in mine and held it
+as we continued our miserable way across the fields. We walked perhaps
+two hours, at the end of which Gilbert said tenderly, in his usual
+voice: "You must be terribly tired, my poor darling; I think I could
+bear to rest now; we may try to sit down." We sat down upon a fallen
+tree, and after some minutes he told me that if I could get him a glass
+of beer somewhere it would bring him round. I went in search of an inn
+and discovered a closed one, for it was Sunday and the time of afternoon
+service. Nevertheless I knocked so perseveringly that a woman came
+forth, incensed by my pertinacity, and peremptorily refused with
+indignation any kind of drink: to obtain a bottle of beer I had to take
+an oath that it was for a patient.
+
+The glass of ale at once calmed and revived my husband, and when the
+bottle had been emptied--in the course of an hour or so--he was himself
+again and felt hungry.
+
+We did not know the place,--it was Adisham; we had no luggage, and as to
+resuming our journey it was out of the question, for some time at least.
+So I went again to the inn, and asked the woman if she could give us a
+room. "No, there was not one ready; and then it was so suspicious,
+people coming like that through the fields and without luggage." I
+offered to pay in advance. "But we might be runaways." My husband had
+his passport, and I explained that he had been taken ill suddenly, and
+that our luggage could be sent to us from London. "If the gentleman were
+to die here it would be a great trouble." I had to assure her that it
+was not dangerous, and that rest only was required. At last she
+consented to show me into a very clean, freshly-papered room,
+deprecating volubly the absence of curtains and bedstead in such an
+emergency, but promising to put them up shortly if we remained some
+time.
+
+The bedding was laid upon the carpet; the mattresses had just undergone
+a thorough cleaning, and the sheets and counterpane smelt sweet. When
+night came we were thankful to rest our tired limbs even on the floor,
+and to hope that sleep would bury in oblivion the anguish of the day, at
+least for a while.
+
+Oh, the weary, weary time spent there, without work, without books, and
+with but little hope of better days. How should we get out of it, and
+when?... It was now clear that these terrible attacks were due to
+railway travelling. Then how should we ever get home again?...
+
+Our luggage had been telegraphed for and returned, and the appearance of
+the trunks had evidently inspired some confidence in our landlady.
+Materially we were comfortable enough: a clean bedroom, a quiet, rather
+large sitting-room (it was the usual public dining-room, but it being
+early in the season, there were no boarders besides ourselves); and the
+cookery, though simple and unvaried, was good of its kind,--alternately
+ham and eggs, beef-steak and chops with boiled potatoes, rice pudding,
+or gooseberry tart.
+
+Morning after morning my husband wondered if he would feel equal to
+resuming the journey; but the necessary self-reliance was found wanting
+still. We walked out slowly and aimlessly, and we chose for our long
+walks the most solitary lanes. Gilbert felt that the air, impregnated by
+sea-salt, was gradually invigorating him, and after three weeks of this
+melancholy existence made up his mind to order a carriage to take us as
+far as Canterbury. The long drive and change did him good, and he was
+well enough to take me to the Cathedral, and show me the town, where we
+lingered two days, and then took another carriage for Croydon. At that
+stage my husband told me that we were not far from Beckenham, and
+proposed that we should call upon Mr. and Mrs. Craik on the following
+day. I shall never forget the kindness of the reception nor the sympathy
+of our hostess. I was surprised to see my husband enjoying conversation
+and society so much, because when he was unwell he shrank from meeting
+with any one, and required complete solitude; he only wished to feel
+that I was near him, without fretting and in silence. But the charming
+simplicity of the welcome in the garden, the peacefulness, not only of
+the dwelling, but still more the calm and sweet aspect of the celebrated
+authoress, together with her husband's friendly manner, acted soothingly
+upon the nerves of their visitor. He told without reticence what had
+happened, and soon changed the subject to fall into an animated and
+interesting conversation.
+
+After lunch Mrs. Craik made me walk in the garden with her, and inquired
+more closely into the particulars of this strange illness; she
+encouraged and comforted me greatly. She was tall, and though
+white-haired, very beautiful still, I thought. As we walked she bent her
+head (covered with the Highland blue bonnet) over mine, and as she
+clasped my shoulders within her arm, I could see her hand laid upon my
+breast, as if to soothe it; it was the loveliest hand I ever saw; the
+shape so perfect, the skin so white and soft. We spoke French together;
+she was interested about France, and liked talking of its people and
+customs. Before we left she asked me to write to her, and offered to
+render me any service I might require.
+
+The journey to Todmorden was not to be thought of this time, and Gilbert
+had begged his uncle and aunt to meet us at Kew, if they could manage
+it. They answered in the affirmative, and he found lodgings for them,
+not far from ours, nearly opposite to the church.
+
+Knowing that his book must now be ready, he longed to see a copy of it,
+and feeling well enough one morning, he started with me for London; but
+as soon as we were in the heart of the town, its bustle, crowd, and
+noise drove my husband to the comparative peace of the nearest park.
+There, as usual in such cases, we had to walk till his nerves were
+calmed, and then to sit down for a long time. He did not think he would
+be equal to the busy streets that day, and asked me to take a cab and
+see if I could bring him back a copy of his book. Reluctantly I left
+him, though he assured me the attack was over; only he was afraid of
+bringing it on again if he went into the street. So I was driven to Mr.
+Macmillan's house of business, and immediately received by him. He was
+evidently truly sorry to hear that my husband was unwell, and "Etching
+and Etchers" being upon his table, he took up a copy, and with many warm
+praises insisted upon placing it himself in my cab. The book was
+everything that its author had desired, and taken so much pains to
+ensure; he was gratified by the result, and gratefully acknowledged the
+liberality of the publishers. One of the first visits paid by Mr.
+Hamerton when he felt well again was to Mr. Cook, of the "Saturday
+Review," who was himself out of health through overwork. He feelingly
+expressed his regret that my husband could not continue to act as
+regular art critic, but trusted that he would still contribute to the
+"Saturday" as much as possible, and on subjects he might himself select.
+
+Next we saw Mr. Seymour Haden, and I begged him to try and discover what
+was the nature of my husband's ailment.
+
+It was no easy matter, as the patient refused to submit to examination
+and to prescriptions of any kind. Mrs. Haden, who was full of sympathy
+and kindness, apprised her husband of this peculiarity and he undertook
+to _passer-outre_. So the next time we called by invitation, he looked
+steadily at his guest for some time, and said to him deliberately: "You
+are _very_ ill; it's no use denying it to me; you must give up all
+work,--not in a month, or a week, or to-morrow, but to-day, instantly."
+My husband flushed, so that I trembled in fear of another seizure, and
+answered angrily: "I cannot give up work; I _must_ work for my family; I
+shall try to work less." ... "I say you are to give up all mental labor
+immediately; I shall see, later, what amount of intellectual work you
+are able to bear, according to the state you will be in. You may break
+stones on the road, but I forbid you to hold a pen for literary
+composition; and once back home, you must renounce railway travelling as
+long as it produces uncomfortable sensations." All this was said
+imperatively, and although it drove my husband almost to desperation, I
+thanked Mr. Haden in my heart for his courageous and timely
+interference, and Gilbert did the same after recovering from the shock.
+
+This time he did not feel either so sad or so despondent as formerly,
+when he had suffered alone; he knew now for certain that the causes of
+his trouble were overwork and railway travelling, and he took the
+resolution of avoiding both dangers as much as possible. Whenever he
+felt nervous we remained quietly at Kew, reading or sketching or walking
+in solitary places with his uncle and aunt, and when he thought himself
+well enough we went to London by boat or omnibus, to the British Museum,
+the National Gallery, or South Kensington Museum, and to the public or
+private art exhibitions. We also paid calls, and on one of these
+occasions I was introduced to George Eliot and to Mr. Lewes; the latter
+sat by us on a sofa outside of the inner circle (the room was full), and
+talked with wonderful vivacity and great discrimination of the state of
+French literature. He judged of it like a Frenchman; his conversation
+was extremely interesting and suggestive, and he appeared to derive
+great pleasure from a rapid exchange of thoughts. Undeniably he was very
+plain, when you had time to think of it, but it was with him as with the
+celebrated advocate, M. Crémieux,--so much caricatured,--neither of
+them seemed at all plain to me as soon as they spoke; both had
+expressive eyes and countenance, and the interest awakened by the
+varying expression of the features did not allow one to think of their
+want of symmetry and shape.
+
+The person who sat next to George Eliot seemed determined to monopolize
+her attention; but as a new-comer was announced she came forward to meet
+him, and kindly taking me by the hand, made me sit in the chair she had
+herself occupied, and motioned to my husband to come also. He remained
+standing inside the circle, whilst the Monopolizer had, at once, to
+yield his seat to the mistress of the house, as well as a share of her
+conversation to others than himself.
+
+I immediately recognized the description given of her by my husband; her
+face expressed at the same time great mental power and a sort of
+melancholy human sympathy; her voice was full-toned, though low, and
+wonderfully modulated. We were frequently interrupted by people just
+coming in, and with each and all she exchanged a few phrases appropriate
+to the position, pursuit, or character of her interlocutor, immediately
+to revert to the subject of our conversation with the utmost apparent
+ease and pleasure.
+
+Mr. Lewes offered tea himself, because the worshippers surrounded the
+Idol so closely that they kept her a prisoner within a double circle,
+and they were so eager for a few words from her lips that as soon as she
+moved a step or two they crowded about her in a way to make me think
+that, in a small way and in her own drawing-room, she was mobbed like a
+queen at some public ceremony.
+
+The next time we called upon George Eliot she had heard of our meeting
+with Mr. Tennyson, and said,--
+
+"So you have seen the great man--and did he talk?"
+
+"Talk?" answered my husband; "he talked the whole time, and was in high
+spirits."
+
+"Then you were most fortunate."
+
+We understood what was implied, for Mr. Tennyson had the reputation of
+not being always gracious. However, we had learned from himself that
+nothing short of rudeness could keep his intrusive admirers at a
+distance, so as to allow him some privacy. He told us of a man who so
+dogged his steps that he was afraid of going out of his own garden
+gates, for even in front of those locked gates the man would stand and
+pry for hours together, till the poet's son was sent to him with a
+request that he would go elsewhere.
+
+In the case of his meeting with Mr. Hamerton it was totally different,
+for he had himself expressed a wish for it to Mr. Woolner. Of course my
+husband was greatly flattered when he heard of it, and readily accepted
+an invitation to lunch with Mr. Woolner's family, and to meet the poet
+whom he so much admired. I sat by Mr. Tennyson, and endeavored to
+suppress any outward sign of the interest and admiration so distasteful
+to him. Nevertheless, I was greatly impressed by the dignity of his
+simple manners and by the inscrutable expression of the eyes, so keen
+and yet so calm, so profound yet so serene. His was a fine and noble
+face, even in merriment, and he was very merry on that day, for the
+string of humorous anecdotes he told kept us all laughing, himself
+included. I am sorry now not to remember them, the more so as they
+generally concerned himself. Several were connected with his title of
+"Lord of the Manor," but the only one I can remember in its entirety is
+the following, because he was addressing himself to me--a
+Frenchwoman--the scene of the story being the Hôtel du Louvre, in Paris.
+
+Mr. Tennyson began by remarking that there were a good many stories
+current about him; some of them were true, but most of them apocryphal.
+
+"And is the one you are going to relate true?" I asked.
+
+He smiled, and answered:--
+
+"I think it is capital; you will have to guess. I had occasion to go to
+Paris with a friend who was supposed to speak French creditably, and
+who fancied himself a master of it. On the morning following our arrival
+in the French capital, being somewhat knocked up by the journey, we had
+a late breakfast at a small side-table of the dining-room, of which we
+were soon the only occupants, under the watchful and, as I thought,
+suspicious eyes of a waiter, whose attention had probably been attracted
+by the conspicuous difference between our stature and garb from that of
+his little dandified countrymen. Having caught a slight cold on the
+passage, I felt more inclined to stay by the fire with a newspaper than
+to go out, and did so, whilst my friend, who had some business in the
+town, left me for some time. As I drew my chair up to the hearth I heard
+the waiter answering with alacrity to some recommendation of my
+friend's, 'Oh, monsieur peut être tranquille, j'y veillerai.' I thought
+it was some order about our dinner, and resumed my political studies.
+Was it my cold which made me dull and inattentive? It is quite possible,
+for my eyes kept wandering from my paper, and, strange to say, always
+met those of the French waiter riveted upon me. At first I felt annoyed:
+what could be so strange about my person? Then I was irritated, for
+though that queer little man was making some pretence at dusting or
+replacing chairs, still his eyes never left me for a moment, and at
+last, being somewhat drowsy, I had the sensation that one experiences in
+a nightmare, and thought I had better resort to my room and make up for
+a shortened night. No sooner, however, had I got up from my chair than
+the waiter was entreating me to remain, offering to heap coals on the
+fire, to bring me another paper or a pillow if I was tired, and 'Did I
+wish to write a letter? he would fetch instantly what was required; or
+should I like something hot for my cold?' His voice had the strange
+coaxing tone that we use to pacify children, and made me stare; but I
+answered angrily that I only wanted a nap, and to be let alone, and I
+made for the door in spite of his objurgations. Then he ran in front of
+me, and barring the door with arms outstretched, besought me to await my
+friend. This unaccountable behavior had rendered me furious, and now I
+was determined to force my way out, despite the mad resistance and loud
+gibberish of the waiter, and I began to use my fists. It was in the
+midst of this tremendous row that my astonished friend re-appeared in
+the dining-room, and was greeted with this exclamation from my
+adversary: 'Ah, monsieur, vous voyez, j'ai tenu ma parole: je ne l'ai
+pas laissé sortir _le fou;_ mais ça n'a pas été sans peine, il était
+temps que vous arriviez.'
+
+"It turned out that my friend, anxious for my comfort, and noticing that
+the fire was getting low, had said in his easy French before leaving,
+'Garçon, surtout ne laissez pas sortir le fou' (_feu_)--meaning 'Don't
+let the fire go out,' and the intelligent foreigner had immediately
+guessed from my appearance that I was _le fou_."
+
+Amidst general laughter I said,--
+
+"It is cleverly invented."
+
+"I see you do not believe it," Mr. Tennyson answered; "yet it has passed
+current in society and in the newspapers."
+
+Sitting close to Mr. Tennyson, as I did, I noticed the large size, and
+somehow plebeian shape, of his hands. They did not seem to belong to the
+same body as the head, indicating merely physical strength and fitness
+for physical labor. His dress also struck me as peculiar: he was wearing
+a shirt of coarse linen, starchless, with a large and loose turned-down
+collar, very like a farmer's of former days, and shirt and hands looked
+suited to each other. After remarking this I happened to look up into
+Mr. Tennyson's face, which then wore its habitual expression of serious
+and grand simplicity; and I thought that the rough and dull linen, with
+the natural, unstiffened fall about the neck, formed a most artistic
+sculpturesque setting for the handsome head well poised above it.
+
+After lunch Mr. Woolner took the gentlemen to his studio for a smoke,
+and my husband told me afterwards that Mr. Tennyson had continued as
+talkative there as he had been at lunch, and was only interrupted by the
+entrance of Sir Bartle Frere, who had a great deal to say on his own
+account.
+
+It was very gratifying to me to notice that whenever my husband met with
+celebrities he was treated by them on a footing of equality, and
+although still a young man, his opinions and views were always accepted
+or discussed with evident respect, even by his seniors. His presence
+invariably awoke interest and confidence, and in most cases sympathy. It
+was felt that he was one of the few to be looked up to, and I have heard
+people much older than himself tell me that they prized highly a private
+hour spent with him, because his influence made them feel more desirous
+of striving for noble aims and elevated thoughts which seemed so natural
+and easy to him. It is true, indeed, that whatever he thought, said, or
+did, bore the stamp of genuine uprightness, for his nature was so much
+above meanness of any kind that he had great difficulty in admitting it
+in others; whenever he met with it his first attitude was one of
+charitable hesitation, but when he recognized it unmistakably his
+indignation was as unbounded and unrestrained as in cases of cruelty.
+
+In spite of the impediment to social intercourse caused by his
+intermittent nervous state, Mr. Hamerton enjoyed rather a large share of
+cultivated and intelligent society at this time. His worst moments
+happened in the morning and in bright sunshine; the evening was in
+general entirely free from disagreeable sensations, and a rainy day or
+clouded sky most favorable. This peculiarity enabled him to accept
+invitations to dinners, at which he met the persons whose acquaintance
+he cared for.
+
+Mr. Thomas Hamerton and his sister had left us at Kew to go back home,
+and we wished it were as simple for us to do the same, but we could only
+think of the journey with the saddest forebodings; yet we longed to be
+through it, and safely restored to our peaceful rustic life and to a
+sight of our children.
+
+It was a very tedious, trying, and harassing journey; we travelled only
+at night, by the slowest trains, and went but short distances at a time.
+Sometimes my husband was unable to proceed for a few days; but, with
+admirable courage and resolution, he managed to reach the much-desired
+goal.
+
+And now what was to be done? Mr. Haden allowed literary work only on two
+consecutive days in the week, and when Gilbert was unwell on those days,
+there was no remunerative production, and his anxieties became almost
+intolerable. He resolved to try every day of the week if he were fit for
+work, and to go on whenever he felt suitably disposed till the two days'
+work had been done, and then to leave off till the next week. This
+succeeded for a while, but as he naturally became anxious to produce as
+much as possible during these two days, he felt driven, and suffered in
+consequence. He then attempted to devote only two hours to literary
+composition at a sitting, and to repeat the attempt twice a day when he
+did not feel his powers overtaxed. To this new rule he adhered till the
+end of his life--at least, generally speaking, for in some circumstances
+he had to write throughout the day, but he was careful to avoid this
+extremity as much as possible.
+
+We waited impatiently for news of the reception of "Etching and Etchers"
+by the public, and Mrs. Craik having been so kind as to offer any
+service she could render, I wrote to her on the subject, and she
+answered:--
+
+"BECKENHAM. _July_ 19, 1868.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Hamerton,--I can quite understand how _you_ care about the
+book--perhaps more than your husband even, and I wish I could send you
+news of it. But there have been no reviews as yet, and this being the
+dull time of year, the sale is slow. Whatever reviews come out you shall
+have without fail from the firm. It is so valuable and charming a book
+that I do hope it may gradually make its way. I do believe it is only
+the dreadful cities which make your husband ill--and no wonder; in
+peaceful Autun he will flourish, I trust; and you too recover yourself,
+for I am sure you were very far from well when you were here. It was so
+kind of you to come to us that Sunday, and to believe that we are both
+people who really mean what we say--and say what we think: which all the
+world does not. If ever I can do anything for you, pray write. And some
+day in future ages I shall write to you to ask advice upon our little
+tour in unknown French towns and country, when we shall certainly drop
+upon Autun _en route_. Not this year, however.
+
+"With very kind remembrance to you both, believe me, dear Mrs. Hamerton,
+
+"Yours sincerely,
+
+"D. M. Craik."
+
+My sister, Caroline Pelletier, had now come to Pré-Charmoy with her
+baby-daughter, to escape from the drought prevailing at Algiers, and her
+presence was a great pleasure to my recluse. She often read to him to
+keep up her English, and accompanied him in his drives when I was
+prevented, aware that he did not much like to venture away alone since
+he had been ill. At his request she had brought an Algerian necklace and
+bracelets made of hardened paste of roses, which were intended for Aunt
+Susan, who had greatly liked the odor of mine, and who acknowledged the
+little present in a very cordial letter.
+
+My younger brother Frédéric was at that moment very ill with typhoid
+fever, and I had asked my husband to let me go to help my mother in
+nursing him; however, with greater wisdom and firmness he refused his
+leave, and made me understand my duty to our children. "If you brought
+back to them the germs of disease, and if they died of it, you never
+would forgive yourself," he said. But after the fatal ending he allowed
+me to attend the funeral, on condition that I should not enter the
+house, but come back directly after the painful duty was accomplished.
+At the same time, he kindly invited my mother to come to us, after
+taking all necessary precautions against the danger of bringing
+infection to her grandchildren.
+
+The society of M. Pelletier, who used to follow his wife to Pré-Charmoy
+as soon as he was free, proved quite a boon to Gilbert in his solitude,
+and a solid friendship was soon formed between the two brothers-in-law.
+M. Pelletier's mind was inquisitive and receptive; he had read much, and
+in the family circle we called him our "Encyclopedia." He made it his
+duty and pleasure to clear up any obscure point which might embarrass
+any of us, and often undertook long researches to spare my husband's
+time. They regularly sat up together long after the other inmates of the
+house had gone to their rest, talking and smoking, or walking out in the
+refreshing breeze of the summer night.
+
+My brother Charles also joined us at times, and, being a capital
+swimmer, taught his nephews all sorts of wonderful aquatic feats. We all
+went daily to the pond at Varolles, and though the men and boys were all
+proficient in swimming, Charles astonished them by taking a header,
+preceded by a double somersault, from the top of the wall, and kindling
+thereby a jealous desire to rival him, so that in a very short time my
+husband, who hitherto had remained but an indifferent performer, now
+trod the water, read aloud, or smoked in it, with the greatest ease. It
+was very good exercise for him.
+
+For some time past Mr. Hamerton's reputation had been growing in
+America, but he did not derive the slightest profit from the sale of his
+books there till Messrs. Roberts Brothers, of Boston, proposed to pay
+him a royalty upon the works that should be published by them in advance
+of pirated editions. This offer was accepted with pleasure and
+gratitude, and the pecuniary result, though not very important, proved a
+timely help. Moreover, Roberts Brothers admired Mr. Hamerton's talent,
+and in very flattering terms acknowledged it, besides doing much for the
+spread of his reputation in America.
+
+In the autumn, bad news of Aunt Susan's health reached Pré-Charmoy. The
+reports soon became alarming, and her nephew was made very miserable by
+the impossibility of going to her bedside. When we had taken leave of
+each other at Kew, she was very despondent on account of my husband's
+illness, and expressed a fear that she might die without our being near
+her. No one could say when the taboo on railway travelling could be
+withdrawn for him, but I gave our aunt a solemn promise that in such an
+emergency as she mentioned, I at any rate would go to her when she
+called me, and Gilbert had ratified the engagement. From her letters it
+was easy to see that she wished very much for my companionship and
+nursing, being very low in spirits and feeble in body, yet she was
+reluctant to ask, with the knowledge that her nephew also frequently
+required my care. At last we agreed that the proposal should come from
+us, my husband, as usual, sacrificing his own comfort to the claims of
+affection. The offer was gratefully accepted.
+
+As I had never travelled much alone, and am entirely destitute of the
+gift of topography, it was not without misgivings that my husband saw me
+off; but he had taken the trouble of writing down for my guidance the
+minutest directions, and though he told his uncle that he should not be
+astonished to hear that I had turned up in New York, I reached London
+safely.
+
+He was very lonely at Pré-Charmoy, with only his little girl and a maid,
+the boys being at college, but he frequently went to dine there with the
+principal, M. Schmitt, from whom he needed no invitation, and who always
+made him welcome. He was also cheered by my letters, which told him of
+his aunt's rapid improvement in health and strength. We went out
+together upon the hills as often as the weather allowed, and when
+threatened with an attack of nervous dizziness--which she dreaded
+unspeakably--she derived confidence from my apparent composure, and
+tided over it when I firmly grasped her round the waist, and made her
+take a few steps in the keener and purer air of the garden. When our
+aunt was restored to her usual state of health, rather more than a month
+after my arrival, I took leave of my kind relatives loaded with presents
+for every one of the children, and even for their parents. Of course I
+wished to spend Christmas at home, and I arrived just in time to realize
+my wish. Gilbert had come to meet me at the station, and as soon as we
+had exchanged greetings and news he began to tell of a plan for an
+artistic periodical which had mainly occupied his thoughts during my
+absence. As we were driving home he entered into all the details of the
+scheme as he conceived it, and said he believed he might undertake the
+management of such a periodical, even where he was situated, if Mr.
+Seeley gave his valuable help. He was full of the idea, and his thoughts
+were continually reverting to it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+1869-1870.
+
+
+"Wenderholme."--The Mont Bouvray,--Botanical Studies--La Tuilerie.
+--Commencement of the "Portfolio."--The Franco-German War.
+
+The uncertainty of finding sufficient literary work after the
+resignation of his post on the "Saturday Review" had been a cause of
+great anxiety to Mr. Hamerton, though he had enough on hand at that
+time, but he wondered very much if it would last. He wrote for the
+"Globe" regularly; for the "Saturday Review," "Pall Mall Gazette," and
+"Atlantic Monthly" occasionally, though he had a great dislike for
+anonymous writing, as he bestowed as much care and labor upon it as if
+it could have added to his reputation. He worked with greater pleasure
+and some anticipation of success at his novel of "Wenderholme," the
+first volume of which had been sent to Mr. Blackwood, who agreed to give
+£200 for the copyright. Here are some passages from his letter, which of
+course was very welcome. After a few criticisms:--
+
+"The narrative is natural and taking. Your description of the drunken
+habits of Shayton are _excellent_, and not a bit overdone. It reminds me
+of a joke of Aytoun's when there was a report of an earthquake at a
+village in Scotland notorious for its convivial habits. He remarked,
+'Nonsense; the whole inhabitants are in a chronic state of D. T. that
+would have shaken down the walls of Jericho.'
+
+"The picture of poor Isaac's struggles and his final break-down at his
+own home is very well done, and so is that of his old mother, with her
+narrow fat forehead.
+
+"I particularly like Colonel Stanburne. He _is_ like a gentleman, and I
+hope he has a great deal to do in the remaining part of the story.
+Little Jacob is very nice, and promises to make a good hero.
+
+"The style is throughout pleasant and graceful. I shall look anxiously
+for vols. 2 and 3, but I feel confident that you will not write anything
+unkind or inconsistent with good taste."
+
+Encouraged by the favorable opinion of Mr. Blackwood, the author went on
+as diligently with the novel as his health allowed. From time to time I
+find in his diary, "too unwell to work," or "obliged to rest," or "not
+well enough to write." Still, he was remarkably free from bodily pain,
+as it is generally felt and understood; he never complained of aches or
+sickness, and to any ordinary observer he looked vigorous and unusually
+healthy; but from me, accustomed to scrutinize the most transient
+expression of his face and countenance, he could not hide the slightest
+symptoms of nervousness, were it merely the bending forward of the body,
+the steady gaze or unwonted cold brightness of the eyes. Whenever I
+detected any of these threatening signs at home, I begged him to leave
+work and to go out, and if we happened to be in an exhibition or any
+crowded place, we had to resort to some secluded spot in a public
+garden--to the parks if we were in London; and I believe it must be on
+account of the repeated anguish I suffered there that I never wished to
+visit them for my pleasure: those horribly painful hours have deprived
+them of all charm for me. What my husband had to bear was a terrible
+apprehension of something fearful,--he did not know what,--now
+increasing, as if a fatal end were inevitable; now decreasing, only to
+return--ah! how many times?--till sometimes only after hours of strife,
+and sometimes suddenly, it left him calm but always weakened. At the
+very time that he was most frequently subject to these attacks, the
+American papers were giving numerous notices of his works, and brief
+biographies in which he was invariably presented to the public as an
+athlete in possession of the most robust health.
+
+The doctors agreed in saying that this disorder was only nervous, and
+not the result of any known disease; that the only remedy lay in rest
+for the brain, and active exercise for the body in the open air. But it
+was indeed difficult to give rest to a mind incessantly thirsting for
+knowledge, and finding an inexhaustible mine of interest in the most
+trivial events, in the simplest natures and the monotonous existence of
+the rustics, as well as in the philosophy of Auguste Comte and John
+Stuart Mill, or in the aesthetics of Ruskin and Charles Blanc. It was a
+mind which turned all that came in its way into the gold of knowledge,
+and which spent it generously afterwards, not only in his writings, but
+in familiar conversations; his friends used to say that they always
+gained something when with him, on account of the natural elevation of
+mind which made him treat all questions intellectually. He had no taste
+for sport or amusements or games, with the exception of boating and
+chess; but chess-playing can hardly be called mental rest, and boating
+is not always practicable, requiring several hours each time it is
+indulged in, particularly when one is not close to a lake or river.
+
+Riding Cocote was a pleasant relaxation to her master, as she was a
+spirited little creature, and the two often went together to the Mont
+Beuvray (the site of the ancient Bibracte of the Gauls), to find the
+learned and venerable President of the Société Eduenne busy with his
+researches among the ruins, but nevertheless always ready to receive
+them hospitably. The use of one of his huts was given to his young
+friend, and his four-footed companion was turned loose to browse on the
+fine, short grass which grew thickly under the shade of the noble oaks
+and chestnut trees of the mountain.
+
+On these occasions, a valise containing sketching material and books was
+strapped on behind the rider, on the horse's back; at other times, when
+I accompanied my husband, we went in a light cart, which was left with
+Cocote at a farmhouse about half-way up the hill.
+
+My husband liked me to read to him whilst he sketched, and I see by his
+diary of 1869 that some of the works he listened to in the course of
+that year were: "Les Couleuvres," by Louis Veuillot; Victor Jacquemond's
+"Voyage en Italie;" "l'Art en Hollande," and "La Littérature Anglaise,"
+by Taine "Le Postscriptum;" George Eliot's "Silas Marner;" Sidney
+Colvin's "Academy Notes;" Tennyson's "In Memoriam;" Légouvé's "l'Art de
+la lecture;" "Chateaubriand et son groupe littéraire," "Béranger et de
+Sénancourt," by Sainte-Beuve, whose talent as a critic he greatly
+admired.
+
+The rambles and drives which he took in quest of picturesque subjects
+inclined him to botanical studies, and he began to form a herbarium; the
+search for plants gave a zest to the long walks recommended by the
+doctors, which might have become tedious had they been aimless. The
+prettiest or most remarkable of these plants were sketched or painted
+before being dried, to be used in the foregrounds of pictures. Gilbert's
+mind was also inventive; the reader may have remarked in the
+autobiography that he had made various models of double-boats, the
+principle of which he wished to see more generally adopted on account of
+their safety; but in 1869 it was not with boats that this faculty of
+invention was busy,--it was with a plan for a carriage which would meet
+our requirements. The little donkey-cart was so rickety now that it had
+become unsafe, and the carriage-builders could not show anything
+sufficiently convenient of a size and weight to suit Cocote. The elegant
+curves above the fore-wheels reduced the stowage room to a mere nothing,
+and we required plenty of space to carry, safely protected from rain and
+dust, many things--amongst them change of garments when we went to Autun
+for a wedding, a funeral, or a soirée, and plenty of wraps for the drive
+back in the cold or mist of midnight. A good deal of room was also
+wanted for the provisions regularly fetched from the town,--grocery,
+ironmongery, etc. My husband succeeded in contriving a carriage
+perfectly answering our wants: it was four-wheeled, and provided with a
+double seat covering a roomy well; there was also a considerable space
+behind to receive bundles and parcels, or at will a small removable
+seat. Six persons could thus ride comfortably in the carriage, and as we
+were expecting a visit from Mr. T. Hamerton and his sister, we wished
+very much to have it ready for their use.
+
+With the tender thoughtfulness which characterized my husband, he had
+contrived a low step and a door at the back part of the carriage to
+allow an aged person, like his aunt or my mother, to get inside with
+ease and safety, and to get out quite as easily in case of danger.
+
+They arrived in the middle of July, and spent a month with us. They were
+both in very good health, and Aunt Susan, in spite of her seventy years,
+rivalled her little grand-niece with the skipping-rope. She wrote
+afterwards from West Lodge on August 20:--
+
+"MY DEAR NEPHEW AND NIECE,--We arrived at home all safe and well at five
+o'clock on Monday to tea, and to-day it is a week since we left your
+most kind and hospitable entertainment, and I can assure you a most
+true, heartfelt pleasure and gratification it has been to me to spend a
+month with you, for which you must accept our best thanks for your
+kindly studied attentions and exertions to make our visit pleasant. I am
+sure I am much better for my journey; I feel strong and more vigorous;
+the drives in the little carriage were no doubt the very thing that
+would conduce to my getting strong, as I had then fresh air and exercise
+without fatigue. [There follows a description of the journey, according
+to a careful itinerary prepared by her nephew.] How is little Lala, lal,
+a, lala? [her little niece, who was always singing]. We often talk of
+her interesting ways and doings, and I often wish I could give other
+English lessons to my nephews. I think we should have made some
+progress, as both sides seemed interested in their business."
+
+Shortly after the departure of his relatives, Mr. Hamerton was informed
+by his landlord that he would have to leave the little house and garden
+and stream he liked so well, because it was now the intention of the
+proprietor to come to it with his family to spend the vacations. He was
+offered, instead, another house on the same estate, called "La
+Tuilerie," larger and more convenient, but a thoroughly _banale maison
+bourgeoise_, devoid of charm and picturesqueness, close to the main
+road, and without a garden; moreover, in an inconceivable state of
+dirtiness and dilapidation. I felt horror-struck at the notion of
+removing to such a place; however, I was at last obliged to submit to
+fate. My husband, though very disinclined to a move, thought that since
+it could not be avoided, it was as well to make it as easy, cheap, and
+rapid as possible. He could not afford to lose time, and his health
+prohibited long travels in search of a new abode, since he could not
+make use of railways. We went as far in the neighborhood of Pré-Charmoy
+as Cocote could take us in a day in different directions, but found
+nothing suitable, probably because we did not wish to be at a distance
+from the college, which would prevent the boys from coming home as they
+had been accustomed to do.
+
+The greater space and conveniences offered at La Tuilerie were a
+temptation to my husband. We had, besides two entrances, a large
+dining-room, drawing-room, kitchen, six bedrooms, lots of closets,
+cupboards, dressing-rooms, and an immense garret all over the first
+floor, well lighted by two windows, and paved with bricks. In the
+extensive courtyard was a set of out-buildings, consisting of a
+gardener's cottage, cartshed, and stable for six horses; and as on the
+ground belonging to the house there had formerly existed a tile-kiln
+(_tuilerie_) with drying sheds, there was ample space for a garden after
+removing the rubbish which still covered it.
+
+The fact is that circumstances allowed of no choice, and we had to
+resign ourselves to the inevitable. Gilbert saw at once that with a
+certain outlay and a great deal of ingenuity he could make La Tuilerie
+not only tolerable, but even convenient and pleasant--though I doubted
+it--and he explained how the outbuilding might be used as laundry,
+laboratory, and carpenter's shop--there being three rooms of different
+sizes in it; and what a gain it would be so to have all the dirty work
+done outside the house. Another attraction was the good views from all
+the windows; that of the Beuvray, with the plain leading to it; the
+amphitheatre of Autun, with the intervening wood of noble trees, and
+beyond it the temple of Janus; the range of the Morvan hills, the fields
+of golden wheat and waving corn, and the pastures which looked like
+mysterious lakes in the moonlight when the white mist rose from the
+marshes and spread all over their surface--endlessly as it seemed. He
+promised me to plan out a garden, and there being several fine trees
+about the kiln and on the border of the road--oaks, elders, elms, and
+spindle trees--he said he would contrive to keep them all, so as to have
+shade from the beginning, and to give the new garden an appearance of
+respectable antiquity.
+
+The workmen were set at once to their task of repairing, painting, and
+papering, and though my husband deprecated both the time spent on
+supervision and the unavoidable expense (for the landlord, under pretext
+that the rent was low, refused to contribute to the repairs, which he
+called _améliorations_), was unmistakably elated by the prospect of
+having the use of a more spacious dwelling; for he very easily suffered
+from a feeling of confinement, and tried to get rid of it by having two
+small huts which could be moved about to different parts of the estate
+according to his convenience, and to which he resorted when so inclined.
+Even when they were not used, it was for him a satisfaction to know that
+he had in readiness a refuge away from the house whenever he chose to
+seek it. This dislike to confinement was betrayed unconsciously when he
+sat down to his meals by his first movement, which pushed aside whatever
+seemed _too near_ his plate--glass, wine-bottle, salt-cellars, etc. I
+remember that he would not use the public baths in France, because the
+cabins are small and generally locked on the outside. It was therefore a
+great pleasure to devise stands and cupboards and shelves in the large
+room which was to be his laboratory, and which he adorned with a cheap
+frieze of white paper with gilt edges, and "Lose no Time" in
+black-and-red letters, repeated upon each of the four walls, so as not
+to escape notice whichever way you turned.
+
+The carpenter's shop also had its due share of attention, and was well
+provided with labelled boxes of all dimensions for nails, screws, etc.,
+whilst a roomy closet, opening into the studio, was fitted up with a
+piece of furniture specially designed to receive the different-sized
+portfolios containing engravings, etchings, and studies of all kinds,
+together with a lot of pigeon-holes to keep small things separate and in
+order. All this was done at home, under his direction, and he has let
+his readers into the secret of his taste when he wrote in "Wenderholme":
+"For the present we must leave him (Captain Eureton) in the tranquil
+happiness of devising desks and pigeon-holes with Mr. Bettison, an
+intelligent joiner at Sooty thorn, _than which few occupations can be
+more delightful._" About the pigeon-holes, a friend of my husband once
+made a discovery which he declared astounding. "I well knew that Mr.
+Hamerton was a model of order," he said to me; "but I only knew to what
+extent when, having to seek for string, I was directed to these
+pigeon-holes. I easily found the one labelled 'String,' but what it
+contained was too coarse for my purpose. 'Look above,' said Mr.
+Hamerton. I did, and sure enough I saw another label with 'String
+(thin).' I thought it wonderful."
+
+Yes, Gilbert _loved_ order, and strove to keep it; but as it generally
+happened that he had to do many things in a hurry (catching the post,
+for instance), he could not always find time to replace what he had
+used. When this had gone on so as to produce real disorder, he gave a
+day to restoring each item to its proper place--this happened generally
+after a long search for a mislaid paper, the finding of which evoked the
+oft-repeated confession, "I love Order better than she loves me, as
+Byron said of Wisdom."
+
+The correspondence relating to the foundation of the "Portfolio" was now
+very heavy; everything had to be decided between Mr. Seeley and Mr.
+Hamerton; suitable contributors had to be found, subjects discussed,
+illustrations chosen. The only English art magazine of that day confined
+its illustrations to line engravings and woodcuts, and its plates were
+almost always engraved from pictures or statues. It was intended that
+the "Portfolio" should make use of all new methods of illustration, and
+should publish drawings and studies as well as finished works. But it
+was the dearest wish of the editor that the revived art of Etching
+should receive due appreciation in England, and that, with this object,
+etched plates should be made a feature of the new magazine.
+
+The contents of the first volume will best show the plan, which was
+quite unlike that of any existing periodical. A series of articles on
+"English Artists of the Present Day" was contributed by Mr. Sidney
+Colvin, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Mr. Tom Taylor, Mr. Beavington Atkinson, and
+the editor. These were illustrated by drawings most willingly lent by
+Mr. G. F. Watts, Mr. Poynter, Sir E. Burne-Jones, Mr. Calderon, Mr. H.
+S. Marks, Mr. G. D. Leslie, and other painters; and by paintings by Lord
+Leighton, Mr. Armitage, and Mr. A. P. Newton. The reproductions were
+made by the autotype (or carbon) process of photography, which was then
+coming into high estimation as a means of making permanent copies of
+works by the great masters. Every copy of these illustrations was
+printed by light, a process only possible in the infancy of a magazine
+which could count at first on the interest of but a small circle, and
+had to form its own public. The editor contributed a series of papers,
+entitled "The Unknown River," illustrated by small etchings by his own
+hand. These were printed on India paper, and mounted in the text,
+another process only possible in a magazine addressed to a few. The
+first volume also contained a very fine etching by M. Legros, and others
+by Cucinotta and Grenaud. Articles were contributed by Mr. F. T.
+Palgrave, Mr. Watkiss Lloyd, Mr. G. A. Simcox, and Mrs. Mark Pattison
+(Lady Dilke). A paper on "A New Palette" of nine colors was the
+forerunner of the elaborate "Technical Notes" of later years. The
+imposing size of the new magazine, its bold type, fine, thick paper, and
+wide margins were much admired, and prepared the way for the many
+editions _de luxe_ issued in England in the next quarter of the century.
+
+In the second year the slow autotype process had to be abandoned for the
+quicker Woodburytype, by which were reproduced drawings kindly
+contributed by Sir J. E. Millais, Sir John Gilbert, Mr. Holman Hunt, Mr.
+Woolner, Mr. G. Mason, Mr. Hook, and others. The editor commenced a
+series of "Chapters on Animals," illustrated with etchings by Veyrassat.
+Other etchings by M. Martial, Mr. Chattock, Mr. J. P. Heseltine, and Mr.
+Lumsden Propert appeared. Mr. Basil Champneys, Mr. W. B. Scott, and Mr.
+F. G. Stephens contributed articles.
+
+In the third year a series of "Examples of Modern Etching" was made the
+chief feature. It included plates by M. L. Flameng, Sir F. Seymour
+Haden, M. Legros, M. Bracquemond, M. Lalanne, M. Rajon, M. Veyrassat,
+and Mr. S. Palmer. The editor wrote a note upon each, and had now the
+pleasure of seeing one of his objects accomplished, and the public
+appreciation of his favorite art extending every day.
+
+In subsequent years the various methods of photo-engraving were employed
+instead of the carbon processes of photography, and the "Portfolio" was
+one of the first English periodicals to give reproductions of
+pen-drawings.
+
+Several of M. Amand-Durand's admirable facsimiles of etchings and
+engravings by the old masters adorned its pages. In 1873 appeared one of
+Mr. R. L. Stevenson's first contributions to literature,--if not his
+first,--a paper on "Roads," signed "L. S. Stoneven." This was followed
+by other articles in the years 1874, 1875, and 1878, bearing his own
+name.
+
+The fear of running short of work was not realized; on the contrary, my
+husband had always too much on his hands; for he dreaded hurry, and
+would have liked to bestow upon each of his works as much time as he
+thought necessary, not only for its completion, but also for its
+preparation, and that was often considerable, because he could not
+slight a thing. When he was writing for the "Globe" he polished his
+articles as much as a book destined to last; he always respected his
+work, and the care given to it bore no relation to the price it was to
+fetch. He often expressed a wish that he might labor like the monks in
+the Middle Ages, without being disturbed by mercenary considerations;
+that simple shelter, food, and raiment should be provided for himself
+and for those dependent upon him--he did not foresee any other wants--so
+that he might devote the whole of his mental energy to subjects worthy
+of it. But I used to answer that if he had such liberty he never would
+publish anything; for whenever he sent MS. to the printer it was
+inevitably with regret at not being able to keep it longer for
+improvement. Still, the second volume of "Wenderholme" had been sent to
+Mr. Blackwood, who wrote on Sept. 24, 1869:--
+
+"There is no doubt that I liked vol. 2 very much. The story is told in a
+simple, matter-of-fact way, which is very effective, by giving an air of
+truth to the narrative.
+
+"The fire and the whole scene at the Hall is powerfully described. The
+love at first sight is well put, and the militia quarters and the
+landlord are true to the life."
+
+My husband read to me the MS. of the novel as fast as he wrote it, and I
+was afraid that some of the original characters might be recognized by
+their friends, being so graphically described; however, he believed it
+unlikely, people seeing and judging so differently from each other.
+
+In the summer, as usual, we had several visitors who afforded varying
+degrees of pleasure; a strange lady-artist amongst others, whose
+blandishments did not succeed in making my husband acquiesce in her
+desire of boarding with us, free of charge, in return for the English
+lessons she would give to our children. She resented the non-acceptance
+of her proposition, and having begged to look at the studies on the
+easel, feigned to hesitate about their right side upwards, by turning
+them up and down several times, and retiring a few steps each time as if
+in doubt.
+
+A more desirable visit was that of M. Lalanne, who besides his talent
+had much amiability and very refined manners. Ever after he remained, if
+not quite an intimate friend of my husband, at least more than an
+acquaintance, and whenever they had a chance of meeting they made the
+most of it. Gilbert, after one of these meetings,--a _déjeuner_ at M.
+Lalanne's,--told me the following anecdote. Some one asked him if he
+had not the "Legion d'honneur"? and being answered that it had not been
+offered, went on to say that it was not "offered," but "accordée"
+through the influence of some important personage, or by the pressure of
+public opinion; "and I think this should be your case," M. Lalanne's
+friend went on, "for you have rendered, and are still rendering, such
+great service to French art and to French artists, that it ought to be
+acknowledged. As you do not seem inclined to trouble yourself about it,
+a deputation might be chosen among your admirers to present a petition
+to that effect to the Ministre des Beaux-Arts." Mr. Hamerton having
+replied that he should prize the distinction only if it were
+spontaneously conferred, M. Lalanne remarked that decorations were of
+small importance, and asked without the slightest pride, "Do you know
+that I am one of the most _décorés_ of civilians?... No; well, then, I
+will show you my decorations." Then ringing the bell, he said to the
+maid who answered it, "Bring the box of decorations, please." It was a
+good-sized box, and when opened showed on a velvet tray a number of
+crosses, stars, rosettes, and ribbons of different sizes and hues, all
+vying in brilliancy and splendor. The first tray removed, just such
+another was displayed equally well filled, and M. Lalanne explained
+that, having given lessons to the sons of great foreign personages, they
+had generally sent him as a token of regard and gratitude some kind of
+decoration--maybe in lieu of payment.
+
+At the end of 1869 "Wenderholme" was published, and the first number of
+the "Portfolio" made its appearance on January 1, 1870, and from that
+date it became for the editor an undertaking of incessant interest, to
+the maintenance and improvement of which he was ever ready to devote
+himself, and for which he would have made important sacrifices. The
+dedication of "Wenderholme" was meant for Aunt Susan, and after
+receiving the book, she wrote:--
+
+"Accept my most sincere and highly gratified thanks for the copy of your
+novel, and its dedication. We have heard that the "Times" and the
+"Yorkshire Post" had each favorable articles on the merits of your
+novel. We have detected nearly every character, even those that take
+other forms, but we do not even whisper any information in this
+neighborhood. Mr. and Mrs. W---- were immediately struck with the
+'hoffens' and 'hirritation' of the doctor, but I pretend to think it not
+individual, but that it was the case among the people you were writing
+about."
+
+In May 1870, Mr. Hamerton removed to La Tuilerie, about five hundred
+yards from Pré-Charmoy. He continued to date his letters from
+Pré-Charmoy--the new house being on the estate so called; his motive was
+to avoid possible confusion in the delivery of his letters. He was
+greatly tickled to hear the peasants call his new abode "le château de
+l'Anglais," and to see them staring admiringly from the road at the
+windows, which were left open that paint and plaster might dry before we
+came to live in it. Though perfectly independent of luxury, my husband
+liked cleanliness and taste in the arrangement of the simplest
+materials, and he contrived by a good choice of patterns and colors in
+the papering of the rooms, with the help of fresh matting on the floors,
+and the judicious hanging of fine engravings and etchings in his
+possession, to impart quite a new and pleasant aspect to the _banale
+maison bourgeoise_. Gradually I became reconciled to it, on account of
+its greater convenience, and I even came to like it when the vines and
+wisteria and golden nasturtiums hid the ugly bare walls, and the
+fragrance of mignonette and roses and petunias was wafted into the rooms
+looking over the garden, and that of wild thyme and honeysuckle into
+those which looked over the fields; when the tall acacias began to shoot
+upwards straight and graceful from their velvety green carpet, and
+scattered upon it their perfumed moth-like flowers; while we listened to
+the humming of the happy bees in the sweet-smelling lime trees and to
+the wondrous song of the rival nightingales challenging each other from
+bower to bower in the calm, warm nights of summer-time. And such a great
+change did not take very long to realize: the ground had been well
+drained and plentifully manured, and it was almost virgin soil,
+unexhausted by previous vegetation, so that the elm-bower was soon
+thickly leaved and with difficulty prevented from closing up, the
+climbing vines became heavy with grapes, whilst the spreading branches
+of the acacias speedily formed a vast parasol, and afforded a pleasant
+shelter from the glare of the August sunshine. Hardy fruit trees of all
+kinds had been planted all along the garden hedge, and in the third year
+began to yield cherries--in moderation--but plums of different species
+we had in great quantities, also quinces, sometimes apples, apricots,
+and figs--the two last, however, were frequently destroyed by frost,
+the spring being generally very cold in the Morvan. As to pears, we had
+to wait somewhat longer for them, the pear trees requiring strict
+pruning to preserve the quality of the fruit; but we used to have a
+small cart-load of them when the year had been favorable. There was
+nothing my husband liked better than to pick gooseberries, currants,
+raspberries, cherries, or plums, and eat them fresh as we took a walk in
+the garden; he was very fond of fruit, and unlike most men, he would
+rather do without meat than without vegetables or dessert. His tastes in
+food, as in everything else, were very simple, but he was particular
+about _quality_. I never heard him complain of insufficiency, though,
+situated as we were, there was sometimes only just enough; and even that
+lacking which might have been considered as most necessary, namely, a
+dish of meat. For Gilbert, however, it was not a privation when
+occurring occasionally; nay, he even enjoyed the change, and as I
+generally went to Autun on Fridays and could get fish, we made it a
+_jour maigre_, though not from religious motives. It was understood that
+if eggs were served they must be newly laid; if potatoes, mealy and _à
+point_; if fish, fresh and palatable; he would not have tolerated the
+economy of one of our lady neighbors, who abstained from buying fish at
+Autun because it was too dear, she said; but who used to bring a full
+hamper when she came back yearly from Hyères, where it was cheap, enough
+to last for a week _after the journey_, and who considered the unsavory
+hamper an ample compensation for the absence of fish from her menus
+during the remainder of the year.
+
+The removal did not hinder or interrupt Mr. Hamerton seriously in his
+work, for the new house was quite ready to receive the furniture; and
+the place of every piece having been decided beforehand, the farmers
+merely handed them out of their carts to the workmen, who carried them
+inside the rooms, according to previous directions.
+
+The difficulty of getting proofs of the different states of his plates
+whilst etching them, incited my husband to invent a press for his own
+laboratory, that he might judge of his work in progress by taking proofs
+for himself whenever he liked. Considering the present state of our
+affairs I was not favorable to the idea, but I was overruled, as in all
+cases concerning expenses deemed necessary to artistic or literary
+pursuits. He had few material wants, and therefore thought himself
+justified in providing for his intellectual needs--for instance, by the
+gradual formation of a library. He often deprecated the necessity of
+apparent extravagance in such things; "but you see," he would say, "I
+cannot stand stationary in the acquirement of knowledge if I am to go on
+teaching others--I must keep ahead--without mentioning the satisfaction
+of my own tastes and cravings, to which I have a certain right." Indeed
+it was truly wonderful that he should have been able to achieve so much
+work, and work of such quality, in the intellectual solitude and
+retirement of these seven years passed out of great cities where
+libraries, museums, and human intercourse constantly offer help and
+stimulus to a writer. Luckily for him he bore solitude well. He has said
+in "The Intellectual Life": "Woe unto him that is never alone, and
+cannot bear to be alone!" And again: "Only in solitude do we learn our
+inmost nature and its needs." Further on: "There is, there is a strength
+that comes to us in solitude from that shadowy awful Presence that
+frivolous crowds repel." He often sought communion with that awful
+Presence in the thick forests of the Morvan and on the highest peak of
+the Mont Beuvray, and found it.
+
+For some time our minds had been disturbed by the unsettled aspect of
+French politics, and the possibility of a war with Prussia had been a
+cause of great personal anxiety to my husband on account of his
+nationality. He has related in "Round my House" how the news of the
+declaration of war reached us on a Sunday, as we were bringing the
+children home after spending the day peacefully in the fields and on the
+river-banks of a picturesque little village.
+
+It is probable that if my husband had been able to bear a long railway
+journey, we might have accepted the hospitality so kindly offered in the
+following letter:--
+
+WEST LODGE. _August_ 12, 1870.
+
+"MY VERY DEAR NEPHEW AND NIECE,--I am most grievously and fearfully
+concerned to hear of your sad condition in consequence of the terrible
+and needless war that is now spreading misery, desolation, and perhaps
+famine all over the Empire, just to gratify the unbounded ambition of
+one man. We wish you and your three children could fly over to us and be
+in safety. Really, if you get at all alarmed, do not hesitate to come,
+all of you, with as much of your property as you can pack and bring; we
+can and shall be pleased to find you refuge from any pending evil you
+may be dreading. Dear P. G., you would find your articles about the
+state of your country had got copied into the 'Manchester Courier,' but
+we wish to caution you about what you put in them. Remember whose iron
+heart could punish you, and what would become of your wife and family if
+you were cast into prison.
+
+"The little grandson and his nurse are coming here on Tuesday next for a
+month; they will only occupy one bedroom, so there will still be the
+best bedroom and a very good attic, and half of my bed if little Mary
+Susan Marguerite dares trust herself with me"
+
+Although Mr. Hamerton had always taken great interest in politics, he
+never wished to play an active part in them; from time to time he wrote
+a political article about some cause he had at heart, or some wrong
+which he wished to see redressed, or again on some obscure point which
+his experience of two countries might help to clear up, but he never
+consented to supply regular political correspondence to any newspaper.
+Having had rather a lengthened connection with the "Globe," he was
+offered the post of war-correspondent, which he declined.
+
+He has passed over many interesting incidents of this wartime in "Round
+my House," although he has given a few. One of the most striking was
+certainly his guiding a Garibaldian column _en reconnaissance_ across
+the bed of the river Ternin, on a bitterly cold day, mounted on his
+spirited little Cocote, who showed quite a martial mettle, and may well
+have felt proud of leading a number of great cavalry horses. She took no
+harm from her cold bath, but her master, whose legs had been in the icy
+water (on account of her small height) up to the thighs, was not so
+fortunate: he caught a serious chill, accompanied with fever and pains,
+which confined him to the house over a week. He mentions in the book our
+anxiety when the spy mania was at its height, and the workmen had almost
+decided to attack us in a body, but he refrains from detailing how, day
+after day, when the "hands" congregated in the village inns after dinner
+in the twilight, we used to take our children by the hand and pass, with
+hearts in anguish for their safety, but with as confident a countenance
+as we could command, before their infuriated groups; never knowing
+whether some fatal blow would not be dealt from the next group or the
+one following. The men stood on the door-steps, or in the very middle of
+the road, awaiting us with lowering brows and sullen looks of suspicion,
+when with sinking hearts and placid faces we stopped to say a few words
+to one of our _present_ enemies to whom we had formerly rendered some
+help in illness or destitution. The truth is, they generally looked
+somewhat ashamed on such occasions, and always answered politely, but
+without the frank and pleased looks of other days, when they were proud
+of our notice and interest; they would rather have done without it now,
+especially in the company of their fellow-conspirators against our
+safety. I dare say the innocent unconcern of our children, who laughed
+and played freely in their happy ignorance of danger, proved our best
+safeguard, but still every night after reaching home we could not help
+thinking--"How will it be to-morrow?"
+
+Just at the beginning of the hostilities, my husband had deprecated the
+rashness of the French people, which was blinding them to the unprepared
+state of their army, and to its numerical inferiority when compared with
+the German force. But when he saw that, although the King of Prussia had
+said that the war was not directed against the French people, he was
+still carrying it on unmercifully after the fall of Napoleon III., his
+sympathies with the invaded nation grew warmer every day, and he did all
+that was in his power to spare from invasion that part of the country
+where we lived, and which we knew so well. He put himself in
+communication with General Bordone,--Garibaldi's aide-de-camp (Garibaldi
+himself being very ill at that time),--and explained how Autun might be
+surprised by roads which had been left totally unguarded. He made a
+careful map of the country about us for Garibaldi, and shortly after,
+outposts were placed according to his directions, so as to prevent the
+enemy from reaching Autun by these parts, without resistance.
+
+He used to go to Autun with Cocote almost every night for news, and met
+there with Garibaldian officers whom he often drove to inspect the
+outposts, and they gave him the password for the sentinels on his way
+home. One night, however, he had remained even later than usual, having
+taken an officer to a very distant outpost, and when he reached the road
+leading to La Tuilerie, the password had been changed, and he was
+detained in spite of all he could say to be allowed to proceed on his
+way. He would have submitted easily to the discomfort of a few hours in
+the guard-room had it not been that he realized how anxious I must be,
+and when he heard the order of march given to a patrol, he asked to be
+allowed to join it as it was going his way, observing that the soldiers
+would have the power of shooting him if he attempted to run away.
+
+The permission was granted, and he set off on foot, in the midst of the
+patrol, followed by his dog, Cocote having been left at the inn.
+
+It was freezing hard, and the snow lay deep on the ground; the march was
+a silent one--the men having been forbidden to talk--and it was a
+miracle that Gilbert's dog escaped with its life, for every time it
+barked or growled it was threatened with instant death. His master,
+however, artfully represented that in case enemies were hidden in the
+ditches or behind the hedges bordering the road, "Tom" would soon
+dislodge them and help in their capture. This seemed to pacify the men,
+together with the prospect (no less artfully held out) of a glass of rum
+each when they reached La Tuilerie.
+
+It was a weary march for Gilbert and an anxious watch for me, and as
+soon as I heard the joyful bark of our dog announcing his master's
+return, I hastened downstairs and made a great blaze for the half-frozen
+patrol and its prisoner, and served to them all some hot grog which was
+duly appreciated.
+
+I have no doubt it seemed hard to the poor soldiers to leave the seats
+by the leaping flames to resume their slippery march in the creaking
+snow, but they did it promptly enough, somewhat cheered by the renewed
+warmth they were carrying away with them.
+
+Mr. Hamerton has described in "Round my House" how he watched the
+battle which took place at Autun, from our garret window. With the naked
+eye we could only see the dark lines of soldiers without being able to
+follow their strategical movements; but to my husband, with the help of
+his telescope, every incident was instantly revealed, and he
+communicated them to us in succession as they occurred.
+
+It is needless to say what a relief we experienced when we heard that
+the enemy was falling back--ever so slightly. Then every one of us,
+women and children, wanted to look through the telescope, and for once I
+_did_ see in it, and hailed with heartfelt thanksgivings, the scarcely
+perceptible retreating movement of the Germans.
+
+At that moment the light of day was fading fast, and in the twilight I
+could just see my husband turning towards our awestruck children and
+saying to them: "I am certain that you will never forget this day, and
+what a horrible thing a war is."
+
+And they answered, "Oh! never!"
+
+Despite these painful preoccupations, Mr. Hamerton had prepared the
+"Etcher's Handbook" and its illustrations, and was writing a series of
+articles on the "Characters of Balzac" for the "Saturday Review." To
+save time I read to him "Le Père Goriot," "Eugénie Grandet," "Ursule
+Mirouet," "Les Parents Pauvres," "La Cousine Bette," etc. Mr. Harwood
+approved of the series, but although my husband admired Balzac's talent
+greatly, he disliked the choice of his subjects in general, and
+complained to me of the desponding state of mind they produced in him;
+he called it "withering" sometimes. In consequence he became convinced
+that it was not a good study--mentally--for him, and rightly abandoned
+the series, for it was of importance that he should be in the healthiest
+mental condition to write the "Intellectual Life," the form of which was
+giving him a great deal of trouble. He had already begun it twice over,
+and each time had read to me the preliminary chapters, without giving to
+my expectant interest entire satisfaction. He had had the plan of the
+book in contemplation for years, and the gathered materials were rich
+and ready, but the definite form had not yet been found. He was in no
+way discouraged by repeated failures, and told me he "was sure to grasp
+it sometime," only he grew excited in the struggle. The prudent rule
+which forbade work at night had been cast aside, and it was about two
+o'clock in the morning when I was awakened to listen to the first
+chapters of the "Intellectual Life," as they now remain. I was very
+happy to be able to praise them unreservedly: hitherto my part had been
+but a sorry one. I could only say, "I don't think this is the best
+possible form," without suggesting what the best form ought to be; but
+now I felt sure it answered exactly to my expectations, and my husband
+rejoiced that "he had hit it at last."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+1870-1872.
+
+Landscape-painting.--Letters of Mr. Peter Graham, R. A.--Incidents of
+the war time.--"The Intellectual Life."--"The Etcher's Handbook."
+
+An American clergyman, Mr. Powers, after reading Mr. Hamerton's works,
+had become one of his most fervent admirers, and there came to be a
+regular correspondence between them. Mr. Powers used to gather all the
+information he could about the progress of his friend's reputation in
+the United States--newspaper articles, criticisms, encomiums, notes,
+etc., and to send them to Pré-Charmoy. He was a great deal more
+sensitive to strictures on my husband than the victim himself; and I see
+in the letter-book of 1870 this entry: "April 28. Powers. To console his
+mind about the article on me."
+
+Now Mr. Powers longed to see some pictures from the hand of Mr.
+Hamerton, and had so often expressed this wish, that the artist, out of
+gratitude for the constant interest shown in his work, rashly promised
+to paint two landscapes as a present. It was very characteristic that he
+did not promise one only, but two, and at a time when he was so
+overwhelmed with work that he hardly knew how to get through the most
+pressing; and still more characteristic is this other entry in the
+letter-book: "February 7, 1871. Powers. Sending him measures of his
+pictures, so that he may get frames for them."
+
+It is true that one of the pictures was begun, but before it was brought
+to completion several years were to elapse, though the pictures were
+both--at intervals--on the easel; always undergoing some change either
+of effect or of composition, even of subject, for the painter could
+never be satisfied with them. He felt that he lacked the power of
+expressing himself, and said to me: "These are not my pictures, I
+_dream_ them differently;" whilst when he had seen Mr. Peter Graham's
+"Spate in the Highlands," he exclaimed: "This is one of my
+_dream_-pictures; I should like to have painted it." Entirely devoid of
+the false pride which prevents learning from others, he had written to
+Mr. Peter Graham about what he considered his failures, and had received
+the following reply:--
+
+"With regard to what you say of yourself in your last letter, I have
+never had an opportunity of seeing a picture of yours; but I cannot
+imagine any one to fail in landscape who has the high qualifications for
+it which you obviously have--a sensitively impressionable nature, a
+strong, loving admiration for whatever in heaven or earth is beautiful
+or grand in form, color, or effect. Then you have the faculty of
+observation, without which a mind, however sensitive to the impressions
+of nature, will not be able to do anything, will be passive, not active.
+The mechanical difficulties of our art must be to some extent overcome
+before our thoughts and intentions can be realized and our impressions
+conveyed to others. After all, every artist feels that his work is a
+failure, the success of rendering what he wishes is so exceedingly
+limited in his mind. I am talking of what you know as well as I do; but
+my only reason is that you spoke of yourself as failing in landscape,
+'probably from want of natural ability,' which I cannot believe. My
+method of getting memoranda, which you inquire about, is to study as
+closely as I can; to watch and observe and make notes and drawings, also
+studies in color, and patient groping after what I wish to learn, are my
+only methods. I feel unable to enter into details, so much would need be
+said on the subject. I believe I am much indebted to my long education
+as a figure-painter for any little ability I may have in rendering the
+material of nature. I was a figure-painter many years before I touched
+landscape. Continued study from the antique and painting from the nude
+in a life-class give, or ought to give, an acquaintance with light and
+shadow which to a landscape-painter is invaluable--nature affects our
+feelings so much in landscape by light and shadow. In Edinburgh we had a
+long gallery with windows from the roof at intervals, and the statues
+were arranged there; a splendid collection. I shall never forget the
+exquisite beauty of the middle tint, or overshadowing, which the statues
+had that were placed between the windows; those which were immediately
+underneath them were of course in a blaze of light, and we had all
+gradations of light, middle-tint, and shadow. When I came to study
+clouds and skies, I recognized the enchantment of effect to be caused by
+the same old laws of light I had tried to get acquainted with at the
+Academy. Of course color adds immensely to the difficulty of sky
+painting, and the amount of groping in the study of gray, blue, etc., is
+very disheartening. I need not longer weary you, however, on this
+subject, but shall just again say that I really see no reason why you
+should not succeed in landscape-painting if such be your wish, and
+therefore cannot think of you as having failed."
+
+Then, in a subsequent letter, I find this passage:--
+
+"Since receiving your last letter I have read, and with great pleasure,
+your 'Painter's Camp in the Highlands.' I am stronger than ever in the
+belief that it is merely from your never having devoted the necessary
+amount of time to art in the right direction that unqualified success
+has not been attained by you as an artist. I think it unfortunate that
+you 'learned painting with a clever landscape-painter.' You probably far
+excelled him in sympathy with nature, power of observation, and all the
+gifts especially required for a landscape-painter. What you really
+needed, study under a figure-painter, or better still at an Academy,
+would have given you. Landscape nature is too complicated to be a good
+school to acquire the mastery over the mechanical difficulties in art. I
+don't agree with you that you ought to have filled your notebooks with
+memoranda from nature instead of painting pictures at Loch Awe. Your
+experience there was very valuable. A notebook memorandum from nature is
+of little or no use for a picture in oil without previous study of
+similar subjects or effects in the same vehicle. You ask my opinion of
+your present method of study. I think it excellent, and would make only
+two suggestions. You might safely discontinue the study of botany and
+dissection of plants; there is not the slightest fear of a want of truth
+in your pictures, and the time might be devoted to some more pressing
+work. Then I think you might paint the human figure with much profit,
+even to landscape-painting and writing on art."
+
+The reader may have remarked that Mr. Hamerton had frequently painted
+from a model at Pré-Charmoy, though not from the nude, for he was of
+opinion that this kind of study was no great help to him at this stage,
+though it might have been earlier.
+
+A more serious impediment than technical difficulties soon stopped all
+progress with Mr. Powers' pictures. It was a recurrence of the cerebral
+excitement, almost in a chronic form. My husband had made a plan for
+issuing--separately--proofs of the etchings appearing in the
+"Portfolio;" but he was so ill that he could not hold a pen; and to
+explain the details of this plan to Mr. Seeley I acted as amanuensis
+under his dictation. His aunt was very much grieved to hear of this
+illness, and wrote:--
+
+"Suppose you tried a ten or twenty miles' journey by train, in some
+direction whence you could return by water or conveyance if necessary. I
+assure you I can do valiant things with impunity that the very thinking
+of them would have made me ill about thirteen months ago."
+
+He did not need courage to be preached to him, he had a sufficient store
+of it; indeed, his nervousness had nothing to do with fear: he used to
+drive or ride Cocote after she had been running away, upsetting the
+carriage and breaking the harness, till she was subdued again into
+docility. Once at Dieppe, in a storm, he had volunteered to steer a
+lifeboat which was making for a ship in distress, but his services had
+been refused when it was known that he had a family. He rode fearlessly
+one of the high, dangerous bicycles of that time, about which Aunt Susan
+humorously said in one of her letters that "they often prove rather
+restive, and are given to, or seized with, an inclination to butting the
+walls, and also of lazily lying down on the road over which they ought
+to be almost imperceptibly passing along." And during the war he kindly
+received, fed, and helped several _francs-tireurs_ and stray French
+soldiers, perfectly aware that he was risking his life in case the
+Prussians came near; he even conveyed one of them to the Garibaldian
+outposts in his carriage. Of his own accord he attempted time after time
+to get the better of this peculiar nervousness, but it had lately
+increased to such a point that, for a time, when we reached Autun in the
+carriage and came _in sight_ of the railway bridge, he had to give me
+the reins, jump down, and go back to wait for my return outside the
+town; for I could not go with him, having to take our boys to the
+college. I never knew how I might find him when we met again. Unlike the
+majority of patients, who make the most of their ailments to excite
+sympathy, he considerately let me know immediately of the slightest
+improvement, and kept repeating: "It will soon be over now; don't
+distress yourself."
+
+I believe that the great excitement and anxiety of the wartime had
+caused the recurrence of the ailment, and no wonder, for we knew several
+cases of mental derangement in the small circle of our acquaintances,
+even amongst peasants, who are far from imaginative or nervous. In
+Gilbert's case there were only too many reasons for anxiety, besides the
+uncertainty of his situation. His brother-in-law, M. Pelletier, then
+Économe of the Lycée at Vendôme, was in the thick of the strife, and his
+post was not unattended with danger--though the Lycée had become an
+International Ambulance. It was sometimes hard for him to restrain his
+indignation before the insolence and partiality of the victors: once,
+for instance, he appealed to the general in command to obtain for the
+French wounded an equal portion of the bread given to the Prussians; but
+he was pushed by the shoulder to an open window, from which the French
+army could be seen, and the general exclaimed--pointing to the soldiers
+in the distance: "Vous n'aurez rien, rien! tant que nous ne les aurons
+pas battus!... allez!..."
+
+Another time M. Pelletier had to go to Château Renaud to fetch several
+things sorely wanted at the ambulance. It was forbidden by the enemy,
+under penalty of death, to carry any letters out of the city, which they
+had declared in a state of siege; but M. Pelletier could not find in his
+heart to refuse a few from desolate mothers and wives, and these letters
+were carefully sewn up at night, by his wife, in the lining of his
+overcoat. Who betrayed him?... No one knows, but just as he was about to
+descend the stairs, some one rapidly brushed past, whispering hurriedly,
+"Leave that coat behind." He understood, went back to his apartment,
+threw the coat to his terrified wife, merely saying "Burn," and had only
+time to seize another great-coat hanging in the passage and rush to the
+omnibus waiting with the escort. He was, however, stopped by a Prussian
+officer, who said: "You sha'n't go--you are carrying letters, and you
+know that you have put yourself in the way of being shot." The coat was
+taken from him _and the lining cut open_. On finding nothing, the
+officer said, with a dry smile: "You have been warned; but let it be a
+lesson to you,--you might not escape so easily another time."
+
+My brother Charles, despite his being the only son of a widow and
+_soutien de famille_, had been enlisted, and his letters did not always
+reach their destination, though his regiment was at Chagny, not far from
+Autun, and for a while Mr. Hamerton had lost all traces of his
+mother-in-law. Madame Gindriez had gone to Vendôme to be near her
+younger daughter, Madame Pelletier, in the hope of keeping clear of the
+bloody conflict, but found herself in the very centre of it after the
+occupation of Vendôme by Prince Frederick Charles, and was thus shut off
+from all news of her son. After vainly attempting to get a safe-conduct
+during the hostilities, she at last succeeded after the armistice, and
+left the town to go to Tours, where she had friends willing to receive
+her, and where she expected to hear from her son. The omnibus in which
+she travelled was escorted by Bismarck's White Cuirassiers, pistol in
+hand, till it reached Château Renaud. In the night, Madame Gindriez was
+awakened by loud rappings at her bedroom door, and ordered to give up
+her room to some Prussian sergeants who had come back from an
+expedition. She dressed quickly and went to the kitchen--the only place
+in the hotel free from soldiers--to await the morning as she best could.
+Her breakfast was served upon a small table, apart from the long one in
+the centre of the room, which was reserved for the German officers. They
+were very much elated, it seemed, by the armistice, thinking that it
+might lead ultimately to a peace, for which they openly expressed their
+desire, ordering champagne, clinking their glasses together, and
+politely offering one to Madame Gindriez with the words: "You won't
+refuse to drink with us _à la paix_, Madame?" "À la paix, soit," she
+courageously answered; "mais sans cession de territoire." They did not
+insist.
+
+It may be easily surmised that such tidings, reaching my husband from
+time to time, kept him in an anxious state far from beneficial to his
+health. After the armistice, I find a great many entries in the
+letter-book of letters inquiring about friends, and how they had fared
+during this terrible war-time. Despite this chronic state of anxiety,
+Mr. Hamerton was writing "The Intellectual Life," and had offered it for
+publication in America to Messrs. Roberts Brothers. They answered:--
+
+"We liked the title and the plan of your new work, as outlined by you,
+and presuming it will be larger than 'Thoughts about Art,' we will give
+you fifty pounds outright for the early copy, or we shall allow you a
+percentage on it, after the first thousand are sold, of ten per cent, on
+the retail price, provided we are not interfered with by competing
+editions."
+
+The author had the satisfaction of receiving another letter from Roberts
+Brothers, dated July 21, 1871, in which this passage occurs: "'Thoughts
+about Art' is quite popular; you have many very dear friends in this
+country, and the number is increasing."
+
+In September of the same year Mr. Haden wrote, in reference to the
+projected "Etcher's Handbook":--
+
+"Your new processes interest me immensely, and I am glad you are going
+to give us a handbook on the whole subject. Let it be concise, and even
+dogmatic, for you have to speak _ex cathedrâ_ on the matter, and people
+prefer to be told what to do to being reasoned into it."
+
+Ever anxious to improve himself, my husband had asked Mr. Lewes to
+advise him about his reading preparatory to the new book he had begun to
+write on the Intellectual Life. Here is the answer:--
+
+"THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PARK.
+
+"_Nov_. 2, 1871.
+
+"MY DEAR HAMERTON,--We so often speak of you and your wife, and were so
+very anxious about you during the war, that we have asked right and left
+for news of you, and were delighted at last to get such good news of you
+both.
+
+"As to the books to be suggested for your work, partly the fact that no
+one can really suggest food for another, partly the fact that I don't
+clearly understand the nature of your work--these perhaps make a good
+excuse if the following list is worthless. It is all I have been able to
+gather together.
+
+  "Littré, 'Vie d'Auguste Comte.'
+  St. Hilaire, 'Vie et travaux de Geoffroy St. Hilaire.'
+  Gassendi, 'Vita Tychonis Brahei, Copernici.'
+  Bertrand, 'Fondateurs de l'Astronomie Moderne.'
+  Morley, 'Life of Palissy' (passionate devotion to research).
+  Morley, 'Life of Cardan.'
+  Berti, 'Vita di Giordano Bruno.'
+  Bartholmess, 'Vie de Jordano Bruno.'
+  Muir's 'Life of Mahomet.'
+  Stanley's 'Life of Arnold.'
+  Mazzuchelli, 'Vita di Archimede.'
+  Blot's 'Life of Newton.'
+  Drinkwater's 'Kepler and Galileo.'
+
+"All these are first-rate, especially the two last, published by the
+Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge, together with some
+others, under the title of 'Lives of Eminent Persons.'
+
+"The 'Biographie Universelle' will give you, no doubt, references as to
+the best works under each head.
+
+"We did not go abroad this year, but buried ourselves in absolute
+solitude in Surrey--near Haslemere, if you know the lovely region; and
+there I worked like a man going in for the Senior Wranglership, and Mrs.
+Lewes, who was ailing most of the time, went on with her new work. This
+work, by the way, is a panorama of provincial life, to be published in
+eight parts, on alternative months, making four very thick vols. when
+complete. It is a new experiment in publishing. While she was at her
+art, I was at the higher mathematics, seduced into those regions by some
+considerations affecting my personal work. The solitude and the work
+together were perfectly blissful. Except Tennyson, who came twice to
+read his poems to us, we saw no one.
+
+"No sooner did we return home than Mrs. Lewes, who had been incubating
+an attack, _hatched_ it--and for five weeks she was laid up, getting
+horribly thin and weak. But now she is herself again (thinner self) and
+at work.
+
+"She begs me to remember her most kindly to you and to Mrs. Hamerton.
+
+"Ever yours truly,
+
+"G. H. LEWES."
+
+Almost in every letter that my husband received from Mr. Lewes, he had
+this confirmation of what George Eliot had told him about the heavy
+penalty in health attending or following her labors.
+
+Mr. Lewes had not mentioned his lives of Goethe and Aristotle, but they
+were ordered with the other books he had recommended, and I began to
+read them aloud to my husband whilst he was etching the plates for an
+illustrated edition of the "Painter's Camp," that he had always hoped to
+see accepted by Mr. Macmillan.
+
+M. Pelletier had been promoted from Vendôme to Lons-le-Saunier, and
+after spending a month of the vacation at our house with his wife and
+three children, now invited his host and family to go back with him for
+the remainder of the holidays. However, the boys only went, for their
+father was incapacitated for railway travelling, and the little girl May
+could not be persuaded to leave her parents, even to go with her cousins
+and her Aunt Caroline, whom she so much loved.
+
+The nervous state into which my husband had been thrown back had
+produced a morbid sensitiveness to noise and to the sight of movement
+which isolated him more and more, even from his nearest friends, and
+during these last vacations he had seldom been able to take _déjeuner_
+with us. In consequence he had a little hut erected near the river, _au
+buisson Vincent_, whither he retired almost daily, and to which I took
+or sent him his lunch; there he read, wrote, or sketched, surrounded
+only by silent and motionless objects. This morbid sensitiveness
+decreased with the light of day, and when the sun had set we generally
+joined him to admire the beauty of the after-glow fading slowly into
+twilight in the summer evenings. He always dined with us all, and after
+dinner he either listened to music, of which he was very fond, or even
+played a little himself on the violin, or walked out in company. We made
+quite a little procession on the road now,--six children romping about,
+my sister and her husband, my mother and my brother Charles, the master
+of the house and myself; and since it had transpired that my husband was
+not so well, some of his friends at Autun or in the neighborhood came as
+often as they could to make him feel less out of the world. He has said
+himself: "The intellectual life is sometimes a fearfully solitary one.
+Unless he lives in a great capital the man devoted to that life is more
+than other men liable to suffer from isolation, to feel utterly alone
+beneath the deafness of space and the silence of the stars. Give him one
+friend who can understand him, who will not leave him, who will always
+be accessible by day and night,--one friend, one kindly listener, just
+one,--and the whole universe is changed." In his case the friendly and
+intelligent intercourse kept up with his wife's relatives alleviated in
+a great measure the sense of isolation.
+
+The life in the hut, together with the botanical studies and the
+formation of the herbarium, suggested the plan of the "Sylvan Year," and
+thereby lent additional interest to these pursuits, though at that time
+his main work was the prosecution of "The Intellectual Life," now that
+he had finished the correction of the handbook on etching. [Footnote:
+Contributed to the "Portfolio," and afterwards published separately.]
+This last work brought him many pleasant letters from brother artists,
+but I shall only quote what Mr. Samuel Palmer said about it, because it
+was his praise, and that of Mr. Seymour Haden, which gave the author the
+greatest satisfaction, coming from authorities on the subject.
+
+"REDHILL. _January_, 1872.
+
+"DEAR MR. HAMERTON,--Had I thanked you earlier for your 'handbook,'
+which came long ago, I could not have thanked you so much: for it is the
+test of good books, as of good pictures, that they improve with
+acquaintance. I had a little 'Milton' bound with brass corners, that I
+might carry it always in my waistcoat-pocket--after doing this for
+twenty years it was all the fresher for its portage. Your invention of
+the positive process is equally useful and elegant; useful because the
+reverse method lessens the pleasure of work, elegant because the
+materials are delicate and the process cleanly and expeditious."
+
+In this letter Mr. Palmer expressed his desire to publish a translation
+of Virgil's "Eclogues" in verse, and asked for his correspondent's
+advice about it. Another source of satisfaction to Gilbert was the
+increasing success of his works in America. In January, 1872, he had a
+letter from Roberts Brothers, in which they said:--
+
+"We have mailed you a copy of 'The Unknown River.' It has proved a
+success, and has been generally admired. It is a charming book, and we
+should like to bring out a popular edition. 'Thoughts about Art' is
+selling better than we expected--it has given a start to the 'Painter's
+Camp,' which we are now printing a second edition of.
+
+"We think you are getting to be well known and appreciated in this
+country."
+
+Enclosed in the letter was a remittance for £49 8_s_., which proves that
+an author has need of a good many successes to pay his way; still, these
+remittances from America made a difference in Mr. Hamerton's
+circumstances, and were exclusively devoted to the education of his
+boys. Though unambitious, he was not indifferent to the increase in his
+reputation, for he had written in "The Intellectual Life," "Fame is
+dearer to the human heart than wealth itself." He certainly cared
+infinitely and incomparably more for his reputation--such as he wished
+it to be, pure, dignified, and honored--than for wealth; his only desire
+about money, often expressed, was "not to have to think about it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+1873-1875.
+
+Popularity of "The Intellectual Life."--Love of animals.--English
+visitors.--Technical notes.--Sir F. Seymour Haden.--Attempts to resume
+railway-travelling.
+
+The dedication of "The Intellectual Life" was a perfect surprise to me
+when I first opened my presentation copy: the secret had been well kept.
+I felt grateful and honored to be thus publicly associated by my husband
+in his work, though my share had been but humble and infinitesimal--more
+sympathetic than active, more encouraging than laborious. Our common
+dream had been to be as little separated as possible, and he had
+attempted soon after our marriage to rouse in me some literary ambition,
+and to direct my beginnings. I first reviewed French books for "The
+Reader," and he was kind enough to correct everything I wrote; then he
+induced me to try my hand at a short novel, reminding me humorously that
+some of my father's friends used to call me "Little Bluestocking." He
+took a great deal of trouble to find a publisher for my second novel,
+and was quite disappointed to fail. He wrote to encourage me to
+persevere:--
+
+"The reviews of your first novel have all been favorable enough, but the
+publishers told me they had _never_ published a one-volume novel that
+had succeeded, and that they had now made up their minds _never_ to
+publish another, no matter who wrote it. I rather think they would
+publish your new novel, but I earnestly recommend you to try ... _I am
+quite sure_ you have something in you, but you want wider culture,
+better reading, and more of it, and the difficulty about household
+matters is for the present in your way, though if I go on as I am doing
+now we will get you out of that."
+
+A copy of "The Intellectual Life" was sent to Aunt Susan, who received
+it just as she was going to visit her sister, Mrs. Hinde, whom she
+found in failing health, and who died shortly after. It was a new grief
+for my husband, to whom she had always been very kind. As soon as
+tranquillity was re-established in France, after the war and Commune,
+Mr. Hamerton had renewed a regular correspondence with his friends, and,
+being greatly interested in the technique of the fine arts, consulted
+those friends whose experience was most to be relied upon. Mr. Wyld's
+letters are full of explanation about his own practice, as well as that
+of Decamps, Horace Vernet, Delaroche, and Delacroix. In one of them I
+find this interesting passage:--
+
+"I very much doubt if the talent of coloring can be _learnt_. I think it
+is a gift like an ear for music, which if not born with you can never be
+perfectly acquired (I, for instance, _I am sure_, could never have
+_perfectly_ tuned a violin). Doubtless if the faculty exists
+intuitively, it may be perfected, or at all events much improved by
+study and practice, but he that has it not from birth, _I_ think, can
+never acquire it."
+
+Mr. S. Palmer, in a long letter also devoted to the technical part of
+painting and etching, turns to literature to say:--
+
+"My pleasure in hearing of the success of 'The Intellectual Life' is
+qualified only by the comparative apathy of the English. Of such a book
+one edition here to three in America is something to be ashamed of."
+
+The sale of the book was rapid, both in England and in America, but the
+American sale continued to be incomparably the larger. As early as
+February, 1874, Roberts Brothers wrote:--
+
+"'The Intellectual Life' is a complete literary success in America; it
+has been the means of making you almost a household god in the most
+refined circles. We are now selling the fifth thousand. Our supply of
+the English 'Chapters on Animals' [Footnote: Contributed to the
+"Portfolio," and afterwards published separately.] is all sold, and we
+are now stereotyping the book. We hope to sell a good many."
+
+The motive which prompted my husband to write these "chapters" was
+purely his love and pity for all dumb creatures. He never could do
+without a dog--and the dog was always the favorite, being even preferred
+to the saddle-horse; and when out of compassion for its infirmities it
+had to be out of pain, his master never shirked the painful duty, but
+performed it himself as mercifully as he could. One of his dogs, which
+had long been treated for cancer, was at last chloroformed to death, his
+master helping the veterinary surgeon all the time. Another, who became
+suddenly rabid, and could not be prevented from entering the house, to
+the imminent peril of us all, he met and stunned at a blow with a log of
+wood, having no weapon ready. Poor Cocote was not sold when she became
+useless, but allowed to divide her old age peacefully between the
+freedom of the pasturage and the comfort and plenty of the stable, till
+her master asked the best shot of the place (a poacher) to assist him in
+firing a volley, which quickly put an end to her life, as she was
+unsuspectingly coming out of the field. And he only came to this
+decision when we left the country. Out of love or pity my husband was
+interested in all animals, and I believe that animals were instinctively
+aware of it. Dogs always sought his caresses; he used to remove _with
+his hands_ toads from the dangers of the road, and they did not seem
+afraid. He never was stung by bees, though he often placed his hand flat
+in front of the opening in the hive, so that they were obliged to alight
+upon it before entering. Of the rat only he had a nervous horror, but it
+remained unconquerable; he disliked the sight of one, and if he met one
+accidentally, he always experienced a disagreeable shock. When he tried
+to find out the reason, he was inclined to attribute it to the
+disquieting rapidity and restlessness of its movements.
+
+In 1874 Mr. Hamerton began to write for the "International Review,"
+principally on the fine arts, and continued his contributions till 1880.
+Roberts Brothers expressed a wish that he would reserve the publications
+in book form to their firm, which had done so much for his reputation.
+
+At the beginning of April he heard from Boston that they were printing
+the sixth thousand of the "Intellectual Life," and had written to
+Messrs. Macmillan that they were willing to unite in bringing out a new
+edition of "Etching and Etchers." In October the seventh thousand of the
+"Intellectual Life" was being printed; the second edition of "Chapters
+on Animals" and the second of "Thoughts about Art" were about half gone,
+and "A Painter's Camp" was going off quite freely. About the last
+Roberts Brothers added: "This book ought to sell better. We have reason
+to congratulate ourselves that it so fascinated us that we ventured to
+republish it. We are Nature lovers, and delight to keep the company of
+one who loves her and is able to tell of it as you can."
+
+Of course we cheered Aunt Susan with the list of these successes, and
+she answered: "I wish, my dear P. G., that all your admirers would be as
+generous with their money as they are with their flattery, for flattery
+is not a commodity to supply a family with means of subsistence." In the
+same letter she told of Mr. Hinde's death and funeral, and of her hopes
+of seeing her nephew, Ben Hinde, succeed to his father's living.
+
+Early in 1874 Mr. Hamerton had the pleasure of becoming personally
+acquainted with one of the most distinguished of the contributors to the
+"Portfolio,"--Mr. Sidney Colvin, who now came to pay a visit to the
+editor, after nursing his friend R. L. Stevenson through one of his
+dangerous attacks of illness. My husband esteemed highly Mr. Colvin's
+knowledge and acquirements. During his short stay this esteem expanded
+into personal regard, and in after years, whenever a meeting with him
+was possible, it invariably afforded gratification.
+
+In the summer our house was turned into a sort of temporary hospital by
+an epidemic of measles brought to it by the boys from their college.
+Having had it in my youth, I luckily was spared to nurse in succession
+the three children and my husband, whose case was by far the most
+serious. However, he would not take to his bed, but remained in his
+study with a good fire at night, sleeping upon an ottoman or in an
+arm-chair, wrapped up in his monk's dress, and the head covered with an
+Algerian chechia. In due course he got through the distemper without
+accident, but for fear of chills he continued to wear the chechia and
+monk's dress in the house some time after his recovery, and he was so
+discovered by Mr. and Mrs. Mark Pattison when they paid us an unexpected
+visit. It happened thus. I had driven my sister and her youngest boy to
+Autun, where he had been invited to stay a few days at his godmother's,
+and as we alighted in the courtyard of the hotel I was told that an
+English gentleman and his wife had ordered an omnibus to call upon Mr.
+Hamerton, and were on the point of starting. On learning that I was at
+the hotel they came to propose that I should go back to La Tuilerie with
+them, which proposition I accepted with pleasure. I left the
+pony-carriage, told my sister that I would fetch her in the evening, and
+drove off with Mr. and Mrs. Pattison, the latter very much interested by
+what I could point out to her on the way,--the Temple of Janus, the
+Roman archways, the double walls of the town, and Mont Beuvray.
+
+The drive from Autun to La Tuilerie is a short one, and we soon arrived
+at the garden gate. As we stopped, the study window was quickly, almost
+violently, thrown open, my husband's anxious face appeared through it,
+and he shouted to the bewildered coachman, "What has happened?" At the
+sight of an omnibus he had been afraid of an accident (not at all
+unusual with Cocote's tendency to take fright, run away, and upset
+carriage and all), and had fancied me hurt, and brought back laid upon
+the cushioned seat. But as soon as he saw me safe and sound, and noticed
+my companions, he hastened down to receive his visitors. We spent the
+afternoon very pleasantly, but as it was getting cooler and a little
+damp after sunset, my husband, who was not fully recovered, had to
+excuse himself from accompanying Mr. and Mrs. Pattison back to Autun,
+and to let me go instead. I had the pleasure of a second meeting with
+them on the following morning at the hotel, when we took leave of each
+other.
+
+I have always remembered an incident in connection with this visit that
+Mr. and Mrs. Pattison never knew of. There had been in our entrance hall
+for the last four months at least, a manuscript notice written very
+legibly by Mr. Hamerton, and carefully pasted up with his own hands, in
+a very good light by the side of the drawing-room door, to this effect:
+"English visitors to this house are earnestly requested not to stay
+after seven o'clock p.m. if not invited to dine; and when invited to
+dine, not to consider themselves as entitled to the use of a bedroom,
+unless particularly requested to remain."
+
+This had been done in a moment of legitimate anger and vexation (of
+course without consulting me), and I had thought it the best policy to
+ignore it for some time--particularly during winter, when it was put up,
+for there was little probability of English visitors at that time. As to
+French visitors, it was unlikely that they could make out its meaning,
+and if they did, as it did not concern them, they would consider it as a
+humorous _boutade_. After a fortnight, however, I begged my husband to
+remove the "notice;" but his anger had not cooled a bit, and he said in
+a tone that I knew to admit of no opposition that the "notice" was meant
+to remain there _permanently_. And there it remained, at first
+partially, and by degrees almost entirely, covered up by the shawls or
+mantles that I artfully spread as far as possible over the obnoxious
+manuscript, till, emboldened by non-interference, and under pretext that
+the wall-paper about the door was soiled, I got leave to have a new
+piece hung, and took care to have it laid _over_ the notice. This took
+place on the very day that Mr. and Mrs. Pattison paid their friendly
+visit.
+
+I must now explain the cause of my husband's temporary ukase. As I have
+said before, M. Bulliot, President of the Société Eduenne, was a friend
+of his, and on one occasion, a Scotchman having applied to him for
+permission to see a precious book kept in the archives of the learned
+society, M. Bulliot, finding him well-bred and interesting, took the
+trouble of bringing him to La Tuilerie, in the hope that Mr. Hamerton
+and Mr. W---- would derive pleasure from the meeting. It was so, and Mr.
+W----'s researches at Autun requiring a few days only, he was invited to
+dinner for the morrow. He duly arrived and dined, but as he gave no sign
+of going away, I asked him a little before ten if he was a good walker,
+as the hotels at Autun closed at eleven. He merely answered, "No
+matter." Looking already like an old man, and weak besides, I felt
+certain that he could not possibly reach the town in time for a bed, and
+I quietly retired to mine. My husband told me in the morning that he had
+shown Mr. W---- to the spare room, unwilling to turn an old man out in
+the cold and mist of an early morning. I foresaw a repetition of what
+had happened at Pré-Charmoy. And so it proved, for Mr. W---- quartered
+himself upon us for two days, and it is impossible to say how much
+longer he would have stayed if my husband had not at last insisted
+peremptorily on driving him back to Autun.
+
+On reaching home Gilbert immediately went up to his study to write his
+"Notice to English visitors," and without saying a word securely pasted
+it up at the entrance. A few days later he heard from the proprietor of
+the Hótel de la Poste, that before leaving Mr. W---- had said, "Mr.
+Hamerton will settle the bill."
+
+It was a good thing for my husband that he gave so much consideration to
+the bringing up of his children, for indirectly he derived from it some
+benefit to his own health; for instance, not wishing them to be always
+confined to college, he used often to drive them to and from Autun; and
+in the summer, as he came back, he would just stop the pony for a few
+minutes at our gate to pick up the rest of the family and a hamper, then
+take us to a cool and shady dell divided from a little wood by the river
+Vesvre--the coldest water I ever bathed in; and as soon as Cocote was
+taken out of harness and left in the enjoyment of the fresh grass, we
+all tumbled into the icy water, and swam till our appetites were
+thoroughly sharpened for a hearty dinner in the lingering twilight.
+
+The children were also taken by their father to the hills, where they
+climbed about whilst he sketched; his little daughter Mary liked nothing
+better than to spend a day "au Pommoy" above the beautiful valley of the
+Canche, where the parents of our servant-girl lived. They were farmers
+in a very humble way, but they offered us heartily the little they
+possessed,--the new-laid eggs, the clotted cream, which the children
+delighted in, thickly spread upon black bread, and which the mother
+prepared in perfection; also frothy goat's milk, with walnuts and
+chestnuts in their season. Cocote, too, had free access to the dainty
+grass and crystal spring of their pasturage in the hollow behind the
+cottage. Whilst my husband painted and I read to him, we watched the
+children, who, bare-footed and bare-legged, turned up the stones in the
+river-bed seeking for trout and crayfish. In the course of these
+pleasant excursions Gilbert entered into conversation with every one he
+met--farmers, shepherdesses, cow-boys, and even beggars, learning what
+he could of their lives and thoughts, sympathizing with their labors and
+their wants, often conveying useful information to their minds,
+frequently on politics, sometimes on geography or science. He tried to
+explain to them the railways and telegraph, for many of the dwellers in
+these hilly regions had never seen a railroad, especially the old folk,
+who could no longer walk any great distance, and remembered Autun only
+as it was in the time of the diligences. He liked the polite,
+deferential manners of the French peasants and their quiet dignity; and
+they felt at ease with him because of his serious interest in what
+concerned them, and total absence of pride in the superiority of his
+station or learning. Wherever he went he liked to see the parish church,
+and generally found it worth his while, either artistically or
+historically. The cure was frequently to be met with, and not sorry to
+talk with a person better informed than most of his parishioners: it was
+for Gilbert another field to glean from, and on such occasions he
+generally managed to bring home a sheaf with him. It was most remarkable
+to see how well he got on with the Roman Catholic clergy, although his
+religious opinions were never hidden from them, and his attitude by no
+means conducive to hopes of conversion; but on the other hand, he was
+not aggressive, and did not turn into ridicule ceremonies or beliefs to
+which he remained a stranger. Perfectly firm in his own convictions, he
+respected those of other people, because his large sympathy understood
+the different wants of different natures, even when he had no share in
+them. He was always on visiting terms with _our_ curé (the one
+officiating at Tavernay--the nearest village to La Tuilerie), and on
+friendly terms with the Aumônier de l'Hôpital and the Aumônier de
+Collège (although the boys were not under his spiritual direction, their
+father considering it as a duty to let them choose their own religion
+when they were of age); later on l'Abbé Antoine, professor at the
+seminary, became a faithful and welcome visitor to La Tuilerie; even
+Monseigneur the Bishop of Autun gave a signal proof of his respect for
+Mr. Hamerton's character, which will be related in due course, and
+visited him afterwards so long as we remained in the Autunois.
+
+The technical difficulties of painting, which were giving my husband so
+much trouble to conquer, led him to speak not unfrequently of the
+advantages formerly afforded to students by the privilege of working in
+the same studios with their masters, and even of having some portions of
+the masters' pictures to execute under their personal and invaluable
+direction. He realized what a gain it would be, not only for beginners,
+but even for artists, to be acquainted with the best methods of the best
+artists, and at last, counting upon their well-known generosity, he
+resolved to make a general appeal to their experience. They were almost
+unanimously favorable to the idea, and furnished valuable notes, the
+substance of which was published in the "Portfolio." The letters are too
+technical, though very interesting, to be quoted here, but the eminent
+names of the writers will be a proof of the importance attached to the
+subject. I find those of Sir Frederick Leighton, Sir John Gilbert,
+Watts, Holman Hunt, Samuel Palmer, Calderon, Wyld, Dobson, Davis,
+Storey, etc., etc., in the notes still in my possession.
+
+My husband was himself in the habit of making experiments in painting
+and etching, though he deplored both the time and money so spent, and
+repeatedly resolved not to meddle any more with them; but he could not
+keep the resolution. His mind was so curious about all possible
+processes and technicalities, and his desire of perfection so great,
+that not only did he experiment in all the known processes, but invented
+new ones. Entries in the note-book like the following are of frequent
+occurrence:--
+
+"Experiments with white zinc did not succeed."
+
+"This month tried sulphur with success. I discovered also that the
+three-cornered scraper is excellent for obtaining various breadths of
+line in the background."
+
+"I made a successful experiment in sandpaper mezzotint."
+
+"M. de Fontenay and I made _crême d'argent_ very cheaply indeed."
+
+"To-day I tried experiments on grains: the grains given by the sandpaper
+and rosin. That given by the fine glass-paper was the best."
+
+"Quite determined to put a stop to all experiments, in view of
+typographic drawings."
+
+Here is an important entry, August 19, 1875:--
+
+"RESOLVED in future to confine myself exclusively to oil-painting and
+etching in all artistic work done for the public, except the designs for
+the bindings of my books, which may be done in water-colors.
+
+"RESOLVED also that there shall be as little as possible of copying and
+slavery in my artistic work, but that Etching shall be Etching, and
+Painting Painting."
+
+He had been working very hard, copying etchings for the new edition of
+"Etching and Etchers," and was thoroughly tired of it. I see in his
+diary:--
+
+"Finished my plate after Rembrandt. N.B.--Will never undertake a set of
+copies again."
+
+"Felt it a great deliverance to be rid of plates for 'Etching and
+Etchers.'"
+
+A later note:--
+
+"There is no technical difficulty for me in etching. I ought therefore
+to direct my energies against the artistic difficulties of composition,
+drawing, light and shade. Haden's 'Agamemnon' is the model for the kind
+of work I should like to be able to do in etching. Comprehensive
+sketching is the right thing."
+
+Meanwhile our boys were growing, and giving great satisfaction to their
+father by their application to and success in their studies; they always
+kept at the head of their class, and carried off a great number of
+prizes at the end of every scholastic year. The younger boy, Richard,
+evinced an early taste for the pictorial arts, and was gifted with a
+sure critical faculty and a natural talent for drawing. Although he had
+never taken regular drawing-lessons, he had often watched his father at
+work, had occasionally sketched and painted under his direction, and was
+receiving a sort of artistic education by what he saw at home of
+illustrated periodicals, engravings, and etchings sent for presentation
+or criticism. He was early tempted to try etching, and of course
+received encouragement and help; the first attempt was a success, as far
+as it went, and Mr. S. Palmer wrote about it:--
+
+"Your son's etching has given pleasure to other than 'parental eyes.'
+'What a sweet little etching,' said my wife, who saw it lying on the
+table; 'it is like an old master.' There is something touching in the
+sight of a beginner, full of curiosity and hope. My yearning is, 'O that
+he may escape the rocks on which I split--years wasted, any one of which
+would have given a first grounding in anatomy, indispensable anatomy, to
+have gone with the antique. The bones are the master-key; the marrowless
+bones are the talisman of all life and power in Art. Power seems to
+depend upon knowledge of structure; all surface upon substance; knowing
+this, and imbued with the central essence, we may venture to copy the
+appearance, perhaps even imitate it."
+
+Mr. Seeley also wrote, with sly humor: "Your boy's etching is capital.
+It would be interesting to know what processes this remarkable artist
+employs."
+
+Richard frequently expressed his intention of being a painter; but his
+father, though much pleased to notice in the boy a real tendency towards
+art, did not at all feel certain that there were in him the gifts
+indispensable to the making of an artist. I was often told that, despite
+the cleverness of his copies, and even of his caricatures, he seemed to
+lack invention and originality. However, it was understood that he would
+be allowed a fair trial,--but only after taking his degree of "Bachelier
+ès-lettres," for his father was of opinion that perhaps more for artists
+than for men in other professions, a liberal education was necessary to
+the development of the finest aptitudes. He also thought that the boys
+might now appreciate English poetry, and selected short passages from
+the best poets, which he read aloud in the evenings, whilst they
+followed with books in their hands; it accustomed them to the rhythm and
+to the music of the language, and the peculiar qualities of each piece
+were explained to them afterwards. Little Mary Susan also received
+encouragement in the practice of her music, for I see this entry on
+March 7, 1875: "My little daughter and I played piano and violin
+together to-day for the first time."
+
+Very slowly and gradually his health had improved, and he was in 1875
+almost free from nervousness, but he had not yet dared to attempt
+railway travelling; he had occasion to write to Mr. Seymour Haden, and
+here is part of the reply:--
+
+"First, I am delighted to hear that the improvement in your health
+maintains itself; next, that I shall be very happy to do you a plate for
+the 'Portfolio.' I was with Macmillan the other day, and heard from him
+that you were at work upon a new edition of 'Etching and Etchers.' He
+spoke so well of you and of your work, that I am _empressé_ to report
+him to you in this. It must be a great satisfaction to you, after the
+extraordinary life you have led, to find that it is producing such
+satisfactory results. May it and the good effect which attends it
+continue! And this brings me to speak of your railway malady. It does
+not differ from other cases of the kind in any one particular. It is an
+idiosyncracy. It is not to be got over by medicine (certainly not by
+chloral), but by time--or rather, by the difference induced in the
+constitution by age. A man may be subject to all you describe at forty,
+and actually free from such symptoms at fifty--and I should advise you
+to _test_ yourself, after so long an abstinence from this mode of
+travel, by a short journey now and then. No accumulative mischief could
+arrive--and you _may_ find, to your great satisfaction, that you have
+entirely lost your enemy. If you do, by all means come, pay us a visit,
+and see what we are doing in England. I have done an etching of Turner's
+'Calais Pier,' 30 _inches square_, which is by many degrees the finest
+thing (if I may be permitted so superlative an expression) I have done
+or ever shall do. I mean to publish it about the close of the year. I
+have _built_ a press for printing it, and am having paper _made_
+expressly, and real sepia (which is magnificent--both in color and
+price) got from the Adriatic for the ink! so that great things ought to
+_result_."
+
+And the result was certainly by far the finest of modern etchings,
+according to Mr. Hamerton's opinion; in some particulars he preferred
+the "Agamemnon," but the size of "Calais Pier" as an increase of
+difficulty was to be considered, and if the "Agamemnon" was an original
+conception, it cannot be said that "Calais Pier" was a copy--so much
+being due to interpretation. Later on, when my husband was in possession
+of this _chef-d'oeuvre_, it always occupied the place of honor in the
+house.
+
+Following Mr. Haden's advice, he now tried short railway journeys at
+intervals, by slow trains, so that he could get out frequently at the
+numerous stations,--not to allow the accumulating effect of the
+vibration,--and generally in the night. There are some short entries
+about it in the diary:--
+
+"October 7, 1875. Went to Laisy in boat with M. de Fontenay; the day was
+most lovely. Came back in the train without feeling any inconvenience."
+
+"October 12, 1875. Went from Laisy to Etang by the river. Dined there;
+returned by train in the evening all right. We had no accidents, except
+on a little sunken rock after Chaseux, when M. de Fontenay's boat was
+upset."
+
+In this manner he used to go to Chalon (there was rather a long stoppage
+at Chagny for change of train) to stay two or three days with my mother
+and brother, who lived there. He was still anxious and uneasy, but he
+nerved himself to bear the discomfort, in the hope that he would get
+inured to it in time, and he used to close his eyes as soon as he was in
+the carriage, and to draw the curtains to avoid seeing the objects that
+we passed on the line.
+
+In the summer of 1875 he received from the new owner of Innistrynich an
+invitation to revisit the dear island. Nothing could have given him more
+pleasure. Mr. Muir gave him all the details of the improvements he had
+effected, but said:--
+
+"I retained the old cottage, with its twelve small apartments, and added
+a new front, containing five rooms.
+
+"I saw Donald Macorquodale [whom my husband often had in the boat with
+him]; he was much pleased to hear that you had been inquiring about him.
+He is now getting frail, and not very able to work. He requested me to
+say that he was very glad to hear of you, and would be delighted to see
+you at Loch Awe. He sold the boats you were so kind as to give him, but
+he only received a small sum for them, having kept them too long."
+
+My husband never forgot his old servants, and showed his interest in
+them whenever he could; they had great affection and respect for him,
+mingled with awe, well knowing that, although he gave his orders kindly,
+he meant to be obeyed. There was a very trusty widow, who came to our
+house twice a week, and I remember finding her in tears, and asking what
+was the matter. "Ah! c'est Monsieur qui m'a grondée," she sobbed
+desperately. "But what has he said to put you in such a state?" "Oh! he
+did not say much; only, 'Lazarette, why will you scratch off the paint
+with the matches?' ... 'Mais quand Monsieur gronde,'" ... and there was
+a fresh explosion.
+
+It was well that my husband's health was better, for it enabled him to
+bear the saddening news of his uncle Thomas's approaching end; he had,
+for the last few months, grown weaker and weaker, till his sister
+wrote:--
+
+"WEST LODGE. _September_ 1875.
+
+"The loss of my dear worthy brother is indeed a sad blow to me, and I
+was not able to attend the funeral.... I am better now, though the
+doctor is still in attendance upon me. I should indeed have liked you
+both to have been here, but I could not press you, or even expect you to
+run such a risk.... Still, I look forward to the pleasure of seeing you
+all at West Lodge before the winter sets in."
+
+It may be here briefly explained that Miss Susan Hamerton greatly needed
+her nephew's advice about money matters; they had been hitherto managed
+by her brother, and she had had no care about it; but now, after
+entrusting what she possessed to a person recommended by Mr. T.
+Hamerton, she had become aware that it was not safe, and was afraid of
+losing the savings she had been able to make, for she had no control
+over the capital.
+
+It was difficult to explain all this by letters, and she was anxious to
+give all the details by word of mouth, consequently she grew more and
+more pressing in the expression of the desire that her nephew should
+attempt the journey; he was not to be detained by the consideration of
+expense, for she intended to make him a present of some bank-shares
+which she no longer wanted, since her brother had left her an increase
+of income for her life.
+
+My husband resolved to undertake the long journey in the course of 1876,
+and to arrange his work in view of it. Besides his contributions to
+different periodicals, he had in the year 1875 entirely written "Round
+my House," prepared the new edition of "Etching and Etchers," got the
+notes necessary for the "Life of Turner," and given much consideration
+to a plan mentioned thus in the note-book: "December 28, 1875. Feel
+inclined to write a book on remarkable Frenchmen, such as the Ampères,
+Victor Jacquemont, the Curé d'Ars, and a few others who interest me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+1876-1877.
+
+"Round my House."--Journey to England after seven years' absence.
+--Friends in London.--Visit to Mr. Samuel Palmer.--Articles for the
+"Encyclopaedia Britannica."--Death of my sister.--Mr. Appleton.
+
+
+The note-book for 1876 opened with the following rules, written by my
+husband for his own guidance:--
+
+"Rise at six in winter and five in summer. Go to bed at eleven in winter
+and ten in summer. There must be two literary sittings every day of two
+hours each. The first to be over as soon as possible, in order to leave
+me free for practical art work; the second to begin at five p.m., and
+end at seven p.m.
+
+"_Something_ really worth reading must be read every day, the quantity
+not fixed.
+
+"I must go out every day whatever the weather may be.
+
+"Time may be taken, no matter when, for putting things in order. The
+best way is to do it every morning before setting to work. It is better
+to try to keep things in order than to accumulate disorder.
+
+"Keep everything _quite_ in readiness for immediate work in literature
+and art.
+
+"When tired, rest completely, but never dawdle. Be either in harness or
+out of harness avowedly. Special importance is to be given to painting
+this year. Pictures are to be first painted in monochrome, in raw umber
+and white. Read one thing at a time in one language. All rules suspended
+during fatigue."
+
+At the beginning of the year Roberts Brothers had asked for a photograph
+of the now popular author of "The Intellectual Life." In April they
+acknowledged the receipt of two, and were sending some copies of the
+engraving from them. They also said:--
+
+"Suppose we should wish to bring out an edition of 'Wenderholme' this
+autumn, would you abridge and rewrite it? Condensation would be likely
+to make it more powerful and more interesting. Or perhaps you would
+rather write an entirely new novel? We think such a novel as you could
+write would have a large sale.
+
+"The accompanying letters will interest you as proofs of your growing
+popularity. We mail you to-day, by request of Miss May Alcott, a copy of
+her father's clever little volume, 'Concord Days.' A fine old gentleman
+he is, the worthy father of the most popular of American authoresses."
+
+Here is Miss May Alcott's letter:--
+
+"MY DEAR MR. HAMERTON,--I am pleased and proud that you should have
+considered my letter worthy an answer, and I am still more gratified to
+be allowed the satisfaction of selecting the best pictures of Concord's
+great man for you. Mr. Emerson has been for more than thirty years the
+most intimate friend of my father, as also Mrs. Emerson and mother; the
+daughters and myself growing up together. And as father is thought to
+know and understand the poet perhaps better than any other contemporary,
+I venture sending by post one of his books, which contains an essay on
+Mr. Emerson, which may interest you. It was thought so fine and true on
+its first appearance that it was published in illuminated form for
+private circulation only; but as there is not a copy of the small
+edition to be obtained, I send 'Concord Days' instead. This morning, on
+receipt of your very kind reply to my letter, I went to Mr. Emerson's
+study and read him the paragraph relating to himself, which pleased him
+exceedingly; and while his daughter Ellen stood smilingly beside him, he
+said, 'But I know Mr. Hamerton better than he thinks for, as I have read
+his earlier works, and though I did not meet him while in England, I
+value all he writes.' Then I showed him the two pictures which father
+and I thought the preferable likenesses, which I enclose by mail to you,
+though he produced a collection taken at Elliot and Fry's, Baker Street,
+London, from which we find none better on the whole than this head,
+which gives his exact expression, and the little one giving the _tout
+ensemble_ of the man we admire so much."
+
+Few things could have given greater pleasure to Mr. Hamerton than to
+learn that his works were appreciated by such a writer and thinker as
+Mr. Emerson, whose books he studied and enjoyed and quoted very
+frequently. But he was quite put out by the engraving of his portrait,
+which, indeed, could not be called a likeness. He wrote as much to
+Roberts Brothers, who replied: "We are not a bit disappointed to hear
+that you don't like the head, for we have come to consider the dislike
+of all authors to similar things as chronic." They offered, however, to
+have the plate corrected according to the victim's directions, and
+added: "But take heart upon the fact that nine hundred and ninety-nine
+out of a thousand who look upon it believe it to be a facsimile of
+yourself, and where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."
+
+In another letter, they say again:--
+
+"The head, which to you is an insurmountable defect, is favorably looked
+upon by everybody. If Mrs. Hamerton should hear the praise from fair
+lips she would certainly be jealous. However, the engraver will see how
+nearly he can conform to your wishes, and perhaps we may be able to
+please you yet."
+
+No praises from lips however fair would have induced me to put up with
+the portrait, and I said so frankly, without being at all influenced by
+jealousy, for in my opinion the original was far handsomer in expression
+and bearing than the likeness; but Roberts Brothers, who had never seen
+the original, still clung to the obnoxious engraving, and wrote again:
+"If _we_ are deluded, and happy in that delusion, why should _you_ care?
+Mrs. Hamerton, she must confess it, is jealous of our fair
+countrywomen." Nevertheless it was withdrawn in deference to our wishes.
+
+Mr. Powers was now and then discreetly reminding Mr. Hamerton of his
+promised pictures, and after hearing from the painter that they were
+_safe_ (whatever that may have brought to his mind) sent these verses:--
+
+"MY PICTURES.
+
+  "A famous artist over the sea
+  Promised to paint two pictures for me.
+
+  "He wrought, but his colors would not show
+  His pure ideal and heart's warm glow.
+
+  "And so the paintings are still unsent,
+  Though years ago their spirit went.
+
+  "Two pictures hang in my treasured thought--
+  My dream of those the artist wrought.
+
+  "They are sweet and fadeless, and soothe my sight,
+  When weary and sad, with a strange delight.
+
+  "But the light which shows their marvellous art
+  Is the generous glow of the painter's heart.
+
+  "This is the way that there came to me
+  The gift of pictures from over the sea."
+
+"ANSWER.
+
+  "There's a parson out West in Chicago,
+   To whom I did promise--long ago--
+      A couple of pictures,
+      Not fearing strictures
+   Of the critical folk of Chicago.
+
+  "Time passed, and the works were not finished;
+   Time passed, yet with hope undiminished,
+      That parson he wrote,
+      And my conscience he smote,
+   And so was I greatly punished.
+
+  "For a promise is not a pie-crust,
+   And 'I will' is changed to 'I must'
+      When you say to a friend--
+      'Two pictures I'll send,'
+   And he orders the _cadres_ in trust.
+
+  "Then the parson he sighed in despair--
+   'Where are my two pictures?--O where?'
+      In regions ideal
+      Far, far from the real,
+   Like cloudscapes that melt into air.
+
+  "And then I thought--'Now it grows serious,
+   For deferred hope is most deleterious;
+      Yet how can I toil
+      In color and oil
+   In a world where the publishers weary us?'
+
+  "Ah me! for a month with the flowers,
+   And the sweet April sunshine and showers.
+      To paint with delight
+      From morning till night,
+   For my dear friend, Horatio N. Powers!"
+
+It may be said here that the pictures were completed and packed off in
+the beginning of October, 1876.
+
+In view of a series of large etchings Mr. Hamerton went to Decize, on
+the Loire, where he hoped to find material for several subjects. He made
+twenty sketches of the town, river, boats, etc., and then called upon M.
+Hanoteau, the painter, who had expressed a desire for his acquaintance.
+There is a short note relating the visit:--
+
+"April 21, 1876. Arrived at ten a.m., and had a pleasant day watching
+him paint. I also saw the interior of his atelier, and the things in
+progress. He only paints in the immediate neighborhood. Always from
+nature. When we had finished _déjeuner_ we went together to a little
+_étang_ in the wood, near to which were some old cottages. He painted
+that bit on a small panel. After completing his sitting he showed me
+part of the road to Cercy-la-Tour, and a gentleman with him showed me
+the rest.
+
+"Had a deal of art talk with Hanoteau, also with a young sculptor called
+Gautherin."
+
+This young sculptor was poor, but energetic and courageous; he rapidly
+made his way to fame, but unfortunately died too soon to reap the
+benefit of his remarkable talent.
+
+The idea of an abridged "Wenderholme" had been accepted by the author,
+who had written to Messrs. Blackwood about it, and who received the
+satisfactory answer that, "though they had sustained a loss with the
+first publication, they thought that the reputation and popularity of
+the writer having considerably increased, 'Wenderholme' would sell well
+in their 'Library Series of Novels.'" In consequence the revision was
+begun at once, for Roberts Brothers had also written, "Whenever you feel
+inclined to take up 'Wenderholme,' we shall be glad to comply with your
+demand." And there followed a new proposition in the same letter:--
+
+"Since writing you about a new novel, we have had an inspiration, and
+have already acted upon it--a series of novelettes, to be published
+anonymously, the secret of authorship, for a period, to rest entirely
+with the author and publisher. We shall call it the 'No Name Series,'
+and issue it in neat, square 18mo volumes of about 250 pages, to sell
+for one dollar.
+
+"Those to whom we have suggested the idea are mightily pleased, and we
+are even tickled with the great fun we expect to have--something like a
+new experience of the 'Great Unknown' days of Sir Walter Scott. We have
+several promises from well-known authors, and we all agree that you must
+write one of them. Take your own time to do so, and when you send us the
+'copy' we will advance £50 towards the copyright. People say it will be
+impossible to keep the secret, for an author's style cannot be hidden;
+but though it may be easy enough to say, 'Oh! this is Hamerton; anybody
+can tell his style,' _if it is not admitted_, there will be uncertainty
+enough to make it exciting, and create a demand--we hope a large one."
+
+Although my husband had not been so well in the spring (it was the worst
+time of the year for him), he decided to start for England early in June
+to see the Paris Salon and the English Academy. He did not ask me to go
+with him, for our daughter had had quite recently a bad attack of
+bronchitis--at one time we had even feared inflammation of the
+lungs--and the greatest care against the possibility of colds had been
+recommended. However, he thought he would be equal to the journey, and
+gave me a promise to stop whenever he felt unwell. He reached Paris all
+right, did his work there, and had a kind letter from Mr. Seeley, who
+said:--
+
+"I was greatly pleased to receive your card this morning, and learn that
+you had had a successful journey. Now you will certainly come and see
+me, won't you? Brunet-Debaines is here, and will remain till the end of
+next week. If you are with us then, we will get him to Kingston, and
+have a day on the Thames together, and all of us shall make sketches."
+
+It was very tempting. But the next news was not so good, and Mr. Seeley
+wrote again:--
+
+"If you have lost your appetite in a big town the remedy is plain. Come
+to Kingston at once. You will not be much troubled with noise there, and
+you can paddle about on the river and get hungry, or go flying madly
+about on a bicycle, if you have kept up the practice. There is a big
+bedroom empty, and waiting for you."
+
+The journey was resumed as far as Amiens, but the enemy proved too
+strong to be overcome by courage and resolution, and after resting two
+days my husband came back home by easy stages, having only told me the
+truth after leaving Amiens, to prevent my going to him at any cost. He
+reached La Tuilerie on the first of July, and I see in the diary:
+"Rested at home. Very glad to be there." The attempt was not attended by
+any lasting bad effects; he immediately regained his appetite and usual
+health; but his Aunt Susan was sorely disappointed. He tried to soothe
+her by explaining what he believed to be the combined causes of his
+breakdown: first the intense heat, which had made his stay in Paris very
+trying; the fatigue he had undergone there; and lastly the weakness
+supervening after the loss of appetite, also due to the abnormal heat,
+which was causing several sunstrokes every day, even in England. He
+announced his intention of making another attempt with me in the autumn,
+when the chances would be more in his favor.
+
+Since the beginning of the year the study of painting had become
+predominant, and had necessitated rather a heavy outlay, because
+Gilbert's schemes were always so elaborate and complex--drawing-boards
+of different sizes, every one of them with a tin cover painted and
+varnished; some for water-colors, others for charcoals; canvases for
+oils and monochromes, wooden and porcelain palettes, pastilles, tubes,
+portable easels, sunshades, knapsacks, stools, brushes, block-books,
+papers for water-colors and chalk studies, tinted and white, numberless
+portfolios to class the studies, and--a gig, to carry the paraphernalia
+to greater distances and in less time than the four-wheeled carriage
+required. I was against the gig, but the boys were of course delighted,
+and declared with their father that it had become "absolutely
+necessary."
+
+I see in the diary: "July 30, 1876. In the evening went to Autun on
+Cocote; enjoyed the ride considerably. Brought back the gig. Wife
+sulky." The expenses of the year had been very heavy, owing to several
+causes; first some house repairs had become inevitable, and the landlord
+offering us only the option of doing them at our own cost or leaving the
+house, we had to order them. The roofs were in such a state that in
+stormy weather we had our ceilings and wall-papers drenched with
+rain-water, and indeed it had even begun to make its way _through_ the
+ceilings into the inhabited rooms. The diary for March 12, 1876, says:
+"A very stormy day, the wildest of the whole year. We arranged the tents
+(Stephen and I) in the attic, to prevent the rain from coming into our
+bedroom." Then there had been boats made for the boys (cheap boats, it
+is true, made by common joiners). They were well deserved, I
+acknowledge; the boys had had each an accessit at the "Concours
+Académique," and both were mentioned with praise by the Sous-Préfet at
+the public distribution of prizes. Besides, what was still more
+important, Stephen had successfully passed his examination for the
+"Baccalauréat." Lastly, there had been an expensive and unproductive
+journey, and there was the prospect of another. All this in the same
+year somewhat alarmed me. The gig was not an important concern, being
+made, like the four-wheeled carriage, from designs of my husband's, by
+ordinary wheelwrights and blacksmiths; but though admitting its
+usefulness, and even desirableness, I thought we might have done without
+it.
+
+In the beginning of August my husband told me the plan of "Marmorne"
+(for the "No Name Series"), and I had been afraid that it would be too
+melodramatic; however, I was charmed when he read me the beginning, and
+my fears were soon dispelled by the strength and simplicity of the
+narrative.
+
+On October 4 we started for England, leaving my mother in charge of the
+house and children; we stopped at Fontainebleau in the morning, and
+after _déjeuner_ visited the forest pretty thoroughly in a carriage.
+After dinner we went on to Paris, where we stayed only four days for
+fear of its effects, and proceeded to Calais by a night-train. Luckily
+for Gilbert, he could sleep very well in a railway carriage, and
+sea-sickness was unknown to him. We crossed in the "Castalia," in very
+rough weather indeed, the waves jumping over the deck, and covering
+everything there with foam; at one time there came a huge one dashing
+just against my husband's block as he was sketching, and drenched him
+from head to foot. However, he took a warm bath at Dover, changed his
+clothes, and felt only the better for the passage.
+
+Mr. Seeley's house was reached at midnight, and very happy was Mr.
+Hamerton to meet his friend again, and to be once more in England after
+an enforced absence of seven years. On the morrow our kind host and
+hostess took us to Hampton Court Palace, thence to Richmond Park by
+Twickenham, and altogether made us pass a most pleasant day. The
+following day was reserved for the National Gallery, and I find this
+note in the diary: "I was delighted to see the Turner collection again,
+and greatly struck by the luminous quality of the late works. This could
+not possibly have been got without the white grounds."
+
+On the Sunday we went to Balham to dine early with Mr. and Mrs.
+Macmillan, and met Mr. Ralston and Mr. Green, the historian. It was
+noted as a very interesting day by my husband.
+
+On the sixth day we took leave of Mr. and Mrs. Seeley, and took a
+night-train for Peterborough, where we visited the cathedral and town to
+await the dusk; then on to Doncaster and Knottingly. From Knottingly we
+did not see clearly how to reach Featherstone, and were greatly
+embarrassed, when a coachman, who had just driven his master to the
+station, foresaw the possibility of a handsome tip, and offered to take
+us--without luggage--in his trap. It was pitch dark, he had no lamps,
+the road was all ruts, and the horse flew along like mad. We only held
+to our seats--or rather kept resuming them, in a succession of bumps,
+now on one side, now on the other, and up in the air--by grasping the
+sides of the trap with all our might, till a sudden stop nearly threw us
+all out; at any rate it did throw us in a heap over each other at the
+bottom of the trap--unhurt. It was with a sense of immense relief that
+we plodded the rest of our way to the vicarage, where we arrived at
+eleven. The diary says: "October 17, 1876. Saw my Aunt Susan again for
+the first time since 1869, at which time I hardly hoped ever to see her
+again."
+
+It was a great comfort to Gilbert to witness the affectionate care taken
+of his aunt by her niece, Annie Hinde, and her brother Ben, with whom
+she lived. He had always entertained a great liking for these cousins,
+but it was increased during his stay at the vicarage by their hospitable
+and friendly ways, and by his gratitude for their having given to his
+dear relative as much of peaceful satisfaction as it was in their power
+to do. Miss Susan Hamerton was aged, no doubt, but she was still able to
+do everything for herself, and to occupy her time usefully in
+housekeeping, sewing, reading, writing, and going out. She still
+retained her strong will, and manifested it in a way which nearly
+destroyed all the pleasure of the meeting with her nephew--and would
+have done so, had he not yielded to it by consenting to a transfer of
+bank-shares (in his favor) which involved great liabilities. She would
+not listen to an explanation of the risk, and considered it ungracious
+to look the gift-horse in the mouth. "It had been a capital investment,"
+she said, and she remained absolutely opposed to the sale of the shares.
+Her nephew had to accept the gift as it was--so that instead of
+relieving anxiety it created a new one. However, having come to give her
+a little of the sunshine of happiness, he decided not to let it be
+clouded over. We stayed a month in happy and cordial intercourse, my
+husband spending the intervals of work in long talks and walks with his
+aunt, and when the time for our departure arrived, the sadness of
+parting was soothed by the hope of meeting again, now that Gilbert
+seemed to have recovered the power of travelling.
+
+On our return to London we lunched with Mr. Seymour Haden, who took
+my husband to the room in which he kept his collections, where they
+had a long talk on art matters, and where he gave him a proof of the
+"Agamemnon," whilst I was having a chat over family interests, children,
+and music with Mrs. Haden.
+
+In the afternoon we called upon George Eliot and Mr. Lewes, who were
+very friendly indeed. I was greatly struck by George Eliot's memory, for
+she remembered everything I had told her--seven years ago--about our
+rustic life, and her first question was, "Are your children well, and do
+you still drive them to college in a donkey-chaise?" She was gravely
+sympathetic in alluding to the cause of our long absence from London,
+and when I said how great was my husband's satisfaction in being there
+again, she seized both of my hands softly in hers, and asked in the low
+modulations of her rich voice, "Is there no gap?" ... "Thank God!" I
+answered, "there is none." Then she let go my hands, and smiling as if
+relieved she said, "Let us talk over the past years since you came;" and
+then she told me of the growing interest manifested by the "thinking
+world" in the works of my husband. "We are all marvelling at the
+_maturity_ of talent in one so young still, and look forward hopefully
+for what he may achieve."
+
+The day after we saw Mr. Calderon in his studio, painting two beautiful
+decorative pictures; there was a garland of flowers in one of them--the
+freshness of their coloring was admirable. We missed Mr. Woolner, who
+was out, and thence went to Mr. Macmillan's place of business, and with
+him to Knapdale, where we dined and stayed all night.
+
+As soon as dessert had been put on the table, Mrs. Macmillan begged to
+be excused for a short time, as she wished to see that Mr. Freeman (who
+was on a visit, but not well enough to come down) had been made
+comfortable. On hearing of Mr. Freeman's presence at Knapdale, my
+husband expressed his regrets at not being able to see him, and these
+regrets were kindly conveyed to the invalid by Mrs. Macmillan, who
+brought back his request to Mr. Hamerton for a visit in his bedroom.
+
+I heard with satisfaction that Mr. Freeman had been very cordial, and
+had shown no trace of resentment at what had passed at a former meeting
+at Mr. Macmillan's house. The conversation had then turned on Ireland,
+and Mr. Macmillan was, like my husband, for granting autonomy. This set
+Mr. Freeman growling at the use of a Greek word, and he exclaimed, "Why
+can't you speak English and say Home Rule, instead of using Greek, which
+you don't know!" My husband flushed with anger, and recalled the
+irritable historian--not without severity--to a proper sense of the
+respect due to their host, at the same time paying a tribute to Mr.
+Macmillan's remarkable abilities. Later in the evening the word "gout"
+was mentioned. "There again," Mr. Freeman exclaimed, "why can't we call
+it toe-woe!" But this was said in a joke, and accompanied with a laugh.
+
+Wherever we went, we heard praises of the "Portfolio." Throughout his
+life Mr. Hamerton remained, not only on good terms, but on friendly
+terms with every one of his publishers; and whenever he went to London
+he looked forward with great pleasure to meeting them in succession.
+There were, of course, different degrees of intimacy, but the
+intercourse was never other than agreeable.
+
+For many years he had wished to know Mr. Samuel Palmer personally, and
+the wish was reciprocated. Now an opportunity presented itself, and one
+afternoon saw us climbing Redhill in pleasant anticipation; but when
+after admiring the view we rang the bell of the artist's secluded abode,
+we were told that Mr. Palmer had been very ill lately, was still keeping
+his bed, and could see no one. It was a great disappointment, and some
+words to this effect were written on a card and sent up to the invalid.
+Soon after Mrs. Palmer came down and feelingly expressed her husband's
+sincere regrets; she told us of his illness, which had left him very
+weak and liable to relapses, and of the pleasure he would have derived
+from a long talk with Mr. Hamerton on artistic topics. We had been shown
+into the dining-room, which evidently, for the present, was not used,
+though it was warmed by a good fire, but darkened by the blinds being
+down and the curtains drawn. The rays of a golden sunset diffused
+through the apertures a strange and mysterious glow, which suddenly
+seemed to surround and envelope an apparition, standing half visible on
+the threshold of the noiselessly opened door. A remarkably expressive
+head emerged from a bundle of shawls, which moved forward with feeble
+and tottering steps--it was Mr. Palmer. His wife could not trust her
+eyes, but as soon as she became convinced of the reality of his
+presence, she hastened to make him comfortable in an arm-chair by the
+fire, and to arrange the shawls over his head and knees with the most
+touching solicitude. "I could not resist it," he pleaded; "I have looked
+forward to this meeting with so much longing." His eyes sparkled, his
+countenance became animated, and regardless of his wraps, he accompanied
+his fluent talk with eloquent gestures--to the despair of his wife, who
+had enough to do in replacing cap and rugs. He put all his soul and
+energy (and now there was no lack of it) into his speech. The art-talk
+kindled all the fire of enthusiasm within him, and he told us anecdotes
+of Turner and Blake, and held us for a long time fascinated with the
+charm of his conversation. He could listen too, and with so vivid an
+interest and sympathy that his mere looks were an encouragement. My
+husband was afraid of detaining him, but he declared he felt quite well
+and strong--"the visiting angels had put to flight the lurking enemy;"
+he had even an appetite, which he would satisfy in our company. Nothing
+loath, we sat down to an excellent tea with delicious butter and
+new-laid eggs, with the impression of sharing the life of elves, and of
+being entertained by a genie at the head of the table and served by a
+kind fairy. This feeling originated no doubt in the small stature of Mr.
+and Mrs. Palmer; in the strange effect of light under which our host
+first appeared to us, and lastly in the noiseless promptitude with which
+the repast was spread on the table, whilst the darkness of the room gave
+way to brightness, just as happens in fairytales.
+
+It is curious that my husband and myself should have received exactly
+the same impression, and a lasting one.
+
+The journey to Paris was resumed by slow night-trains without
+disturbance to his health, and the day after his arrival he had a long
+talk about etching with M. Leopold Flameng, who encouraged my husband's
+attempts, and even offered to correct his defective plates rather than
+see them destroyed; but this was declined, though the valuable advice
+was gratefully accepted. M. Flameng looked very happy; he was in full
+success, very industrious, and fond of his art; married to a devoted
+wife of simple tastes, and already able to discern and foster in his son
+the artistic tendencies which have made him celebrated since. They were
+a very cheerful and united family. Two days after we had _déjeuner_ with
+M. Rajon. Of all the French etchers who, from time to time, went to
+London for the "Portfolio," I believe M. Rajon was the one best known in
+English society, where his liveliness and amiability, as well as his
+great talent, found appreciators.
+
+Like almost every other artist, he did not attach so much importance to
+what he could do well, as to what he could never master. His ambition
+was to become a celebrated painter, but his pictures gave little hope of
+it; they were heavy and dull in color, and entirely devoid of the charm
+he lent to his etchings. He showed himself very grateful for what Mr.
+Hamerton had done for his reputation. Accidentally, as he was admiring
+the design of some very simple earrings I wore, I said that I did not
+care so much for jewels as for lace, on which he answered he was
+extremely fond of both--on women--and invited me to go and see a
+collection of old laces he was forming. I was obliged to decline, for
+our time was running short; but he made us promise to pay a long visit
+to his studio during our next sojourn in Paris.
+
+We reached home safely, and found my mother and the children all well.
+
+There had been a great step made in the possibility of travelling this
+year, though it had been attended by many returns of anxiety and
+nervousness; still, it was a not inconsiderable gain to know that in
+case a journey became absolutely necessary it might be achieved, and our
+stay in London and Paris had been of importance in allowing my husband
+to study seriously in the public galleries.
+
+Mr. Powers had been delighted to receive his long-delayed pictures, and
+wrote his thanks in terms of enthusiasm; he said that many people had
+been admiring them, and that a well-known painter had exclaimed, "Now I
+swear by Hamerton." About the growing popularity he wrote: "As I said
+before, you win the hearts of men, and your name is now a household word
+in many quarters of this country." It was exactly, in almost identical
+words, what Roberts Brothers had already written. And this was true not
+only in America, for many English letters echoed it.
+
+"Round my House" was very well received. There was an important and
+favorable review in the "Times," and one in the "Débats" by Taine.
+
+In the beginning of the year Gilbert had undertaken the painting and
+decoration of the staircase and lobby, which occasioned a great amount
+of labor and fatigue, and interfered with his other work. He gave it up
+at my entreaty, and only directed the painter, being thus enabled to
+devote more time to the articles on "Drawing" in preparation for Messrs.
+Black's new edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," which were
+finished in February.
+
+Soon after he told me of a plan for a new book, the title of which he
+meant to be "Human Intercourse," and which would require a large number
+of memoranda. We all liked the idea in the family circle when it was
+explained, and he began immediately to gather materials. At the same
+time he continued his readings for the biographies of remarkable
+Frenchmen, and he contemplated the task with deep interest and
+earnestness. The year 1877, which had begun so auspiciously, had in
+store for my husband one of the lasting sorrows of his life. On the
+morning of March 11 he received a telegram announcing the death of his
+beloved sister-in-law, Caroline Pelletier, who had died at Algiers of
+meningitis, leaving three young children to the care of their desolate.
+father. It was a heavy blow, an irreparable loss. She had been like both
+a daughter and sister, and her affection had always been very sweet to
+him. The shock was so great that his health suffered in consequence, and
+the nervousness reappeared. It was of Caroline he was thinking when he
+wrote in "Human Intercourse" this passage about a wife's relatives:
+"They may even in course of time win such a place in one's affection
+that if they are taken away by Death they will leave a great void and an
+enduring sorrow. I write these lines from a sweet and sad experience.
+Only a poet can write of these sorrows. In prose one cannot sing,--
+
+  "'A dirge for her the doubly dead, in that she died so young.'"
+
+M. Pelletier still continued with his children to spend the vacations at
+La Tuilerie, but the joy fulness of these holidays was now replaced by
+sorrow and regrets; the evenings were particularly trying, for of late
+years they had been very merry. Our children having taken a great fancy
+to acting charades, we all took part in them by turns. Their Aunt
+Caroline and their father were the stars of the company, and to this day
+they recollect her irresistible sprightliness as a coquettish French
+kitchen-maid attempting the conquest of their father, in the character
+of the typical Englishman of French caricatures. She smiled, curtsied,
+and whirled about him, handling her brass pans so daintily, tossing them
+so dexterously, that the bewildered and dazzled islander could not
+resist the enchantress, and joined enthusiastically in the chorus of the
+song she had improvised,--
+
+  "La femme que l'on préfére
+  C'est toujours la cuisiniére,"
+
+while she played the accompaniment with a wooden spoon upon the lids of
+the pans.
+
+Her brother-in-law achieved unqualified success in the part of the
+Englishman. He had kept on purpose an immense chimney-pot hat and a
+tartan plaid which he used to perfection, and his "Oh's!" and "Ah's!"
+were of such ludicrous prolongation, and his gait so stiff, and his
+comical blunders delivered with so much of haughty assurance, that he
+"brought down the house."
+
+It was seldom that my husband consented to take an active part in games:
+he generally preferred being a spectator; but whether acting or
+listening, charades were one of the few pastimes for which he had a
+taste,--it seems the more strange since he did not care for the theatre,
+though he liked plays to be read to him. I suppose that the feeling of
+being penned in a crowded place was insupportable to him.
+
+After the death of my sister, some years had to elapse before we could
+bear to see charades again.
+
+On May 25 my husband had the pleasure of bringing home from the railway
+station Mr. Appleton, editor of the "Academy," for whom he had a great
+regard. His notes say:--
+
+"We passed a very pleasant evening, and did not go to bed till after
+twelve.
+
+"26th. Walked with Mr. Appleton to Pré-Charmoy in the morning. In the
+afternoon took him to Autun and showed him the Roman arches, the Gothic
+walls, the cathedral, the Chemin des Tours, etc., etc. A very pleasant
+day. We got home in time for dinner, found the boys at home, and talked
+till one in the morning.
+
+"27th. Took Mr. Appleton to the railway in the morning, with regrets,
+and a certain sadness on account of his health."
+
+Mr. Appleton was on his way to Egypt by his doctor's advice. He was
+singularly amiable and sympathetic. He thought, and said simply, that
+very likely he had not long to live, and dared not marry on that
+account, though he often felt solitary. He suffered from asthma, and
+could only sleep with the windows of his bedroom wide open, and a bright
+wood fire burning in the chimney.
+
+He had promised to pay us another visit if he were spared, but alas! we
+never saw him again.
+
+As the biographies advanced, the author grew uncertain about the title
+he would give them. It could not be "Celebrated Frenchmen," because some
+of them would not exactly answer to the qualification. He had thought of
+"Earnest Frenchmen," but Mr. Seeley objected, and said, "The word
+'earnest' has got spoilt. It was used over and over again till it got to
+sound like cant, and then people began to laugh at it. How would 'Modern
+Frenchmen' do?" It was deemed a perfectly suitable title, and given to
+the book.
+
+At the end of the summer Mr. Seeley and his wife paid us a flying visit
+on their way back from Switzerland. It was a great pleasure to see them
+again.
+
+Shortly after them M. Brunet-Debaines came, and I could not help
+directing my husband's attention to the simplicity of his arrangements
+for working from nature; a small stool, upon which was fixed a canvas or
+a drawing-board, and a color-box, were all he required; however, I was
+told that "wants varied with individuals."
+
+Hitherto Mr. Hamerton's plan about painting had been to begin several
+pictures at once, to allow them to dry; but now he was sick of remaining
+so long over the same pieces of work, and he decided to paint only two
+pictures at a time, and to use drying materials.
+
+He had succeeded in mastering the technicality of charcoal drawing, and
+had made an arrangement with the Autotype Company for the reproduction
+of some drawings in this medium.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+1878-1880.
+
+"Marmorne."--Paris International Exhibition.--"Modern Frenchmen."
+--Candidature to the Watson Gordon Chair of Fine Arts.--The Bishop of
+Antun.--The "Life of Turner."
+
+
+The important literary works undertaken by Mr. Hamerton in the year 1878
+were "Modern Frenchmen" and a "Life of Turner."
+
+The artistic work remained unsatisfactory to the severe self-criticism
+of the artist, who kept destroying picture after picture,
+notwithstanding his serious studies and experiments in various modes and
+methods of painting. He succeeded better with charcoals and monochromes,
+and sent several finished subjects to be reproduced by the Autotype
+Company. Mr. S. Palmer wrote about it: "If I had twenty years before me,
+I should like to spend them on monochromes and _etching_."
+
+In the same letter he went on:--
+
+"Life being spared, your 'Marmorne,' the fame of which had already
+arrived, is the next reading treat on my list. You call it your 'little
+book,' a recommendation to me, for, with few exceptions, I have found
+small books and small pictures the most beautiful, and I doubt not that
+you know better than myself how much almost all three-volume novels
+(including Scott's) would be improved, _as works of art_, by
+condensation into one.
+
+"Both yourself and Mrs. Hamerton are often mentally present with us
+here: the evening of our first, and, alas! only meeting is among the
+vivid pleasures of memory, and a repetition is a cherished pleasure of
+_hope_. I will only add that I fear you are killing yourself with
+overwork, and that you should put yourself under a repressive domestic
+police."
+
+Some time before, my husband had received from G. H. Lewes a letter with
+this address: "Mr. Adolphus Segrave, care of P. G. Hamerton, Esq.,
+Pré-Charmoy, Autun." George Eliot and Mr. Lewes had been reading
+"Marmorne," and had never entertained the slightest doubt about the
+authorship, though the book was published under the assumed name of
+Adolphus Segrave. The story had been greatly appreciated by both of
+them, and especially the style in which it was told. Such high praise
+was in accordance with what Mr. Palmer had previously said to Mr.
+Seeley; namely, that "he considered Mr. Hamerton as the first
+prose-writer of his time."
+
+It may be remembered that a cousin of my husband's, Mr. H. Milne, had
+called upon us at Innistrynich, and had since bought his little
+property. He heard of our last visit to Yorkshire, and, not aware of his
+relative's trouble in regard to railway travelling, had felt hurt at his
+apparent neglect. Luckily my husband heard of it through his Aunt Susan,
+and immediately wrote to explain matters. Mr. H. Milne, who had known
+all about the pecuniary situation, now answered:--
+
+"I can assure you that it is very pleasing to me to know that your
+career has been so successful as to enable you to give your sons an
+education to fit them to grapple with the difficulties people have to
+meet with nowadays to make them comfortable, and to do so is all the
+more satisfactory when accomplished by their own exertions. My mother
+[the lady who served as model and suggestion for Mrs. Ogden in
+'Marmorne'] still retains unimpaired all her faculties, and looks much
+the same as when you were here. We shall celebrate her eighty-sixth
+birthday on March 15. She really is wonderful, and a marvel to every
+one, and particularly so to her doctor, who on no occasion has ever
+prevailed on her to take one drop of medicine, notwithstanding he
+persists in coming to see her twice a week--for what reasons seems quite
+past my mother's comprehension."
+
+The pecuniary situation had certainly improved, which was a relief to my
+husband, for his children were growing up, and losses due to non-
+remunerative work and ill-health had to be gradually made good. There
+seemed to be a fate adverse to his making money, even by his most
+successful works. Here is "Marmorne" as an example, published in
+America, in England, in France, both in Hachette's "Bibliothèque des
+meilleurs Romans Étrangers," and as a feuilleton in the "Temps," also in
+the Tauchnitz collection, unanimously well received by the press; said
+to be "_le_ roman de l'année" by the "Revue des Deux Mondes," and still
+bringing considerably less than £200 to the author's purse. It was a
+great disappointment to the publishers also. Roberts Brothers wrote: "Of
+'Marmorne' we have only sold 2,000 copies; there ought to have been
+10,000 sold;" and Mr. Blackwood said: "The sales have been rather
+disappointing to us after the attention and favorable impression the
+work attracted; we had looked for a larger and more remunerative
+demand."
+
+The character of the scenery in the Autunois pleased Mr. Hamerton more
+and more, though it lacked the grandeur of real mountains. He was
+particularly sensitive to the beauty of its color, which reminded him
+sometimes of the Scotch Highlands, and was said to be very like that of
+the Roman Campagna in summer-time. Such notes as the following are
+frequent in his diary:--
+
+"January 11, 1878. Went to Fontaine la Mère; beautiful drive the whole
+way. Was delighted with the Titian-like quality of the landscape. Much
+of the sylvan scenery reminded me of Ruysdaël. Took five sketches."
+
+Throughout this year my husband gave a great deal of his time to his
+aunt's affairs, which were in a deplorable state, owing to the
+dishonesty of her lawyers; accounts for several years past had to be
+gone over, cleared up, and settled, and at so great a distance the
+proceedings involved a heavy correspondence. However, the help given was
+efficacious, and Miss Hamerton's independence was secured in the end. In
+the summer Gilbert had to relinquish the river-baths that he enjoyed so
+much. In the two preceding years he had remarked that he was often
+unwell and agitated after a swim, but had kept hoping that the effect
+might be transitory; it was, however, now renewed with growing intensity
+every time he took a cold bath, so that, with much regret, he had to
+give them up. He used to say with a shade of melancholy, that we must
+resign ourselves to the gradual deprivation of all the little pleasures
+of existence,--even of the most innocent ones,--but that the hardest for
+him to renounce would be work.
+
+Having borne the journey to England in 1877 without bad results to his
+health, he now decided to attempt a visit to the Paris International
+Exhibition. He was very anxious to ascertain the present state of the
+fine arts all over the globe, and if possible to make the best of this
+opportunity. On the day appointed for starting, and whilst he was
+packing up, Mr. R. L. Stevenson just happened to call without previous
+notice. What a bright, winning youth he was! what a delightful talker!
+there was positively a sort of radiance about him, as if emanating from
+his genius. We had never seen him before; we only knew his works, but he
+seemed like a friend immediately. Listening to his fluent, felicitous
+talk, his clear and energetic elocution, his original ideas and veins of
+thought, was a rare treat, and his keen enjoyment of recovered health
+and active life was really infectious. He could not remain seated, but
+walked and smoked the whole of the afternoon he remained with us.
+Knowing that he had lately been dangerously ill, I ventured to express
+my fear that the smoking of endless cigarettes might prove injurious.
+"Oh, I don't know," he said; "and yet I dare say it is; but you see,
+Mrs. Hamerton, as there are only a very limited number of things
+enjoyable to an individual in this world, _these_ must be enjoyed to the
+utmost; and if I knew that smoking would kill me, still I would not give
+it up, for I shall surely die of _something_, very likely not so
+pleasant." Although the shutters were closed in all the rooms that were
+not to be used in our absence, they were opened again to let him see the
+etchings on the walls; for he had a fine taste, not only for the
+beauties of nature, but also for artistic achievements. We felt it most
+vexatious to be obliged to leave that very evening, but my husband
+managed to remain with Mr. Stevenson till the last available minute, by
+asking me to pack up his things for him. I remember that after reading
+the "Inland Voyage" I had told my husband how I had been charmed by it,
+and had begged to be given everything which came from the same pen; but
+at that time we were afraid that such a delicate and refined talent
+would not bring popularity to the author; happily we were
+mistaken,--perhaps only to a certain extent, however,--as his most
+successful works belong to a later and quite different genre.
+
+At the recommendation of M. Rajon, we went to a quaint little hotel in
+Paris, near La Muette, well known to artists and men of letters, and
+patronized, for its quietness, by some of the most famous, being usually
+let in apartments to persons who brought their own servants with them.
+Its situation, close to the Bois de Boulogne, made our returns from the
+exhibition easy and pleasant--so easy, indeed, that when we had to spend
+the evening in Paris, and could find no carriage to take us there, we
+merely went back to our headquarters, where we had the choice of
+railway, tramways, and omnibuses for every part of Paris.
+
+According to our promise we went to meet M. Rajon at his studio, and
+amongst other things saw a beautiful portrait of him, which, however,
+was so much flattered that for some time I hesitated about the likeness.
+He was represented on horseback, with a long flowing cloak, and a
+sombrero casting a strong shadow over one of his eyes, which was
+afflicted with a weakness of the eyelid, which kept dropping down so
+frequently that the pupil was seldom seen for any time; the horse was a
+thoroughbred; two magnificent greyhounds (the originals we could admire,
+at rest upon a raised platform of carved oak and red cushions) ran
+alongside of him, and this tall-looking, dignified, romantic rider
+was--little, spare, merry M. Rajon. Gossip whispered that he had been
+somewhat intoxicated by his sudden fame, and had been, for a while,
+desirous of showing off, so that he had brought back from England the
+thoroughbred and the greyhounds to be noticed in the "Allée des
+Cavaliers," but that not having been accustomed to sit a horse before,
+his thoroughbred had flung him against a tree so severely that the taste
+for equitation had gone out of him for ever. Be this as it may, M. Rajon
+was far from being vainglorious; he knew his value as an artist, frankly
+and openly enjoyed his success, but remained simple, urbane, and
+courteous. He told us that he could only give _two hours_ a day to
+original work, and that his mother (a simple woman for whom art remained
+an incomprehensible mystery) could not admit this limitation. At that
+time he was spending money rather lavishly--giving _fêtes_ in his studio
+to celebrated actors and actresses, musicians, singers, poets, and
+artists, and the expenses were sometimes a cause of momentary
+embarrassment; then his simple mother would say: "Why need you trouble
+yourself about it? You work very little--then work twice as much, which
+won't tire you, and you'll have twice as much money." She could not, he
+said, be made to understand that this prolonged labor would be
+worthless, because the inspiring flame would be burned out.
+
+Mr. Woolner arrived in Paris a few days after Mr. Hamerton, and they
+spent a whole day together in the sculpture galleries of the Louvre. Mr.
+Woolner remembered that old Madame Mohl, having read my husband's works,
+had expressed a wish to renew the acquaintance of former days, and would
+be glad to see us both at tea-time--any day that might suit us.
+
+A week later we called upon the wonderfully preserved old lady, who was
+delighted to receive a visit from a rising celebrity--though a host of
+celebrities had passed through her drawing-room. She complained of being
+_délaisée_ by the young generation. Still, she remained lively and
+gracious; her quick intelligence and ready memory were unimpaired by her
+great age, and it was with eagerness that she seized upon another
+opportunity for narrating her treasured-up stories of renowned people,
+particularly of the two Ampères, whom she had known intimately. She was
+still living in the same house that they had inhabited together, when
+Mr. Mohl kindly gave them the benefit of his more practical sense in
+household management. Madame Mohl was rather severe about Jean Jacques
+Ampère, whom she called a "young coxcomb," and "an egotist." She was not
+sentimental, and had no sympathy with or pity for the love so long
+faithful to Madame Récamier; nay, I thought I could detect in her
+strictures the unconscious feminine jealousy of a lady whose salon had
+been forsaken by one of its "lions" for a more attractive one, and who
+had resented it bitterly. But André Marie Ampère she praised
+unreservedly, with the warmth of most exalted admiration.
+
+It was very funny to see the little lady curled up on a couch, propped
+by cushions, running over her strings of memories with pleased alacrity,
+then jumping down in her stockings to pour out tea for her guests in
+utter disregard of her shoes, which lay idly by the sofa, even when we
+took leave of her; and as she accompanied us to the door, the white
+stockings conspicuously displayed themselves at every step, without the
+slightest attempt at concealment. (At that time black stockings would
+have been thought an abomination.)
+
+Almost every morning saw Mr. Hamerton in the exhibition before the crowd
+of visitors arrived, so that he was able to study in peace and
+profitably. He had had a card-case, and cards of a convenient size and
+thickness, made especially to take notes upon, and he devoted a separate
+card to every picture worth studying. It was a very convenient plan,
+with alphabetical classification for references; every time he went he
+took with him a fresh supply, and was not encumbered with those he had
+already filled up.
+
+Generally some etcher met him by appointment, and together they selected
+pictures to be reproduced for the "Portfolio." His evenings were mostly
+taken up by invitations; and it was well for his wife that she had been
+mercifully exempted by nature from jealous tendencies, for the ladies
+paid the author of "Marmorne" such a tribute of admiration that he was
+sometimes abashed by their fervor, yet never intoxicated. Friends had
+repeatedly told him that he could win the hearts of men, and if women
+dared not say as much of themselves, they let him see that he exercised
+a great and healthy influence over them too; he also enjoyed their
+society, and though he did not mean it to be a flattery, they accepted
+it as such.
+
+Amongst artists and men of letters he was acknowledged as a writer of
+genuine worth and extensive acquirements. There is a proof of it in a
+letter addressed to him by M. Véron, editor of "L'Art," on merely
+_guessing_ that Mr. Hamerton must be the writer of a criticism of his
+"Esthétique" in the "Saturday Review."
+
+"PARIS, 11 9_bre_, 1878.
+
+"CHER MONSIEUR,--On me communique une revue très remarquable de la
+'Saturday Review' sur mon 'Esthétique.' Ce qui distingue cet article
+c'est une sérieuse connaissance du sujet et une puissance d'analyse des
+plus rares. Cela ne ressemble en rien à ces généralités vagues et
+flottantes dont se contentent la plupart des écrivains qui font de la
+critique dans la revue des journaux. Aussi ai-je éprouvé à être loué par
+un pareil homme une jouissance infiniment plus vive que celle
+qu'auraient pu me procurer des éloges beaucoup plus hyperboliques, mais
+moins compétents.
+
+"Cet homme, je suppose que c'est vous. Si je ne me trompe pas,
+permettez-moi de vous dire que je me sens singulièrement heureux de me
+rencontrer en fait d'esthétique avec un écrivain capable de raisonner
+sur ces questions comme l'a fait l'auteur de l'article de la 'Saturday
+Review.'"
+
+More acquaintances amongst artists were made during his stay in Paris,
+including Bracquemond, Protais, Feyen-Perrin, Waltner, Lhermitte, and
+Munkacsy.
+
+Having finished his work in the exhibition, my husband went home to
+write a notice of it for the "International Review." In the course of
+November his eldest son Stephen passed a successful examination for the
+second part of the Baccalauréat-ès-Lettres, and as the boy was now to
+study at home, his father frequently employed him to write letters under
+his dictation. It was very good practice for Stephen, and spared his
+father's time for painting and drawing.
+
+At the beginning of 1879, Mr. R. L. Stevenson had sent a manuscript to
+Mr. Hamerton, with a request that he would read it, and recommend it to
+a publisher if it were thought worth the trouble. It was appreciated,
+and a successful sale expected. In the interest of Mr. Stevenson, my
+husband advised him to sacrifice the idea of immediate payment, and to
+retain the copyright, hoping that it would prove more advantageous.
+However, the young author preferred the ready cash, which he may have
+been in need of; nevertheless acknowledging afterwards that it would
+have been preferable to have acted according to the sound advice given
+at the time.
+
+As our daughter was fast developing a talent for music, her father felt
+tempted to resume the practice of the violin regularly, and they often
+played duets and sonatas together; but the difficulty--nay, the
+impossibility--of finding time for the prosecution of all the studies he
+had undertaken was a source of oft-recurring discouragement, because
+unavoidably he had to replace one by another now and then, it being
+impracticable to carry them on _de front_. Sometimes he complained,
+good-humoredly, that I rather discouraged than encouraged him about
+music--which was certainly true, for well knowing that to become a
+violinist of any skill involves years and years of regular and steady
+practice, I was adverse to this additional strain, leading to no
+adequate reward. I well knew it could not be sustained, and would have
+to give way to pressure from other quarters--writing, painting, etching,
+or reading. The study of Italian had also been vigorously resumed, so
+that in the diary I see this note regularly: "Practised Spohr and
+Kreutzer, or Beethoven. Read Dante." I also find the following in April:
+"Spent the greater part of the day in planning my new novel with Charles
+(his brother-in-law). Worked on plan of my novel, and modified it by
+talking it over with my wife," I did not like the plan, which, in my
+opinion, went too much into the technicalities and details of a young
+nobleman's education; I feared they might prove tedious to the reader;
+in consequence there is a new entry a week later: "Improved plan of
+novel with wife. Now reserve mornings exclusively for it, or it will
+never be finished at all. Make this a fixed rule."
+
+At the end of April some monochromes had been sent for reproduction, but
+he was greatly disappointed with them, as may be seen by the diary:--
+
+"May 31. Had a great deal of trouble this month about reproductions of
+drawings in autotype. Dissatisfied with the reproductions of the oil
+monochromes, which came coarse, with thousands of false specks of light.
+The surface of a drawing should be _mate_ for autotype reproduction.
+This led me to make various experiments of various kinds, and the latest
+conclusion I have arrived at is something like drawing on wood; that is,
+pencil or chalk, going into detail, and sustained by washes of Indian
+ink, and relieved by touches of Chinese white. The whole business
+hitherto has been, full of difficulties of various kinds."
+
+"June 11. The proofs of the autotypes on white paper with brown
+pigment arrived to-day. Determined to have second negatives taken
+of all of them, and to repaint them on the positives."
+
+To turn his thoughts away from his repeated disappointments in artistic
+attempts, and to a greater disappointment in his novel--which he had
+entirely destroyed after bestowing upon it two months of labor--Gilbert
+began to scheme a boat, a river yacht. It was the best of diversions for
+him, as he took as much pleasure in the planning of a boat as in the use
+of it. This new one was to be a marvel of safety and speed, but
+especially of convenience, for it would be made to carry several
+passengers for a month's cruise, with means of taking meals on board,
+and of sleeping under a tent. Of course Mr. Seeley had been informed of
+the scheme, and wrote in answer: "Don't fail to send me notice when your
+boat may be expected on the Thames, that I may rouse the population of
+Kingston to give you an appropriate reception."
+
+Another novel was begun, but it was still to be the story of a young
+French nobleman's life, spent alternately in France and in England,
+and in the manner of "Tom Jones." Meanwhile "Modern Frenchmen" was
+selling pretty steadily, but slowly, the public being mostly
+unacquainted with the names, though Mr. G. H. Lewes, Professor
+Seeley, Mr. Lockhart, and many others, had a very high opinion
+of the work. Mr. Lockhart wrote about the biography of Régnault:--
+
+"I have by me at this moment your life of Henri Régnault. I trust you
+will not consider it an impertinence if I tell you how it has delighted
+me, both as a man and a painter. I have the most intense admiration for
+Régnault, and in reading his biography it has rejoiced me to find the
+author in such thorough sympathy with his subject. Biographies of
+artists, as a rule, are the most disappointing of books to artists. This
+is indeed an exception, and I most heartily congratulate you on your
+very subtle and delicate picture of a noble life.
+
+"I was in Granada with Fortuny when the news of Régnault's
+death came. I shall never forget the impression it made on us all. The
+fall of Paris, the surrender of Napoleon, all the misfortunes of France
+were as nothing compared to this.
+
+"When I first had the book I thought you a little unjust to Fortuny, and
+was prepared to indorse Régnault's estimate of him. Since then I have
+seen the thirty Fortunys at the International Exhibition, and they have
+moderated my enthusiasm, and brought me back to sober orthodoxy, to
+Velasquez and Rembrandt."
+
+Mr. G. H. Lewes also wrote:--
+
+"We left London before your book arrived, but I sent for it, and Mrs.
+Lewes has been reading it aloud to me the last few evenings. It has
+charmed us both, and we regret that so good a scheme, so well carried
+out, should in the nature of the case be one doomed to meet with small
+public response. No reader worth having can read it without interest and
+profit, but _il s'agit de trouver des lecteurs_.
+
+"My son writes in great delight with it, and I have recommended it to
+the one person we have seen in our solitude; but I fear you will find the
+deaf adder of a public deafer than usual to your charming. A volume of
+biographies of well-known Frenchmen would have but a slender chance of
+success--and a volume on the unknown would need to be spiced with
+religion or politics--_et fortement épicé_--to attract more than a
+reader here and there.
+
+"We are here for five weeks in our Paradise _without_ the serpent
+(symbol of visitors!); but alas! without the health which would make the
+long peace one filled with work. As for me, I vegetate mostly. I get up
+at six to stroll out for an hour before breakfast, leaving Madonna in
+bed with Dante or Homer, and quite insensible to the attractions of
+before-breakfast walks. With my cigar I get a little reading done, and
+sometimes write a little; but the forenoon is usually sauntered and
+pottered away. When Madonna has satisfied her inexhaustible craving for
+knowledge till nearly lunch-time, we play lawn-tennis. Then drive out
+for two or three hours. Music and books till dinner. After cigar and nap
+she reads to me till ten, and I finish by some light work till eleven.
+But I hope in a week or two to get stronger and able to work again, the
+more so as 'the night in which no man can work' is fast approaching."
+
+Mr. R. Seeley agreed with Mr. Hamerton's opinion that "Modern Frenchmen"
+was one of his best works, "admirably written, full of information and
+interest."
+
+Professor Seeley had also said: "I wish English people would take an
+interest in such books, but I fear they won't. There ought to be many
+such books written."
+
+Mr. G. H. Lewes suggested that the other biographies in preparation
+should be published separately in some popular magazine; but the author,
+having been discouraged by the coolness of the reception, gave up the
+idea of a sequel to what had already appeared, and the material he had
+been gathering on Augustin Thierry, General Castellane, and Arago
+remained useless.
+
+The boat in progress had been devised in view of a voyage on the Rhône,
+for Mr. Hamerton, who greatly admired the noble character of the scenery
+in the Rhône Valley, had longed for the opportunity of making it known
+by an important illustrated work. He submitted the plan to Mr. Seeley,
+who answered:--
+
+"I like your Rhône scheme; it is a grand subject, but a book on the
+Rhône should begin at the Rhône glacier and end at the Mediterranean.
+Have your ideas enlarged to that extent. One cannot well omit the upper
+part, which the English who travel in Switzerland know so well. The
+Rhône valley is very picturesque, and the exit of the Rhône from the
+Lake of Geneva is a thing never to be forgotten. But don't go there to
+get drowned; it is horribly dangerous."
+
+For various reasons--amongst others, the time required and the
+outlay--the idea of the book entertained by Mr. Hamerton differed
+considerably from that of Mr. Seeley; it was explained at length, and
+finally accepted in these words: "I think your plan of a voyage on the
+navigable Rhône, with prologue and epilogue, will do well."
+
+This plan, however, was never realized, owing to insurmountable
+obstacles; it was taken up again and again, studied, modified, and
+regretfully relinquished after several years for that of the Saône, much
+more practicable, but still not without its difficulties.
+
+And now what might have been a great event in the life of Mr.
+Hamerton--namely, the possibility of his election to the Watson-Gordon
+Chair of Fine Arts in Edinburgh, began to occupy his mind. He was
+strongly urged by his friends to come forward as a candidate, but he
+hesitated a good deal for several reasons, the most important being the
+necessity of two places of residence, for he would not have inflicted
+upon my mother and myself the pain of absolute separation. Still, there
+were, as it seemed to me, in case of success, some undeniable
+advantages--first of all a fixed income, and the possibility of seeing,
+in the course of the necessary journeys, what might be of interest in
+London and Paris, as well as the possibility of attending more
+efficaciously to the "Portfolio." Mr. Seeley, who had always endeavored
+to tempt his editor over to England, declared himself delighted at the
+prospect. He had formerly sent such hints as these: "I wish you had a
+neat flying machine and could pop over and do the business yourself." Or
+at Cowes: "I thought of you, and said to myself, how much more
+reasonable it would be for Hamerton to have a snug little house here,
+and a snug little sailing-boat, instead of living at that preposterous
+Autun. How he would enjoy dancing over these waves, which make me sick
+to look at them; and how pleasant it would be to tempt him to pay
+frequent visits to Kingston! There are delightful cottages and villages
+to sketch in the Isle of Wight, and charming woodland scenery in the New
+Forest." Again: "When our new house is dry enough then you will be
+obliged to come over. It will be better than seeing the Paris
+Exhibition. And when you are once in England you will take a cottage at
+Cowes, and buy a boat, and never go back to Autun."
+
+The idea of becoming a candidate was first suggested by T. Woolner after
+a journey to Edinburgh, where he had heard some names put forward for
+the Watson-Gordon chair, and amongst them that of Mr. Hamerton, which
+had seemed to him the most popular. On his part, he had done what he
+could to strengthen this favorable opinion by spreading what he knew of
+his friend, not only as an artist and cultured man of letters, but also
+as a sociable conversationalist, capable of enjoying intercourse with
+his fellow-men in moments of leisure, and he took care to let my husband
+know that this point was of importance--the new professor being expected
+to exercise hospitality, so as to create a sort of centre for the
+gathering of art-lovers. He said he had heard of a good income, of light
+duties, and of the almost certainty of success in case Mr. Hamerton
+should present himself.
+
+Professor Masson had also suggested to Mr. Macmillan that "many persons
+in Edinburgh would like to secure the best man in Mr. Hamerton," and Mr.
+Craik wrote about it: "You would be an ornament to the University, and
+might do useful and important work there. For many reasons the Scotch
+professorships are enviable, for this particularly--that the session is
+a short one, and would require short residence. It will be pleasant for
+all of us, your friends, if you go to Edinburgh, for it will compel you
+to come to England and be seen."
+
+Mr. Seeley was also of opinion that "no man ought to be wholly dependent
+upon literary labor. It tries the head too much."
+
+All the friends who were consulted by my husband answered that they
+considered him perfectly adapted for the situation--apart from friendly
+motives. Mr. Alfred Hunt wrote: "I would be very glad to do everything
+to forward your election. I am indebted to you for a large amount of
+gratification and profit which I have derived from your books; I am sure
+you will allow me to say that I am often very far from agreeing with
+you," etc.
+
+R. L. Stevenson wrote:--
+
+"Monterey, Monterey Co., California.
+
+"My dear Mr. Hamerton,--Your letter to my father was forwarded to me by
+mistake, and by mistake I opened it. The letter to myself has not yet
+reached me. This must explain my own and my father's silence. I shall
+write by this or next post, to the only friends I have, who, I think,
+would have an influence, as they are both professors. I regret
+exceedingly that I am not in Edinburgh, as I could perhaps have done
+more, and I need not tell you that what I might do for you in the matter
+of the election is neither from friendship nor gratitude, but because
+you are the only man (I beg your pardon) worth a damn. I shall write to
+a third friend, now I think of it, whose father will have great
+influence.
+
+"I find here (of all places in the world) your 'Essays on Art,' which I
+have read with signal interest. I believe I shall dig an essay of my own
+out of one of them, for it set me thinking; if mine could only produce
+yet another in reply we could have the marrow cut between us.
+
+"I hope, my dear sir, you will not think badly of me for my long
+silence. My head has scarce been on my shoulders. I had scarce recovered
+from a prolonged fit of useless ill health than I was whirled over here
+double-quick time and by cheapest conveyance.
+
+"I have been since pretty ill, but pick up, though still somewhat of a
+massy ruin. If you would view my countenance aright, Come--view it by
+the pale moonlight. But that is on the mend. I believe I have now a
+distant claim to tan.
+
+"A letter will be more than welcome in this distant clime where I have
+a box at the post-office--generally, I regret to say, empty. Could your
+recommendation introduce me to an American publisher? My next book I
+should really try to get hold of here, as its interest is international,
+and the more I am in this country, the more I understand the weight of
+your influence. It is pleasant to be thus most at home abroad, above all
+when the prophet is still not without honor in his own land."
+
+Mr. W. Wyld had also written: "I need not say I heartily wish you
+success--and the more so that it would have the result of my seeing you
+at least twice a year, a pleasure I shall anxiously look forward to; for
+the older I grow the more I yearn for that sort of communion of thought
+which is scarcely ever to be met with in the ordinary way of existence
+... I have no one I can discuss art with ... and as for philosophy--"
+
+Miss Susan Hamerton also pressed her nephew to offer himself for the
+chair, and indulged in bright hopes of frequent meetings.
+
+The result was that, after a long talk with me on March 21, 1880, my
+husband determined to offer himself as a candidate, and although he did
+it without much enthusiasm, he began immediately to prepare himself for
+the new duties that would be involved. First of all, he told me that his
+knowledge of the history of art was insufficient, and would require
+additional researches. His plan was to go to Greece first, then to
+Italy; another year he would go to Holland and Belgium, then to Spain--I
+began to be afraid of this programme, as I reflected that the income
+from the professorship would hardly cover our travelling expenses, and
+that very little time would be left for literary work if the lectures
+required so much preparation; however, I only begged him to wait for the
+result of the election before he undertook anything in view of it. He
+agreed, and turned his thoughts towards the "Graphic Arts," and a new
+edition of "Etching and Etchers."
+
+In the beginning of April, Mr. Hamerton attended with his family the
+wedding of Charles Gindriez, his brother-in-law, and was well pleased
+with the young lady, who thus became a new member in the gatherings at
+La Tuilerie.
+
+Three days later, his elder son Stephen started for Algiers, where he
+had an appointment at the Lycée.
+
+For some time past, the two great political parties at Autun had been at
+daggers drawn, and the proprietors of the Conservative paper,
+"L'Autunois," had brought from Paris a skilful and unscrupulous
+political writer to crush its opponents and to effect the ruin of the
+rival paper, "La République du Morvan," by fair means or foul. The first
+stabs dealt by the new pen were directed against notable residents, and
+being a good fencer and a good shot--in fact, a sort of bravo--M.
+Tremplier, the wielder of the pen, proclaimed loudly after every libel
+that he was ready to maintain what he advanced at the point of the
+sword, and to give a meeting to all adversaries. Unacquainted with the
+real social standing of Mr. Hamerton in Autun, but knowing that he was
+Président Honoraire du Cercle National, a Liberal institution patronized
+by the Sous-Préfet and Republican Deputies, M. Tremplier thought it
+would be a master-stroke to defame his character by accusing him of
+being the author of some anonymous articles against the clergy which had
+appeared in "La République du Morvan." Though greatly irritated by this
+unfair attack, my husband contrived to keep his temper, and simply
+denied the accusation. This denial was indorsed by the editor of the
+newspaper in which the articles had been published, and the disagreeable
+incident was expected to end there. But this would not have satisfied
+the truculent M. Tremplier, and in the next number of his paper he
+expressed in arrogant terms an utter disbelief in Mr. Hamerton's denial,
+and venomously attacked him for his nationality, literary pretensions,
+etc., winding up his diatribe, as usual, by a challenge. This was too
+much, and my husband resolved to start for Autun immediately, and to
+horsewhip the scoundrel as he deserved. Mr. Pickering, an English
+artist, and friend of ours, who happened to be at La Tuilerie, offered
+to assist my husband by keeping the ground clear while he administered
+the punishment--for M. Tremplier, notwithstanding his bravado, deemed it
+prudent to surround himself with a bevy of officers, and was seldom to
+be met alone. I was strongly opposed to this course, and at last I
+prevailed upon my husband to abandon it by representing that he was
+being drawn into a snare, for no doubt M. Tremplier was only waiting for
+the attempt at violence he had provoked to get his victim seized and
+imprisoned, so as to be able ever after to stigmatize him with the
+terrible phrase, "C'est un homme qui a fait de la prison." This would be
+undeniable, and as people never inquire _why_ "un homme a fait de la
+prison," it is as well to avoid it altogether. We agreed upon a
+different policy, and resolved to prosecute the "Autunois" for libel,
+and immediately set off to retain a well-known advocate, who belonged to
+the Conservative party, and was said to be one of the proprietors of the
+"Autunois." He knew my husband personally, and also knew that he was
+incapable of having written the anonymous articles, still less capable
+of telling a lie, and as we felt sure of his own honorable character, we
+boldly asked him to defend a political opponent. This was putting him in
+a very delicate situation, and he complained of it at once; but my
+husband insisted, and said that he could not fairly shun this duty.
+Vainly did this gentleman, supported by the Président du Tribunal and
+other notabilities of the same party, try to dissuade Mr. Hamerton from
+seeking redress, by saying that "no one attached the slightest
+importance to such libels," "that he was too much above M. Tremplier to
+resent anything that came from his mercenary pen," "that his character
+was unimpeachable," etc. He was even warned that he had not the remotest
+chance of a verdict in his favor, because he could not prove that he was
+not the author of the objectionable articles. "I should have thought
+that M. Tremplier would be called upon to prove that I had written
+them," he answered. "Anyhow, if I can't count upon justice here, I will
+appeal to the court at Dijon." Seeing that his resolution was not to be
+shaken, he was asked what would satisfy him, and he answered, "An
+apology from M. Tremplier in the 'Autunois.'" And M. Tremplier had to
+submit to the orders of the all-powerful keepers of the purse-strings:
+he did it with a bad grace--but he had to do it.
+
+One of the articles attributed to Mr. Hamerton had been directed against
+the Bishop of Autun, whom he highly esteemed, and there was much
+curiosity as to the opinion of the prelate himself. That opinion was
+soon publicly expressed by a visit from this dignitary of the Roman
+Catholic Church to the Protestant tenant of La Tuilerie.
+
+On receiving Monseigneur Perraud, I thanked him first for his good
+opinion, of which I had never doubted, knowing him to be a reader of my
+husband's works, and also because there was no fear that a man of his
+culture could believe the anonymous articles to be written by the author
+of the biography of l'Abbé Perreyve in "Modern Frenchmen."
+
+Monseigneur Perraud answered that my husband's character and literary
+talent were so much above question that he would never have given a
+thought to this affair had it not been that the "Autunois" was often
+called "Le Journal de l'Evêché," though in fact the Bishop had no more
+to do with it than with its editor, M. Tremplier, whom he had never
+consented to receive. But unwilling to allow the possibility of any
+doubt to remain in other people's minds, he had taken this opportunity
+of becoming personally acquainted with my husband, and of giving a proof
+of his high regard for him.
+
+Monseigneur Perraud had a reputation for freezing dignity which kept
+many people aloof; but he talked quite freely with my husband. Dignity
+he certainly possessed in an unusual degree, and the same might be said
+of Mr. Hamerton, but it was no bar to interesting intercourse nor to
+brotherly sympathy, as we found afterwards in sorrowful circumstances.
+
+This first visit certainly enhanced the high opinion which each had
+formed of the other, and subsequent meetings confirmed the interest they
+found in each other's views and sentiments.
+
+I mentioned Mr. Pickering in connection with the affair of the
+"Autunois," and it may now be explained that after reading "Round my
+House," he had fancied he should like to see the scenery described in
+the book, as it would probably afford him paintable subjects. Although
+the name of the neighboring town was not given, and though great changes
+had been made by the construction of a railway since the publication of
+the book, Mr. Pickering lighted upon Autun as the very place he was in
+search of. He soon made my husband's acquaintance, and a friendship
+between them was rapidly established.
+
+Mr. Woolner, who had kept up for some months a brisk correspondence in
+behalf of Mr. Hamerton's candidature, now heard that matters were not
+going so smoothly as he had expected. He was told that the income would
+not come up to the sum stated at first; that the formation of an art
+museum was contemplated, in which case the duties of forming and keeping
+it would devolve upon the professor. There was also a desire that the
+students should receive technical instruction; and, lastly, it was
+rumored that forty lectures a year would be required. In fact, Mr.
+Hamerton began to regret that he had offered himself for the post
+without knowing exactly what he would be expected to do.
+
+Whilst in this frame of mind he was advised to go to Edinburgh in order
+to call upon each of the electors. No one acquainted with his character
+could have imagined for an instant that he would comply. "The electors,"
+he said to me, "must be acquainted with my works; I have sent nearly
+fifty testimonials given by eminent artists, men of letters, and
+publishers; I consider this as sufficient to enable the electors to
+judge of the capacities for which an art professor ought to be chosen.
+If these are judged insufficient, my presence could not give them more
+weight."
+
+I find this simple entry in the diary: "July 20, 1880. Got news that I
+was not elected;" and though he may have regretted the time wasted in
+this fruitless attempt, I am convinced that he experienced a sensation
+of delightful relief when no longer dreading encroachments upon his
+liberty to work as he thought fit. [Footnote: It was also Mr. R.
+Seeley's opinion when he wrote: "You have felt so much doubt as to the
+effect of such a change of life upon your health that the decision may
+come as a relief to you."] After all, there remained to him as a lasting
+compensation the tokens of flattering regard for his character and of
+appreciation of his talents given in the numerous testimonials by such
+eminent persons as Mr. R. Browning, Sir F. Leighton, Sir J. E. Millais,
+Sir John Gilbert, Mr. T. Woolner, Mr. G. F. Watts, Professor Seeley,
+Professor Sidney Colvin, Professor Oliver, Mr. Mark Pattison, Mr. S.
+Palmer, Mr. Orchardson, Mr. Marks, Mr. A. W. Hunt, Mr. Herkomer, Mr.
+Vicat Cole, Mr. Alma Tadema, Sir G. Reid, Mr. W. E. Lockhart, Mr. J.
+MacWhirter, Professor Legros, M. Paul Rajon, M. Leopold Flameng, etc.
+
+The testimonials are too numerous to be given here, but they all agreed
+in the expressed opinion that Mr. Hamerton would be "the right man in
+the right place," or "the very man."
+
+Although the "Life of Turner" had first appeared in the "Portfolio," it
+was again well received by the public in book form, and greatly praised
+by the press, particularly in America. The "Boston Courier" said:--
+
+"We have found this volume thoroughly fascinating, and think that no
+open-minded reader of 'Modern Painters' should neglect to read this
+life. In it he will find Turner dethroned from the pinnacle of a
+demi-god on which Ruskin had set him (greatly to the artist's
+disadvantage); but he will also find him placed on another reasonably
+high pedestal, where one may admire him intelligently and lovingly, in
+spite of the defects in drawing, the occasional lapses in coloring,
+and the other peculiarities which are made clear to his observation by
+Mr. Hamerton's discussion."
+
+He had found it a difficult subject to treat because of the paucity of
+incidents in Turner's life; but the painter's genius had made so deep an
+impression upon him in his earlier years that he had eagerly studied his
+works and sought information about his personality from the friends who
+had, at some time or other, been acquainted with the marvellous artist.
+I believe that my husband hardly ever went to the National Gallery
+without visiting the Turner Room, and that is saying much, for during
+his sojourns in London he seldom missed going every day it was open, and
+sometimes he went twice,--once in the morning, and again in the
+afternoon. Great as was his admiration of Turner's oil pictures, I
+believe it was equalled by his delight in the same master's water-colors
+and drawings. When in the lower rooms, where they are exhibited, he
+could hardly be prevailed upon to go upstairs again, and I had to plead
+fatigue and hunger to recall him to the realities of life. Although his
+appreciation of Constable was high, it could not be compared to what he
+felt for Turner, because "Turner was so wide in range that he was the
+opposite of Constable, whose art was the expression of intense affection
+for one locality."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+1880-1882.
+
+Third edition of "Etching and Etchers."--Kew.--"The Graphic
+Arts."--"Human Intercourse."
+
+Once rid of the perturbation occasioned by the affair of the election,
+Mr. Hamerton was free to devote himself energetically to the preparation
+of a new and splendid edition of "Etching and Etchers," for which he
+spared neither thought nor pains,--being generously entrusted by Messrs.
+Macmillan with the necessary funds, and given _carte blanche_ for the
+arrangement. Mr. Craik had said, in a letter dated Jan. 10, 1880: "We
+are disposed to make it a very fine book, and not to grudge the outlay.
+We must leave all the details for you to arrange." In another, of May
+29, he said again: "We are particularly anxious to make it a beautiful
+book; and I think the plan of making each edition completely different
+from the preceding, gives it an interest and value that will make the
+book always sought after. The first edition is a scarce and valuable
+book. The second will rise in value."
+
+Being allowed to do exactly as he liked, the author of "Etching and
+Etchers" set to his task with delightful anticipation of the result.
+
+At the same time he was also giving a good deal of time to the
+annotation of certain engravings and etchings presented by himself and
+some friends to the Manchester Museum, in which he took great interest.
+
+When the vacation brought the boys home in August, it was decided to
+have a trial trip on the Saône in the "Morvandelle;" but after behaving
+well enough on the water, she filled and sank at anchor whilst her
+captain was quietly enjoying dinner with his sons at the nearest inn.
+The boat being made of wood, and divided into a great many compartments
+to hold stores and luggage, let the water into those compartments as the
+wood dried and shrank. It became, therefore, necessary to exchange the
+wooden tubes for iron ones, for it was a double boat. So the crew had to
+come back home, and Mr. Hamerton sent to a periodical a relation of his
+impressions and adventures in this brief voyage and shipwreck.
+
+In the summer there was an exhibition at the Glasgow Institute of Fine
+Arts, and my husband was asked to send something if possible; but being
+almost overwhelmed with work, he was obliged to decline the invitation.
+Mr. R. Walker, the secretary of the Institute, wrote to say how sorry he
+was not to have his name in the catalogue, and added:--
+
+"Our collection of etchings is very good, and during the short time
+we have been open the people of Glasgow have learned more about
+etching than ever they knew before. Your book has been a source of
+infinite delight to many here. A short time ago we all hoped to have
+you among us. The loss is ours. Sometimes I trust we may have the
+pleasure of seeing you in Glasgow. You would find us not altogether
+wanting in appreciation of what is right in art, and there is an
+increasing number of people here who believe that ledgers are not the
+only books worth studying."
+
+Although the "Portfolio" was now generally acknowledged to be at the
+head of artistic periodicals in England, it was the desire of both its
+editor and publisher to improve it still further. In one of his letters
+Mr. Craik had said: "What an important part the 'Portfolio' is playing!
+I believe you are affecting the public, and compelling them to recognize
+the best things in a way they never did before. I think your conduct of
+the monthly admirable."
+
+It was now proposed to add to its artistic value by giving more original
+etchings. Hitherto the peculiar uncertainty of the art of etching had
+hindered the realization of this desire, for there being no certainty
+about the quality of an etching from a picture, the risk is immensely
+increased when a commission is given for an original etching. The
+celebrity of an etcher and his previous achievements can only give hopes
+that he _may_ be successful once more, but these hopes are far from a
+certainty. Even such artists as Rajon and Jacquemart,--to mention only
+two of the most eminent,--who constantly delighted the lovers of art by
+masterpieces of skill and artistic feeling,--and were, moreover,
+painters themselves,--were not safe against failure, and repeated
+failure, even in copying.
+
+When a commission has been given to an artist, the stipulated price has
+to be paid whether the result is a success or a failure, unless the
+artist himself acknowledges the failure--a very rare occurrence; at best
+he admits that some retouching is desirable, and consents to undertake
+it; but too often with the result that the plate loses all freshness.
+
+Such considerations, and many more, made it necessary for the publisher
+and editor of the "Portfolio" to discuss the subject at length and
+without hurry. In addition to the affairs of the "Portfolio," there was
+the choice of illustrations for the book on the Graphic Arts, which was
+to be published by Mr. Seeley, and for which the presence of the author
+in London was almost a necessity.
+
+It was then decided that, both our boys having situations, we would take
+our daughter with us and seek for lodgings somewhere on the banks of the
+Thames, probably at Kew. Mr. and Mrs. Seeley, with their usual kindness,
+invited us to stay with them until we had found convenient
+accommodation.
+
+We started in October, and as soon as we reached Paris we heard from our
+younger son Richard that he was far from pleased with his present
+situation. Instead of having to devote only a few hours a day to
+teaching English, as he had been promised, the whole of his time was
+taken up by the usual drudgery which is the lot of an under-master, so
+that he could not study for himself. The first thing his father did was
+to set him free from that bondage, and to devise the best means to
+enable him to pursue the study of painting which the boy wished to
+follow as a profession. They went together to consult Jean Paul Laurens,
+who said that the most efficacious way would be--not to study under one
+master, but to go to one of Juan's ateliers, where students get the
+benefit of sound advice from several leading artists. In conformity with
+this counsel my husband saw M. Juan, and after learning from him the
+names of the artists visiting the particular atelier where Richard was
+to study, he got him recommended to Jules Lefebvre and to Gérôme by an
+intimate friend.
+
+Paul Rajon, as usual, did not fail to call upon us, and we were very
+sorry to notice a great change for the worse in his appearance. He said
+he had been very ill lately, and was still far from well; he seemed to
+have lost all his buoyancy of spirits, and to look careworn. He alluded
+to pecuniary difficulties resulting from the early death of his
+brother-in-law, which left his sister, and a child I believe, entirely
+dependent upon him. Without reckoning on adverse fortune or ill-health,
+he had built himself a house with a fine studio at Auvers-sur-Oise, to
+escape from the incessant interruptions to his work when in Paris. But
+of course the outlay had been heavier than he had intended it to be, and
+these cares made him rather anxious. Being very good friends, we had
+formerly received confidences from him about the dissatisfaction created
+by the loneliness of his home and the want of a strong affection--in
+spite of his success in society and the flattering smiles and speeches
+of renowned beauties. In answer to my suggestion that marriage would
+perhaps give him what he wanted, he had answered: "No doubt; but where
+shall I find the wife? The girl I introduce into society as _my_ wife
+must be very beautiful, else what would society think of my taste as an
+artist?... She must also be above the average in intelligence, to meet
+with the _élite_ and keep her proper place; and lastly, she must also be
+wealthy, for my earnings are not sufficient for the frame I desire to
+show her in." He was quite serious, but I laughed and said: "I beg to
+alter my opinion of your wants. The wife you describe would be the mere
+satisfaction of your vanity, and if you were fortunate enough to meet
+with the gifts of beauty, intelligence, and wealth in the same person it
+would be very exacting to expect that in addition to all these she
+should be domestic, to minister to your home comforts, and sufficiently
+devoted for your need of affection."
+
+"I told you I thought it very difficult," he sighed.
+
+"If you take other people's opinion about the choice of a wife," my
+husband said, "you are not ripe for matrimony; no man ought to get
+married unless he feels that he cannot help it,--that he could not live
+happily without the companionship of a particular woman."
+
+There had been an interval of a few years between this conversation and
+our present meeting; but M. Rajon had not forgotten it, for he said with
+a shade of sadness: "It is now, Mrs. Hamerton, that I feel the want of a
+domestic and devoted wife, such as you advised me to choose; but
+marriage is out of the question. I am an invalid."
+
+We tried to cheer him up, and my husband's serene philosophy seemed to
+do him good. He repeated to Paul Rajon his usual comparison of the
+events of life to a very good cup of coffee to which a pinch of salt is
+always added before we are allowed to taste it. "Your reputation and
+talent," he said, "make a capital cup of coffee; but your illness has
+seasoned it with rather a heavy pinch of salt."
+
+The journey to England was got through without any serious accident to
+my husband's health, but we had to be very careful in adhering to our
+rules of slow trains and night travelling and frequent stoppages.
+
+It was the first visit of our daughter to England, and her father
+watched her impressions with great interest. She spoke English timidly
+and reluctantly; but Mrs. Seeley was so kindly encouraging that she
+overcame her timidity.
+
+Mr. Seeley received us in his pretty, newly built house at Kingston,
+which, being quite in the country and very quiet, suited my husband's
+tastes admirably. The proximity of a beautiful park was very tempting
+for rambles, and when at leisure we much enjoyed going all together for
+a stroll under its noble trees. Mr. Seeley and his friend sometimes went
+off to London together in the morning, but it was more desirable for my
+husband to go to town only in the afternoon, because he felt less and
+less nervous as the day wore on, and was quite himself in the evening.
+
+We left Kingston to go and stay for a few days with Mr. and Mrs.
+Macmillan. The evenings after Mr. Macmillan's return from business were
+very animated with conversation and music.
+
+Sometimes Mr. Macmillan gave us some Scotch and Gaelic songs with
+remarkable pathos and power; and invariably, after every one else had
+retired, he remained talking intimately, often confidentially, with my
+husband far into the night.
+
+A pretty incident occurred before we left Knapdale. One afternoon we
+found Mrs. Macmillan very busy putting the finishing touches to an
+embroidered and be-ribboned baby's frock, intended as a present to her
+husband's first grandchild, on his first visit to Knapdale, which was to
+be on that very day. After dinner the little man made his appearance in
+the decorated frock, and took his place upon his grandfather's
+shoulders. Then we all formed a procession, headed by the still erect
+form of the grandsire supporting the infant hope of the family, and
+leading us--parents, relatives, and guests--to the cheerful domain of
+the cook. She proudly received the company, standing ladle in hand, by
+an enormous earthen vessel containing a tempting mixture, in which
+candied fruits, currants, and spices seemed to predominate. We were
+expected, every one, to bring this medley to greater perfection by
+turning over a portion of it with the ladle. It was duly offered first
+to the little stranger, whose grandsire seized and plunged it into the
+savory depths, whilst the tiny baby hand was tenderly laid upon his own.
+
+The second part of the ceremony--tasting--had likewise to be performed
+by proxy, for the young scion of the house peremptorily refused to
+trifle with any temptation in the form of mincemeat. We all in
+succession performed the ancient rite, and my husband said to me
+afterwards what a capital subject for a picture of family portraits the
+scene would afford. The contrast in the attire of the cook and her maids
+with the toilettes of the ladies, together with the picturesque
+background of the bright kitchen utensils, made a subject in the style
+of an old Dutch master, with a touch of modern sentiment.
+
+After seeing different places on the banks of the Thames we decided
+again for Kew, but this time we required larger lodgings--not only on
+account of Mary, but also for Miss Susan Hamerton and our cousins, Ben
+and Annie Hinde, whom we had invited to join us there. They had gladly
+accepted the invitation, and our meeting was happy and cheerful. We had
+been very fortunate in our lodgings, which were spacious, clean, and
+with a good view of the Green. Our landlady was a very respectable and
+obliging person, and she let us have, when we wished, the use of a
+chaise and a fast-trotting little pony, which greatly added to Aunt
+Susan's enjoyment of the country, for her nephew drove her to the
+prettiest places in the neighborhood, and through Richmond Park whenever
+the weather allowed it. The beautiful gardens received almost a daily
+visit from us, and were a most agreeable as well as a convenient resort
+for our aged aunt, as she could either walk in the open grounds when it
+was mild enough, or else visit the numerous hot-houses if she found the
+outside air too keen for her.
+
+We had been fortunate in this choice of Kew for our temporary residence;
+not only did we like the place in itself, but we met with so hospitable
+and flattering a reception from several resident families, that they
+contrived to make us feel unlike strangers among them, and ever after,
+our thoughts turned back to that time with mingled feelings of regret,
+pleasure, and gratitude; and whenever we came to contemplate the
+possibility of moving to England, Kew was always the place named as
+being preferred by both of us.
+
+Here we again met Professor Oliver, whom my husband had known since he
+came to Kew alone for the first time. Being greatly interested in
+painting, and possessing a collection of fine water-colors by Mr. Alfred
+Hunt, he took pleasure in showing them to Mr. Hamerton, as well as the
+Herbarium, of which he was Director.
+
+Professor Church and his wife showed themselves most friendly and
+untiringly hospitable. Very interesting and distinguished people were to
+be met at their house, where the master was ever willing to display
+before his guests some of his valuable collections of jewels, rare
+tissues, old laces, and Japanese bronzes. We often had the pleasure of
+meeting at this friendly house Mr. Thiselton Dyer, now Director
+of Kew Gardens, and his wife, the daughter of Sir John Hooker--a most
+charming person, who reminded both of us of the lovely women
+immortalized by Reynolds.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The third edition of "Etching and Etchers," now on sale, had fulfilled
+all expectations, and was universally admired and praised. It was a
+great satisfaction to the author, who had never before enjoyed such a
+complete recognition. His reputation and popularity increased rapidly,
+and if he had liked he would have been a good deal lionized; but
+although far from insensible to this success, he remained true to his
+studious habits--going with Mr. Seeley to the National Gallery, British
+or Kensington Museums, to choose illustrations for the "Graphic Arts,"
+or quietly writing at his lodgings, and only accepting invitations from
+his friends and publishers.
+
+In December Mr. Macmillan gave a dinner at the Garrick Club in honor of
+the author of "Etching and Etchers," who was warmly congratulated by the
+other guests invited to meet him.
+
+I have still in my possession the menu belonging to Mr. Alma Tadenia who
+said to my husband: "I dare say Mrs. Hamerton would like to have a
+_souvenir_ of this evening--present her with this in my name," and he
+handed his menu, on the back of which he had quickly and cleverly drawn
+a little likeness of himself in caricature, and the guests had signed
+their names on it. A facsimile is given on the opposite page.
+
+As he had given us an invitation to visit his curious house we did not
+fail to go, and Mary was especially attracted by the famous grand piano,
+inscribed inside with the signatures of the renowned musicians who had
+performed upon it. Knowing that our daughter was seriously studying
+music, Mrs. Alma Tadema generously expressed the hope of seeing sometime
+the signature of Miss Hamerton by the side of the other names.
+
+My husband also took Mary to Mrs. Woolner's, and she enjoyed greatly the
+society of the children, who spoke French very creditably, and who were
+interested in the details she could give them about French life and
+ways. They took her to their father's studios, and showed her his works.
+When dinner-time came, however, she was unprepared for being waited upon
+by her new friends, and in consequence felt somewhat ill at ease. It was
+a fancy of Mr. Woolner's to make his children wait upon his guests. They
+offered bread and wine, and directed the maids, their duty consisting
+chiefly in seeing that every guest received perfect attendance. It
+reminded one of the pages' service in mediaeval times, and was accepted
+by people of mature age as a gracious courtesy of their host, though it
+proved rather embarrassing to a girl of fifteen. I don't know how long
+the custom prevailed, but I did not notice it in succeeding years.
+
+Our cousin, Ben Hinde, had joined us only for a few days, his duties as
+a clergyman not allowing of a long absence, but our meeting had been
+very pleasant and cordial. He had left with us his sister Annie, to whom
+my husband endeavored to show what was most worthy of attention in the
+metropolis. And just as we were thus enjoying our fragrant "cup of
+coffee," the "pinch of salt" was thrown into it with a heavy hand--for
+we heard from Richard that he was lying so dangerously ill that he could
+not move in bed. He had only written a few words in pencil to let us
+know that the doctor thought our presence unnecessary, because the
+danger would be past, or the illness prove fatal, before we could
+arrive.
+
+Of course my first impulse was to rush to my poor boy's bedside; but
+what was to become of Mary--a girl of fifteen--unused to English ways,
+and speaking English still imperfectly? Perhaps our aunt, who was to
+leave us in a few days, would stay a little longer, though the approach
+of Christmas made it imperative for her companion to get back to the
+vicarage as soon as possible. But my husband?... Could I think of
+leaving him a prey to this terrible anxiety, and to all the dangers of a
+return of the old nervous attacks? I saw how he dreaded the mere
+possibility, though he never said a word to influence my decision, but
+the threatening insomnia and restlessness had already made their
+appearance, and warned me that I ought to stay near him.
+
+I wrote to my best friend in Paris, begging her to send her own doctor
+to our poor boy, and to let me know the whole truth immediately. The
+answer was reassuring--the crisis was past; there was nothing to fear
+now, only the patient would remain weak for some time, and would require
+great care. His friends--particularly one of them, a student of
+medicine--had nursed him intelligently and devotedly. As soon as he
+could take a little food my friend sent him delicacies and old wines,
+and when he could bear the railway he went to his grandmother's to await
+our return home.
+
+We breathed again, and Aunt Susan and Annie left us comparatively quiet
+in mind.
+
+My husband now went on with his work as fast as possible, for he longed
+to see his younger son again. When his notes for the "Graphic Arts" were
+completed, we made a round of visits to take leave of our friends, and
+after another short stay at Knapdale, where we had the pleasure of
+meeting Mr. Lockyer, and another very pleasant pilgrimage to Mr. and
+Mrs. Palmer's hermitage, we set off for Paris.
+
+Mr. Seeley wrote shortly after our arrival in the French capital about
+several matters connected with the "Portfolio," and added: "How will you
+be able to settle down again in that little Autun? You will feel (as
+Robert Montgomery said of himself in Glasgow) like an oak in a
+flower-pot."
+
+No, the oak liked to feel the pure air of the Morvan hills blowing about
+its head, and to spread its branches in unconfined space. It was in
+great crowded cities that it felt the pressure of the flower-pot.
+
+On arriving at home we found Richard well again, and gifted with an
+extraordinary appetite--which was the restorative he most needed, having
+grown very thin and weak through his illness.
+
+My husband had been very desirous to present me with a _souvenir_ of the
+success of "Etching and Etchers," and pressed me to choose a trinket,
+either a bracelet or a brooch; but I thought what I possessed already
+quite sufficient, and though very sensible of his kind thoughtfulness, I
+said that if he liked to make me a present, I would choose something
+useful,--a silk dress, for instance. "But that would not be a present,"
+he said; "when you want a dress you buy it. I should like to offer you
+some pretty object which would last."
+
+I knew that he liked to see me--and ladies in general--wearing jewels;
+not in great quantity, but simply as a touch of finish to the toilette.
+When I was young, he would have liked me (had it been possible) to dress
+always in white, and the fashions not being then so elaborate as they
+have become, it was easy enough in summer-time and in the country to
+indulge his taste. So in warm days I often wore a white muslin dress,
+quite plain, relieved only by a colored sash. If the sash happened to be
+green, he liked it to be matched by a set of crystal beads of the same
+color, which he had brought me from Switzerland when he had gone there
+with his aunt and uncle. When the ribbon was red, I was to wear corals,
+and with a blue one lapis-lazuli.
+
+At last he remembered that I had admired some plain dead-gold bracelets
+of English make that we had been looking at together, not far from the
+National Gallery, and said he would be glad if I would choose one of
+them. I had, however, taken the same resolution about jewels as his own
+about pictures, and that was, to admire what was beautiful, but never to
+buy, because it was beyond our means. The resolution, once taken, left
+no way open to temptation. Still, I did not mean to deny myself the
+pleasure of accepting his proffered present, only I did not want it to
+be expensive, and since I had a sufficiency of jewels, "would he give me
+a pretty casket to put them in?" "Yes," he readily assented. And when I
+opened the casket of fair olive-wood, with the delicately wrought nickel
+clasps and lock, I found a folded paper laid on the dark-blue velvet
+tray, and having opened it read what follows--I need not say with what
+emotions.
+
+  "Here in this empty casket, instead of a diamond or pearl,
+  Instead of a gem I leave but a little rhyme.
+  She remembers the brooch and the bracelet I gave her when she was a
+girl.
+  Deep blue from beyond the sea, not paler from lapse of time.
+  She will put them here in the casket, the ultramarine and the gold;
+  And if such a thing might be, I would give them to her twice over;
+  Once in my youthful hope, and now again when I'm old,
+  But alike in youth or in age with the heart and the soul of a lover."
+
+This note is entered in the diary:--
+
+"January 1, 1881. Faceva i miei doni alla sposa, alla figlia, al mio
+figlio Stefano. La sposa era felicissima di ricevere la sua cassetta."
+
+Roberts Brothers had heard that a new book was in preparation, and they
+wrote in January, 1881:--
+
+"Your third edition of 'Etching and Etchers' is really a magnificent
+specimen of book-making, and we understand two hundred copies have been
+sold in America. At all events, whatever the number sold, it is not to
+be had. We should like to have the American edition of the 'Graphic
+Arts,' and should be glad to receive the novel when it is ready."
+
+But the novel had been put aside, the author being doubtful if it
+equalled "Marmorne" in quality. The whole of his time for writing was
+devoted to the "Graphic Arts," and the remainder to painting from
+nature, often with Mr. Pickering, and to the consideration of the
+necessary alterations to the boat in view of a summer cruise on the
+Saône. The reading of Italian was resumed pretty regularly, whilst the
+diary was kept in that language.
+
+Early in the spring Mr. Seeley wrote:--
+
+"I am afraid it is indispensable that we should meet in Paris, as the
+selection of engravings for reproduction is very important, though, like
+you, I grudge the loss of time. But the book is an important one, and we
+must do our very best to make it a success."
+
+It was then decided that my husband should go to Paris with Richard, and
+they started on May 4, stopped a day at Sens to see the cathedral again,
+and to call upon Madame Challard (who had become a widow), and arrived
+in Paris at night.
+
+The entries in the note-book (kept in Italian) record his visits to the
+Salon, to the Louvre, and to various public buildings. Also to the
+Bibliothèque, to study the works of the École de Fontainebleau, and to
+an exhibition of paintings in imitation of tapestry, which much
+interested him.
+
+He also went with Richard to see Munkacsy's picture of "Christ before
+Pilate," and notes Richard's astonishment at it. He considered it
+himself as one of the finest of existing pictures. He also expresses the
+great pleasure he derived from Jacquemart's water-colors, their
+brilliancy and sureness of execution.
+
+The four following days having been very busy, received only this short
+note, "In Parigi con Seeley;" then the fifth has, "Seeley e partito sta
+mattina."
+
+The succeeding entries record further visits to the Salon, the Louvre,
+and Bibliothèque; but on the return journey, at Chagny on the 19th, he
+notes that he has received sad news of the death of M. de Saint Victor,
+in a duel with M. Asselin. It was only too true, and had happened on a
+day which was to have been a _fête_, for Madame de Saint Victor, whose
+daughter went to the same school as ours, had invited both myself and
+Mary, with a few others school-fellows and their mothers, to lunch at
+the Château de Monjeu, of which her husband was Régisseur. The
+unfortunate lady did not know what had passed between her husband and a
+gentleman of the locality who was trespassing on the grounds of the
+château. M. de Saint Victor considered himself insulted, and challenged
+M. Asselin; he, moreover, insisted upon choosing the sword as a
+weapon--the most dangerous of all in a serious duel--and on the morning
+which should have been festive and mirthful, he fell dead in the wood
+near his home, killed by a sword-thrust from his skilful adversary.
+
+As soon as he was back home, Mr. Hamerton set to work regularly at the
+"Graphic Arts." In the diary this phrase is repeated like a litany:
+"Worked with great pleasure at my book, the 'Graphic Arts.'" But at
+the same time there is a complaint that it prevents the mind from being
+happily disposed for artistic work. I have already said how difficult it
+was for him to turn from one kind of occupation to another. Here is a
+confirmation of this fact:--
+
+"I lost the whole of the day in attempting to make a drawing for an
+etching. Was not in the mood. It is necessary to have a certain warmth
+and interest in a subject--which I have lost, but hope to recover. For a
+long time past all my thoughts have turned upon my literary work."
+
+It is easy for readers of the "Graphic Arts" to realize what an amount
+of knowledge and preparation such a book required; and to present so
+much information in a palatable form was no less than a feat. Still, the
+author took great delight in his work. As in the case of "Etching and
+Etchers," he was encouraged by the publisher, who wrote on June, "I mean
+to take a pride in the book." It was exactly the sort of work which
+suited him--sufficiently important to allow the subjects to be treated
+at length when necessary, and worthy of the infinite care and thought he
+liked to bestow upon his studies. In this case, wonderful as it seems,
+he had himself practised all the arts of which he speaks, with the
+exception of fresco. As to the other branches of art, namely,
+pen-and-ink, silver-point, lead-pencil, sanguine, chalk, charcoal, water
+monochrome, oil monochrome, pastel, painting in oil, painting in
+water-colors, wood-engraving, etching and dry-point, aquatint and
+mezzotint, lithography, he had--more or less--tried every one of them.
+And though he did not give sufficient practice to the burin to acquire
+real skill, still he did not remain satisfied till he could use it.
+
+The same feeling of conscientiousness led him to become acquainted with
+all the different processes of reproduction so much in vogue, and he was
+ever anxious to learn all their technical details.
+
+It was hoped that the "Graphic Arts" might be published at the end of
+the year, and in order to be ready, the author put aside all other work,
+excepting that of the "Portfolio;" but he longed for a short holiday,
+and meant to take it on the Saône. He went to Chalon to a boat-builder,
+and explained the changes to be made in the "Morvandelle," set the men
+to work, and returned to his book.
+
+He had begun to suffer from insomnia, and Mr. Seeley wrote:--
+
+"Probably you are right in saying that yachting is a necessity for you;
+but for the enjoyment of it you are badly placed at Autun. You must look
+after that cottage at Cowes, which I suggested some time ago; and we
+must set up a yacht between us; only, unluckily, I am always seasick in
+a breeze."
+
+Certainly the situation of Autun was not favorable to yachting, the
+streams about it being only fit for canoeing; but the broad Saône was
+not far off, and as Chalon was my husband's headquarters when cruising,
+he was not disinclined to the short journey which afforded an
+opportunity for visiting my mother and my brother, who lived there.
+
+My husband had thought that a river voyage would be charming with R. L.
+Stevenson as a companion, and that they might, perhaps, produce a work
+in collaboration, so he had made the proposal, and here is part of the
+answer:--
+
+"RINNAUD COTTAGE, PITLOCHRY, PERTHSHIRE.
+
+"MY DEAR MR. HAMMERTON,--(There goes the second M: it is a certainty.)
+Thank you for your prompt and kind answer, little as I deserved it,
+though I hope to show you I was less undeserving than I seemed. But just
+might I delete two words in your testimonial? The two words 'and legal'
+were unfortunately winged by chance against my weakest spot, and would
+go far to damn me.
+
+"It was not my bliss that I was interested in when I was married; it was
+a sort of marriage _in extremis_; and if I am where I am, it is thanks
+to the care of that lady who married me when I was a mere complication
+of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a
+bridegroom.
+
+"I had a fair experience of that kind of illness when all the women (God
+bless them I) turn round upon the streets and look after you with a look
+that is only too kind not to be cruel. I have had nearly two years of
+more or less prostration. I have done no work whatever since the
+February before last, until quite of late. To be precise, until the
+beginning of the last month, exactly two essays. All last winter I was
+at Davos; and indeed I am home here just now against the doctor's
+orders, and must soon be back again to that unkindly haunt 'upon the
+mountains visitant--there goes no angel there, but the angel of death.'
+The deaths of last winter are still sore spots to me.... So you see I am
+not very likely to go on a 'wild expedition,' cis-Stygian at least. The
+truth is, I am scarce justified in standing for the chair, though I hope
+you will not mention this; and yet my health is one of my reasons, for
+the class is in summer.
+
+"I hope this statement of my case will make my long neglect appear less
+unkind. It was certainly not because I ever forgot you or your unwonted
+kindness; and it was not because I was in any sense rioting in
+pleasures.
+
+"I am glad to hear the catamaran is on her legs again; you have my
+warmest wishes for a good cruise down the Saône: and yet there comes
+some envy to that wish; for when shall I go cruising? Here a sheer hulk,
+alas! lies R. L. S. But I will continue to hope for a better time,
+canoes that will sail better to the wind, and a river grander than the
+Saône.
+
+"I heard, by the way, in a letter of counsel from a well-wisher, one
+reason of my town's absurdity about the chair of Art: I fear it is
+characteristic of her manners. It was because you did not call upon the
+electors!
+
+"Will you remember me to Mrs. Hamerton and your son? and believe me,"
+etc., etc.
+
+In September we had the pleasure of a visit from Miss Betham-Edwards,
+and the acquaintance ripened into friendship.
+
+Having brought the "Graphic Arts" satisfactorily forward, my husband
+thought that he might indulge in the longed-for holiday on the Saône. He
+expected to find everything ready at Chalon, and to have only to
+superintend the putting together of the sections of the boat. He was,
+however, sorely disappointed on finding that nothing had been done, and
+that he must spend several days in pushing the workmen on, instead of
+sailing pleasantly on the river. After a week of worry and irritation
+the boat was launched, and the two boys having joined their father on
+board, they went together as far as Tournus, after spending the first
+night at Port d'Ouroux, where they had found a nice little inn, with
+simple but good accommodation. In the afternoon Stephen went back to
+Autun to fetch his things, for he was obliged to be at his post on the
+first of October. Richard proceeded with his father down the Saône to
+Mâcon. The diary says:--
+
+"Sept. 30. A beautiful voyage it was. The loveliest weather, favorable
+wind, strong, delightful play of light and color on water. I had not
+enjoyed such boating since I left Loch Awe."
+
+There are these notes in the diary:--
+
+"Nov. 26. Corrected the last proof of the 'Graphic Arts,' and sent it
+off with a new finish, as the other seemed too abrupt. Spent a good deal
+of time over the finish, writing it twice."
+
+"Nov. 27. Worked all day as hard as possible at index to 'Graphic Arts,'
+and got it finished at midnight."
+
+He was in time, but Mr. Seeley wrote:--
+
+"Now Goupil's delay [about the illustrations] threatens to become most
+serious. We have now orders for 1050 copies, large and small, so we have
+already surpassed the sale of 'Etching and Etchers,' third edition."
+
+Alas! there was a very distressing item of news in the letter dated
+December 1:--
+
+"The enclosed letter from Goupil is a complete upset. It seems that the
+printing of the Louvre drawings [Footnote: Two drawings by Zucchero and
+Watteau. The latter was in black, red, and white chalk. The reproduction
+was printed from one plate, the different colored inks being rubbed in
+by the printer. Only about ten prints could be taken in a day.] will
+take five or six months.
+
+"We must decide at once what to do. This is one plan. If we can get all
+the other illustrations ready, then to publish as soon as we can,
+putting these three plates in the large paper copies only, and in the
+others a slip of paper explaining how tedious the printing is, and
+promising that these illustrations shall be delivered in the spring to
+any purchaser who produces the slip.
+
+"This is one plan. If you prefer it, please telegraph _Yes_.
+
+"The other plan is to postpone the publication, and bring out the
+complete book in the spring. If you prefer this, please telegraph _No_.
+
+"I leave the matter entirely in your hands. Pray decide as you judge
+best."
+
+This delay was most provoking after the hard work the author had given
+to the book to have it out in good time, and also because the orders
+were increasing; they had now reached 315 copies for the large edition,
+and 868 of the small one. Still, there was no help for it, and the
+publication must be postponed rather than give an imperfect book to the
+public. Both author and publisher agreed in that decision.
+
+On December 17, 1881, Mr. Hamerton received the following letter:--
+
+"19 WARWICK CRESCENT.
+
+"DEAR MR. HAMERTON,--You will do me an honor indeed by the dedication
+you propose, and my own little worthiness to receive it becomes of
+secondary importance when taken with the exceeding importance of the
+truth you insist upon in connection with it--a truth always plain to me,
+however moderately I may have been able to illustrate its value.
+
+"Thank you very much: you will add to my obligation by the visit you so
+kindly promise.
+
+"I return you the best of Christmas wishes, and am ever, dear Mr.
+Hamerton,
+
+"Yours most truly,
+
+"ROBERT BROWNING."
+
+I transcribe the dedication to explain Mr. Browning's letter.
+
+"TO ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+"I wish to dedicate this book to you as the representative of a class
+which ought to be more numerous,--the class of large-minded persons who
+take a lively interest in arts which are not specially their own. No one
+who had not carefully observed the narrowing of men's minds by
+specialities could believe to what a degree it goes. Instead of being
+open, as yours has always been, to the influences of literature, in the
+largest sense, as well as to the influences of the graphic arts and
+music, the specialized mind shuts itself up in its own pursuit so
+exclusively that it does not even know what is nearest to its own closed
+doors. We meet with scholars who take no more account of the graphic
+arts than if they did not exist, and with painters who never read; but
+what is still more surprising, is the complete indifference with which
+an art can be regarded by men who know and practise another not widely
+removed from it. One may be a painter and yet know nothing whatever
+about any kind of engraving; one may be a skilled engraver, and yet work
+in lifelong misunderstanding of the rapid arts. If the specialists who
+devote themselves to a single study had more of your interest in the
+work of others, they might find, as you have done, that the quality
+which may be called open-mindedness is far from being an impediment to
+success, even in the highest and most arduous of artistic and
+intellectual pursuits."
+
+Mr. Hamerton was so adverse to puffing of any kind and to noise being
+made about his name, that he neglected the most honest means of having
+it brought forward to public notice; for instance, he had been asked in
+November, 1881, for notes on his life for a book to be entitled "The
+Victorian Era of English Literature," and had forgotten all about it. He
+had to be reminded in 1882 that he had promised to send the notes.
+
+I suppose that the following letter from R. L. Stevenson must have been
+received about this time. It is almost impossible to ascertain, as--like
+the others--it bears no date.
+
+"VILLA AM STEIN, DAVOS PLATZ, GRISONS, SWITZERLAND.
+
+"MY DEAR MR. HAMERTON,--My conscience has long been smiting me, till it
+became nearly chronic. My excuses, however, are many and not pleasant.
+Almost immediately after I last wrote to you, I had a hemorreage (I
+can't spell it), was badly treated by a doctor in the country, and have
+been a long while picking up--still, in fact, have much to desire on
+that side. Next, as soon as I got here, my wife took ill; she is, I
+fear, seriously so; and this combination of two invalids very much
+depresses both.
+
+"I have a volume of republished essays coming out with Chatto and
+Windus; I wish they would come, that my wife might have the reviews to
+divert her. Otherwise my news is nil. I am up here in a little chalet,
+on the borders of a pine-wood, overlooking a great part of the Davos
+Thai: a beautiful scene at night, with the moon upon the snowy mountains
+and the lights warmly shining in the village. J. A. Symonds is next door
+to me, just at the foot of my Hill Difficulty (this you will please
+regard as the House Beautiful), and his society is my great stand-by.
+
+"Did you see I had joined the band of the rejected? 'Hardly one of us,'
+said my _confrères_ at the bar.
+
+"I was blamed by a common friend for asking you to give me a
+testimonial: in the circumstances he thought it was indelicate. Lest, by
+some calamity, you should ever have felt the same way, I must say in two
+words how the matter appeared to me. That silly story of the election
+altered in no tittle the value of your testimony: so much for that. On
+the other hand, it led me to take a quite particular pleasure in asking
+you to give it; and so much for the other. I trust even if you cannot
+share it, you will understand my view.
+
+"I am in treaty with Bentley for a life of Hazlitt; I hope it will not
+fall through, as I love the subject, and appear to have found a
+publisher who loves it also. That, I think, makes things more pleasant.
+You know I am a fervent Hazlittite; I mean, regarding him as _the_
+English writer who has had the scantiest justice. Besides which, I am
+anxious to write biography; really, if I understand myself in quest of
+profit, I think it must be good to live with another man from birth to
+death. You have tried it and know.
+
+"How has the cruising gone? Pray remember me to Mrs. Hamerton and your
+son, and believe me,
+
+"Yours very sincerely,
+
+"ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON."
+
+Throughout this year the diary was kept in Italian, and the reading of
+Italian books was pretty regularly kept up; among them were Olanda,
+Petrarch, and Ariosto. He soon abandoned Petrarch, whom he did not value
+much; here is the reason: "I prefer the clear movement of Ariosto to all
+the conceits of the sonnet-maker."
+
+"Human Intercourse" was begun, and to save time, two copies were written
+simultaneously--one for England and the other for America--by inserting
+a sheet of black copying paper between two sheets of thin "Field and
+Tuer" paper, and writing with a hard lead pencil and sufficient pressure
+to obtain a duplicate on the page placed underneath. Roberts Brothers
+were very desirous of seeing this new work, and had written: "We should
+like to make 'Human Intercourse' a companion volume to the 'Intellectual
+Life,' and the title is so suggestive of something good that we hope you
+will hasten the good time of its appearance."
+
+The publication of the "Graphic Arts" had been fixed for March 1, but a
+copy having been got ready at the end of January, it was sent as a
+compliment to Mr. Sagar of the Burnley Mechanics' Institution, and Mr.
+Seeley said: "The Burnley people are delighted at having had the first
+sight of the 'Graphic Arts.' Mr. Sagar writes that from what he saw of
+it, he has no hesitation in saying that it is the best book you have
+written, and does great credit to everybody concerned in its
+production."
+
+The book was highly appreciated by those competent to judge and
+understand the subjects. Mr. Haden wrote about it a letter of fourteen
+pages. Though he calls it himself "an unconscionably long letter," it is
+most interesting throughout, but I only quote a few passages from it.
+
+"I have been reading the 'Graphic Arts' with great interest. It is, or
+rather must have been, a formidable undertaking. I like your chapter on
+'Useful and Aesthetic Drawing.' Your insistence on keeping the two
+things separate, and claiming for each its value, is a great
+lesson--read, too, just at the right time.
+
+"And in your 'Drawing for Artistic Pleasure,' the great lesson there is,
+that true artistic pleasure can only be excited in others by the artist
+that _knows_ what he is about, though he does not express it. Did you
+ever see a drawing or an etching by Victor Hugo? Hugo is a poet, and
+affects to be an artist. But his knowledge of what is or should be
+_organic_, in every picture, is so lamentably absent, that his poetry
+(sought to be imparted in that shape) goes for nothing.
+
+"In 'Right and Wrong in Drawing,' which is excellently written, the
+concluding paragraph is admirable. The chapter on 'Etching and
+Dry-Point' is charmingly written, easy and refined in diction, and set
+down _con amore_."
+
+Then came this letter from Mr. Browning:--
+
+"19 WARWICK CRESCENT, W. _March_ 6, 1882.
+
+"DEAR MR. HAMERTON,--I thought your dedication a great honor to me, and
+should have counted it such had it simply prefaced a pamphlet. To
+connect it with this magnificent book is indeed engraving my name on a
+jewel, instead of stone or even marble.
+
+"Your sumptuous present reached me two days ago--and will be consigned
+to 'my library,' when the best jewel I boast of is disposed of on my
+dressing-table among articles proper to the place: no, indeed--it shall
+be encased as a jewel should, on a desk for all to see how the author
+has chosen to illustrate the [painting- and] drawing-room of the
+author's admirer and (dares he add?) friend,
+
+"ROBERT BROWNING."
+
+Mr. Alfred Hunt also wrote: "I can see that the plan of the book is
+admirable. I often want to know something about art processes which I
+don't practise myself, and which I might be stimulated into trying if I
+was only younger."
+
+The sale of the book was rapid, and before six weeks had elapsed so few
+copies remained that the prices were raised to fifteen guineas for the
+large edition, and to seven and a half guineas for the small one. But
+the author had overworked himself, and hurry had brought back the old
+enemy--insomnia. Mr. Seeley, who had lately suffered from lumbago,
+wrote:--
+
+"Sleeplessness is a far worse thing than lumbago. You are right in
+taking it seriously. I have little doubt, however, that by avoiding
+overwork--and especially hurried work--and getting plenty of exercise,
+you will overcome the tendency. If you ever do another big book, we must
+take two or three years for it, and have no sort of hurry. I once
+thought of the 'Landscape Painters' as a good subject for a big book."
+
+In a subsequent letter Mr. Seeley gives a great deal of thoughtful
+consideration to what might suit his friend's requirements:--
+
+"If 'Landscape Painting' is a subject that you would thoroughly like to
+take up, please tell me what travelling you would consider needful, and
+as far as expense goes I will try to meet you. Perhaps for one thing we
+might go to Italy together, if you are not afraid of being dragged about
+in a chain.
+
+"I thought of the Rhône book again, as likely to suit your present state
+of health."
+
+In the current year, however, it was impossible to undertake the voyage,
+because "Human Intercourse" was to be the important work. As usual with
+a new book, the author had had a struggle at the beginning. He
+attributed the difficulty to the want of subdivisions in the chapters,
+and when he had adopted a more elastic system than is usual in a
+treatise, the obstacle disappeared. He has himself explained this, more
+in detail, to his readers, in the preface of the book.
+
+There is no doubt that this long struggle had increased the tendency to
+sleeplessness, and a little cruise on the Saône was thought to be the
+best remedy. So he left for Mâcon at the beginning of April, and after
+putting the several parts of the boat together, and getting provisions
+on board, he started with Stephen on a voyage down the Saône. On their
+way they could see with a telescope all the details of Mont Blanc. At
+Port d'Arciat they picked up a friend, and after a "good little repast
+with a Good Friday _matelote_," a few sketches were made at Thoissey and
+Beauregard.
+
+The change and exercise in the open air did my husband a great deal of
+good, and he had regained sleep when he returned home.
+
+There being still a good deal of leakage in the "Morvandelle," though a
+thick kind of flannel had been pressed into the interstices, it was
+decided to use the wooden parts to make two small boats for the pond,
+one for Stephen and the other for Richard, the old ones being rotten.
+There was much pleasurable planning for my husband in the scheme, and
+also some manual work for rainy weather. He was exceedingly careful and
+handy in doing joiner's work, and every one in the house applied to him
+for delicate repairs, and--when he had time--they were done to
+perfection; only, he seldom had time, and it was a standing joke that he
+must have a private museum somewhere to which the objects confided to
+him found their way. In reality, he had to do a good deal of manual
+labor of different kinds, on account of our country life, which placed
+us at an inconvenient distance from workmen. For instance, he always
+framed his etchings and engravings himself; at one time he even
+undertook to re-gild all the frames which the flies so rapidly spoilt in
+the country. He had also to make numerous packing-cases and boxes for
+the sending of plates, pictures, and books; he invented lots of
+contrivances for the arrangement of his colors, brushes, portfolios,
+etc. He made different portable easels with folding stools corresponding
+to their size, for working from nature, desks for large books, such as
+dictionaries, to be placed by the side of his arm-chair when he was
+reading; others for etchings and engravings, so that they might be
+examined without fear of any object coming in contact with them. So
+sensitive was he to the way in which works of art were handled, that he
+allowed no one to touch his prints or illustrated books; he was always
+in dread about their margins being creased or crumpled, and to avoid
+this possibility he used to show them himself. A well-known aqua-fortist
+told me that my husband had said to him once, "I would not trust you to
+handle one of your own etchings."
+
+Mr. Seeley had suggested that some illustrated articles about Autun
+might interest the readers of the "Portfolio" on account of the Roman
+and mediaeval remains, the remarkable cathedral, and the picturesque
+character of the surrounding country. He thought that, as a title, "An
+Old Burgundian City" would do. In a former letter he had expressed a
+wish that his editor should come to England--if possible--every year in
+the spring, instead of the autumn, when it was too late to discuss
+arrangements for the "Portfolio" for the ensuing year. Mr. Hamerton
+admitted that it would be desirable, no doubt, but he could not afford
+it; the expenses of our last stay had been a warning, though we had
+lived as simply as possible. To these considerations Mr. Seeley had
+answered: "I am sorry you do not feel more happy about your future work.
+What seems to be wanting is some public post in which you would be paid
+for studying." But he had had more than enough of such schemes after his
+attempt at Edinburgh, and it was the only one he was ever induced to
+make. He began at once the pen-drawings which were to illustrate the
+articles on Autun, and he liked his work exceedingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+1882-1884.
+
+"Paris."--Miss Susan Hamerton's Death.--Burnley revisited.--Hellifield
+Peel.--"Landscape" planned.--Voyage to Marseilles.
+
+In May, Richard went away to Paris to study from the antique in the
+Louvre, and Mary read English to her father for an hour every afternoon.
+
+In the summer Mr. Hamerton received the decoration and title of Officier
+d'Académie, but so little did he care for public marks of distinction
+that the fact is barely mentioned in the diary.
+
+In August he received the following interesting letter from Mr.
+Browning:--
+
+"HOTEL VIRARD, ST. PIERRE DE CHARTREUSE ISÈRS.
+
+"_August_ 17, 1882.
+
+"DEAR MR. HAMERTON,--When I got, a month ago, your very pleasant letter,
+I felt that, full as it was of influences from Autun, the Saône between
+Chalon and Lyons, speeded by '330 square feet of canvas,' my little word
+of thanks in reply would never get well under weigh from the banks of
+our sluggish canal; so reserved launching it till I should reach this
+point of vantage: and now, forth with it, that, wherever it may find
+you, I may assure your kindness that it would indeed have gratified me
+to see you, had circumstances enabled you to come my way; and that the
+amends you promise for failing to do so will be duly counted upon; tho'
+whether that will happen at Warwick Crescent is unlikely rather than
+merely uncertain--since the Bill which is to abolish my house, among
+many more notable erections, has 'passed the Lords'' a fortnight ago,
+and I must look about for another lodging--much against my will. I
+dropped into it with all the indifference possible, some twenty-one
+years ago--meaning to slip out again soon as this happened, and that
+happened--and they all did happen, and yet found me with a sufficient
+reason for staying longer, till, only last year while abroad, the
+extraordinary thought occurred--'what need of removing at all?'--to
+which was no answer: so I took certain steps toward permanent comfort,
+which never before seemed worth taking--and, on my return, was saluted
+by a notice to the effect that a Railway Company wanted my 'House,
+forecourt, and garden,' and wished to know if I objected--I who, a month
+or two before, had painted the house and improved the garden. Go I
+must--but I shall endeavor to go somewhere near, and your visit, if you
+pay me one, will begin the good associations with the place. And _this_
+place; you may be acquainted with it, not unlikely. It is a hamlet on a
+hilltop, surrounded by mountains covered with fir--being the ancient
+Cartusia whence our neighbors the monks took their name; the Great
+Chartreuse lies close by, an hour's walk perhaps: this hamlet is in
+their district, 'the Desert,' as they call it; their walks are confined
+to it, and you meet on a certain day a procession of white-clothed
+shavelings, absolved from their vow of silence, and chattering like
+magpies, while vigorously engaged in butterfly-hunting. We have not a
+single shop in the whole handful of houses--excepting the 'tabac et
+timbres' establishment--where jalap and lollipops are sold likewise--and
+one hovel, the owner of which calls himself, on its outside,
+'Cordonnier': yet there is this 'Hôtel' and an auberge or two--serving
+to house travellers who are dismissed from the Convent at times
+inconvenient for reaching Grenoble; or so I suppose.
+
+"The beauty and quiet of the scenery, the purity of the air, the variety
+of the wild-flowers--these are incomparable in our eyes (those of my
+sister and myself), and make all roughnesses smooth: we spent five weeks
+here last season; will do the like now, and then are bound for Ischia,
+where a friend entertains us for a month in a seaside villa he inhabits:
+afterwards to London, with what appetite we may, though London has its
+abundant worth too. Utterly peaceful as this country appears--and you
+may walk in its main roads for hours without meeting any one but a
+herdsman or wood-cutter--I shall tell you a little experience I have had
+of its possibilities. On the last day of our sojourn last year, we took
+a final look at and leave of a valley, a few miles off; and as I stood
+thinking of the utter _innocency_ of the little spot and its
+surroundings, the odd fancy entered my head, 'Suppose you discovered a
+corpse in this solitude, would you think it your duty to go and apprise
+the authorities, incurring all the risks and certain hindrance to to-
+morrow's departure which such an act entails in France--or would you
+simply hold your tongue?' And I concluded, 'I ought to run those risks.'
+Well, that night a man was found murdered, just there where I had been
+looking down, and the owner of the field was at once arrested and shut
+up in the _Mairie_ of the village of St. Pierre d'Entremont, close by.
+The victim was an Italian mason, had received seven mortal wounds, and
+lay in a potato-patch with a sack containing potatoes: 'he had probably
+been caught stealing these by the owner, who had killed him,'--so, the
+owner was taken into custody. We heard this--and were inconvenienced
+enough by it next day, for our journey was delayed by the Judge
+(d'Instruction) from Grenoble possessing himself of the mule which was
+to carry our luggage, in order to report on the spot; but we got away at
+last. On returning, last week, I inquired about the result. 'The accused
+man, who was plainly innocent, being altogether _boulversé_ by the
+charge coming upon him just in his distress at losing a daughter a
+fortnight before, had taken advantage of the negligence of the gendarmes
+to throw himself from the window. He survived three hours, protesting
+his innocence to the last, which was confirmed by good evidence: the
+likelihood being that the murder had been committed by the Italian's
+companions at a little distance, and the body carried thro' the woods
+and laid there to divert suspicions.' Well might my genius warn me of
+the danger of being a victim's neighbor. But how I have victimized
+_you_, if you have borne with me! Forgive, and believe me ever,
+
+"Yours truly,
+
+"ROBERT BROWNING."
+
+Mr. Seeley had thought that a series of articles on Paris might be
+suitable for the "Portfolio," if they were written by the editor, who
+knew the beautiful city so well, and accordingly my husband had decided
+to go there for a month, in order to take notes and to choose subjects
+for the illustrations. He never could have been reconciled to the idea
+of remaining a month in Paris alone, and I bethought myself of a plan,
+which seemed both economical and pleasant, and which he readily adopted.
+It was to take Mary with us, and to rent a small apartment in our quiet
+Hôtel de la Muette; having our meals prepared in our private kitchen
+(for each apartment was complete), and the cleaning done with the help
+of a _femme de ménage_. It would be a sort of life-at-home on a very
+small scale.
+
+The apartments were like English lodgings without attendance. Moreover,
+no one belonging to the hotel, not even a servant, had a right to enter
+the apartments: they were entirely private. One might order the most
+costly repasts from the luxurious restaurants close at hand, or keep a
+_cordon bleu_, or live on bread-and-water like an anchorite, just as one
+pleased, without anybody noticing it. This liberty was exactly what my
+husband liked.
+
+We left home on October 9 with Richard, who was to continue his artistic
+studies in England now, and Mary, whom her father wanted to become
+acquainted with the different museums, beautiful buildings, and
+treasures of art, under his direction, for which there could have been
+no better opportunity.
+
+We all looked forward to this change as to a _partie de plaisir_, the
+young people especially, and on our arrival in Paris, M. Mas and his
+wife received us with great cordiality. They had nothing in common with
+the ordinary type of hotel-keepers, and welcomed their _habitués_ with a
+simple, hearty friendliness--such as servants, who had been all their
+lives in a family, might show to their masters--which pleased my husband
+much. They showed us, with visible satisfaction, our little apartment,
+saying that it had been reserved for us on account of "Mademoiselle,"
+because her room would be just close to her mamma's, and the door
+leading from one to the other might be left open at night. We were told
+that the kitchen was particularly nice, because Monsieur Paul Baudry,
+"un artiste aussi," had fitted it up "à neuf" for the three months he
+had been spending in our present apartment. Early in the morning I went
+out to order provisions--groceries, fuel, wine, etc., for the month we
+were to remain at the hotel. We had afterwards an excellent and cheerful
+_déjeuner_ prepared in our own kitchen. My husband was amused by the
+contrivances of what he called "the doll's house," and said he did not
+mind spending a month in that way. In the afternoon we went with the
+children to see the Hôtel de Ville, Notre Dame, and La Cour de
+Cassation: in each of these buildings my husband gave us a short
+explanatory lesson in architecture.
+
+The second day he had already made rules for the division of his time,
+according to which the mornings would be reserved for writing and
+correspondence; déjeuner was to be ready at eleven, so as to leave the
+afternoon free for the work in Paris.
+
+As on the previous day, we were breakfasting together, talking of
+Richard's prospects in London, when there came a telegram, saying that
+our dear Aunt Susan thought herself to be sinking, and desired to see
+us. It was a sudden and a painful blow; my husband had not a moment of
+hesitation about what he would do. He told us to pack up immediately,
+whilst he went to look at the railway-guide, and find the first slow
+night-train for England: Richard and Mary were to go with us--it would
+be a last satisfaction for their aunt if we arrived in time.
+
+I was full of apprehension for my husband, but, of course, refrained
+from mentioning my fears.
+
+There was no slow train after four o'clock, so we had to start when it
+was still daylight, but he kept his eyes closed till darkness rendered
+invisible the objects we passed on our way. He bore the journey very
+well on the whole, and on reaching Calais we went on board the steamer
+immediately. It was midnight, the sea was splendidly phosphorescent, and
+Richard and Mary took great delight in throwing things into it, to see
+the sparkles flash about. I had no fear so long as we remained on the
+water, for Gilbert always enjoyed it, whatever the weather might be, and
+felt utterly free from nervousness.
+
+Arrived at Dover at four in the morning, we went to bed for a little
+rest, and after breakfast went out for a walk on the seashore under the
+cliffs. Richard had never seen the sea before, and he received a
+profound impression from it. The wind was high, and the big green,
+crested waves came dashing their foam on to the very rocks at our feet.
+The alternate effects of sunshine and masses of clouds, violently driven
+and torn by the squalls, were magnificent; and Richard, more than ever,
+was fired with the wish to become a painter. His sister, very sensitive
+to natural beauty, shared his enthusiasm.
+
+The train for London started at three, and on arriving at Charing Cross
+we found a more reassuring telegram, stating that our aunt was somewhat
+better. Thus cheered by the hope of seeing her again, Gilbert was able
+to eat his supper with us before going to bed. I was greatly alarmed by
+his decision to start early in the morning and to travel throughout the
+day; but having made such a sacrifice of money in abandoning our
+apartment and provisions, and in taking the children with us in the hope
+of giving a last satisfaction to his aunt, I understood that he would on
+no account run the risk of arriving too late.
+
+It proved a most painful day to us all. Very soon he gave signs of
+distress and nervousness in spite of all his efforts to hide them; but
+this time he would not leave the train, though I besought him to do so.
+
+We had some provisions in our bags, but, weak as he felt, he could not
+swallow a morsel of anything; he could not even drink. Still, at one
+time he thought that a little brandy might do him good; unfortunately we
+had not any with us, and it being Sunday all the refreshment-rooms were
+closed on the line. He strove desperately against the growing cerebral
+excitement, now by lying down at full length on the cushions with the
+curtains drawn, and his eyes closed (most mercifully we were alone in
+our compartment); now by stamping his feet in the narrow space and
+rubbing his hands vigorously to bring back circulation. In these
+alternate fits of excitement and prostration we reached Doncaster at
+five. Luckily there was a stoppage of about forty minutes before we
+could proceed to Featherstone, and we turned it to the best advantage by
+leaving the railway station and going in search of a quiet hotel, where
+we ordered something to eat. Darkness had now set in. We had had a
+little walk out of sight of the railway, in the open air, and there
+seemed to be not a soul, besides ourselves and the landlord, in the
+hotel; so that by the time our dinner made its appearance my husband had
+so far recovered that he was able to take both food and drink, which did
+him much good.
+
+We arrived at Featherstone station after ten, and as the time of our
+arrival had been uncertain, there was nobody to meet us. We left our
+luggage, and only taking our handbags, we set off for the vicarage on
+foot in the dark and in a deluge of rain. At eleven we were all standing
+by the bed of our dear aunt, who knew us perfectly in spite of her weak
+state, and whose satisfaction at the sight of Richard and Mary was as
+great as unhoped for. The diary says: "Oct. 15, 1882. Our poor aunt
+recognized us, but it is only too plain that she cannot live more than
+three or four days." The doctor, whom we saw on the following morning,
+said that Miss Hamerton was dying of no disease; it was merely the
+breaking up of the constitution. She was kept up artificially by
+medicine and stimulants, very frequently administered, for which she had
+neither taste nor desire. Now she said to the doctor: "I have been very
+submissive because I wanted to retain my flickering life until I should
+see my nephew and his family; this great happiness has been granted to
+me, and now I only desire to go to my final rest." After this the
+doctor's prescription was to give her only what she might ask for. We
+remained at her bedside throughout the day, with the exception of a
+visit to the old church, now restored with care and taste, to my
+husband's satisfaction.
+
+We watched our aunt part of the night, and she spoke very often, with
+her usual clearness of mind; towards three in the morning our cousins
+Emma and Annie came to relieve us. On the morrow there was a change for
+the worse with greater weakness, and we determined--my husband and
+myself--to watch all night.
+
+Aunt Susan concerned herself about our comfort to the last; she reminded
+her nephew to keep up a good fire that I might not get cold; she
+insisted upon my making some tea for myself, and upon my husband having
+a glass of beer. About two in the morning she asked for a little
+champagne; her mind was so clear that, after exchanging a few sentences
+with her nephew in the Lancashire dialect and drinking her small glass
+of champagne, she said with a smile, "It's good sleck," and lay still
+for a while. At three she wanted to be turned on her side, which my
+husband did with tender care, happy to be able to do something for her
+better than any one else could do it, as she said. I believe she liked
+to feel herself in his arms. Then she wished Ben to come up to read the
+last prayers. I went to call him, also Annie and Emma, Richard and Mary,
+and we all surrounded her bed whilst Ben was reading the prayers
+according to her desire, and my husband holding one of her hands all the
+time. She rested her eyes upon each of us in turn, closed them never to
+open them again, and breathed more and more feebly till she breathed no
+more. It was five o'clock in the morning. Her death had been a peaceful
+one, without a struggle, without pain,--the death we may desire for all
+that we love. Nevertheless, it proved a sore trial for my husband, who
+was losing the oldest affection of his life. It was even more severe
+than such losses are in most cases, however great may have been the
+affection, for it was like complete severance from the past to which
+both he and his aunt were so much attached. When they were together the
+reminiscences of the old days at Hollins, of the old friends and
+relations, of the quaint old customs still prevailing in the youthful
+days of the Misses Hamerton, and the great change since, were frequent
+topics of conversation. Aunt Susan was extremely intelligent, and her
+conversation was full of humor; she also wrote capital letters, and kept
+her nephew _au courant_ of all that happened to their common friends.
+She shared in his great love and admiration for the beauties of nature,
+and her enjoyment of them was intense. When walking out she noticed all
+the changes of effect, and her interest never palled.
+
+Great respect to her memory was manifested by the inhabitants of
+Featherstone, high and low, who filled the church on the day of the
+funeral and on the following Sunday, and who had put on mourning almost
+without exception.
+
+On the Sunday night my husband went alone to the cemetery by moonlight,
+and remained long at the grave.
+
+Our cousins, Ben and Annie Hinde, both showed great sympathy, and were
+also sorrowful on their own account; but Ben thought it bad for Mary and
+Richard to be shut up in unrelieved sadness, and was so kind as to take
+them to Leeds, Pontefract, Wakefield, and York in turn.
+
+Aunt Susan had left a little legacy to each of her nephews and nieces,
+and the rest of her savings to my husband (she had not the disposition
+of the capital, which had been left in trust).
+
+She had carefully prepared and addressed little parcels of _souvenirs_
+to myself and to each of my children--jewels, seals, silver
+pencil-cases, as well as some ancient and curious objects which had been
+preserved as relics in the family, and which she knew we should value
+and respect.
+
+The day came when we had to leave our dear cousins and the old vicarage,
+so full of associations both pleasant and painful. We proceeded towards
+Burnley, where a telegram from Mr. Handsley was handed to my husband at
+the station. It said that Mr. Handsley was prevented from coming
+himself, but that his carriage was in readiness to take us to Reedley
+Lodge, where his wife was awaiting us.
+
+We were made very welcome, and Gilbert was happy to see his friends
+again after so long a separation. Thursday--our former servant in the
+Highlands--came to see us in the evening, and our children, who had
+heard a great deal about him, were glad of the meeting.
+
+Mrs. Handsley was a distant relation of my husband, and the relationship
+had always been acknowledged. She showed herself eager to divine how her
+guests would like to spend the short time at their disposal, and to
+fulfil their wishes. She was aware of my husband's faithful attachment
+to old associations, both with persons and with places, and she drove us
+to see his former friends who were still alive, and also the Hollins.
+The children, who had heard so much about it, were greatly interested,
+particularly in the room which had been their father's study. Note in
+the diary: "October 26, 1882. Went to see the Brun, that I had not seen
+since my marriage. Drank some of its water."
+
+Mrs. Handsley said she had it on good authority that Mr. John Hamerton
+of Hellifield Peel had expressed on several occasions his regret for the
+division existing between the two branches of the family, and his wish
+to become acquainted with my husband, whose works he knew and admired.
+
+Now it had been a lifelong desire of his to visit Hellifield Peel--the
+ancient tower with the romantic history, and the seat of the elder
+branch of the Hamertons. There could be no better opportunity, Mrs.
+Handsley suggested. At last he decided for the attempt, and on the
+following morning we set out with the children.
+
+It was Gilbert's intention merely to send his card, and beg leave to see
+the tower without putting forward a claim of any kind, but on receipt of
+the card we were immediately shown into the drawing-room and most
+cordially received by Mr. John Hamerton and his sister. I was at once
+struck--and so were Richard and Mary--by the likeness between the two
+men, though they belonged to different branches of the family. My
+husband might have been easily taken for a younger brother of Mr. John
+Hamerton. They were both tall and spare, the elder man especially; both
+were straight and of somewhat proud bearing; their eyes were blue, with
+a straightforward and fearless expression. The lightness of the beard
+and hair, together with the development of the forehead, completed the
+resemblance, though the whole aspect of Mr. John Hamerton was that of a
+country gentleman, whilst hard intellectual work had left its stamp on
+the younger man's countenance. They got on very amicably together, and
+we were invited to lunch. My husband eagerly desired to go over the
+house, but alas for his dreams! it had been transformed according to
+modern wants, and the absence of all relics from so many generations was
+very striking.
+
+We walked in the park, where we admired the noble trees, the pond, and,
+at some distance from the Peel, the beautiful Ribble valley, the subject
+of one of Turner's landscapes.
+
+It was now time to go to our train after our long and charming visit;
+and when Mr. John Hamerton had given some photographs of Hellifield Peel
+to my husband, and we had taken a friendly leave of his sister, he
+accompanied us to the station, and invited us to the Peel whenever we
+might come that way.
+
+So the long breach in the family now belonged to the past, and was
+replaced by mutual goodwill and friendliness. Gilbert wrote in his
+diary: "October 27, 1882. One of the most delightful days of my life."
+
+The day after, he went to Burnley with Mr. Handsley and saw the new
+school before going to the Council Chamber, where a public reception had
+been organized in his honor, and where he delivered an oration in
+acknowledgment of many flattering speeches. The formal part of the
+reception over, he shook hands with every one who came forward to speak
+to him--among whom he still remembered a few.
+
+The afternoon ended with a visit to the Mechanics' Institution, in which
+he had never ceased to take great interest. He had been much moved and
+gratified by the welcome offered him at Burnley, and never forgot it.
+
+The journey to London was very trying on account of the cold, fog, and
+snow. The train ploughed its way slowly and cautiously amidst the
+explosive signals, which did not add to our comfort. We felt very sorry
+for Mr. and Mrs. Seeley, who were sitting up for us so late into the
+night.
+
+On the days following our arrival, my husband introduced Richard to his
+friends, took him about London, and chose lodgings for him.
+
+He also saw Mr. F. G. Stephens, who wished him to become a candidate for
+the post of Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford; but he did not feel
+tempted.
+
+He called upon Mr. Browning, who was unfortunately out; but as he was on
+the point of closing the door, he felt a resistance, and saw a
+lady--"the sister of Robert Browning," she explained--to whom his card
+had been handed, and who, by mistake, had read the name as Hamilton. It
+was only after looking at it more attentively that she had rushed down
+the stairs to detain the visitor. He went up with her to the
+drawing-room, where he found Mrs. Orr, the sister of Sir Frederick
+Leighton, and they had a long and pleasant talk together. Some days
+later he had the pleasure of meeting with Mr. Browning.
+
+It was lucky that Gilbert had good health just then, and Richard to go
+about with him in London, for I was laid up with a bad cold--the result
+of having walked a whole day in the snow making calls, without an
+opportunity of drying my boots or of warming my feet. Mrs. Seeley was my
+kind and thoughtful nurse, and thanks to her care I gradually recovered.
+
+Richard came to say good-bye, and we left Nutfield House for France.
+This time we did not go through Paris, but visited everything of
+interest at Rouen, Dreux, Orléans, and Bourges. The diary says:
+"November 27. In the evening we reached home, very happy to be back
+again."
+
+On the 29th of the same month be received a letter from Mr. Sagar, from
+which I quote the following passage:--
+
+"Sufficient time has not yet elapsed, I hope, for you to forget us in
+Burnley here, and the pleasure we had in seeing you in the Council
+Chamber on that, to us, memorable Saturday.
+
+"Next year will be the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the
+Institute, and we are going to celebrate this and the general success we
+have had by a week's jubilee--the whole of New Year's week. The jubilee
+will take the form of a conversazione, a banquet, and a general
+exhibition, occupying every room of the place except two. South
+Kensington authorities are sending us six cases of examples of fabrics,
+pottery, etc., and about sixty frames of pictures, drawings, etc. Can
+you use your influence for us in obtaining a representative
+exhibition--say of etchings, or anything else of a suitable character
+that might suggest itself to you--together, if possible (and this would
+delight us all), with your presence, or in the absence of this, if you
+can't be here, a short letter for me to read, as on the opening of the
+Art-school?"
+
+The letter was sent in due time, and acknowledged with grateful thanks.
+
+Mr. Seeley was so kind as to send us news of Richard from time to time;
+he wrote in March: "Richard has shown me some of his drawings; I think
+he is making progress. One of his last drawings seemed to me excellent;
+very tender and subtle. He was down at Kinsgton with us the other day."
+
+This opinion of Mr. Seeley's gave great pleasure to my husband, who had
+always entertained doubts about the range of his son's artistic talent.
+
+In the same month he was asked to send a biographical note for "Men of
+the Time," a proof that his reputation was on the increase, and Mr.
+Haden, who had just come back from America, said that his works were
+held there in the highest esteem.
+
+The book on Paris necessitated another journey, and my husband made the
+time of it to coincide with the opening of the Salon. This time we
+stopped at Auxerre, and visited the four churches, the museum, and the
+room in which are exhibited the relics of Marshal Davoust.
+
+The diary says: "April 30. Began this morning another diary in English,
+to record the impressions which may serve for my literary work."
+
+On May 1 we had a carriage accident which might have been serious. Our
+horse took fright at sight of a steam tram, and ran away on the footpath
+at a furious rate, dashing the carriage against the trees and lamp-posts
+until he slipped and fell at full length on the asphalt. My husband had
+been able to jump out, but a sudden jerk had prevented me from following
+him at the moment, and then there was danger of being hurt between the
+side of the carriage and the banging door. Gilbert had been running,
+hatless, after the carriage to hold the door and enable me to jump out,
+and he just succeeded as the horse slipped down and upset the carriage.
+I was out in time to escape being hurt, but of course we were both a
+good deal shaken, and went back to rest at our hotel.
+
+We had hardly been a week in Paris when my husband began to suffer from
+nervousness. A tramway had been laid in front of the hotel, and the
+vibration prevented him from sleeping. Then spring was always trying to
+him; and above all, he wished himself in the country. Mr. Seeley wrote:
+"Nature evidently intended you for a savage; how in the world did you
+come to be a literary man? What must Frenchmen think of you, in Paris
+and miserable? Even Mrs. Hamerton must feel ashamed of you." He
+acknowledged that he was more happy in a primitive sort of existence
+than in one too perfectly civilized; still, he could not endure the
+privation of books, and he would have felt keenly the absence of works
+of art; but he was in deeper sympathy with the beauty of nature than
+with artistic beauty--to be denied the last would have been a great
+privation, but in the absence of the first he really could not live.
+
+We had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with Mr. Howard-Tripp, who
+had recently married Mr. Wyld's daughter, and who, being a
+picture-dealer, invited us to go and see his gallery in the Rue St.
+Georges. There were a great many fine works that my husband greatly
+admired, particularly those by Corot, Daubigny, and Troyon, and the
+scheme for the book on "Landscape" having been settled with Mr. Seeley,
+he begged Mr. Howard-Tripp to allow reproductions of some of the
+pictures to appear in his future work. It was readily granted.
+
+This selection of pictures for the book on "Landscape" gave the author
+much additional labor; but it was better to do it now that he was in
+Paris than have to come again on purpose. Mr. Seeley had offered to run
+over and help with the arrangements, but was prevented by a slight
+accident. He then proposed that photographs of the pictures chosen
+should be sent to him, that he might have a vote.
+
+We were very near the end of our stay in Paris, and Gilbert wanted to go
+to the office of "L'Art," having some business there, and wishing to say
+farewell to the manager. He had also invited the sons of M. Schmitt (who
+were now in Paris) to meet us in the Square Richelieu and to dine
+afterwards at a restaurant. He thought that he could manage both things
+on the same day. However, we were hardly out of the omnibus when I
+perceived he was unwell; but I had not time to propose anything before
+he started off at such a rate that I was obliged to run to follow him:
+the worst symptoms were betrayed by his gait, by the congestion of face
+and neck, and by the hard stare of the eyes. It was too late to take a
+carriage; he could not stop, and could not be spoken to. I saw that a
+sure instinct was guiding him out of the crowded street to the by-ways
+and least frequented places, and I strove to remain by his side. In the
+course of about twenty minutes, I noticed a slackening in his pace, and
+as I had been looking about for some refuge, I remarked, through the
+open doors of a small café, an empty back-room, and motioned to him to
+follow me there. It was almost dark, and there was a divan running along
+three sides of the wall; I made him lie down upon it, and went to tell
+the _dame-de-comptoir_ (who happened to be the mistress of the house)
+that my husband had felt suddenly unwell and required a little rest. She
+made no fuss, did not press me to send for a doctor or to administer
+anything; she merely promised to prevent any one from going into that
+back room, and said we might remain there undisturbed as long as was
+needed. After half-an-hour my husband asked for a little brandy and
+water, and gradually became himself again. We remained about two hours
+in the little room, reading--or pretending to read--the newspapers, and
+such was Gilbert's courage and resolution, that he went to keep the
+appointment with the young men he had invited. I knew I was not to
+breathe a word of what had happened, and I was miserably anxious about
+the effect that a dinner in a restaurant _en vogue_ might have upon the
+nerves of my poor patient. Strange to say, he bore it very well, and
+played his part as entertainer quite merrily. But after dinner I longed
+to get him away, and proposed to take an open carriage for a drive in
+the Champs Élysées. This was accepted, and I believe he really enjoyed
+it.
+
+We agreed to leave Paris the following evening, and I went to town alone
+in the afternoon for a few things which had been postponed to the last
+moment. We reached Autun on May 26, at which date the diary says: "I am
+very happy to be in my home, which I prefer to all the finest palaces in
+Paris."
+
+In the spring he had suffered repeatedly from great pain in one of his
+legs, and had attributed it to rheumatism; now he began to feel the pain
+again in the left foot, and it soon became so acute that the doctor was
+sent for. He said it was an attack of gout, but gave hope of an ultimate
+cure, because the patient's constitution was not a gouty one. The cause
+of the attack was insufficient exercise in the open air. He prescribed a
+severe regimen, less sedentary work, and as much walking and riding as
+possible.
+
+For twenty-one nights my husband could not go to bed, but remained
+stretched on a couch or sitting in an arm-chair; when the pain was less
+severe he laid himself down upon the bed for a short time, but he hardly
+ever got to sleep. His fortitude and patience were incredible, and he
+bore the almost intolerable sufferings with admirable resignation. He
+tried to read, and even to write upon a desk placed on his knees, and
+talked much about his plan for the book on "Landscape."
+
+Mr. Seeley wrote:--
+
+"I am heartily sorry to hear of your attack of gout. But I am relieved
+to hear that it is not erysipelas, which must have been alarming.
+Possibly the discomfort you suffered in Paris may have been a
+premonitory symptom of this attack, and you may look forward to the
+enjoyment of better health when it has passed away."
+
+Mr. Haden declared that he felt "delighted" by this attack, as
+indicative of a change for the better in the constitution; he hoped that
+the tendency to nervousness and insomnia would disappear, or at any rate
+greatly diminish.
+
+We were now daily expecting Richard, and Mr. Seeley had said on June 25:
+"Richard was with us on Saturday, his farewell visit. We like him more
+and more every time we see him." He was coming back--at my request--to
+pass an examination in English, the same that his brother had passed
+successfully two years ago for the _Certificat d'aptitude_, after which
+he got his post of professor at Mâcon. I had thought that if Richard
+failed as an artist he might be glad to fall back upon a professorship,
+and it turned out so. His father was pleased to notice how much better
+and more fluently he spoke English on his return from London; but at the
+same time, after seeing the drawings done in England, he was confirmed
+in the opinion that originality and invention were lacking to make a
+real artist of his younger son. What ought to be said was very
+perplexing: the drawings were good enough in their way, the progress
+undeniable--but they were only copies, even when done from the living
+model--the creative spark, the individual artistic stamp, were absent.
+My husband allowed himself some time for consideration before warning
+Richard that he thought him mistaken in his choice of a career.
+
+However, after having passed a successful examination it was Richard
+who, of his own accord, told his father that he felt very doubtful about
+the ultimate result of his artistic studies. He believed they were begun
+too late, and that his chances against students who had several years'
+start were very small--they had been drawing and painting since the age
+of thirteen or fourteen, whilst he was preparing himself for his
+degrees. The ease with which he had carried off the _Certificat
+d'aptitude_ made him sanguine about being ready for the _Agrégation_ in
+the course of a year, after which he would be entitled to a post in the
+University. He would not abandon art, he said, but would not follow it
+as a profession.
+
+It was a great relief that the resolution should have been his own; but
+it surprised Mr. Seeley considerably, and he wrote to my husband:--
+
+"From what you tell me of his want of enjoyment in the practice of art,
+the determination seems wise. I suppose we take it for granted that a
+man must take pleasure in doing whatever he can do well; but there is no
+reason in the world why ability and inclination should always go
+together. A man with a good eye and that general ability and power of
+application which make a good student may easily be a draughtsman above
+the average, but it is quite intelligible that he should take more
+pleasure in other studies."
+
+At the end of August Gilbert went with Stephen and his eldest nephew,
+Maurice Pelletier, for a cruise of ten days on the Saône. They were on
+the new catamaran "L'Arar," and enjoyed their voyage thoroughly.
+
+On October 2, Richard left us to go to Paris to have the benefit of _les
+Cours de la Sorbonne_, as a preparation for _L'Agrégation d'Anglais_;
+and in December Stephen asked for a year's leave of absence from his
+post, in order to pursue his English studies in London. It is therefore
+conceivable that the father's health should have been impaired by
+anxiety and his brain overtaxed by the numerous works he had undertaken
+to meet his responsibilities. He was at the same time writing "Human
+Intercourse" for Messrs. Macmillan, "Paris" for the "Portfolio," and the
+book on "Landscape" was begun.
+
+In November he had written a very long letter to Miss Betham-Edwards,
+mainly in explanation of the word "sheer" used for boats, then about our
+doings, and he says:--
+
+"We have had the house upset by workpeople, but we are settled again
+after a great bother, which I dreaded before, as Montaigne used to dread
+similar disturbances; but now it is over I feel myself much more
+comfortable and orderly, though the reform has cost me a considerable
+loss of time. The rooms look prettier and are less crammed.
+
+"I got the other day a letter of twenty pages from a cousin in New
+Zealand who had never written to me for thirty years. It was the most
+interesting biography of struggle, adventure, danger, hard work, and
+final success. It is a great pity that the men who go through such lives
+have not the literary talent to make autobiographies that can be
+published. I have another cousin whose history is _quite_ as good as
+'Robinson Crusoe,' and I have engaged him to write it, but he never
+will. If I lived near him I could gradually get the material out of him;
+but at a distance I cannot get him even to write rough notes. On the
+other hand, we literary people are quite humdrum people in our ways of
+life, and our autobiographies would generally be of little interest.
+
+"I have been reading Ariosto lately in Italian, and am struck both by
+his qualities and deficiencies. He is all on the surface; but what a
+wealth of inventive power, and what a well-sustained, unflagging energy
+and cheerfulness! The descriptions are frequently superb, and there is a
+go in the style generally that is very stimulating. It is like watching
+the flow of a bright, rapid, brimming river. I don't think we have any
+English poet of the same kind. Spenser is rather like, but heavier, and
+just lacking that brightness in combination with movement. Spenser and
+Byron together contain many of the qualities of Ariosto."
+
+The first note in the diary for 1884 says: "I must try to economize time
+in all little things where economy is possible without injury to the
+quality of work. I cannot economize it very much in the work itself
+without risk of lowering quality."
+
+It was a pleasure for my husband to see that his articles on the
+architecture of Paris had been so favorably noticed as to bring requests
+for contributions from "The Builder" and "L'Architecte." Mr. Seeley
+wrote to him: "I think it is a feather in your cap that your
+architectural notes should have brought you invitations to write for
+professional journals."
+
+My brother-in-law, M. Pelletier, had left Algiers, and was now Économe
+at the Lycée at Marseilles. He had suggested that, it being possible to
+go from Chalon to Marseilles by water, we might pay him a visit and see
+the course of the Rhône at the same time. My husband felt greatly
+tempted to accept, for more than one reason: he would be able at the
+same time to take notes and to make observations on the way for the book
+on "Landscape," and to come to a conclusion about the possibility of the
+Rhône scheme. We might divide the places of interest into two series,
+and see one of them in going and the other in coming back, with a
+pleasant time of rest at our friend's in the interval.
+
+The itinerary was carefully prepared to miss nothing on the way, and on
+April 8 we left my mother in charge of the house, whilst my husband,
+myself, and Mary started from Chalon, where we went on board the steamer
+for Mâcon. My husband having often seen the town, was left to his
+writing whilst I took Mary to see the church of Brou. From Mâcon to
+Lyons we enjoyed the landscape from the deck of the steamer,
+particularly Trévoux, and L'Ile Barbe as we neared Lyons.
+
+Note in the diary: "We passed through some lovely scenery, but I came to
+the conclusion never to boat with the 'Arar' below Courzon."
+
+So long as he remained on the water or in little out-of-the-way places,
+Gilbert was well enough and enjoyed himself exceedingly, but as soon as
+we were obliged to stay in large towns he began to suffer; at Lyons,
+having attempted to go to the Museum when it was crowded, he had to
+hurry out, and it is a miracle how he managed to reach the hotel, where
+he went through one of the worst attacks of nervousness in his life. It
+did not last very long, and when he was well again I took Mary to
+Fourvières.
+
+By rail we proceeded to Vienne, then to Valence and Pierre-latte,
+where it was pitch dark as we got out, and raining heavily. To our
+dismay we saw no sign of either omnibus or carriage. However, a man was
+coming up to us in a leisurely way with a broken lantern, and he
+explained that the "'bus had not come because it was raining." He led us
+to a very queer--apparently deserted--hotel, where the getting of sheets
+for the narrow beds seemed to be an almost insurmountable difficulty;
+and as to cases for the pillows, in sheer despair of ever getting any,
+we had to use clean towels out of our bags in their stead. The
+double-bedded room was adorned with a gallery of pastel portraits so wan
+and faded that they looked by the faint gleam of moonlight through the
+shutters like a procession of ghosts; and there were so many chairs in
+Mary's room, and such an immensely long table, that it must surely have
+been used by the ghosts as a dining-hall. Nevertheless, we slept
+soundly, had a charming excursion in the morning, and a good, though
+late, _déjeuner_ afterwards, for it chanced to be the drawing of lots
+for the conscription, and the hotel was crowded by famished
+officials--Mayor, _adjoints_, gendarmes, officers, etc. Of course there
+was nothing for unofficial people like us but to wait and catch the
+dishes as they left the important table, and appropriate what might
+remain upon them. There was enough for us, and the wine was
+excellent,--so good indeed that we thought of having a cask sent to La
+Tuilerie. The great people having departed, we were able to talk at our
+leisure with the landlady, but all of a sudden we became aware that it
+was getting time to go, and asked for the bill. "Oh! there was no need
+for a bill, she could reckon in her head--but there was no hurry." We
+explained that there was some hurry, as the carriage we had ordered
+would be at the door presently.
+
+"Mais pourquoi? pourquoi vous en aller?" exclaimed the simple woman,
+with an air of consternation; "est-ce que vous n'êtes pas bien ici?"
+
+Bourg St. Andéol, where we stopped next, is a very interesting place. My
+husband was particularly pleased with the little town and the Hôtel
+Nicolai. Our arrival created quite a stir in the sleepy, regular routine
+of the little bourg, and the doors and windows it can boast of became
+alive with curious eyes as we passed along the deserted streets. In an
+open carriage we were driven to Pont St. Esprit, and noticed the long
+lines of mulberry trees on each side of the roads; the driver explained
+that they are planted to feed the silkworms, and that in two months they
+would be leafless. We took the steamer again at Pont St. Esprit, late in
+the following day, for Avignon. In the morning of Sunday we all went to
+hear High Mass in the Cathedral, then to the Palace of the Popes, and
+round the walls. In the afternoon we visited the tomb of John Stuart
+Mill, and my husband left his card at the house of Miss Taylor. We then
+heard music in the open air, and saw the old bridge.
+
+It was a very pleasant fortnight that we spent at Marseilles with our
+relations, the only drawback being Gilbert's uncertain health, which
+prevented him from going out much; though close to the expanse of the
+Mediterranean, I suppose he had the feeling expressed in the preface to
+"Landscape" in these words: "The lover of wilderness always feels
+confined among the evidences of a minutely careful civilization."
+
+Towards the end of the day, when the blinding glare of sunshine was
+softened, we generally went to the Vieux Port, where there was an
+uninterrupted succession of picturesque scenes among sailors of all
+nations and ships of every description; or to La Joliette, to watch the
+arrival or departure of the Chinese vessels and other curious craft. At
+other times we walked in the Pare Borelli or on the Corniche.
+
+A novel feature in our life was the frequent visits to the theatre with
+our friends. It was most remarkable that my husband should take such a
+sudden fancy to the Opera; he could not account for it himself, except
+by noticing that "he felt at home in it." We invariably took _fauteuils
+d'orchestre_, so that he only saw the musicians, actors, and
+scenery--hardly any of the occupants of the theatre, except those in the
+stage-boxes. It is a curious fact that in the space of a fortnight he
+heard more operas than in all the rest of his life.
+
+He wrote the greater part of the day in a very quiet room, which M.
+Pelletier, who was well acquainted with his tastes, had fitted up
+accordingly at the very beginning of our visit.
+
+On our return we stopped to see Tarascon and Beaucaire, where we had
+still some friends. In the last place the director of the gas-works
+obligingly showed us through the house which had been my father's. We
+also visited Nîmes, Orange, and Montélimart, giving a whole day to each
+place. It was already very hot in the south, and the perfume of the
+acacias in full bloom everywhere was almost more than we could bear,
+especially at Montélimart. At Orange, after seeing the noble Roman
+remains, we partly ascended the hill to see the Ventoux range of
+mountains; then went on to Valence for the night. We were on board the
+steamer at five in the morning, and had a delightful voyage to Lyons,
+during which Gilbert took copious notes in the map-book he had prepared
+on purpose. After resting a day, we went straight on to Chalon by boat,
+and had a pleasant day with the captain, who invited us to _déjeuner_
+with him on board.
+
+On the whole, we were satisfied with our journey; but the information my
+husband had collected on the way convinced him that the Rhône project,
+as he had planned it, was utterly impracticable.
+
+We were soon in great anxiety about our relatives at Marseilles, for we
+learned that cholera had broken out there early in July. Gilbert,
+without the least hesitation, immediately wrote to M. Pelletier,
+inviting him and his children to La Tuilerie, where they would be safe
+from the terrible scourge. Our brother-in-law readily availed himself of
+the invitation for his children; but thought it his duty to remain at
+his post, and set an example to the panic-stricken population.
+
+The arrival of our nephews and niece from the very centre of
+contamination did not tend to augment our popularity in the
+neighborhood, and we were made to understand--very plainly--that the
+house was tabooed, along with ourselves. Our milk from the farm just
+opposite to our house was brought to us half-way, and deposited in the
+middle of the road, where our servant had to go and fetch it--no one
+amongst the inmates of the farm being sufficiently courageous either to
+bring it within our walls, or to deliver it to a servant who had
+approached "les Marseillais."
+
+Ever since Richard had come home he had been steadily preparing himself
+for his examination, with the help of his father. Every day they read
+English poetry together, and Gilbert gave him all the necessary
+information as to the meaning, rhythm, and structure.
+
+In moments of relaxation he joined the family circle, frequently
+enlivened by the presence of a young couple, M. and Mme. Pochon, who had
+recently come to live at the schist-works, where the husband was
+managing engineer. The lady had a charming voice, and used to sing in
+the church with Mary, who played the harmonium. This led to an intimacy,
+and with an additional singer and pianist in the person of my niece we
+often organized private concerts, in which my husband took great
+pleasure. There was nothing he enjoyed more than such private
+recreation, except perhaps the satisfaction of taking trouble to make
+things agreeable to others. Here is an instance among many.
+
+On a fearfully hot day in August he overheard a _cantinière_ who,
+talking to her husband from the top of a wagon which had just stopped
+near La Tuilerie, was lamenting her inability to find a shady place for
+the _déjeuner_ of the officers, who would shortly arrive. He saw at once
+that he might offer these hot and weary warriors the unexpected pleasure
+of a cool resting-place. So he went to the _cantinière_, and proposed to
+have the officers' table set upon the lawn, under the shady elder trees.
+The woman could hardly credit such a charitable offer, and warned him
+that the fresh-looking grass would certainly suffer from it; but he only
+smiled, saying that it could not be helped, but that he hoped to induce
+the grass to grow again with copious watering.
+
+The table was set, chairs were brought from the house, also live
+charcoal for the portable stove, and we witnessed a very entertaining
+scene from behind the shutters when the regiment halted.
+
+The Colonel began to swear and scold at sight of the white, dusty,
+sultry road where the _cantinière_ had stopped, and for a few moments
+refused to listen to her explanations; but when he saw Mr. Hamerton
+coming out of the garden gate to invite him inside with his brother
+officers, he dismounted to salute him, and stood fixed in a state of
+ecstacy before the inviting white table-cloth, looking so fresh and cool
+between the green grass of the lawn and the green leaves of the trees.
+The other officers shared this pleasant impression, and were profuse in
+their thanks. After a short talk with the master of the house--who was
+called away to his own _déjeuner_ by the bell--they drank his health,
+and sat down with unfeigned satisfaction to their meal.
+
+It was not only the lawn which was thus invaded; for there being in the
+courtyard a deep well of deliciously cold water, the soldiers were not
+slow to find their way to it, and after quenching their thirst and
+filling up their _bidons_, they stretched themselves at full length upon
+the ground wherever there was shade, either from tree or wall.
+
+This general enjoyment of an hour's delicious rest amply compensated my
+husband for the havoc done in the garden.
+
+We were rather a numerous household then, at meal-times, with the
+addition of my mother, M. Pelletier and his three children, my brother,
+his wife and two little girls, so that when the youngest officer entered
+the dining-room--as spokesman--to reiterate the thanks of his brother
+officers, he felt abashed by so many eyes fixed upon him; still, he
+managed to get through his duty--somewhat hurriedly--and soon after the
+regiment was marching off; the men, now rested and refreshed, singing
+lustily at the top of their voices, and waving their _képis_ towards La
+Tuilerie.
+
+Stephen arrived for the vacation towards the middle of August; but the
+suspense in which we were kept about Richard's examination was most
+unfavorable to the health of his father. At last there were great
+rejoicings when a telegram conveyed to us his brilliant success. He came
+out second on the list, the first being a lady--Miss Williams--of whom
+he had often spoken to us in high terms, having been with her as a
+student at the Sorbonne, and who has since become directress of that
+most useful institution, the Franco-English Guild.
+
+We were told that Richard was the youngest _agrégé_ in France, and of
+course we were proud of it. Mr. Seeley wrote: "I heartily congratulate
+you on Richard's great success. It is not often that a young man can so
+speedily justify his choice of a career."
+
+"Human Intercourse" was published in September, and sold well, in spite
+of its cold reception by the Press. Mr. Hamerton did not allow
+unfavorable criticism to disturb him much. There was only one kind of
+attack that he did not bear patiently, I believe, and that was being
+told that he had no _genius_. "I don't pretend to have genius; I never
+said I had; then why make it a reproach?" he used to say.
+
+There was a second edition as early as December, and I give here a
+fragment of one of the numerous letters the author received, which may
+prove that public opinion was more favorable to the book than the
+critics:--
+
+"You have given me some pleasant hours as I read and pondered over
+remarks of yours in 'Human Intercourse.' It is not the first time that
+you have tinted the current of my life. I hereby certify to my
+gratitude, not that I am of any account in the world, but because it
+seems to me a sort of duty, and because, were our positions reversed, it
+would please ME to know that I was appreciated even by a stranger. What
+you say about priests and women interests me deeply as a clergyman...."
+
+The letter contained eleven pages of confidential talk, mostly about
+personal experiences in the discharge of professional duty; clearly
+showing that the subject had not been treated in vain in "Human
+Intercourse."
+
+There had been a serious strike at the schist-works of La Comaille
+(close to Pré-Charmoy), and the hands, now that the winter was coming
+upon them, were distressed and greatly disheartened. Mr. Hamerton tried
+his best to mollify the engineer and to reason with the men, and make
+them see that the strike could not bring them any advantage. At last the
+workmen asked to be allowed to return to their work; but the engineer
+refused to take back the promoters of the strike, among whom was the
+husband of one of our former servants. The poor woman came in tears to
+beseech her "bon Monsieur" to obtain M. Pochon's forgiveness, for if her
+husband were kept out of work much longer her three little children
+would have to starve. The landlord having already threatened to turn
+them out, my husband had paid the rent of their cottage for a year, and
+now he pleaded so warmly the cause of the deluded workmen to Madame
+Pochon,--asking for her influence in their favor,--that together they
+carried their point, and so gave comfort to several poor families. With
+the exception of the two ringleaders, who had used threats and violent
+language, all the hands were taken back again. Our former servant's
+gratitude still survives; one of her children never fails to send the
+united wishes of the family for the New Year, and the letters always
+begin with, "Nos chers bienfaiteurs."
+
+The great kindness and generosity of "L'Anglais" were so well known in
+our neighborhood that the people had no hesitation in applying at La
+Tuilerie for clothing, medicines, or help of any kind. Even the beggars
+who came regularly, lingered after pocketing their penny in the hope of
+seeing him personally as he crossed the courtyard or went out on the
+road, for then--as an old woman confided to one of the maids--"On est
+sûr d'une pièce blanche." He was entirely free from false pride, and
+looked down upon no one deserving respect. One girl whom we had had in
+our service for five years, and who only left us to be married, begged
+as a great favor that Mary should be godmother to her child. He gave his
+leave at once, being the first to recall how attached and devoted she
+had been to our daughter when a baby. And when she called with her
+husband, he always shook hands with them both, and offered them
+refreshments.
+
+He showed the same ready sympathy to the class of young authors and
+artists in want of help and advice, trying to get them employment, and
+helping them to improve their work. He often accepted for the
+"Portfolio" articles which greatly increased his labors; for he had to
+correct and to rewrite parts--if he perceived some promise of talent in
+their authors. He also took the trouble of criticizing minutely numbers
+of etchings and drawings, pointing out possible alterations which might
+make them acceptable to the public, and by so doing he helped to form
+and encouraged a great number of artists.
+
+Mr. Seeley was anxious that the book on "Landscape" might be out in good
+time for the Christmas sale, and explained the many reasons which made
+it desirable; but although the author had done his best to be ready, he
+began to doubt of the possibility. Having been anxious about it and
+hurried, he became subject to painful attacks of palpitation. As soon as
+Mr. Seeley heard of it he wrote:--
+
+"Pray do not run any risk of ruining your health. Tell me exactly how
+you stand, how much remains to be written. Then we will face the
+position like sensible people, and consider what is best to be done. You
+must neither risk your health by overwork nor your reputation by hasty
+work. What a pity it is that you don't enjoy games! I find tennis such a
+relief from worries. I have also a double tricycle, on which I ride
+every morning with my garden boy. It is a capital exercise; the steering
+occupies one's thoughts almost as well as a game. One can't think much
+of business while going seven or eight miles an hour with the
+probability that any considerable swerve will lead to an upset."
+
+Gilbert sometimes went on a velocipede, and liked it, but did not
+possess one at that time.
+
+In November there was good news for the boys. Richard had been told by
+M. Pelletier that a post at Marseilles would soon be vacant, and that he
+might apply for it. He did so, and got it, whilst Stephen replaced him
+at Poitiers, so that now they were both provided with good situations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+1884-1888.
+
+"Landscape."--The Autobiography begun.--"Imagination in landscape
+painting."--"The Saône."--"Portfolio papers."
+
+In October, 1884, all the five hundred large-paper copies of "Landscape"
+had been ordered except fifty; but the last pages of MS. were not sent
+off until January 30, 1885.
+
+The author wrote to the publisher: "At last I have the pleasure of
+sending you a page of MS. with 'The End' written upon it;" and as if
+relieved from his task he went on to relate the following incidents:--
+
+"There has been a curious attempt at assassination here yesterday. A
+doctor named Vala was stopped by what seemed to be a nun, who asked for
+a place in his gig. He stretched out his hand to take a parcel belonging
+to the nun, took it, and then offered her his hand. He touched it,
+thought 'That's the hand of a man,' whipped his horse, and drove off at
+full speed. When at a distance he examined the contents of the parcel,
+which turned out to be a loaded revolver and a dagger. He thinks the
+project was to assassinate him _en route_.
+
+"Other curious story.
+
+"Night before last a strange man got tipsy in our village and began to
+blab and talk. He asked for a bottle without a bottom, and for some
+woollen rags. He was suspected of having a dynamite project, and the
+mayor was fetched at one in the morning to look after him, so he
+arrested him and took him to Autun at two a.m. On the way the man
+coolly confessed that he was one of a dynamite gang of ten, and
+threatened the mayor and the village when he got out of prison.
+
+"So you see we have our dangers as well as you."
+
+"Human Intercourse" was more popular in America than in England. Roberts
+Brothers wrote: "We have been selling three thousand copies of 'Human
+Intercourse;' does not that speak well for your popularity here? As yet
+the pirates have left it alone, although the 'Intellectual Life' has
+been pirated." Still, the author continued to receive many letters
+testifying to the appreciation of the book by his countrymen. Mr. Wyld
+said: "I have read 'Human Intercourse' from end to end, and intend to do
+so more than once, taking and considering each essay separately."
+
+Mrs. Henry Ady (Julia Cartwright) wrote that she and her husband had
+been charmed with it. The book seemed to have influenced women
+powerfully, for their letters about it were very numerous.
+
+The news of Richard's health became disquieting early in the month of
+January; he suffered much from headaches, and could not work. He was
+well nursed at his uncle's, M. Pelletier's, by his grandmother, who
+happened to be on a visit to her son-in-law. The doctor said it was a
+kind of nondescript fever with cerebral and typhoid symptoms, to which
+young people not acclimatized to Marseilles were very liable on settling
+there. In Richard's case there had been a predisposition on account of
+the hard work he had gone through for the _Agrégation_. He had looked as
+if he bore it easily while it lasted; but the strain had been more
+severe than he was aware of; and two years after his recovery he told me
+that he had never felt the same since that illness at Marseilles.
+
+In February, Miss Betham-Edwards having sent a volume of her poems to my
+husband, he wrote in acknowledgment:--
+
+"I have read your book in the evenings and with pleasure, especially
+some pieces that I have read many times. 'The Wife's Prayer,' for
+one, seems to me quite a perfect piece of work; and not less perfect
+in another way, and quite a different may, is 'Don. Jose's Mule,
+Jacintha.' The delicate humor of the latter, in combination with
+really deep pathos and most finished workmanship, please me
+immensely. Besides this, I have a fellow-feeling for Don José,
+because I have an old pony that I attend to myself always, etc.,
+etc....
+
+"I have been vexed for some time now by the tendency to jealous
+hostility between France and England. I had hoped some years ago that
+the future might establish a friendly understanding between the two
+nations, based upon their obvious interest in the first place, and
+perhaps a little on the interchange of ideas; but I fear it was
+illusory, and that at some future date, at present undeterminable, there
+will be another war between them, as in the days of our fathers. I have
+thought sometimes of trying to found an Anglo-French Society or League,
+the members of which should simply engage themselves to do their best on
+all occasions to soften the harsh feeling between the two nations. I
+dare say some literary people would join such a league. Swinburne very
+probably would, and so would you, I fancy, I could get adhesions in the
+French University and elsewhere. Some influential political Englishmen,
+such as Bright, might be counted upon. I would have begun the thing long
+since; but I dread the heavy correspondence it would bring upon me. I
+would have a very small subscription, as the league ought to include
+working men. Peace and war hang on such trifles sometimes that a society
+such as I am imagining might possibly on some occasion have influence
+enough to prevent a war. It should be understood also that by a sort of
+freemasonry a member of the society would endeavor to serve any member
+of it belonging to the other nation.
+
+"I don't know if you have observed how harshly Matthew Arnold writes of
+France now. He accuses the whole nation of being sunk in _immorality_,
+which is very unfair. There are many perfectly well-conducted people in
+France; and why does not Arnold write in the same strain against Italy,
+which is more immoral still? The French expose themselves very much by
+their incapacity for hypocrisy--all French faults are _seen_."
+
+The winter was very cold, and all the ponds were covered with ice,
+affording good opportunity for skating. My husband undertook to teach
+Mary to skate, and they often went on the ice together.
+
+"Landscape" was published on March 12, and on the 19th all the
+large-paper copies were gone, and the small ones dropping off daily.
+
+The author wrote to Mr. Seeley:--
+
+"I am glad 'Landscape' is moving nicely. Nothing is more disagreeable to
+an author than to see an enterprising publisher paid for his trust and
+confidence by anxiety and loss, especially when the publisher is a
+friend. Failure with this book would have been especially painful to me,
+as I should have attributed it in great part to my slowness with the
+MS., and consequent want of punctuality."
+
+Mr. P. Q. Stephens said: "The book is a superb affair, and, as far as I
+have seen it, deserves all praise."
+
+R. L. Stevenson wrote:--
+
+"BOURNEMOUTH. _March_ 16, 1885.
+
+"My Dear Hamerton,--Various things have been reminding me of my
+misconduct; first, Swan's application for your address; second, a sight
+of the sheets of your 'Landscape' book; and last, your note to Swan,
+which he was so kind as to forward. I trust you will never suppose me to
+be guilty of anything more serious than an idleness, partially
+excusable. My ill-health makes my rate of life heavier than I can well
+meet, and yet stops me from earning more. My conscience, sometimes
+perhaps too easily stifled, but still (for my time of life and the
+public manners of the age) fairly well alive, forces me to perpetual and
+almost endless transcriptions. On the back of all this, any
+correspondence hangs like a thundercloud, and just when I think I am
+getting through my troubles, crack, down goes my health, I have a long,
+costly sickness, and begin the world again. It is fortunate for me I
+have a father, or I should long ago have died; but the opportunity of
+the aid makes the necessity none the more welcome. My father has
+presented me with a beautiful house here--or so I believe, for I have
+not yet seen it, being a cage bird, but for nocturnal sorties in the
+garden. I hope we shall soon move into it, and I tell myself that some
+day perhaps we may have the pleasure of seeing you as our guest. I trust
+at least that you will take me as I am, a thoroughly bad correspondent,
+and a man, a hater, indeed, of rudeness in others, but too often rude in
+all unconsciousness himself; and that you will never cease to believe
+the sincere sympathy and admiration that I feel for you and for your
+work.
+
+"About the 'Landscape,' which I had a glimpse of while a friend of mine
+was preparing a review, I was greatly interested, and could write and
+wrangle for a year on every page: one passage particularly delighted me,
+the part about Ulysses--jolly. Then, you know, that is just what I fear
+I have come to think landscape ought to be in literature: so there we
+should be at odds. Or perhaps not so much as I suppose, as Montaigne
+says it is a pot with two handles, and I own I am wedded to the
+technical handle, which (I likewise own, and freely) you do well to keep
+for a mistress. I should much like to talk with you about some other
+points; it is only in talk that one gets to understand. Your delightful
+Wordsworth trap I have tried on two hardened Wordsworthians, not that I
+am not one myself. By covering up the context, and asking them to guess
+what the passage was, both (and both are very clever people, one a
+writer, one a painter) pronounced it a guide-book. 'Do you think it
+unusually good guide-book?' I asked. And both said, 'No, not at all!'
+Their grimace was a picture when I showed the original.
+
+"I trust your health and that of Mrs. Hamerton keep better; your last
+account was a poor one. I was unable to make out the visit I had hoped
+as (I do not know if you heard of it) I had a very violent and dangerous
+hemorrhage last spring. I am almost glad to have seen death so close
+with all my wits about me, and not in the customary lassitude and
+disenchantment of disease. Even thus clearly beheld, I find him not so
+terrible as we suppose. But, indeed, with the passing of years, the
+decay of strength, the loss of all my old active and pleasant habits,
+there grows more and more upon me that belief in the kindness of this
+scheme of things, and the goodness of our veiled God, which is an
+excellent and pacifying compensation. I trust, if your health continues
+to trouble you, you may find some of the same belief. But perhaps my
+fine discovery is a piece of art, and belongs to a character cowardly,
+intolerant of certain feelings, and apt to self-deception. I don't think
+so, however; and when I feel what a weak and fallible vessel I was
+thrust into this hurly-burly, and with what marvellous kindness the wind
+has been tempered to my frailties, I think I should be a strange kind of
+ass to feel anything but gratitude.
+
+"I do not know why I should inflict this talk upon you; but when I
+summon the rebellious pen, he must go his own way: I am no Michael
+Scott, to rule the fiend of correspondence. Most days he will none of
+me: and when he comes, it is to rape me where he will.
+
+"Yours very sincerely,
+
+"ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON."
+
+Mr. Seeley wrote:--
+
+"My brother the Professor has been staying with us and reading the
+'Graphic Arts' and 'Landscape' most assiduously. He was deeply
+interested, and said they seemed to him most important works, giving him
+views about art which had never entered his mind before. He seems to
+feel that you are doing in Art what he is doing in History."
+
+For the present, Mr. Hamerton had no great work in hand. There was the
+usual writing for the "Portfolio," and he had been asked for articles by
+the editors of "Longmans' Magazine" and the "Atlantic Monthly," but he
+had not yet made up his mind as to the subject of a new important book,
+and was discussing various schemes both with Mr. Seeley and Mr. Craik.
+
+In one of his letters to Mr. Seeley he said:--
+
+"I have sometimes thoughts of writing a book (not too long) on the
+Elements or Principles of Art Criticism, in the same way as G. H. Lewes
+once wrote a series of papers for the 'Fortnightly' on the Principles of
+Success in Literature. I think I could make such papers interesting by
+giving examples both from critics and artists, and from various kinds of
+art. It would add to the interest of such papers if they had a few
+illustrations specially for themselves, and as I went on with the
+writing I could tell you beforehand what illustrations might be useful,
+though I cannot say beforehand what might be required. I should make it
+my business to show in what real criticism, that is worth writing and
+worth reading, differs from the hasty expression of mere personal
+sensations which is so often substituted for it; and I would show in
+some detail how there are different criteria, and how they may be justly
+or unjustly applied, giving examples. The articles might be reprinted
+afterwards in the shape of a moderate-sized book like my 'Life of
+Turner,' but about half as thick, and if we kept the illustrations small
+they might go into the book. Such a piece of work would have the
+advantage of giving me opportunities for showing how strongly tempted we
+all are to judge works of art by some special criterion instead of
+applying different criteria. For example, I remember hearing a man say
+before a picture that told a story that 'its color was good, and, after
+all, the color was the main thing in a picture.' Another would have
+criticised the drawing of the figures, a third the composition, a fourth
+the handling. Lastly, it might have occurred to some one to inquire how
+the story was told, and whether the artist had understood the story he
+had to tell.
+
+"I remember being in an exhibition with Robinson, the famous engraver,
+more than twenty, or perhaps thirty, years ago, and was very much struck
+by a criticism of his on a picture which seemed to me very good in many
+respects, though the effect was a very quiet one. He said, 'There's no
+light and shade;' and the want of good, strong oppositions of light and
+dark that could be effectively engraved seemed to him quite a fatal
+defect, though on looking at the work in color the absence of these
+oppositions did not strike me, as other qualities predominated. Here was
+the engraver's _professional_ point of view interfering with his
+judgment of a picture that was good, but could not be engraved
+effectually.
+
+"Then we have the interference of feelings quite outside of art, as when
+Roman Catholics tolerate hideous pictures because they represent some
+saint, although they have really been painted from, a hired model, and
+only represent a saint because the artist, with a view to sale, has
+given a saint's name to the portrait of the model.
+
+"Also there is the judgment by the literary criterion, which is often
+applied to pictures by thoughtful and learned people. They become deeply
+interested in one picture because it alludes (in a manner which seems to
+them intelligent) to something they know by books, and they pass with
+indifference better works that have no literary association.
+
+"Then you have the judgment of pictures which goes by the pleasure of
+the eyes, and tastes a picture with the eyes as wine and good cooking
+are tasted by the tongue. I believe this ocular appreciation is nearer
+to the essential nature of art than the literary or intellectual
+appreciation of it. _Vide_ Titian's pictures, which never have anything
+to say to the intellect, but are a feast to the eyes.
+
+"Then you have the _scientific_ criterion, which judges a landscape
+favorably because strata are correctly superposed, their dip accurately
+given, and 'faults' noticed. In the figure this criticism relies greatly
+on anatomy.
+
+"I have jotted down these paragraphs roughly merely to show something of
+the idea, but of course in the work itself there would be much more to
+be said--other criteria to examine, and a fuller inquiry to be gone into
+about these. I should rely for the interest of the papers, and for their
+_raison d'être_ in the 'Portfolio,' very much upon the examples alluded
+to, both in quotations from critics and in references to works of art.
+
+"With regard to the papers on Landscape Painters--if I wrote the
+introductory chapter it would be on landscape-_painting_ as an art, not
+so much on the painters. I should trace something of its history, but
+should especially show how it differs from figure-painting in certain
+conditions. For example, in figure-painting composition does not much
+interfere with truthful drawing, as a figure can always be made to
+conform to desired shapes by simply altering its attitude and putting it
+at a greater or less distance from the spectator, but in landscape
+composition always involves the re-shaping of the objects themselves.
+Again, color is of much more sentimental importance in landscape than in
+the figure. _Purple_ hills, a _yellow_ streak in the sky, and _gray_
+water produce together quite a strong effect on the poetical
+imagination, whereas the same colors in a lady's dress are but so much
+millinery. If the landscape is engraved it loses nine-tenths of its
+poetical significance; if the portrait of the lady is engraved there is
+only a sacrifice of some colors.
+
+"_October_ 8, 1885."
+
+Meanwhile, it occurred to him that he might undertake his autobiography,
+and stipulate that it should only be published after his death. He told
+me that his health being so uncertain and his earnings so precarious, he
+had thought the autobiography might be a resource for me in case of his
+premature decease, as he saw clearly that notwithstanding the
+considerable sums which his recent successes had brought him, it was not
+likely that he should ever save enough to leave me independent.
+
+As he had himself introduced the subject, I led him to consider Mary's
+future prospects in life, and said that Stephen and Richard being now
+provided with situations, we ought to think of their sister. Her musical
+education had now reached such a point that no teaching afforded by
+Autun could be of any value to her, and it was my desire that she might
+have the advantage of instruction and direction in her studies from one
+of the best professors at the Conservatoire of Paris. I realized that it
+would be a great tax, and a no less great sacrifice for my husband to be
+left alone while I should be in Paris with Mary; but I also knew that he
+never shrank from what he considered a duty--and we both agreed that it
+was a duty to put our daughter in a position to earn her living, if
+circumstances made it necessary.
+
+Accordingly I inquired who was thought to be the best executant on the
+piano in Paris, and we had it on good authority that it was M.
+Delaborde, Professor at the Conservatoire, with whom we corresponded
+immediately. Although we had friendly recommendations, he would not
+pledge himself to anything before examining Mary, and we started for
+Paris in some uncertainty. I had engaged a little apartment at the Hôtel
+de la Muette, where we were known, and a pleasant room looking on the
+garden had been reserved for us, not to inconvenience other people by
+Mary's practice.
+
+I knew the result of the examination would give Gilbert great pleasure,
+so I gave him every detail about it. M. Delaborde, who has the
+reputation of being extremely severe and somewhat blunt, was most kind
+and encouraging. After making Mary play to him for an hour, he said:
+"That will do; there remains a good deal to be done and acquired, but
+you _may_ acquire it by hard work and good tuition in three years. I
+consent to take you as one of my pupils, but I must let you know at once
+that I am very exacting. Don't be afraid of me, for I see that you are
+industrious, and that you really _love_ music. And now I am going to pay
+you a compliment which has its value, coming from me--I find no defect
+to correct in your method." After that he gave us a long list of music
+to be bought for practice, and said we might come twice a week. He also
+inquired what direction I wished her studies to take, and whether she
+intended to give lessons. I answered that I wished her studies to be of
+the most serious character, exactly as if she were preparing herself to
+be a music-teacher, though it was not her parents' present intention,
+but because one never was certain of the future. He perfectly understood
+my wishes, and was also pleased to notice his new pupil's partiality for
+classical music. Strange to say--and I did not fail to convey the
+important fact to her father--Mary, who was so easily frightened, felt
+perfectly at ease with M. Delaborde, and besides her sentiment of
+unbounded admiration for his talent, she soon came to have a great
+liking for himself. Her father was very glad--for her sake
+especially--that she should have the satisfaction of seeing her efforts
+taken _au sérieux_, and appreciated by such an authority as M.
+Delaborde. He often said that one of the greatest satisfactions in life
+was to be able to do something _really well_, better than most people
+could do it, and he was happy in the thought that music would give that
+satisfaction to his daughter. About music he had written to Mr.
+Seeley:--
+
+"I was always in music what so many are in painting--simply practical.
+In my youth I was a pupil of Seymour of Manchester for the violin, and
+thought to be a promising amateur, but I have played far more music than
+I ever talked about. I don't at all know how to talk or write about
+music. It seems to me that it expresses _itself_, and that nothing else
+can express it."
+
+After an absence of five weeks Gilbert was very glad to see us back, and
+to hear that M. Delaborde had been very encouraging to Mary. At the end
+of the last lesson he had said: "À l'année prochaine; je suis certain
+que vous reviendrez: vous avez le feu sacré."
+
+Several projects of books had occurred to Mr. Hamerton, which he
+submitted to his publishers for advice. He had thought of "Rouen," but
+Mr. Craik had answered: "Your name is a popular one, and anything coming
+from you is pretty sure of a sale. But we should consider whether even
+your name will persuade the public to buy this book on Rouen." It was
+abandoned for the consideration of a work on the "Western Islands," to
+which Messrs. Macmillan were favorable.
+
+Mr. Seeley was suggesting the "Sea" as a subject that he might treat
+with authority from an artistic point of view, but he feared he had not
+had sufficient opportunity of studying it, and received this answer:
+"Your letter of this morning has suggested to me another scheme--a
+series of articles on 'Imagination in Landscape Painting.'" The idea
+pleased my husband very much, and as he reflected about it he began a
+sort of skeleton scheme for its treatment.
+
+His own imagination about landscape was truly marvellous. Since he had
+been deprived of the power to travel, he was continually dreaming that
+he had undertaken long and distant voyages, in which he discovered
+wondrously beautiful countries and magnificent architecture. He often
+gave me, on awaking, vivid descriptions of these imaginary scenes, which
+he remembered in every detail of composition, effect, and color, and
+which he longed, though hopelessly, to reproduce in painting.
+
+He was now writing in French a life of Turner for the series of "Les
+Artistes Célèbres," published by the "Librairie de l'Art." It was not a
+translation from his English "Life of Turner," but a new, original, and
+much shorter work, about which he wrote to Mr. Seeley:--
+
+"I am writing a book in French--a new life of Turner, not very long. I
+find the change of language most refreshing. Composition in French is a
+little slower for me, but not much, and as I am a great appreciator of
+good French prose, it is fun to try to imitate (at a distance) some of
+its qualities."
+
+Years after, writing about this same "Life of Turner," he said to Mr.
+Seeley:--
+
+"The insularity of the English that you speak of is not worse than the
+insularity of the French. When I wrote my 'Life of Turner' for the
+'Artistes Célèbres' series, I was asked to reduce the MS. by one third,
+for the reason that the thicker numbers were only given to great
+artists. The sale was very moderate, as so few French people care
+anything about English art."
+
+When the first chapters of "Imagination in Landscape Painting" reached
+Mr. Seeley, he said: "I like your opening chapters much, and I feel glad
+that I have set you on a good subject."
+
+As usual during the vacation, my husband went on the Saône with Stephen
+and Maurice for a fortnight. "L'Arar" had been greatly improved, but was
+still to undergo new improvements while laid up for the winter. On
+coming back home Gilbert wrote to Mr. Seeley:--
+
+"Stephen, my nephew Maurice, and myself have just returned from an
+exhibition on the Saône in my boat, which turned out delightful. We had
+considerable variety of wind and weather, including a very grand
+thunderstorm with tremendous wind (of short duration). We were just near
+enough to a port where there was an inn to be able to take refuge in
+time. The boat would have ridden out the storm on the water, scudding
+under bare poles of course; but I have seen so many telegraph-poles and
+trees struck by lightning, that I apprehended the possibility of its
+striking one of our masts. At the inn we had dinner, and during the
+whole of dinner, between five and six p.m., we had a splendid view of
+Mont Blanc through our open window--first with all its snows rosy, and
+afterwards fading into gray. As there were no beds in the inn we went on
+by night, first in total darkness and afterwards in moonlight, beating
+against the wind, but the wind falling altogether and rain coming in its
+place, and the nearest inn being twelve kilomètres away, we slept on the
+boat under a tent, and were comfortable enough though it rained all
+night. Next morning we were under sail at seven, and had a delightful
+day. A curious thing about that night was a swarm of ephemerae so dense
+that it was like a blinding snowstorm. I could hardly see to steer for
+them; they hit my face like pelting rain. They fell on the deck, till it
+was covered an inch deep, and two inches deep in parts. Next morning
+Stephen, on cleaning the deck, rolled them up into large balls, which he
+threw into the river. The people call them _manna_.
+
+"We exercised ourselves in all ways, going out for manoeuvers against
+the wind when it was worst, rowing in dead calms, or towing the boat
+from the shore, as there is a towing-path all along one side, so we need
+never be quite stopped. The boat behaved capitally, and as the lads
+became better drilled they did the sailing business better together. My
+health kept wonderfully well in spite of (or perhaps in consequence of)
+a good deal of work and some hardship. I did a lot of sketches, and
+amused myself particularly with drawing the delicate distances.
+Yesterday, on our return, we met by appointment a picnic party at
+Nôrlay, and walked ten kilomètres under drenching rain to see a natural
+curiosity called the 'end of the world,' where limestone cliffs end in a
+sort of semi-circle.
+
+"It is believed to be a creek of an ancient lake or sea. The cliffs are
+evidently undermined by waves, and hang over. The ground in the middle
+is full of beautiful pastures and vineyards, with lovely groups of trees
+and a stream, and two very picturesque villages."
+
+The different methods which had been tried for producing manuscript in
+duplicate had all proved distasteful and unsatisfactory. My husband was
+particularly irritated by the delay caused by having to press down the
+hard lead-pencil or stiletto. He could not bear any slow process for
+expressing the swiftly running thoughts, and he tried another plan which
+enabled him to write very nearly as fast as the ideas came. Using glazed
+paper and a soft pencil he made a rough draft without attempt at polish
+in style, merely fixing the thoughts. This he corrected at leisure, and
+copied with a particular kind of ink which was said to yield
+half-a-dozen copies upon moist paper put under a screw-press. But the
+result was very imperfect, and took too much time, and finally he used
+to have his corrected MS. copied by a professional typewriter. This plan
+was by far the most satisfactory, as, by relieving him from the drudgery
+of copying, it allowed more time for painting, and a rather important
+picture of Kilchurn Castle was begun, to be hung on the staircase.
+
+In February "French and English" was begun. My husband was particularly
+qualified to give an impartial comparison of the habits, institutions,
+and characteristics of the two nations, on account of his sympathies
+with both, and his intimate knowledge of the French language and long
+residence in France, during which his inquisitive mind had been
+gathering endless information about the public institutions of the
+country. He had made himself perfectly acquainted with French politics,
+and followed with great interest all current events.
+
+The system of public instruction in France had become familiar to him
+through M. Pelletier (who had been a member of the University from his
+youth); and he had not neglected to learn from the several ecclesiastics
+with whom he was acquainted, what he wanted to know about the
+constitution of the Roman Catholic Church and clergy.
+
+In the same way his military friends told him what he cared to learn of
+the army. He had for a neighbor M. de Chatillon (cousin of the poet and
+painter, A. de Chatillon), a retired captain, who had been in the
+Crimea, and was wounded in the Franco-Prussian War; also a friend and
+visitor, another captain, M. Kornprobst, with whom he made the voyage on
+the Saône. The colonel of the regiment quartered at Autun, M. Mathieu,
+who had fought by the side of the English in the Crimea, came sometimes
+too, to talk about past days, and recalled among other things with
+gratitude and admiration the fare of which he had partaken on board an
+English man-of-war. Mr. Hamerton had only to put questions to one of
+these officers to obtain full information upon any point of French
+military organization. As regards national characteristics in
+individuals, he had a rich accumulation of notes and observations, both
+in his pocket-books and in his mind. Very observant from early youth,
+this tendency had been quickened by the contrasts that life in foreign
+parts constantly presented.
+
+It had been decided that the Rhone voyage should be abandoned for one on
+the Saône; and Mr. Hamerton was in active correspondence with Mr. Seeley
+about the choice of an artist to illustrate the book. Both of them were
+great admirers of Mr. Pennell's talent, and they agreed to make him a
+proposal.
+
+Mr. Pennell, having been overworked and feeling rather nervous and
+unwell, thought that the contemplated voyage would be the very thing to
+restore his health. He would have perfect tranquillity on the peaceful
+river, and he might sketch at his leisure, without hurry; so he gladly
+accepted the hospitality offered him on board the "Boussemroum."
+
+The plan of accommodation on this boat has been explained exhaustively
+by the author of "The Saône," but I think I may give a few brief
+indications of the arrangements for readers unacquainted with the book.
+
+Mr. Hamerton hired a large river-boat called the "Boussemroum," and two
+men to manage it and do the cooking. A donkey, "Zoulou," was kept on
+board to tow the boat when necessary, and in the course of the voyage a
+boy, "Franki," was engaged to drive "Zoulou." Three tents had been
+erected for the passengers, and an awning was placed over part of a
+raised platform to shelter the artists at work from the too generous
+heat of the June sunshine. Each tent was furnished as a simple bedroom,
+with an iron bedstead and a hammock, washing utensils, chest, table for
+drawing or writing, and mats on the floor.
+
+Besides Mr. Pennell's tent and Mr. Hamerton's, another had been reserved
+for Captain Kornprobst, who was to undertake the duties of the
+commissariat. There was nothing so difficult for my husband as to turn
+his mind from intellectual or artistic thoughts to domestic or business
+affairs; he was aware of it, and dreaded interruptions--and the fear of
+interruptions--as well as the responsibility of keeping his floating
+home so regularly provisioned as to save its inmates from becoming,
+occasionally, a prey to hunger or thirst. Humbly confessing his
+shortcomings, he begged his friend, Captain Kornprobst, to join the
+expedition as Purser and General Provider, feeling confident that if he
+consented everything would _marcher militairement_. It was an immense
+relief when the Captain declared himself ready and willing to assume
+these functions.
+
+Mr. Pennell, having been suddenly obliged to go to Antwerp for a series
+of drawings, could not be free at the time of starting. On the other
+hand, Captain Kornprobst had been summoned, the boat hired, and the
+men's wages were running, so the voyage was begun, on the understanding
+that Mr. Pennell would join the party as soon as he could leave Antwerp,
+probably at Corre on the Upper Saône.
+
+On arriving at Chalon-sur-Saône, on May 31, Mr. Hamerton was met by the
+Captain, and they proceeded at once to the "Boussemroum," which they put
+in order as it moved away. It was only at Gray, on June 6, that Mr.
+Pennell came on board.
+
+It has been said in some notices of Mr. Hamerton's life that he read but
+little; nothing could be more opposed to truth; the fact is, that he was
+constantly attempting to bind himself by rules to give only a certain
+proportion of his time to reading, and when he travelled he was sure to
+have among his luggage a large trunk of books. Here is a list, for
+instance, of the works he took with him on the Saône:--
+
+Royau, "À travers les Mots."
+
+No Name Series, "Signor Monaldini's Niece."
+
+Poe, "Poems."
+
+"Italian Conversation Book."
+
+Arnold, "Light of Asia."
+
+Swinburne, "Atalanta."
+
+Auguez, "Histoire de France."
+
+Amiers, "Olanda."
+
+St. Simon, "Louis XIV. et sa Cour."
+
+Paradol, "La France Nouvelle."
+
+Caesar, "De Bello Gallico."
+
+Palgrave, "Golden Treasury."
+
+Milton, "Poems."
+
+Milton, do. (modern edition).
+
+Milton, "Areopagitica."
+
+Stevenson, "Inland Voyage."
+
+Stevenson, "Travels with a Donkey."
+
+Byron, "Poems" (4 vols.).
+
+Shakespeare, "Poems."
+
+Helps, "Social Pressure."
+
+Gerson, "De Imitatione."
+
+The adventures of the voyage having been narrated in "The Saône," I
+shall only mention the incident of the arrest, because it turned out to
+be a lucky thing that I just then happened to be in Paris. It must be
+explained that M. Pelletier, having been entrusted with the organization
+of one of the great new Lycées--the Lycée Lakanal at Sceaux--had been
+deprived of his usual vacation in 1885, and, as a little compensation,
+he came to spend the Easter of 1886 with us, and took away Mary, who was
+to stay with him for her yearly music-lessons. At the end of the month I
+took advantage of my husband's absence to go and see the Paris Salon,
+and to bring back our daughter.
+
+On June 25, while we were at lunch with M. Pelletier and his children,
+and making merry guesses as to the probable whereabouts of the voyagers
+on the Saône, there came a telegram for my brother-in-law, who said to
+me, after reading it: "What would you say if they were arrested as
+spies?" We all laughed at the idea, and I answered that it would be
+capital material for a chapter. "Well then, since you take it this way,
+I may as well tell you that it is a fact, though your husband wishes it
+to be kept from you till he is released."
+
+I began to fear that he might be imprisoned, and that his nervousness
+would return in confinement. From this point of view the consequences
+seemed alarming, and I wondered what would be the best plan to set him
+free as soon as possible.
+
+My brother-in-law was for applying to the English Ambassador, but I felt
+pretty sure that my husband would write to him, and that negotiations in
+that quarter would take some time. So I went straight to one of our
+friends who had a near relation holding an important military post at
+the Élysée, and who might be of great help on this occasion. I told my
+friend what had happened, and he promised to go and explain matters to
+his relative, and to obtain speedily an order of release for the unlucky
+travellers. The same evening I had a note to the effect that the
+Minister of War had sent the desired order by telegram.
+
+The author of "The Saône" has explained why the voyage was interrupted
+at Chalon. The second part was to be made on the "Arar," and the
+erections on the "Boussemroum" were to be demolished and the tents
+removed before the boat was returned to its owner; but as Mary and I had
+expressed a wish to see it before the demolition, we went to Chalon,
+where my husband took us on board and explained all the contrivances,
+which were very ingenious.
+
+The extraordinary appearance of the "Boussemroum" with its three large
+tents attracted quite a crowd on the quay where it was moored, and as we
+made our way towards it we were followed by many curious eyes.
+
+Mr. Pennell, having been discouraged and disheartened by the loss of
+time and the insecurity of his situation in France, especially since he
+had failed to get an official permission to sketch at Lyons, gave up all
+idea of illustrating the Lower Saône. What was to be done with the book?
+Could it be published in an incomplete state and called "The Upper
+Saône?" In that case the work would be of small importance, after all
+the preparations, time, and money spent upon it. "Would it not be better
+to ask another artist to undertake the remaining part?" asked Mr.
+Seeley. But he would have to encounter the same difficulties, and be
+exposed to the same vexations--and, after all, the book might be wanting
+in harmony.
+
+At last Mr. Pennell offered to make drawings from the author's sketches,
+and this was accepted. My husband had already in his possession a great
+number of studies taken at Chalon, Mâcon, and upon the river on previous
+cruises, and they might be utilized in this way, together with those he
+could still make during the vacation on the "Arar."
+
+In the interval between the two boat voyages, Mr. Hamerton devoted
+himself almost exclusively to writing "French and English" for the
+"Atlantic Monthly," and "The Saône." He also took some precautions in
+view of the next cruise, and when he started for it, with Stephen and
+Maurice, he was provided with a passport and a recommendation from the
+English Ambassador.
+
+The voyage was a pleasant one, and ended prosperously, but it soon
+became evident that the book could not be published before the next
+year, mainly because the stereotype plates could not have reached
+America before December, and the publishers then would still have to
+print and bind the book.
+
+Roberts Brothers said about it:--
+
+"We are very glad you have decided to postpone the publication of the
+boat voyage till next year. You will see by our account that we allow
+you nothing on the cheap edition of the 'Intellectual Life.' Thank the
+pirates for it.
+
+"Mrs. Hamerton's 'Golden Mediocrity' has passed through a second
+edition; the first was 1,000 copies."
+
+This last book was a novelette that I had written at the instigation of
+Roberts Brothers, and which had been corrected by my husband.
+
+The illustrations needed for the completion of "The Saône" took a great
+deal of Mr. Hamerton's time in 1886. Early in January he went to Chalon
+to take several sketches, which he worked out afterwards in pen-and-ink.
+We took the opportunity of this journey to see a few houses which had
+been recommended to us as possible future residences, La Tuilerie
+requiring expensive repairs that we were not inclined to undertake,
+because every time we made any our rent was raised,--no doubt because it
+was thought that just after a fresh outlay we should not be disposed to
+leave. But we found the house-rents much higher about Chalon than in our
+neighborhood, and although Gilbert was fond of the Saône--particularly
+for boating--he was far from admiring the landscape as much as that of
+the Autunois, from a painter's point of view. After much consideration
+we decided to go through the unavoidable repairs, and to renew our
+lease.
+
+I suppose that the Saône voyage had directed my husband's thoughts
+towards boats more than ever, for his diary is full of notes about them.
+I shall only give a few to show the drift of his mind.
+
+"Made a sketch for a possible triple catamaran.
+
+"Made an elevation of hull for the 'Morvandelle,' using an elevation of
+a quickly turning steamer in 'Le Yacht,' and _improving_ upon it.
+
+"Made a new balancer for canoe.
+
+"Began to prepare pirogue with marine glue before putting the
+rudder-post.
+
+"Lengthened cross-pieces; completed beam for catamaran, adding details
+of ironwork.
+
+"Demolished old balancer log of canoe, and began to saw it to make a
+little bridge.
+
+"Found that boiling wood was the best plan for bending it; steaming is
+too troublesome.
+
+"Thought much about sails.
+
+"Wrote a letter to 'Yacht' about invention of paper-boats."
+
+In October he began to write for "Le Yacht" a history of catamarans,
+which was highly appreciated by the readers of that paper.
+
+In the course of that year he also wrote a long and careful review of
+"L'Art" for "Longmans' Magazine," "Conversations on Book Illustrations,"
+and a review of Mr. Ernest George's etchings. He also worked at the
+autobiography.
+
+It was a real sorrow for my husband to hear that in consequence of the
+demise of Mr. John Hamerton, Hellifield Peel and the estate were for
+sale and likely to go out of the family. He had been considerately
+offered the first option of purchase, and he wrote in the diary, "How I
+wish I had the money!"
+
+In January, 1887, he wrote to Mr. Seeley:--
+
+"We are rather troubled by the possibility of a war between France and
+Germany. The French papers take the thing coolly, but the English ones,
+especially the 'Daily News,' are extremely pessimist. If there is war I
+mean to come to England, having had enough anxiety and interrupted
+communications during the last war. My sons would probably both
+volunteer into the French army in defence of their mother's country, as
+it would be a duel of life and death between Germany and France this
+time. If you and Mrs. Seeley visit the Continent in the spring you may
+perhaps witness a battle. I have seen just one, and heard the cannonade
+of another--sensations never to be forgotten."
+
+In the spring he had had an attack of gout, in consequence of working at
+the boats instead of going out. He bore it with his usual
+philosophy--trying to read or write whenever the pain was supportable.
+It happened during the Easter vacation, and Stephen used to sit up late
+into the night to keep his father company.
+
+At the end of the vacation Richard, who had obtained a post in Paris,
+took his sister with him, and in June, Gilbert being now quite well, I
+went to fetch her back. M. Delaborde had recommended her the study of
+harmony, and we found an able professor in M. Laurent, the organist of
+the cathedral at Autun.
+
+It was with great satisfaction that her father noticed her application
+and success in this arduous study. He considered it, like algebra, an
+excellent discipline for the mind--too often wanting in a feminine
+education.
+
+Against all expectations "The Saône" did not sell well. It was
+unaccountable; the illustrations were numerous and varied, picturesque,
+and greatly admired by artists,--Rajon in particular was charmed with
+them,--but it appears that their sin consisted in not being etchings; so
+at least said the booksellers, as if the author's works were never to be
+illustrated in any other way. The subject was new, and presented in
+felicitous style; the reviews were hearty; but in spite of all that
+could be said in its favor, the book never became a popular one. Mr.
+Seeley had mentioned in a letter the uncertainty of the publishing
+business, and my husband answered:--
+
+"What you say about the lottery of publishing is confirmed by the
+experience of others. Macmillan said to me one day, 'As one gets older
+and certainly more experienced one ought to get wiser, but it does not
+seem to be so in publishing, for I am just as liable to error now in my
+speculations as I was many years ago.' Evidently Roberts Brothers are
+the same."
+
+The subject of "French and English" seemed too important to Mr. Hamerton
+to be adequately treated in a few articles, and he decided to give it
+proper development in a book, for which all his accumulated observations
+would become useful. He proposed it to Messrs. Macmillan, warning them
+that, as he intended to be impartial, they might find that his
+opinions--conscientiously given--would often be at variance with those
+generally accepted. Mr. Craik answered: "As to 'French and English' I do
+not think that it matters in the least that you differ from the opinions
+of others." Then he went on to say: "I hope to hear from you about a
+large illustrated book for 1889, and we will gladly go into the matter
+with you when you have got an idea into your head."
+
+In the autumn we learned with deep regret the death of our dear cousin,
+Ben Hinde. My husband conveyed it to his friend M. Schmitt in the
+following letter:--
+
+"J'ai reçu ces jours-ci la triste nouvelle que mon cousin--le prêtre
+anglican que j'aimais comme un frère, a succombé à une assez longue
+maladie. Ce qu'il y a de plus pénible c'est la position de sa soeur qui
+s'était entièrement dévouée à lui et à la paroisse. Elle a vécu toute sa
+vie au presbytère, et maintenant, son frère mort, il va falloir qu'elle
+s'en aille. Elle a une petite fortune qui suffira à ses besoins, et j'ai
+l'immense satisfaction de penser que c'est moi qui ai pu sauver cet
+argent des griffes d'exécuteurs testamentaires mal intentionnés. Je les
+ai forcés à payer quarante mille francs. Ma cousine supporte son sort
+avec un courage parfait. Je n'ai jamais rencontré une foi religieuse
+aussi parfaite que la sienne. Pour elle, la mort d'un Chrétien est un
+heureux événement qu'elle célébrerait volontiers par des réjouissances.
+Elle n'y voit absolument que la naissance au ciel. Ceci l'expose à être
+très méconnue. Quand elle perd un parent elle est très gaie et on peut
+s'imaginer qu'elle est sans coeur. Elle va se dévouer entièrement à ses
+pauvres; elle vit absolument de la vie d'une soeur-de-charité, sans le
+titre.
+
+"La mort de mon cousin, et peut-être l'éloignement de ma cousine, me
+laisseront, pour ainsi dire, sans parents. Je ne regrette pas de m'être
+donné une nouvelle famille en France, et je me félicite des bonnes
+relations, si franchement cordiales, que j'ai avec mes deux beaux-frères
+et avec ma belle-soeur."
+
+Some time later he wrote to the same friend:--
+
+"Nous avons fait un charmant voyage sur la Saône, de Mâcon à Verdun avec
+retour à Chalon--une flânerie à voile avec toutes les variétés de temps:
+vents forts et vents faibles, calmes plats (c'est le moins agréable),
+bourrasques, beau temps, pluie, clair-de-lune, obscurité presque
+complète, splendeurs du soleil. Comme nous voyageons à toute heure du
+jour et de la nuit, nous voyons la nature sous tous les aspects
+imaginables. Cela renouvelle pour moi cette _intimité_ avec la nature
+qui était un des plus grands bonheurs de ma jeunesse.
+
+"C'est à peu près le seul genre de voyage que j'aime réellement, et
+c'est le seul qui me fasse du bien."
+
+Note in the diary:--
+
+"January 13, 1888. Fought nearly all day against a difficulty about
+'French and English,' and decided to divide the book into large sections
+and small chapters, divisions and subdivisions. Chapters to be confined
+strictly to their special subjects."
+
+It became the main work of the year, with the articles on catamarans for
+the "Yacht," and the numerous drawings to illustrate them. The
+autobiography was also carried forward.
+
+Our little pony, Cocote, was growing old and rheumatic, and could no
+longer render much service. My husband was unwilling to make her work at
+the cost of pain, and we found it impossible to do without a reliable
+horse at such a distance from Autun.
+
+As Cocote was not always unfit for work--only at intervals--her master
+decided to buy a horse that he might ride when the pony could manage the
+carriage work. He chose a young, nice-looking mare at a neighboring
+farm, and took great pleasure in riding her every day; this regular
+habit of exercise in the open air was of great benefit to his health.
+
+The death of Paul Rajon, which occurred in the summer, was deeply
+lamented by my husband, who, besides his great appreciation of the
+artist's exquisite talent, entertained for him sentiments of real
+friendship. When we came to live at Paris, he made a pilgrimage to his
+house, and to his, alas! neglected tomb at Auvers.
+
+In August, Mr. Seeley wished to republish in book form some of Mr.
+Hamerton's contributions to the "Portfolio," and to give his portrait as
+a frontispiece. He wrote about it: "My traveller says he is continually
+asked for your portrait. If Jeens were living I would ask him to engrave
+it, but as we have no one approaching him in skill, perhaps the safest
+plan would be a photogravure from a negative taken on purpose."
+
+My husband suggested that perhaps Mr. H. Manesse might etch the portrait
+satisfactorily. Mr. Seeley thought it an excellent idea, and said he was
+willing to give the commission.
+
+Mr. H. Manesse arrived on October 17, and set to work immediately. He
+was most assiduous, and progressed happily with his work. His model
+drove him out every day--the weather being fine,--and they derived
+pleasure from each other's society, being both interested in the beauty
+of nature and in artistic subjects.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+1888-1890.
+
+"Man in Art" begun.--Family events.--Mr. G. T Watts.--Mr. Bodley.
+--"French and English."
+
+After long reflections given to the choice of a subject for a new
+illustrated book, Mr. Hamerton thought that after "Landscape in Art,"
+"Man in Art" would be interesting as a study.
+
+Mr. Craik wrote: "'Man in Art' is an excellent idea; you will find us
+ready to embark on it with sanguine expectation. You will later tell me
+your ideas of illustrating--it ought to be well done in this particular;
+but if there is a chance of your coming to England next winter we might
+settle this better in talk."
+
+In the spring Stephen and Richard came as usual for the Easter vacation,
+but our younger son's altered looks and ways greatly disquieted us. In
+the last year he had evinced a growing disinclination to society and
+pleasure; his former liveliness, gayety, and love of jokes had been
+replaced by an obvious preference for solitude, and, as it seemed to us,
+melancholy brooding. To our anxious inquiries he had answered that he
+was nervous, and suffering from mental unrest and insomnia. His tone of
+voice was now despondent, and if he spoke of the future it was with
+bitterness and lassitude. He had been so bright, so confident in his
+powers, so full of praiseworthy ambition, so ready to enjoy life, that
+this sudden change surprised all his friends and gave great anxiety to
+his parents. I begged his father to question him about his health, and
+to advise him to get a _congé_ which he could spend in the country with
+us, and during which he might rest thoroughly.
+
+But I was told that he had not borne the questioning patiently. He had
+answered that he was "only nervous ... very nervous, and wanted peace."
+How different was this answer from the one he had given three years
+before to another inquiry of his father when he was going to his first
+post.
+
+"Richard, I can give you no fortune to start you in life--education was
+all I could afford, so you will have to make your own way. You are now
+strong and well, but you have been a delicate child, and have often
+suffered physically. Now, considering all this--are you happy?"
+
+"Happy?" he had readily answered, "I am very happy; I enjoy life
+exceedingly. As to money matters, I can truly say that I would not
+exchange the education you have given me for three thousand pounds."
+
+My husband attempted to calm my sad forebodings by telling me that there
+is generally a crisis in the life of a boy before he becomes a man, and
+he concluded persuasively by saying: "C'est un homme qui va sortir de
+là." But I felt that his own mind was still full of care.
+
+When the time of my yearly departure for Paris came round, I recommended
+Gilbert to hire a tricycle, and try to get a change of exercise by
+alternately riding his horse and his velocipede, and he promised to do
+so.
+
+For some time I had been desirous to join Mary, on account of her
+confidences about the probability of her becoming engaged. Of these
+confidences I said nothing to her father, as I had made it a rule not to
+disturb him about any projects of marriage for his daughter till I felt
+satisfied that everything was suitable and likely to lead to a happy
+result. His love for Mary was so tender, his fears of any match which
+would not secure for her the greatest possible amount of happiness so
+great, his dread of the unavoidable separation so keen, that I avoided
+the subject as much as possible.
+
+When I arrived at Bourg-la-Reine, I was disappointed not to see Richard
+at the station, with his sister and cousins awaiting me, as he had done
+the year before, but I tried not to seem to notice it. He came, however,
+on the following day and breakfasted with us at his uncle's. He appeared
+cheerful enough when he talked, but as soon as he was silent his
+features resumed the downcast expression they had worn for some time,
+and he was ashy pale.
+
+Being obliged to take Mary to her last music-lesson, I asked Richard
+when I should see him again?... He gave me a kiss, and said "To-morrow."
+There was to be no morrow for him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When, after vainly waiting for him, the cruel news of his tragic end was
+broken to us by M. Pelletier, when we learned that the poor boy had
+committed suicide, my sorrow was rendered almost unbearable by
+apprehension for my husband. I had long feared that there might be
+something wrong with his heart, and now I became a prey to the most
+torturing forebodings. My daughter and brother-in-law shared in them,
+and M. Pelletier approved my resolution to leave Paris immediately and
+endeavor to be with Gilbert before the delivery of the newspapers.
+
+Mary and I left by the first train we could take, and arrived at La
+Tuilerie shortly before eleven at night. My husband divined at once that
+there was some great calamity, but his fears were for M. Pelletier. When
+he knew the truth, he silently wrapped me in his arms, pressing me to
+his bosom, within which I felt the laboring heart beating with such
+violence that I thought it could but break....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The courage of which my husband gave proofs in this bitter trial was
+mainly derived from his pitiful sympathy for those whose weakness he
+supported. He sought relief in work, but did not easily find it. There
+is the same plaintive entry in the diary for some weeks: "Tried to work;
+not fit for it." "Tried to do something; not very well." "Not fit for
+much; succeeded in reading a little" "Attempted to write a few letters.
+Rather unwell." Then he gave up the diary for some time.
+
+More than ever I felt reluctant to tell him of what had happened to
+Mary, and of the probability of her marriage; however, she had been so
+sorely tried by the loss of her brother, that it was imperative to turn
+her thoughts from it, as much as possible, to other prospects. This
+conviction decided me to tell her father everything, and it was a great
+relief to hear that he shared my views entirely. Although I had learned
+long since how little he considered his own comfort in comparison with
+that of those dear to him, how unselfish he was--in affection as in
+other matters--I must avow that I was unprepared for the readiness of
+his self-sacrifice in this case. We were both of opinion that if all
+went well, the marriage should take place as early as possible, so as to
+bring a thorough change in the clouded existence of our daughter.
+
+Note in the diary: "Monsieur Raillard this morning asked Mary to marry
+him, with my consent, and she accepted him. Day passed pleasantly. I
+drove Raillard and his mother to the station."
+
+It now became necessary to make preparations for the wedding, which was
+to take place in the beginning of September. For the choice of an
+apartment and its furniture my husband himself considerately suggested
+my going again to Paris with Mary, where we would meet M. Raillard and
+consult his tastes. Accordingly I left La Tuilerie very reluctantly
+after the great and recent shock my husband had experienced. I am
+convinced it was due to the manful effort he made not to increase my
+distress by the sight of his own that he conquered his nervousness from
+that time, and was even able to strengthen and support me on my too
+frequent breakdowns. He attributed Richard's desperate action partly to
+depression arising from the effects of an accident, confided only to his
+brother, but partly also to the influence of unhealthy and pessimist
+literature on a mind already diseased, and he had said so to Mr. Seeley,
+who answered:--
+
+"I am sure that poor Richard came under the influence of pure and noble
+examples. It may be that there was actual brain disease, though of a
+nature that no surgeon at present has skill to detect. I suppose it is
+possible that disease in the organ of thought may be accelerated or
+retarded by the nature of the thoughts suggested in daily life or
+conversation; and I suppose every one believes that in such disorders
+there may come a time when the will, without blame, is overmastered.
+
+"As to the bad literature of the day, I believe our feelings are quite
+in unison. What an awful responsibility for the happiness of families
+rests upon successful authors--and upon publishers too!"
+
+The letters of condolence and sympathy were numerous and heartfelt; some
+came late, for the friends who had known Richard in his bright and merry
+days refused to believe that it was the same Richard who had come to so
+tragic an end; they thought it was a coincidence of name. I only give
+Mr. Beljame's letter to show how the poor boy had endeared himself to
+every one, and in what esteem he was generally held. All the other
+letters expressed the same sentiments in different words.
+
+"8 _juillet_ 1889.
+
+"Je suis bien sensible, Monsieur, à votre lettre, où vous m'associez, en
+des termes qui me touchent profondément, au souvenir de votre fils
+Richard, mon cher et excellent élève.
+
+"C'était pour moi, non seulement un disciple dont je me faisais honneur,
+mais aussi un véritable ami, et depuis son installation à Paris, j'avais
+eu grand plaisir à l'accueillir dans ma famille. Les détails que vous
+voulez bien me donner, m'expliquent pourquoi, dans ces derniers mois,
+ses visites étaient, à mon grand regret, devenues de plus en plus rares.
+
+"Sa fin si inattendue, alors que la vie semblait de tous côtés lui
+sourire, a été pour moi une douloureuse surprise; j'ai refusé d'abord
+d'y croire; c'est pourquoi je ne vous ai pas tout de suite écrit.
+
+"J'ai tenu à me joindre à ceux qui lui ont rendu les derniers devoirs;
+et j'ai chargé alors votre fils aîné et votre beau-frère d'être mes
+interprètes auprès de vous.
+
+"À des malheurs comme celui qui vient de vous frapper il n'y a pas de
+consolation possible. Si c'est au moins un adoucissement de savoir que
+celui qui n'est plus laisse derrière lui de souvenir d'un esprit
+d'élite, d'une nature aimante et aimable, soyez assuré que tels sont
+bien les sentiments que votre fils a inspirés à tous ceux qui l'ont
+connu, à ses camarades de la Sorbonne, qui l'avaient en affection
+particulière, à ses collègues--mais à nul plus qu'à son ancien maître
+qui vous envoie aujourd'hui, ainsi qu'à Madame Hamerton, l'expression de
+sa triste et respectueuse sympathie.
+
+"A. BELJAME."
+
+When Mr. Seeley was told of Mary's engagement, he wrote: "We are very
+glad to hear of Mary's engagement, and we wish her all possible
+happiness. But because you and I are so nearly of an age, I cannot help
+thinking most of you, and thinking what the loss to you and to Mrs.
+Hamerton will be."
+
+In preceding years Mary's brothers and cousins had often made projects
+in expectation of her marriage, but under the present painful
+circumstances it was understood that only relations would he invited.
+Still the disturbance in our habits could not be avoided, as we had to
+provide lodgings for twenty people. My husband gave up his laboratory
+and his studio and with the help of the boys transformed the hay-loft
+into working premises. He got carpenters to fit up the big laundry as a
+dining-room, under his directions, and when fresh-looking mats covered
+the tiles, and when the huge chimney-piece, the walls, and the doors
+were ornamented with tall ferns, shiny hollies, and blooming heather, of
+which Stephen and his cousins had gathered a cartful, the effect was
+very charming.
+
+My husband had to be reminded several times to order new clothes for the
+ceremony,--a visit to his tailor being one of the things he most
+disliked,--and being indisposed to give a thought to the fit, he used to
+decline all responsibility in the matter by making _me_ a judge of it.
+His fancy had been once tickled by hearing a market-woman say that,
+though she did not know my name, she identified me as "la petite Dame
+difficile," and he called me so when I found fault with his attire.
+
+A few days before the wedding he had gone to Autun, to fetch different
+things in the carriage, among them his dress-coat and frock-coat, and
+after putting on the last, came for my verdict. "It fits badly; it is
+far too large." ... Then I was interrupted by--"I was sure of it; now
+_what_ is wrong with it?" "Wrong? why everything is wrong; the cloth
+itself is not black--it looks faded and rusty--why, it can't be new!"
+"Not new!... and I bring it straight from the tailor's. Really, your
+inclination to criticism is beyond--" He was getting somewhat impatient,
+for the time given to trying on was, in his estimate, so much time lost.
+"It _is_ an old coat," I nevertheless said decisively. "Your tailor has
+made a mistake, that's all." "I am certain it is _my_ coat," he
+answered, quite angrily this time. "I feel at ease in it; the pockets
+are just in their right place;" and as he plunged his hands deliberately
+in the convenient pockets, he drew out of one an old "Daily News," and
+from the other a worn-out pair of gloves. His amazement was
+indescribable, but he soon joined in the general merriment at his
+expense--for Mary and Jeanne, the cousins, and even M. Pelletier, had
+been called as umpires to decide the case between us. The new coat had
+been left in the dressing-room, and it was the old one, given as a
+pattern to the tailor, which had been tried on. The best of it was that
+on the day of the ceremony Gilbert committed the same mistake; luckily I
+perceived it when he had still time to change.
+
+He attached so little importance to his toilet that he never knew when
+he was in want of anything, yet his appearance was never untidy, in
+spite of his omissions. I remember a little typical incident about this
+disinclination to give a thought to needful though prosaic details.
+Before leaving for England on one occasion, I had repeatedly called his
+attention to what he required--in particular a warm winter suit and an
+overcoat. He had promised several times to order them, but when the day
+of our departure arrived he had forgotten all about it. "It's no
+matter," he said; "I shall get them ready-made in London, and with the
+_chic anglais_ too." In England we found the temperature already severe,
+and I urged him to make his purchases. On the very same day, he
+announced complacently that he had made them, and they were to be sent
+on the morrow. He was quite proud of having got through the business,
+particularly because he had bought _two_ suits, though he needed only
+one. "The other would turn out useful some time," he said. And lo! when
+the box was opened, I discovered that instead of clothes fit for visits,
+he had been persuaded to accept a sort of shooting-jacket of coarse gray
+tweed, waistcoat and trousers to match, with a pair of boots only fit
+for mountaineering. When I told him my opinion, he acknowledged it to be
+right, but said the tailor had assured him that "they would be lasting."
+And he added: "I was in a hurry, having to go to the National Gallery,
+and I felt confident the man would know what I wanted, after telling
+him."
+
+Mary was married on September 3, and she was so much loved in the
+village that every cottage sent at least one of its members to the
+ceremony; the children whom she had taught, and in whom she had always
+taken so much interest, came in numbers, and the evident respectful
+affection of these simple people quite moved and impressed the parents
+of M. Raillard. Her father was also pleased with the presence of all our
+neighbors and friends, and he went through the trying day with entire
+self-command. But when the birds had flown away the nest seemed empty
+and silent indeed, and to fill up the time till their return, I thought
+a little cruise on wheels would be the best diversion.
+
+The weather was still fine and warm enough for working from nature, and
+preparations were made for a sketching tour, in which M. Pelletier would
+accompany his brother-in-law while the house was put to rights again.
+
+They started with Cadette, and went successively to Etang,
+Toulon-sur-Arroux, St. Nizier, Charbonnat, Luzy, La Roche-Millay, St.
+Léger, l'Etang-des-Poissons, and La Grande-Verrière,--a most picturesque
+excursion, from which my husband brought back several interesting
+studies.
+
+The day after the return, M. Pelletier and his family left us, my
+brother, his wife and daughters, who had been bridesmaids, having
+preceded them.
+
+At the end of a fortnight Raoul Raillard and his wife came back to spend
+with us the rest of the vacation. The day they went away the diary said,
+"We bore the separation pretty well." Yes, we bore it pretty well this
+time, because it was not to be very long. It had been decided that as
+soon as the young couple were settled in their apartments, we should
+become their guests,--my husband hoping, in this way, to see the great
+Exhibition at leisure and without fatigue.
+
+We arrived at M. Raillard's on October 13, and the very next day saw us
+in the English Fine Arts department of the Exhibition. Our daughter
+lived in the Rue de la Tour, at Passy, an easy walking distance to the
+Champ de Mars, and her father made it a rule to go there on foot with me
+every morning between the first breakfast and _déjeuner à la
+fourchette_. The plan answered very well. We were almost alone in the
+rooms, and could see the pictures at our leisure. My husband took his
+notes with ease and comfort, without nervousness. After a two hours'
+study, we went back to the family lunch, and such was Gilbert's
+improvement in health that he often took us again to the Exhibition in
+the afternoon merely for pleasure.
+
+He enjoyed the works of art immensely, and said that he felt like a
+ravenous man to whom a splendid banquet was offered.
+
+Being also greatly interested in the progress of the various sciences,
+he liked to become acquainted with all new inventions, and often
+resorted to the Galerie des Machines.
+
+Mr. Seeley had been told of our intended visit to England, in case my
+husband did not feel any bad effects from the stay in Paris, and he
+wrote: "It is fortunate that you are coming just now, when we want to
+start the 'Portfolio' on a new career; it will be delightful to consult
+over it with you. Do not exhaust your energy in Paris, and find you have
+none left to bring you over to England."
+
+Although he worked unremittingly, he felt no fatigue; his nervous system
+was quiet and allowed him to seek diligently for promises of new talent
+among the mass of painters and engravers, and to feast his artistic
+sense in the Exposition du Centenaire. He also gave more than his usual
+attention to sculpture, and was of opinion that France remained
+unrivalled in that branch of art.
+
+On our way to England we stopped at Chantilly, and slept at Calais in
+the Hôtel Maritime, on the new pier. I almost believe that we happened
+to be the first travellers asking for a bedroom, for the waiters offered
+excuses for the still incomplete furnishing, and for the service not
+being yet properly organized. After a good night's rest, we visited
+Calais Maritime and the important engineering works there, for which my
+husband expressed great admiration. On arriving in London we went
+straight to Mr. and Mrs. Seeley's, who had kindly invited us to stay
+with them till we found comfortable lodgings.
+
+It was not Gilbert's intention to stay long in England this time; he had
+come mainly to discuss with Mr. Seeley the improvements they both
+desired to introduce in the "Portfolio," and to choose the illustrations
+for "Man in Art." In order not to lose time, he decided to take lodgings
+in a central part, as near to the National Gallery as possible; but he
+wished the street not to be noisy. He found what he wanted in Craven
+Street.
+
+This time he had to pay calls alone, and to beg our friends to excuse
+me, for I had not yet been able to master my sorrow sufficiently to
+allow of my resuming social intercourse without fear of breaking down.
+With her tender sympathy, Mrs. Seeley bore with me, and strove to
+console me when my resignation failed; but I could but feel that I was a
+saddening guest.
+
+While we were still at Nutfield, Mr. A. H. Palmer, the son of Samuel
+Palmer, who had a warm admiration for Mr. Hamerton, had been invited to
+meet him, and he brought his camera with him, proposing to take our
+photographs. The portraits of the ladies were failures; Mr. Seeley's was
+fairly successful; but my husband's was the best portrait we had ever
+seen of him, very fine and characteristic.
+
+We had intended to spend only two or three days with M. and Madame
+Raillard on our return, but our son-in-law being obliged to leave
+suddenly on account of his grandmother's illness, and unwilling to
+expose his wife to contagion, we offered to remain with her till he
+should come back.
+
+We soon received the sad news of the deaths, at an interval of two days
+only, of the grandmother and an aunt; also of the dangerous illness of
+Madame Raillard senior, which happily did not prove fatal, the disease
+having apparently spent its virulence on the two first victims.
+
+During our enforced stay in Paris Gilbert wrote an article for the
+"Photographic Quarterly" on Photogravure and Héliogravure, and for the
+"Portfolio" a review of Mr. Pennell's book on Pen-and-Ink Drawing. We
+went by boat to Suresnes, to see the banks of the Seine, for Mary was
+trying to draw us to live nearer to her. With her husband she had
+already visited several pretty places in the neighborhood of Paris, and
+had given us some very tempting descriptions. As for me, I should have
+desired nothing better than to live near to my daughter, but I never
+expected my husband to reconcile himself to town life.
+
+There was a marked and decided improvement in his ability to travel, for
+he did not suffer at all on the way home; it is true that we strictly
+adhered to the rule of slow and night trains.
+
+The pleasant exercise of riding had to be reluctantly given up because
+Cadette, who had betrayed from the beginning a slight weakness in the
+knees, now stumbled often and badly, especially out of harness. The
+veterinary surgeon who had examined her before we bought her, had said
+that it was of no consequence, only the result of poor feeding, and
+would disappear after a course of prolonged river-baths. Instead of
+disappearing, the tendency had so much increased that it was deemed
+safer not to trust Cadette even in the two-wheeled carriage, at least
+for a while. This mishap was the beginning of my husband's real
+appreciation of velocipedes. He had liked them well enough from the
+first, and used to hire one now and then, but it was only after he had
+become possessed of a good tricycle that the taste for the kind of
+exercise it affords developed itself apace. M. Raillard had made him a
+present of one for which he had little use in Paris, and this present
+having been made just after Mary's betrothal, her father playfully said
+that "he had sold his daughter for a velocipede."
+
+As soon as he had adopted the machine as his ordinary steed, he began to
+consider how to make it carry his sketching apparatus. He invented
+various straps, boxes, holders, rings, etc., fitting in different places
+according to the bulk and nature of the things he wished to have with
+him: a sketching umbrella, a stool, and all that was needful for
+water-color, etching, or oil-painting. He also devised a zinc box,
+easily adapted to the tricycle, to take his letters, manuscripts, and
+parcels to the post, and found it very convenient.
+
+At the end of January he was seized with an attack of gout which lasted
+a week, and took him quite by surprise, for he had not neglected
+physical exercise; the doctor, however, said that an attack of gout
+might be brought on by a mere change of locality--and we had just
+returned from Paris.
+
+He strove to do some work in spite of pain and bad nights, and succeeded
+now and then, and as soon as he could manage--with help--to get into the
+carriage, he drove out for change of air.
+
+In March he received from Mr. Watts the permission he had asked, to have
+his portrait of Lord Lawrence engraved.
+
+I transcribe Mr. Watts's letters, with two others which had preceded it,
+to show in what esteem he held his correspondent's opinions.
+
+"MONKSHATCH, GUILDFORD, SURREY. _November_ 23, 1889.
+
+"MY DEAR SIR,--Our short talk was very interesting to me, and I should
+like to have an opportunity of explaining my views on art and the
+practice of it, which opportunity I hope you will give me at some future
+time. I have asked Mr. F. Hollyer of 9 Pembroke Square, Kensington, to
+let you have prints of Lord Lawrence and Mr. Peabody. On the other side
+of the sheet I send the permission you require."
+
+"MONKSHATCH, GUILDFORD, SURREY. _December_ 4, 1889.
+
+"MY DEAR SIR,--I have just seen the December number of the 'Magazine of
+Art,' in which I find an engraving of my portrait of Peabody. I did not
+know that it would be there, but I have given Mr. Spielman a sort of
+general permission to use certain of the photographs. I do not know
+whether the appearance of the head will vitiate the interest of your
+proposed publication, but I hope not, as the use of it will be of a very
+different nature.
+
+"I am much gratified by what you said of my works in your letter to me.
+However limited may be the result of my efforts, I have worked from the
+very beginning with sincerity of aim, certainly never regarding the
+_profession_ as a trade; and for some years not considering my avocation
+as a profession, declining to paint portraits professionally or to take
+commissions.
+
+"Such wares as I may have of an unimportant aim and character, I am not
+unwilling to sell, as Lord Derby is not unwilling to sell his coals; for
+I am not wealthy, and find many good ways of using money, but I do not
+regard my art as a source of income any longer. I hope some day to have
+the pleasure of discussing certain artistic questions with you."
+
+"MONKSHATCH, GUILDFORD, SURREY. _March_ 14, 1890.
+
+"MY DEAR SIR,--The picture of Lord Lawrence is in my possession, and the
+engraver may have it for two weeks in May or June. Of course he is
+trustworthy! The picture being one of those I have made over to the
+nation, I lend it with a certain hesitation, as I do not consider it
+belongs to me. I am flattered by the opinion of the young men,
+especially as I think I may hope it becomes more favorable with time.
+
+"The portrait of Tennyson is at South Kensington, and no doubt I can
+easily manage that Mr. Frank Short should have access to it.
+
+"I do not expect to be in town for good before the end of April, but
+here I am within an hour and a half of London."
+
+Although a great amount of labor had been bestowed upon "Man in Art,"
+the author thought it advanced but slowly, and became anxious as the
+year wore on. In July he wrote a long explanatory letter to Mr. Craik,
+and received this answer:--
+
+"I am much interested in your report of what has been done towards the
+new book. You have done a good bit of work, and I think you have made a
+thoroughly interesting selection of pictures. You have an almost endless
+field to choose from.
+
+"_It is quite impossible to publish this year_, but you ought to have
+plenty of time to prepare for next autumn. It is strange how long a book
+with illustrations takes to get ready; but the disappointment when many
+artists are at work is proverbial.
+
+"I look forward with sanguine interest to the publication next year."
+
+Note in the diary: "I feel much relieved by this letter, altogether a
+day of _détente_."
+
+Although he had taken an immense quantity of notes both in London and
+Paris, my husband was sometimes greatly perplexed by the want of
+references, and said almost desperately: "No one has any idea of the
+difficulty of doing my work in my situation,--far from picture
+galleries, museums, and libraries. It is so arduous that, at times, I
+feel as if I could not go on. It is too much for the brain to carry so
+many images, to remember so many things, without the possibility of
+refreshing my memory, of settling a doubt, of filling up a gap." He was
+not the only one to wonder at the extraordinary feats of literary
+production which he was compelled to accomplish under such unfavorable
+circumstances. AH those who knew of it said that his store of
+accumulated knowledge must be marvellous indeed. And yet, the only
+remedy was hardly to be hinted at; I felt so certain that he would be
+miserable in a great capital that I never mentioned the possibility of
+living in one of them; he was sufficiently aware of its desirability.
+
+Early in the summer, as I had suffered much from rheumatism, our doctor
+insisted upon my being sent to Bourbon-Lancy for a course of baths. I
+was most unwilling to leave my husband now that Mary was married and
+away, but he said the hope that the treatment would do me good was
+enough to make him bear his temporary loneliness cheerfully, and then my
+mother would come to stay with him. As I was very down-hearted myself,
+he promised to make a break in our separation by coming to see me.
+
+When the first half of my season at the baths was over, I saw him arrive
+in the little gig with M. Bulliot, who had come on an antiquarian quest.
+They went together, to see the curious, simple church of St. Nazaire
+(eleventh century), of which my husband made a drawing. He also sketched
+a view of the Loire, which may be seen from the height above
+Bourbon-Lancy, for a great length of its sleepy course.
+
+In the course of the vacation, my husband listened pretty regularly to
+M. Raillard's English readings out of Emerson or Tennyson, while he
+occasionally read a little German with his son-in-law. He was very
+desirous of resuming the study of that language, which, he said, would
+be of great service in his studies, but he was not able to find the
+time--Italian absorbing all he could spare. Two masters--or rather a
+master and a mistress--had been recommended to him, and when he could
+manage it, he wrote to them alternately long letters in Italian, which
+they returned corrected.
+
+Mr. Bodley, an English gentleman who was studying French institutions
+and politics most seriously, and who was acquainted with Mr. Hamerton's
+works, came in August to see him. This visit was the beginning of a
+lasting acquaintance, which was appreciated and valued by both parties.
+When we settled in the Parc des Princes, and when, after his marriage,
+Mr. Bodley resided in Paris, they met with new pleasure and fresh
+interest whenever an opportunity offered itself.
+
+Mr. Bodley was commencing his studies on Prance for the work he had just
+undertaken for Messrs. Macmillan, which should essay to do for France
+what Mr. Bryce had done for the United States in his "American
+Commonwealth." Recognizing Mr. Hamerton as the chief English authority
+on all French questions, he had, soon after his first arrival in Paris,
+been put into communication with him by the good offices of a common
+friend in the diplomatic service. A correspondence ensued, in the first
+letter of which my husband gave Mr. Bodley some advice on an article the
+latter had been requested to write for the "Quarterly Review," on
+"Provincial France," before he had had any opportunity of studying the
+French provinces. Here is part of the letter:--
+
+"AUTUN, SAÛNE-ET-LOIRE. _June_ 11, 1890.
+
+"MY DEAR SIR,--It is a laudable, though an extraordinary desire on your
+part to know something about the subject you have to treat. I have never
+heard of such a case before. I have known France for thirty-five years,
+and find generally that English critics, who know nothing two miles from
+the British Embassy, are ready enough to set me down and teach me my
+proper place. I send by this post a colis postal, containing--
+
+"1. 'Round my House,' by P. G. H.
+
+"2. 'La France Provinciale,' par René Millet.
+
+"3. 'French and English,' by P. G. H.
+
+"I have not a copy of the English edition of 'French and English,' but
+the Tauchnitz is better, as it had the benefit of correction.
+
+"You ought to notice, with reference to provincial France, the extreme
+difficulty of making any general statements that are true. For example,
+it is believed in England that all French land is cut up into small
+bits. A traveller who writes in the 'Temps' newspaper said lately, that
+although the greater number of proprietors in the Forest Lands of the
+Nièvre were small owners, the greater part of the land was in the
+possession of large owners; and he mentioned one who, he said, owned
+12,000 hectares (more than 24,000 acres) of excellent forest. He did not
+give the name. There are several large landowners in this neighborhood.
+One had an income of £24,000 a year, but it was divided amongst his
+children.
+
+"France is a very various country, and therefore difficult to know. If
+you have Mr. H----'s book amongst those you notice, you should bear in
+mind that it is a strictly partisan publication, hostile to all
+republicans, against whom the author seems to have taken a brief," etc.,
+etc.
+
+Then followed some other letters, from which. I give a few paragraphs:--
+
+"AUTUN. _July_ 15, 1890.
+
+"You have done an imprudent thing in not publishing your 'Quarterly'
+article at once. There are two times for writing--first when you know
+nothing, secondly when you know a great deal; the intermediate time,
+that of acquisition, is not favorable to writing, because it destroys
+the author's confidence in himself. He possesses that confidence before
+learning, and renews it when he has learned. In the interval he suffers
+from diffidence.
+
+"I am glad to hear that M. Jusserand likes my books; he is just the kind
+of Frenchman whose opinion one really values.
+
+"I shall be very glad if you can come. I shall be away part of
+September. All August I shall be at home, but if you could have come
+about now, it would have been better still."
+
+"_July_, 28, 1890.
+
+"The shortest rout from Paris to Autun, as to mere distance, is by
+Laroche, Gravant, Avallon, etc. In the present case I strongly recommend
+the shorter and more rural route, as being by far the prettier and less
+fatiguing, and also because it enables you to see one of the most
+picturesque small towns in France--Avallon. You have five hours to see
+Avallon, and the picturesque valley that it overlooks.... The next
+morning you will of course be occupied in seeing Autun, but if you will
+make your way to the railway station, so as to be there at 11.15, you
+will see a vehicle with yellow wheels and a chestnut mare, with a white
+mark on her face. The said vehicle will bring you to Pré-Charmoy (if you
+will kindly allow it to do so), in time for déjeuner. Please let me know
+the day. It would be better not to make any hard-and-fast arrangement
+about your departure, as I may be able to persuade you to take some
+drives with me to see something in this neighborhood."
+
+"AUTUN. _November_ 2, 1890.
+
+"I received the 'Quarterly' this morning, and read your article. Towards
+the close, you say every Frenchman in the provinces works. That, I am
+sorry to say, is a mistake. Unfortunately there is still a strong
+survival of the old caste prejudice against work, as being beneath a
+gentleman. All the young men I know whose parents are very well off _are
+as idle as they can be, unless they go into the army or the Church_, and
+now they hardly ever go into the Church, or when they do it is in some
+order (Jesuits, Marists, etc.). I was talking about this with a rich old
+French gentleman about ten days ago, and he deeply deplored it; he said
+he felt more respect for common workmen than for the idle young men in
+his own class.
+
+"You appear to think that the Morvan language is a Celtic tongue. No; it
+is only a French patois, very interesting and peculiar in its
+grammatical forms. I understand it partly when spoken, and can read it
+with some little difficulty. My daughter understands it very well. Our
+servants speak it among themselves. Their French is very pure, though
+somewhat limited in its vocabulary.
+
+"It seems to me that you are happily endowed and situated for
+undertaking a work of the kind you intend to write. You have seen a
+great deal of the world, you have no prejudices, you desire nothing but
+to be just, and especially you have that very rare quality--a right
+curiosity. I was pleased, and a little amused by the contrast, when I
+compared you with the strangely uninterested English whom I have seen in
+and out of France. I recollect staying with a friend in England, a few
+years ago, and I noticed that _he did not ask me one single question
+about France_. He simply talked of his own locality, and did not appear
+to take the slightest interest in the continent of Europe.
+
+"You made me pass a very pleasant day, which encourages the hope that
+you will come again to this neighborhood. There is a great deal to be
+seen within a driving radius, especially if you consent to sleep one
+night away from home.
+
+"My wife and I are going to Paris in December, when I mean to look you
+up."
+
+To another visitor whose name I am not at liberty to mention, my husband
+had written the following interesting letter:--
+
+"Whilst driving home in the dark, after saying good-bye to you, I
+thought over your remarks about the great revolution in habits of
+thought which must take place in consequence of the influence of
+scientific methods. The difficulty I foresee is this. Religions supply a
+want that science does not and cannot supply; they answer to the need of
+certain emotions--trust, hope, joy, 'peace in believing,' the happiness
+of thinking that we are each of us individually cared for by a supremely
+good and all-powerful Father. Women especially seem to need these
+emotions to make life happy for them, and when they cease to believe, as
+many now do, they feel a sense of desolation. The most successful
+religion (the Roman) has succeeded by supplying most abundantly that
+care and those consolations which women expect a religion to give, and
+which science does not _in the least degree supply_; in fact, women
+usually dislike science. Now, as the churches maintain themselves
+chiefly by the influence and support of women, may they not continue to
+maintain themselves indefinitely in this way? Is it not possible, to
+mention a special case, that the Roman Catholic Church may exist for an
+indefinite length of time simply as a provider of the kind of authority
+and the kind of emotion that women desire, and that they cannot obtain
+from science? Mr.----, a friend of mine, considers religion absolutely
+necessary to women, and to many men, not that he at all considers
+religion to be true in the matter-of-fact sense, but the scientific
+truth of a doctrine is quite distinct from its beneficial effect upon
+the mind.
+
+"For my part, I don't know what to think about the future. Long ago I
+used to hope for a true religion, but now I see that if it is to be free
+from mythology, it ceases to be a religion altogether, and becomes only
+science, which has none of the heating and energizing force that a real
+religion certainly possesses. Neither has science its power of uniting
+men in bonds of brotherhood, and in giving them an effective hostile
+action against others as religious intolerance does."
+
+On the subject of religious belief, my husband had written previously to
+Mr. Seeley:--
+
+"I have been corresponding with a friend [the same Mr.---- mentioned in
+the letter to another visitor] about the religious views of Mark
+Pattison and Dean Stanley. He knew both of them, and quite confirms what
+I had heard before, that they were no more believers than Renan.
+Pattison he describes as a conservative agnostic or pantheist, meaning
+by 'conservative' a man who thought it better to preserve old forms. I
+recollect that Appleton told me when he was here that there was not the
+slightest obligation on a clergyman of the Church of England to believe
+in the divinity of Christ, and that many clergymen in the present day,
+including Pattison, had no such belief. My friend himself seems to be an
+agnostic, and a strong supporter of the Church of England at the same
+time, and quite lately he earnestly counselled some young English ladies
+(who were Unitarians, but obliged to live abroad) to join the Church of
+England for the sake of 'religious fellowship.' He tells me that there
+is in Dean Stanley's 'Christian Institutions' an exposition of the
+Apostles' Creed, containing hardly a syllable to which Renan could not
+subscribe.
+
+"From all this it would appear that some, at least, of the English
+clergy have adopted the Jesuit principle, practically so convenient, by
+which any one may have an esoteric religion for himself as the
+comfortable lining of the cloak, and an esoteric religion for other
+people as the outside of the cloak. Meanwhile these clergymen are deeply
+respected, whilst honest men whose opinions are not one whit more
+heretical are stigmatized as 'infidels,' and excluded from 'good
+society.' You seem to have got into a curious condition in England.
+Surely many laymen are right in distrusting parsons."
+
+As editor of the "Portfolio," he had been contributing articles from
+time to time, but Mr. Seeley was anxious to see him undertake an
+important series for the following year. He proposed different subjects
+likely to tempt the author's fancy, and suggested "Turner in
+Switzerland;" but one of the difficulties was the quantity of work done
+by Turner in Switzerland, and the time that would be required to follow
+in his steps. Another suggestion of Mr. Seeley's was to write about a
+group of French living artists who would be good representatives of the
+modern school, and whose works would furnish striking illustrations. He
+said with his usual kind thoughtfulness: "I must confess that my
+suggestion of a French subject arose partly from the pleasure you would
+find in paying a visit to your daughter at Paris; and partly also from
+the reflection that Paris is not far from London."
+
+Mr. Hamerton had proposed "The Louvre," but it was feared that the
+subject would not be a popular one; and after mature consideration, the
+idea of a connected series of articles on modern French painters was
+entertained by both publisher and editor. Mr. Seeley wrote: "I was
+rather in hopes that my vague suggestion of a subject might take root in
+your mind and develop into something definite; or, to change the
+metaphor, that it might be a spark to kindle your invention. I think
+such a series would be interesting here, and would furnish admirable
+subjects for twelve etchings."
+
+A journey to Paris was then decided upon for the winter.
+
+The Saône cruise proved particularly pleasant this time, on account of
+the welcome offered to the passengers of "L'Arar" by several friends at
+Neuville, who most hospitably entertained them on land and water. They
+were invited on board "L'Hirondelle" and "Petite Amie," and raced
+"L'Arar" against them. It was a comfort to my husband to feel himself
+among friends, for he suddenly suffered from an irregular action of the
+heart which lasted for thirty-six hours, but ceased as suddenly as it
+came. He had had another distress of the same kind in the summer, but
+only of a couple of hours' duration. I had entreated him to see a doctor
+at the time; but he said it was only nervousness. At Neuville likewise
+he refused to seek advice, feeling sure it would cease of itself; and
+now I have the painful certainty that he was already laboring under the
+symptoms of heart disease. Still, he speedily recovered, and resumed his
+studies in water-colors and in pen-and-ink the day after.
+
+I see by this note in the diary that he was well satisfied with his
+boat: "Sept. 15. My studies occupied me till lunch-time, and then, after
+_déjeuner_, we started in 'L'Arar' to try an experiment in sailing with
+a breeze so light as to be imperceptible, sheets not even stretched, yet
+we went up as far as Pont Vert and beyond. We might have gone further,
+but came back to call upon Madame Vibert."
+
+In October, Mr. Hamerton wrote an article for "Chambers' Encyclopaedia"
+on the "History of Art," and another for the "Portfolio" on "National
+Supremacy in Painting." Having been asked to contribute to the "Forum,"
+he began in November an article on "Home Life in France."
+
+He was always anxious to clear up any international misunderstanding
+between France and England, and had written in May to the "Pall Mall
+Gazette" an explanatory letter on the so-called persecution of the
+Church by the Republic, as regarded the execution of the decrees
+concerning religious orders.
+
+He had also sent a letter to the "Academy" on "France and the Republic."
+
+Although very tolerant himself in matters of religion, it was his
+opinion that the State, whether under a Republic or a Monarchy, had a
+right to exact obedience to its laws as well from religious bodies as
+from private persons; and that a Republican government ought not to be
+accused of tyranny because it enforced the execution of these general
+laws. But people are very apt to take the view which M. de Cassagnac so
+frankly avowed when addressing the Republican party in the Chamber: "We
+claim unbounded liberty for ourselves--because you promise it in your
+programme; but we refuse it to you--because it is contrary to our
+principles."
+
+About the middle of November there was copied into the "Temps" an
+anonymous letter which had appeared in "Truth," professing to express
+the hostile feelings entertained by English naval officers against the
+officers of the French fleet, which had recently visited Malta. This
+roused Mr. Hamerton's indignation; the more so as he never for one
+moment believed the discourteous and outrageous letter to be genuine. I
+transcribe his explanation of the incident as given by himself to his
+son-in-law:--
+
+"_Novembre_ 17, 1890.
+
+"MON CHER FILS,--Il m'est arrivé de pouvoir, je crois, être utile au
+maintien des bonnes relations entre les marines anglaises et françaises.
+Un journal anglais, 'Truth,' a publié il y a quinze jours une lettre
+sans signature, mais présentée comme la communication authentique d'un
+officier de notre flotte de la Méditerranée. Dans cette lettre
+l'écrivain représentait les officiers comme très mécontents d'être
+obligés de donner l'hospitalité à ceux de l'escadre française qui est
+venue à Malte; disant que c'était leur métier de recevoir les Français à
+coups de fusil et qu'ils ne désiraient pas les voir autrement.
+
+"Je connais assez les sentiments d'un 'English gentleman,' (et nos
+officiers de marine se piquent de soutenir ce caractère) pour savoir
+qu'ils comprendraient l'hospitalité mieux que cela, et j'ai envoyé le
+paragraphe en question à l'Amiral commandant la flotte Anglaise de la
+Méditerranée, en lui suggérant l'idée d'une protestation. Il m'a répondu
+par télégramme qu'au reçu de ma lettre l'indignation avait été générale
+parmi les officiers et qu'ils préparent une protestation qu'ils
+m'enverront pour que je la fasse circuler autant que possible dans la
+presse française. Le retard a été probablement occasionné par les
+mouvements de la flotte."
+
+A few days later the following letter was received by Mr. Hamerton:--
+
+"H. M. S. BENBOW. _November_ 17,1890.
+
+"DEAR SIR,--I hope you will kindly assist us in getting the gross
+misstatements copied from 'Truth' as to our feelings towards the French
+Navy contradicted.
+
+"You will perceive that the paper I enclose is signed by an officer
+representing each ship, and that most ranks in the service are also
+represented thereon.
+
+"Any expense that may be incurred would you kindly let me know?
+
+"Yours faithfully,
+
+"H. RAWSON,
+
+"Capt. R. N."
+
+The protestation which accompanied the letter ran thus:--
+
+"H. M. S. BENBOW, AT MALTA. _November_ 15, 1890.
+
+"DEAR SIR,--Your letter of the 1st of November, sent to the
+Commander-in-Chief of the British fleet in the Mediterranean, has been
+forwarded to us, and we have to thank you for having called our
+attention to the paragraph in the 'Temps,' copied from 'Truth' of the
+31st of October.
+
+"Referring to the language in 'Truth,' the editor of the 'Temps' says
+that he hopes it will be protested against in England. The paragraph had
+been seen and commented on by our officers; but as in England no one
+ever takes the trouble to answer or contradict any statement made in
+that paper ('Truth'), and as in this case its object was so palpably
+political, viz. to cause the present Government trouble, and prevent the
+cordiality and friendship that has existed so long between the two
+nations, no notice was taken of it; but when a paper of such importance
+as the 'Temps' copies the paragraph, and it is thus brought before the
+French nation, it at once becomes important and demands a protest and a
+denial.
+
+"As you have already taken an interest in the matter, we are led to hope
+that you will assist us in procuring the insertion in any French papers
+that may have copied this paragraph, most especially the 'Temps,' the
+naval papers, and the local papers at Toulon, of a protest on the part
+of the officers of the English fleet in the Mediterranean against the
+language of the article, and to deny, on our part, any such feelings or
+ideas as are attributed to us in it.
+
+"We beg to assure you that it gave us real and unfeigned pleasure to see
+the French fleet in our midst at Malta, and that what little we were
+able to do to make their visit agreeable and pleasant was done from no
+feeling of duty, or even as a mere return for the kindly reception
+accorded to us at Toulon, but from a sincere appreciation of the high
+qualities of French naval officers, and a desire to cultivate their
+friendship.
+
+"We have the honor to be,
+
+"Sir
+
+"Your obedient servants."
+
+Three weeks later came a letter of thanks, closing the incident, which
+had caused no little trouble to Mr. Hamerton.
+
+"MALTA. _December_ 12, 1890.
+
+"DEAR MR. HAMERTON,--Thank you very much in the name of the English Navy
+for so kindly assisting us to repel the gross insinuations of 'Truth,'
+also for the extracts, and the trouble you have taken for us. I only
+regret that you should have drawn 'Truth' on you.
+
+"I have shown your letter to the Admiral and all the officers here, who
+are much pleased with all that has been done.
+
+"Again thanking you, believe me,
+
+"Yours truly,
+
+"H. RAWSON."
+
+Mr. Hamerton considered himself well rewarded for his exertions by the
+tokens of warm approval he received both from England and from France.
+
+"French and English" did not meet with the success it deserved, though
+it was published in England, America, and France, and in the Tauchnitz
+edition. The author had entertained few illusions about the fate of the
+work, for some reasons which he has himself explained in private
+letters, and in his prefaces to the book. He once wrote in answer to a
+letter from M. Raillard:--
+
+"Vous lisez mes livres, un peu sans doute pour faire plaisir au vieux
+Papa, mais je crois réellement qu'ils vous seront utiles à cause de la
+simplicité du style et de la clarté que j'ai toujours cherchées. Ces
+qualités m'ont gagné de nombreux lecteurs, mais en même temps m'ont
+privé de toute réputation de profondeur. En Angleterre on classe tous
+les écrivains clairs, comme écrivains superficiels."
+
+But he said in the preface to the Tauchnitz edition:--
+
+"The kind of success most gratifying to me after writing a book of this
+kind would be to convert some readers to my own method, or rule, in the
+formation of opinion, whether it concerns one side or the other.
+
+"My method is a good one, but not so good for eloquence as the hastier
+methods of journalism."
+
+And in the preface of the English edition:--
+
+"I should like to write with complete impartiality if it were possible.
+I have at least written with the most sincere desire to be impartial,
+and that perhaps at the cost of some popularity in England, for certain
+English critics have told me that impartiality is not patriotic; and
+others have informed me of what I did not know before, namely, that I
+prefer the French to my own countrymen."
+
+Though "French and English" never became what may be called a popular
+book, it nevertheless attracted a good deal of attention, and the author
+received a great number of letters expressive of admiration and
+gratitude for the clear discernment and impartiality with which the
+differences existing between the two nations had been studied and
+expounded.
+
+Here is a pretty sample from a French lady:--
+
+"MONSIEUR,--Je viens de lire avec le plus grand plaisir votre livre
+'French and English.' Il est si rare qu'un écrivain anglais ose--ou
+veuille, aller contre les préjugés de ses lecteurs anglais, et nous
+fasse justice, que j'en ai éprouvé un vrai sentiment de reconnaissance.
+Bien des jugements portés sont ceux dont j'ai l'habitude de gratifier
+mes amis, et, comme il y a toujours, 'a great deal of human nature in
+mankind;' je n'apprécie que mieux votre livre à cause de cela. À
+quelques exceptions près, par exemple, la fin du chapitre 'on Truth,' je
+vois les choses comme vous, mais certains préjugés sont bien invétérés
+dans l'esprit de vos compatriotes.
+
+"Lorsque je protestais contre les idées fausses qu'on se faisait de
+nous, on m'a dit si souvent: 'Oh! mais, vous n'êtes pas français, vous!'
+Le mot est bien caractéristique. Un Français qui ne répond pas à l'idée
+qu'on se fait de sa nation, c'est une exception.
+
+"Je ne l'aurais peut-être pris que comme une manière de taquiner, une
+plaisanterie, si cela ne m'avait été répété encore tout dernièrement par
+un homme d'une vraie valeur intellectuelle, qui a toute une théorie sur
+les races. La conclusion à déduire était: tout ce qui pense sérieusement
+ne peut être français. Qui sait si votre livre ne vous a pas fait
+accuser de vous être perverti à notre contact puisque vous nous êtes
+assez favorable!
+
+"Je trotte tous ces temps-ci dans la neige, avec votre livre dans mon
+manchon, lisant à chacun de mes amis le morceau qui lui revient, mais je
+voudrais qu'ils lisent tout.
+
+"Sans me donner le temps de trop réfléchir j'ai écrit ma lettre; après
+je n'aurais plus osé. J'aurai eu ainsi l'occasion de dire à un homme de
+talent qu'il m'a fait goûter un vrai plaisir ... peut-être est-ce une
+satisfaction pour un auteur.
+
+"Veuillez agréer, Monsieur, mes compliments bien sincères pour votre
+'fairness' à notre égard.
+
+"Yours truly."
+
+I also give a passage from one of Mr. Calderon's letters:--
+
+"Last night--to my regret--I finished the last chapter of your 'French
+and English.' I am delighted with its truth. Remember (as an excuse for
+giving an opinion so freely) that I too am very fairly acquainted with
+both countries--their capitals and provinces."
+
+The book, as I have said, was translated into French, and, as usual, the
+author took the trouble of revising the translation. Far from taking any
+pride in the fact that the translation of his works was desired and
+sought after, he dreaded it, and would even have opposed it, had the
+thing been in his power. The inevitable loss of his style--upon which he
+always bestowed such conscientious care--was to him almost unbearable.
+
+Roberts Brothers did not appear dissatisfied with the American sale, for
+they said: "We have sold fifteen hundred copies, and are quite ready for
+another popular book."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+1890-1891
+
+Decision to live near Paris.--Practice in painting and etching.--Search
+for a house.--Clématis.
+
+We left home on December 21, 1890, and spent a day and two nights very
+agreeably at Dijon with the parents of our son-in-law. Then we went on
+to Paris by an early morning train, which necessitated our lunching in
+the carriage.
+
+We were to stay with our daughter and her husband, but Gilbert took a
+separate study for his work, in a quiet house in the same street.
+
+My husband had himself made a careful drawing for Richard's monument,
+and now, being in Paris, we went to see it, and wished to have it
+completed by an inscription. Hitherto we had not agreed about any, but
+as we were sadly recalling his last intimate talk, it seemed that the
+desire for "Peace" which he had expressed should be recorded as an
+acquittal of the deed which brought the fulfilment of his wish. And his
+father caused the word _eiraenae_, to be engraved at the head of the
+tombstone.
+
+M. Pelletier, having been promoted to the Économat of the old and famous
+Lycée Henri IV.,--where so many celebrated Frenchmen have been
+educated,--took pleasure in showing us the most ancient or curious parts
+of the building, such as La Tour Clovis, the vaulted kitchen, the
+painted cupola over the staircase, and the delicately carved panels of
+the old monks' library--now the Professors' billiard-room.
+
+My husband was much interested by this visit, and repeated it shortly
+after in the company of M. and Mme. Manesse, M. and Mme. L. Flameng, M.
+Pelletier acting as cicerone.
+
+It being the season of the Epiphany, our niece had the traditional cake
+served on the tea-table, and the royal honors fell to the lot of her
+uncle. He chose Madame Flameng for his queen, and they made us pass a
+merry hour under their joint rule.
+
+The serious part of the talk had concerned the possibility of engaging
+L. Flameng to engrave one of his son's pictures. He had consented, and
+my husband called upon François Flameng to make a choice.
+
+On his return he gave me a description of the studios and library, which
+are very curious, and offered to take me with him on his next visit, to
+renew my old acquaintance with the now celebrated artist. But my
+infirmity would have rendered awkward the introduction to his young
+wife, to whom the memories of previous friendship did not extend.
+
+Writing once to Mr. Seeley about my deafness, my husband had said: "She
+sits surrounded by a silent world, and sees people's lips move and their
+gestures. How difficult it is to imagine such a state of existence! As
+for me, I suffer from the opposite inconvenience of hearing too well.
+When I am unwell my hearing is preternaturally acute, so that my watch
+in my waistcoat ticks as if it were held almost close to my ear."
+
+Being desirous of forming a sound opinion about the present state of the
+fine arts in France, Mr. Hamerton went to visit the New Sorbonne, the
+Hôtel de Ville, the Lycée Janson, the new pictures in the Museum of the
+Luxembourg, those in the private exhibition of M. Durand-Ruel, as well
+as the exhibitions at Messrs. Goupil's and Petit's. He saw J. P.
+Laurens' "Voûte d'Acier," M. Rodin's studio, and the Musée du Mobilier
+National, with its beautiful tapestries.
+
+We left Paris at the end of January and returned home, my husband having
+got through a vast amount of work with ease and pleasure, and with a new
+hopeful confidence in his powers of acquisition and endurance, and also
+with a gratifying sense of his acknowledged standing--even in France--
+among celebrated artists and men of letters.
+
+At the Easter family gathering our possible change of residence was
+exhaustively discussed. The state of the buildings at La Tuilerie was
+growing worse and worse every day, and my brother's opinion, as an
+architect, having been asked for, was that the time for very important
+repairs could no longer be postponed: new roofs would have to be built,
+one of the walls strengthened, the floor tiles taken up; and the
+woodwork of every window was so rotten that it could no longer hold the
+iron with which it had already been mended.
+
+Mary and her husband represented what a heavy outlay would be required
+if we undertook these repairs, and also said, with great truth, that
+after it we should feel bound to the house on account of the money spent
+on it. It was an opportunity for changing a mode of life no longer
+adapted to our wants nor to our years. Why such a big house for two
+solitary beings?... And now that their father was subject to attacks of
+gout and not so sure of immunity from colds, was he to continue to have
+the care of horses and to drive in an open carriage in all weathers?
+Could we be so easily reconciled to the idea of never seeing them longer
+than the short space of five weeks every year, when there was no
+plausible reason for being so far apart?... Their father disliked great
+cities, but he would not be obliged to live inside Paris; there were
+plenty of comfortable and quiet villas in the neighborhood or in the
+suburbs, from which Paris would be accessible by the Seine, thus
+rendering a great part of his work so much easier.
+
+He, on his part, objected that living would be more expensive; that he
+would not be so well situated for working from nature; and last of all
+that, if he decided for a change, he would expect to be so near to Mary
+and her husband as to be able to reach them on foot and in a short time,
+for he could not be reconciled to the loss of a whole day every time he
+went to see them. "The two requisites," he said--"life in the country
+and frequent meetings--cannot be reconciled together."
+
+M. Raillard and his wife praised Montmorency, Meudon, Marly, and St.
+Germain, which they had visited on purpose, but he answered that any of
+these places would be too far off.
+
+However, when Stephen, Mary, and her husband had left us, their father
+was not proof against melancholy thoughts, from which he did not always
+find refuge in work. The following note in the diary is a proof of it:
+"April 5. Did not feel disposed to work, on account of the children's
+departure."
+
+The solitude of our lives had also been considerably increased by the
+deaths of five Autunois friends, and by the departure of M. Schmitt with
+his family. My husband wrote to him:--
+
+"Vous me demandez des nouvelles d'Autun, mais depuis votre départ nous y
+allons le moins possible. Je n'ai rien à y faire, presque plus personne
+à y voir. Je crains même qu'au bout d'un certain temps cet isolement ne
+produise un fâcheux état dans mon esprit. Je me plonge dans le travail,
+le refuge des gens isolés."
+
+Shortly after Easter there came an attack of gout, this time in one
+knee, and Gilbert was naturally disturbed by the conviction that the
+disease had become more threatening now that it was going up. He became
+more alive to the difficulties of our present conditions of existence in
+the country, and more willing to consider the desirability of a change.
+The business of the "Portfolio" would be so much more easily and
+promptly transacted if he were in Paris; correspondence with England so
+much more rapid, and the length of journeys to London diminished so
+appreciably that all these considerations were of great weight in the
+final decision, as well as others of a different nature.
+
+I could not hope to hide from Gilbert the void left in my life by the
+loss of one of my sons, and the absence of a daughter who had never left
+me before for any length of time; nor the sorrowful recollections
+incessantly awakened by the surrounding scenes and objects, and he began
+to think that to break the chain of such painful associations might be
+beneficial to me. This, I believe, dictated his letter of May 8 to Mary,
+in which he told her that she might make serious inquiries for a house,
+as he had definitely decided to go and live near Paris.
+
+Mr. Seeley was very glad to hear that the editor of the "Portfolio"
+would be nearer to England; he said: "I hope you will get comfortably
+settled in the suburbs of Paris. If I may judge by my own experience I
+do not think you will regret the change. I have never done so for a
+moment, although I was fond of Kingston."
+
+Since he had been last at Burnley, and had seen again the pictures
+painted at Sens for Mr. Handsley, my husband had been dissatisfied with
+them. The development of knowledge, skill, and the critical faculty made
+him intolerant of the shortcomings of that early period, and hopeful of
+doing better work now. So he wrote to Mr. Handsley, and proposed to
+paint him two new pictures to replace the old ones. In the reply he was
+begged to think of no such thing, as although the pictures might not be
+quite satisfactory to him, the owner valued them as among the earliest
+productions of the artist. But Gilbert insisted on being allowed to
+replace at least the view of Sens by another subject--already begun and
+about which he felt hopeful--and finally it was left to him to do as he
+liked.
+
+It is a curious thing that, feeling as he did the pressure of work, he
+should have been always ready to undertake some additional task. At that
+moment, when he had so little spare time, he had promised (for an
+indefinite date, it is true), a picture of Mont Beuvray for M. Bulliot,
+and others of Pré-Charmoy for Alice Gindriez, his sister-in-law; Mary
+also was to have her share. The pictures intended for Alice Gindriez had
+been painted several times over, and destroyed, and the one for Mr.
+Handsley had already passed through various changes of effect, but it
+looked very promising. The artist intended to send it to the Salon, and
+had even ordered the frame; but our removal having interrupted painting
+for a long time, it remained unfinished; though it was taken up again at
+intervals.
+
+It is my belief that artistic work, in spite of its disappointments,
+proved a relief and a distraction to my husband; but it is much to be
+regretted that his own standard should have been so high, for it
+prevented him from completing and keeping many etchings and pictures
+which, if not perfect, still possessed great charms. It is also a
+subject for regret that he should have been led to undertake large
+pictures of mountain scenery--so difficult to render adequately. If the
+time spent in fighting against these difficulties had been bestowed upon
+smaller canvases and less ambitious subjects, he would undoubtedly have
+succeeded in forming quite a collection. The greater part of his studies
+are graceful in composition, harmonious in color, tender and true in
+sentiment--why should not the pictures have possessed the same
+qualities? The main reason for his failing to express himself in art, is
+that he was too much attracted by the sublime in Nature, and that the
+power to convey the impression of sublimity has only been granted to the
+greatest among artists.
+
+In May there came a triumphant letter from Mary saying that she had
+discovered the _very_ house wanted by her father, uniting in incredible
+perfection every one of the conditions he had laid down. Once, being
+hard pressed to give his consent to a change of residence, he had
+playfully spread a plan of Paris on the table, and had stuck a pin in
+it, saying at the same time: "When you find me a suitable house _there_,
+in this situation and at that distance from you, I promise to take it."
+It was considered as a joke, but Mary now affirmed that the Villa
+Clématis was at the exact distance from the Rue de la Tour (where she
+lived) that her father had mentioned. Moreover, the roads in the avenues
+leading from Clématis to Passy were excellent for a velocipede, or he
+could reach her in a charming walk of less than an hour--through the
+Bois de Boulogne--and by rail three minutes only were required from the
+station of Boulogne to that of Passy. The rent was moderate, and
+although higher than our present one, would still be within our means,
+if it were taken into consideration that neither horse nor carriage
+would be necessary.
+
+The villa was in the Parc des Princes, which offered several advantages.
+No shops or factories of any kind being allowed within the park, its
+peacefulness was never disturbed by the noise of traffic. The houses,
+which varied in sizes from the simple ordinary villa to the hôtel or
+château, were each surrounded by a garden, small or large; and long
+avenues of fine trees so encircled the park that its existence was not
+much known outside. Quite close to it, however, was the town of
+Boulogne, with its well-provided market and shops, and at a distance of
+a few minutes the _chemin-de-fer de ceinture_, a line of tramways, one
+of omnibuses, and the steamboats not very far off. Clématis had a very
+_small_ garden--a recommendation to my husband--but was still
+sufficiently isolated from the neighboring villas by their own grounds
+on each side. There was a veranda looking over the little garden, and a
+large balcony over the veranda; the dining and drawing-rooms were
+divided by double folding doors, and both had access to the veranda by
+_porte-fenêtres_; the low and wide marble chimney-pieces were surmounted
+by plate-glass windows affording a sight of trees and flowers, and
+giving a most light and cheerful effect to the rooms. There were several
+well-aired bedrooms, and under the house vaulted cellars to keep it
+healthy and dry.
+
+Such was the description sent us, which we found perfectly accurate when
+we visited the house the very day of our arrival at Passy, on June 1,
+1891. The diary says about it: "Went to Boulogne to see the Villa
+Clématis. On the whole pleased with it." As for me, I was charmed with
+it after all the inconveniences I had had to put up with, hitherto, in
+our rough country houses.
+
+We had been told that the rents were low at Billancourt, and we went
+there to ascertain, but we did not like the horrid state of the roads,
+nor the unfinished streets, the result of house-building all over the
+place.
+
+We also saw Vanves and the Château d'Issy, in which there were two
+pavilions to let. Gilbert's fancy was so much taken by one of them that
+I began to dread he might want to live in it. He wrote in the diary:
+"The place seemed curious and romantic. Three very fine lofty rooms, a
+number of small ones. Plenty of space. Not much convenience; wife not at
+all pleased with it." It would have been much worse than anything I had
+experienced before. The house was dark, being surrounded and over-topped
+by a small but dense park climbing up an eminence above it; all the
+rainwater coming down this slope remained in stagnant pools about the
+lower story, the stones of which were of a dull and dirty green, being
+covered with moss. There was a queer circuitous kitchen round the base
+of the stairs, and the dishes prepared in it would have had to be
+carried up the stairs through an outside passage before arriving on the
+dining-room table. Then I wondered how the "fine, lofty rooms" (damp
+with moisture and cold with tiled floors) could be warmed in winter, and
+also lighted; for they all looked upon the tree-clad hill rising up
+hardly a few feet from the windows. All that was nothing to Gilbert, who
+only saw in perspective so many spacious studios and workrooms. At last
+I noticed that a paved road wound round the outside of the pavilion, and
+just as I was pointing it out, there came several heavily laden carts
+thundering along, and shaking the whole building quite perceptibly. My
+husband had enough of it after that, and I rejoiced inwardly at the
+opportune appearance of those carts. The day after, the diary says:
+"Went in the afternoon to Sèvres. Found the place divided into two
+parts: the lower, which smells badly, and the upper, which is all but
+inaccessible, being up a steep hill. Renounced Sèvres."
+
+Besides looking about for a house, we went frequently to the Salons,
+there being two now, and my husband regularly continued his work. Mr.
+Seeley wrote: "The quickness with which your letters come gives me a
+pleasant feeling as regards the future."
+
+To my inexpressible delight "Clématis" was chosen for our future abode,
+after other fruitless researches; indeed, in my opinion it was
+impossible to find anything better suited to our wants--and what sounds
+almost incredible, the situation of the Parc des Princes was found to be
+exactly where Gilbert had pricked the pin in the plan of Paris.
+
+The little garden looked very pretty now in June, with the pillars of
+the veranda all blue with flowers of the climbing clematis, and the
+cornice loaded with the pink and white bouquets of roses. The wild
+clematis, Virginia creeper, and honeysuckle clothed the trunks of every
+tree, whilst their roots were hidden by flowers and ferns of various
+kinds.
+
+Another pleasant feature of the park was the quantity of singing birds;
+there were larks, blackcaps, white-throats, and blackbirds, no doubt
+attracted by the security and peace they enjoyed all the year round--no
+shooting being allowed either in the park or in the Bois de Boulogne.
+
+My husband wished to appropriate all the upper story of Clématis to his
+work, so as to have within easy reach everything he wanted for it, and
+at the same time to escape from all household noises. The large middle
+room with the balcony would be his study and atelier, only he required
+more light for painting, and a tall window was made for him. One of the
+small rooms was to be a laboratory, the other a sort of storeroom for
+papers, panels, frames, canvases, colors, etc., and one of the garrets a
+joiner's shop. Bookcases were to be placed against all the walls of the
+studio, which would serve as a library at the same time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+1891-1894.
+
+Removal to Paris.--Interest in the Bois de Boulogne.--M. Vierge.--"Man
+in Art."--Contributions to "Scribner's Magazine."--New form of "The
+Portfolio."--Honorary degree.--Last Journey to London.--Society of
+Illustrators.--Illness and death.
+
+We were no sooner home again than the transformation of my husband's
+study and laboratory furniture began. He had carefully taken all the
+necessary measurements, and he now set two joiners to work under his
+direction.
+
+Of course we had some months of discomfort and fatigue, with the packing
+up and the sale which preceded our departure. At one time I was almost
+in despair of ever getting through, Gilbert being so very exacting about
+the packing that we had to wrap up each single book separately, and to
+fold up carefully every sheet or bit of paper without creases. It was
+one of his characteristics, this respectful care he took of books and
+papers; it went so far that he could hardly bring himself to destroy
+waste-paper; and when he had not quite filled a page with his writing,
+he would cut off the white piece and lay it aside in a drawer for
+further use; nay more, after making use of these fragments of paper for
+notes which had been copied out, he drew a line of red or blue pencil
+across the writing, and returned the paper to another drawer to be used
+_on the other side_. And it was not for the sake of economy, for he was
+frequently indulging in the purchase of note-books, pocket-books,
+memorandum-books, etc. No; it was a sort of instinctive respect. If any
+one held a book carelessly, or let it fall, he was absolutely miserable,
+and could not refrain from remonstrating. When we unpacked, he directed
+a man to fold up the papers which had been used as wrappers, and when I
+told him that the papers were not worth the man's wages and had better
+be thrown into the street, he looked surprised, and reluctantly allowed
+them to be stuffed into the empty boxes; but be could not bring himself
+to remain while it was being done.
+
+It was hard to break away from the associations of so many years, and
+the last meal we took _tête-à-tête_ in the dining-room, emptied of all
+its furniture except a small table and two chairs, was a melancholy one.
+I swallowed many a tear, and Gilbert's voice was somewhat tremulous when
+he attempted to talk.
+
+Roberts Brothers had inquired early in the year if Mr. Hamerton had
+decided about a new book, and had been answered in the affirmative. They
+now said: "We hasten to reply to your query. Yes, we think 'The Quest of
+Happiness' an admirable title for a book destined for the popular
+heart--so happy that it will of itself sell it. Don't meditate about
+doing it too long."
+
+Messrs. A. and C. Black had also proposed that Mr. Hamerton's articles
+for the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" should be revised and enlarged so as
+to make an interesting and valuable "Hand-book to Drawing and
+Engraving," and the author had agreed to undertake the work. They were
+so considerate as to send a copy of the "Encyclopaedia" to the writer,
+who had long desired to possess it, and who valued it as a treasure. He
+had a special bookcase made for it, with many divisions, to preserve the
+volumes from too much rubbing, and was pleased with their handsome
+appearance in his library.
+
+A letter received in the autumn may offer some interest to the reader.
+It tells of a rather curious occurrence. The writer had been
+occasionally in correspondence with the author of "Wenderholme," and,
+living in Lancashire, had greatly appreciated the accuracy of the
+descriptions and characters in that locality. Two years before he had
+discovered "Thursday," and under his guidance had visited the site of
+the first camp at Widdup, and noted the changes; now he wrote again,
+giving an account of his experiences during a little visit to the Brontë
+country, and explaining at some length that he was "driven by bad
+weather to the 'house' (you will remember the sense in which the word is
+used in the district) occupied by the wrangling drunkard. The talk
+turning upon a hut which had been erected by a _mon_ through Halifax for
+the grouse-shooting, evoked a reminiscence from the only (relatively)
+sober member of the party, of another mon--a hartist--who, aboon thirty
+year sin', built a hut at Widdup, and hed a gurt big dog, and young
+Helliwell, ower at Jerusalem, wor then a lad, and used to bring him (the
+mon) milk, and in the end gat ta'en on as sarvant, and went wi' him to
+Scotland and all ower--you may imagine my delight....
+
+"I was sorry to hear that Thursday was not in very good health. He is,
+however, married, and the proud father of a little girl--Mary Alice. He
+seems very comfortable, and has promised me a photograph of himself by
+way of a frontispiece to my copy of the 'Painter's Camp.'
+
+"I trust I am not boring you; but I thought that you might like to know
+that you and your encampment are still remembered in the district."
+
+It always pleased Gilbert to have news of the people and places
+associated in his mind and affections with his youth, and his interest
+in them never grew cold with years.
+
+Our new installation at Clématis was much simplified by the fact that
+everything from La Tuilerie had been sent in advance.
+
+In order not to keep Gilbert too long from his work, the study was first
+arranged, and he was well pleased with it; indeed, he said he had never
+been so conveniently or comfortably established "for his work" before;
+but still I saw, with pain, that he looked depressed in spite of
+himself.
+
+New Year's Day saw us established in the new house, and regular habits
+of work resumed.
+
+Having two spare bedrooms, our children came to use them during the
+Christmas holidays, and we had some pleasant meetings with M. Pelletier
+and his family. It was by a sort of tacit understanding that almost
+every Sunday we lunched, in turn, at each other's houses,--once at
+Clématis, then at Madame Halliard's, and afterwards at M. Pelletier's.
+After lunch we had a long walk either in the Bois de Boulogne, Parc de
+St. Cloud, Jardin du Luxembourg, or Jardin des Plantes; but although
+Gilbert enjoyed these strolls, they did not make up for the loss of the
+country; neither did the Seine replace the Saône, and Mr. Seeley said:
+"I am sorry the Seine is not what it ought to be. You will miss your old
+amusement of sailing, for which steaming will be a poor substitute."
+
+We all tried to find something that might take his fancy, and we went to
+see the Marne. He said it afforded refreshing and pretty scenes; but he
+was not enthusiastic about its character. I plainly saw that what I had
+feared had come to pass--namely, that this new way of life did not suit
+him so well as the old, and that, despite the greater facilities, he did
+not seem to work to his own satisfaction, and felt dull. This lasted for
+some time. Mr. Seeley humorously teased him about it, and suggested that
+he should write for an American magazine an article on "The Dulness of
+Paris." He went on: "If you could only run over here to roam about our
+Kentish hills, you would soon be all right again. They are covered with
+millions of wood anemones, violets, primroses, cuckoo flowers, and
+blue-bells; and the low ground is gay with marsh-marigolds." Alas! the
+Bois offered all this in profusion, but for flowers Gilbert never really
+cared; he merely appreciated their _valeur_ in the harmony of a
+landscape. He thus explained his feelings, in answer to Mr. Seeley:--
+
+"My complaints about the dulness of Paris refer to the peculiar state of
+mind the place always induces in myself, that is, _ennui_. Now, the
+_ennuyé_ state of mind is the worst possible for a writer, because his
+interest in things ought always to remain keen and lively; he ought to
+have the intelligence of a man with the interest of a child. I believe
+Paris to be, on the whole, the most endurable of great cities, that in
+which the disagreeables of such places are most successfully palliated.
+For instance, I can go from here to the Louvre in magnificent avenues
+all the way. But, for a writer, it is not enough to find life endurable;
+he ought to be keenly interested. My life at Autun was pleasant and
+refreshing; at Loch Awe it was an enchantment. However, I did not come
+here for my pleasure."
+
+And work was crowding upon him; besides "Man in Art," which had been put
+aside since the interruption necessitated by the removal, the editor of
+the "Forum," Mr. Walter H. Page, asked for an article on the "Effects on
+Popular Education of Great Art Collections." He said: "I am glad to be
+able to tell you that some of the best American newspapers have
+discussed your article on the 'Learning of Languages,' and that I have
+many evidences of the appreciation of a large number of our most
+cultivated people."
+
+The editor of the "Illustrated London News" also wished for a series of
+articles on "French Life," and was very sorry that Mr. Hamerton could
+not undertake them for want of time, and the publisher of the
+"Portfolio" would have been pleased to get reviews of the annual Salons
+from the editor's pen.
+
+Early in the spring, as soon as the weather permitted it, we began to go
+regularly with M. and Mme. Raillard to the prettiest places in the
+neighborhood of Paris to spend the Thursdays and Sundays. We were
+frequently joined by the Pelletier family, and had picnics together in
+sheltered nooks. We started early in the morning, carried our provisions
+with the exception of beer, wine, and bread, which could always be
+bought anywhere, and roamed about or rested till the end of the day. In
+this pleasant and independent manner we saw St. Germain,--the forest and
+château,--by which my husband was much impressed; the lakes and Bois de
+Vincennes; the park at Marly, L'Yvette; the mills of Meaux, St. Rémy:
+the Château de Chevreuse, Bougival, Ville d'Avray, La Celle St. Cloud,
+La Terrasse de Meudon, Le Vésinet, Nogent-sur-Marne; the ponds at
+Garches, L'Abbaye des Vaux-de-Cernay, Mareuil-Marly, Melun, and L'Etang
+de St. Cucufa, with its surroundings of luxuriant vegetation and noble
+trees.
+
+These walks in the country--much more of the real country than my
+husband had ever expected to find so near Paris--began to reconcile him
+to his new life; but what helped most towards this reconciliation was
+the Bois de Boulogne, with its hidden charms and beauties, which he had
+the pleasure of discovering for himself, never having heard of them. For
+the parts of the Bois best known and always offered to admiration are
+the most artificial, and the resorts of fashion, equipages, and crowds;
+the cascade, the lakes, the Allée des Acacias, the Pré-Catelan, and La
+Grande Pelouse, while there are enough solitary nooks and unfrequented
+alleys, thick underwoods, open vistas, and groups of graceful and
+handsome trees to interest a lover of landscape for miles and miles,
+without any other disturbance than a chance meeting with a timid rabbit
+or a curious deer.
+
+No sooner had Gilbert found out that there existed in the Bois real and
+extensive woodland scenery--almost untrodden and unexplored, than it
+became a pleasure to start on his tricycle, followed by his dog, for an
+early ride under the dewy branches, in the light and fragrant mist
+rising from the moist mosses and wild-flowers under the first rays of
+the sun. From these healthy rides he returned to his first _déjeuner_
+much exhilarated, having breathed fresh air without the sensation of
+confinement so painful to him. Gradually he came across various scenes
+which he felt attracted to paint, and then his liking for the Bois was
+formed. There were among others, La Mare d'Auteuil, the incomparable
+group of grand old oaks, a single branch of which would have made a fine
+tree; the ponds of Boulogne; the varied views of the Seine, with the gay
+and sunny slopes from the walks running parallel to the river. Then the
+mill and its surrounding fields, quiet at times with browsing cows
+knee-deep in the rich grass, or at other times alive with merry mowers
+and hay-makers. Several views of Mont Valérien, looming in the haze of
+the after-glow, or in dark contrast with the splendor of the afternoon
+sunshine, also caught my husband's attention; as well as numberless
+other places without a name, which pleased him for one sort of beauty or
+another. After each new discovery, he wanted me to go with him to see,
+and whenever it was possible, and at a walking distance from the house,
+I took a book with me and read to him as he sketched. By a few notes in
+the diary it will be seen that his explorations extended to rather long
+distances from the house:--
+
+"Went to L'Alma on the tricycle. Found capital place for studying boats
+not far from the Pont d'Iéna."
+
+"Went round by Bois to Rothschild's, till I came to bridge of St. Cloud
+and to the house--lovely play of lights on the water and upon the
+heights."
+
+"In afternoon rode as far as Argenteuil, and saw Texier's boat-building
+establishment there, and the fleet of pleasure-boats."
+
+"Went to Asnières on tricycle by the Rond-Point of Courbevoie. Some
+difficult passages on road. Return easier by riverside, right bank.
+Beautiful hazy distances."
+
+"Found out boat-house of the Bilancourt boat-club. Spacious and rather
+nice. Keeper boat-builder. Came back by riverside, Auteuil and Bois.
+Charming harmony of grays in the sky--silvery, bluish, rose-tinted, and
+lavender."
+
+"In afternoon rode to St. Cloud with a view to comparison with Turner.
+In coming back met a steam-carriage on the road, managed, I believe, by
+Caran d'Ache," etc., etc.
+
+When he had regained the elasticity of his mind, his thoughts were
+turned again to his important work.
+
+Note in the diary on March 3: "Tried to recover command of 'Man in Art,'
+putting the MS. in order. Read the chapters over again to recover
+materials and spirit of work."
+
+From that date "Man in Art" was steadily resumed till its completion.
+There was a good deal of trouble and disappointment with the
+illustrations, some of which were found unworthy of insertion; but
+having been ordered, they would have to be paid for. The author was
+ready to bear the cost rather than see them inserted, but Messrs.
+Macmillan very kindly and generously refused to allow this, and proposed
+that he should send a bill for any money that he should find it
+necessary to expend on unsatisfactory illustrations.
+
+My husband was now in far better spirits, and, apparently, in very good
+health. A friend, Mr. Oliver, who had named his son Hamerton out of
+admiration for the author, wrote in answer to one of his letters: "I was
+pleased to hear that you find the later period of life not unattended
+with deep satisfaction and pleasure."
+
+Among those pleasures were the friendly or interesting visits that the
+remoteness of Autun from great centres would have effectually prevented.
+In the spring we saw Mrs. Macmillan and her son; in the autumn we had
+the pleasure of becoming personally acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Adam
+Black, who were passing through Paris, and with whom we spent an
+afternoon visiting the gardens and ruins of St. Cloud.
+
+Roberts Brothers, to whom many applications for letters of introduction
+were addressed, and who managed to give only a few, sent some of their
+friends to Mr. Hamerton now and then. They said in one of their letters:
+"Since you will not come to America and see for yourself, we want to
+show you that our aborigines are as good specimens of the _genus homo_
+as they make anywhere."
+
+In the Parc des Princes lives a great artist, Urrabieta Vierge, whose
+house and studio were only a few minutes distant from Clématis. Mr.
+Hamerton's admiration of this artist's talent was great, and his liking
+for him as a man became great also. He often expressed the opinion that,
+in his best pen-drawings, Urrabieta Vierge was--and would
+remain--without a rival. He used to spend hours over the original
+illustrations to Pablo de Segovie, and other drawings in the possession
+of the artist. Hardly ever did a day pass without seeing my husband in
+M. Vierge's studio once at least. He had opportunities of rendering him
+a service sometimes, as the artist had dealings with English and
+American publishers, but was ignorant of their language, and in token of
+gratitude M. Vierge painted his new friend's portrait, and also that of
+his mother-in-law, Madame Gindriez.
+
+The idea of a book on the study of words, to be written in collaboration
+with M. Raillard, had not been abandoned by my husband, who submitted
+the title for Mr. Seeley's approval. It was to be: "Words on their
+Travels, and some Stay-at-home Words." It was pronounced lively and
+interesting. His own share had been delayed; but his son-in-law was
+working at it, and they carefully planned together the composition and
+form of the book, the separate parts of which were to be linked together
+by essays from my husband's pen.
+
+Much time was devoted to the exhibitions in 1892. The Salons, of course,
+had many visits, but they did not give so much pleasure to Gilbert as
+"Les Cent Chefs-d'oeuvre," or the Pelouse Exhibition; he was also
+greatly interested by Raffet's works.
+
+Our children spent with us a month of the long vacation, as they used to
+do at Pré-Charmoy, and our excursions to the most picturesque places in
+the neighborhood of Paris became more frequent. We had formed a project
+for going to Pierre-fonds and Compiègne; but my husband, being now most
+anxious to finish "Man in Art" before Christmas, regretfully put off the
+excursions to the ensuing year. Now that he had regained the buoyancy of
+his spirits, he was fully alive to the peculiar charms of the country
+about Paris, and even intended to write a series of small books on the
+most noteworthy and remarkable places--something in the way of
+exhaustive guides. He thought of beginning with those that he knew
+thoroughly well already, and to acquaint himself gradually with the
+others.
+
+In September our son-in-law, with his wife, went to stay with his
+parents for the remainder of the vacation; but Mary left them a few days
+before her husband to see her relatives at Chalon, and in the way of
+consolation, her father sent the following to Raoul:--
+
+"BEATUS ILLE.
+
+  "Blest is the man whose wife is gone away!
+    From cares exempt, he dwells in perfect peace.
+  His heart is light as boy's on holiday.
+    He walks abroad and joys in his release.
+  The cat is gone, the frisky mouse doth play.
+    The fox remote, walk forth the wandering geese.
+  So he, delivered, thinks his troubles past,
+    O halcyon days!--if they could only last.
+
+"P. G. H. to R. R.
+
+"_Sept_. 11, 1892."
+
+Ever since he had heard of Lord Tennyson's illness, my husband had been
+greatly concerned, and never missed going every evening to the Auteuil
+railway station for the latest news. After the death of the poet he
+wrote to Mr. Seeley:--
+
+"One must die some time; but it is still rather saddening to know that
+Tennyson is no longer a living poet. I have always enjoyed his verse
+very much; the art is so perfect, so superior to that of Browning or
+Wordsworth, even to that of Byron. I know of no poet to equal Tennyson
+in finish except Shelley, Keats, and Horace, and those three only in
+gems."
+
+In a letter to Miss Betham-Edwards he had said once: "Have you observed
+how _very_ careful Tennyson has always been never to publish prose? That
+was capital policy in his case; he seems so much more the poet to the
+world outside."
+
+Mr. Seeley was anxious to confer with the editor of the "Portfolio"
+about plans for the following year; but he had considerately refrained
+from mentioning it, so long as the large book was not announced for
+publication. In the beginning of October, however, he wrote: "I see that
+Macmillans announce your big book; so I suppose that labor is off your
+hands." Then he went on to propose that the editor should write a series
+of articles on the "Humorous Art of the Present Day," and my husband
+took time to think about the subject.
+
+The last sheets of "Man in Art" were sent off on October 20, and after
+acknowledging their receipt, Mr. F. Macmillan said:--
+
+"With regard to the drawings on glass, I write to say that we are
+perfectly willing that, as you suggest, you should make a present of
+them to the Art School of Burnley, in Lancashire.
+
+"The same applies to the original wood-block engraved by Pierre Gusman."
+
+Our November journey to London was unattended with troubles to my
+husband's health, and it was with unalloyed pleasure that we met Mr. and
+Mrs. Seeley again. Our stay was to be a short one, for it had been
+decided that, in the future, we would come over at least once every
+year, and more probably twice.
+
+Here is the first letter after our arrival:--
+
+"LONDON. _November_ 26, 1892.
+
+"MY DEAR MARY,--I have some good news to tell you. My new book is not
+out yet, but soon will be. It is in two editions, one large paper, and
+dear, the other smaller paper and much lower in price. The first is
+exhausted before publication, and the second without being exhausted
+yet, is still going off well. I dined last night with Messrs. Macmillan,
+and they seemed quite satisfied.
+
+"Mr. Seeley has just offered to publish my next novel.
+
+"I was glad to get a post-card from Raoul. It will be a great pleasure
+to me to work with him. Perhaps, however, we shall quarrel over our
+book, and never speak to each other again. But his mother-in-law will
+love him still, whatever happens.
+
+"Your very affectionate old father,
+
+"P. G. HAMERTON."
+
+The work that my husband had to do was easily gone through, and his
+nervous system had so much improved that he went alone about London
+without any forebodings, without even thinking about it, except to
+remark to me sometimes that he had never expected such an improvement.
+Had it not been for a very slight and short attack of gout, he would
+have been perfectly well all the time.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Seeley were then, living in Kensington, and it was very
+convenient for my husband, the situation being quiet and within easy
+reach of the museums. Although the season was not favorable for going to
+the country, our friends knew that their visitor would be pleased to
+escape from London--were it only for a day or two, and they were so kind
+as to take us to their pretty cottage at Shoreham, in Kent, and to show
+us the country surrounding it. Gilbert was out walking most of the time,
+and there being hills and water, wished he had time for sketching,
+though he told me he would not like to live there permanently, the
+country not being sufficiently open for his tastes.
+
+The new arrangements for the "Portfolio" having been decided upon, my
+husband wrote to tell Mary of our near arrival. In this letter he
+said:--
+
+"In spite of the great kindness we meet with here, I don't feel any
+desire to live in or near London, it is so gloomy and dirty, besides
+being so expensive, at least according to present customs of living. We
+are better where we are, near you.
+
+"I am very glad that Raoul likes the idea of our book. I believe we can
+work out together something decidedly new and valuable."
+
+In the course of a visit to Mrs. A. Black, she gave us good and
+interesting news of her cousin, R. L. Stevenson, and showed us a
+photograph taken inside his house at Samoa, in which he was seen
+surrounded by his mother, his wife, his wife's children, and his
+native servants. It was very pleasant to see him looking happy, and so
+much stronger than he used to be.
+
+Mr. Macmillan, though very feeble, was so kind as to receive us. We were
+for leaving him soon, fearing that he would be fatigued; but he insisted
+upon our remaining, and brightened wonderfully as he talked with my
+husband. He ordered glasses and wine, and drank to our healths with such
+hearty good-will, and pressed our hands at parting so affectionately,
+that we were quite moved. He had been such a strong and active man, and
+there was still such an expression of power and will in his countenance,
+that to see him an invalid, unable to walk without help, was
+inexpressibly pitiful. He had said--not without sadness--that he had
+grown resigned to this trying bodily weakness, but at the same time that
+he had a great dread of the weakness reaching the seat of thought some
+day. It was the last time we saw him, though he lived some years longer,
+and we liked ever after to recall his last kind greeting, as warm as
+those of former days.
+
+M. Raillard and his wife received us joyfully on our arrival in Paris;
+we were all greatly cheered by the fact that my husband could now travel
+like everybody else, and this feeling of security gave a great stimulus
+to his energies. We were often planning journeys to places of interest
+that it might be useful for him to visit, either for his artistic
+studies or for literary work. The Countess Martinengo Cesaresco, with
+whom he had long been in correspondence, had invited us to go to see her
+on the Lake of Garda, and this was a great temptation to which he hoped
+to yield some day.
+
+Meanwhile, we planned for the autumn a visit to Lucerne, in which our
+son and daughter and her husband would join, and we often talked about
+it. I knew perfectly well that very few of our schemes could ever be
+carried out, but I encouraged the discussion of them--for even that gave
+pleasure to Gilbert, who had been kept sedentary so long. He told us
+what he would do, and what he would attempt in such and such a place;
+and his desire for beautiful natural scenes was so intense that he often
+dreamt he was _flying_ towards them, and afterwards described his
+sensations. The recurrence of this sensation of _flying_ over space
+caused him some slight alarm, for he explained that doctors considered
+it as a symptom of disturbed equilibrium in the system, which they
+called levitation. Still, he was now almost in perfect health, indeed he
+did not remember the time when he had been so well, so ready for work,
+or enjoying it more--he said he was almost afraid, it seemed so strange.
+
+In a letter from Roberts Brothers, dated March 10, 1893, I read: "We are
+indeed pleased to hear that 'The Quest of Happiness' is likely to be
+ready for this autumn, and the title is so promising that we should not
+wonder if it made your 'cheques' larger."
+
+This book, however, was laid aside for more pressing work. The
+Meissonier Exhibition was opened, and my husband, who delighted in the
+talent of the artist, had already gone there several times when he
+received a letter from Mr. Seeley asking him to notice it for the
+"Portfolio," and he assented.
+
+Then Mr. Burlingame, of the house of Scribner's Sons of New York, came
+over from London for the special purpose of becoming personally
+acquainted with Mr. Hamerton, and of proposing to him to write a series
+of twelve articles on modern representative painters for "Scribner's
+Magazine." The proposal was flattering in itself, but the pleasure it
+gave was singularly enhanced by the visitor's friendly courtesy and
+cultured appreciation. After two meetings only, Mr. Burlingame had to
+leave Paris, and my husband spoke regretfully of the shortness of a
+visit he had so much enjoyed, and expressed a wish that an opportunity
+for more prolonged intercourse might present itself before long.
+
+Judging from Mr. Burlingame's letter, the pleasure had been mutual. I
+quote a passage out of it:--
+
+"I use my earliest opportunity to jot down a note for our better
+remembrance of the main points of the arrangement for 'Scribner's
+Magazine,' by assenting to which you gave me such pleasure in Paris.
+
+"I sail on Saturday, and assure you I shall carry home no pleasanter
+recollection than that of the two days which you made very enjoyable for
+me at Paris and Boulogne."
+
+The scheme did not require much literary labor, but it involved careful
+researches for the choice of subjects, delicate negotiations with the
+owners of the pictures chosen, to obtain the right of reproduction, and
+moreover a superintendence of these reproductions as to quality.
+
+After giving due consideration to the subject of "Humor in Painting" for
+the "Portfolio," the editor did not feel inclined to undertake it. But
+in his frequent walks about Paris his attention had been forcibly
+attracted by the invention and fancy shown in the designs of modern
+houses, and that was a study quite congenial to his tastes, and a
+subject on which he was thoroughly competent to write. It was proposed
+to Mr. Seeley, who accepted it, and from that moment we haunted the
+quarters in which new buildings were rising, as if by magic, in the
+purity of the white stone used in Paris, and in the richness or delicacy
+of their carvings and mosaics.
+
+Besides these various preparations for future work, Mr. Hamerton had
+been much occupied by annotating a collection of different things
+intended as a present to the Mechanics' Institution of Burnley. Shortly
+after sending it off, he received the warm thanks of the Council through
+its secretary.
+
+The search after suitable subjects for "Scribner's Magazine" had only
+yielded an insufficient number, and my husband decided to go to London
+in July to complete his list. He felt so well that the idea of
+undertaking the journey alone did not make him apprehensive in the
+least. Not so with me, and my anxiety was only calmed after receiving
+the assurance that he had felt perfectly comfortable the whole way.
+
+His daughter wrote to him:--
+
+"MON CHER PAPA,--Nous avons été bien heureux d'apprendre que tu as été
+'si grand garçon' comme dit Bonne-maman. Ta témérité nous a tous étonnés
+et nous a fait plaisir en même temps. Ce changement ne pourra que te
+faire du bien puisque tu l'as supporté d'une façon aussi parfaite."
+
+Here is a part of the answer:--
+
+"ARUNDEL HOTEL, VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON,
+
+"_July_ 22, 1893.
+
+"I am extremely pleased with my hotel, which is just what I wanted, both
+as to convenience of situation, beauty, and charges. From the window
+where I am writing I can see the river and a garden with trees, and some
+fine architecture on the Embankment (Quai), yet I am close to the
+busiest part of London.
+
+"I was in the Academy yesterday, and enjoyed it very much. I feel
+perfectly well, and not in the least fatigued by my journey, from which
+I experienced no inconvenience whatever, except an increased appetite,
+which has remained with me ever since."
+
+Shortly after my husband's return from London, Mr. Jaccaci, an American
+artist and author, and a devoted friend of M. Vierge, came to see us,
+and Gilbert's interest in him was quickly awakened. I was told that he
+had travelled much, and, though still young, could speak eight
+languages. There was a first bond between them in their admiration of M.
+Vierge's talent, and in their sympathy for his individuality. They met
+several times at his studio. Unfortunately Mr. Jaccaci's stay was of
+short duration, and he was extremely busy, so much so indeed that he
+could not accept an invitation, but promised to do so next time he came
+to Paris. His departure did not put an end to the friendly intercourse,
+which was carried on by correspondence.
+
+At the first appearance of the "Portfolio" it had taken an entirely new
+line among English periodicals, but now there were two other art
+magazines similar in character and style of illustration, and both its
+editor and publisher were desirous of an alteration which would once
+more distinguish it from similar periodicals.
+
+They considered how it might be remodelled, so as to give it a new
+character of its own, and at last, taking into consideration the
+prejudice which had set in against big books, they decided to reduce its
+size and to increase the letterpress considerably. Each number was to be
+devoted to one subject, and written by the same author, so as to be
+complete in itself. The new second title, "Monographs on Artistic
+Subjects," was liked by many critics, and one of them said: "Monographs!
+I wonder whose idea that was. What an admirable plan! Strange that no
+one ever thought of it before!"
+
+The editor undertook to write the first number, on "The Etchings of
+Rembrandt;" but in spite of his enthusiasm for the subject, and his
+thorough knowledge of it, he felt painfully hurried, for the decision
+had been taken somewhat late in the year. He told me he would have liked
+to devote six months to its preparation. Still, the new plan gave him
+much pleasant anticipation of carefully prepared work, as he disliked
+devoting his time to subjects of minor importance. A number of the
+"Portfolio" now allowed of a worthy subject being worthily treated, and
+that was in accordance with my husband's preferred method of work.
+
+With the ordinary autumnal remittance Roberts Brothers wrote:--
+
+"We have just bought a copy of 'The Isles of Loch Awe, and Other Poems,'
+by P. G. Hamerton, Esq. 1859. Second thousand.
+
+"We have had a good many years a copy of the first edition, 1855, which
+we once loaned to Mr. Longfellow, who made from it selections for his
+collection of 'Poems of Places,' and in it we have placed his letter of
+thanks for the loan."
+
+Some time in the spring my husband had made the acquaintance of M.
+Darmesteter, and had hoped that it might grow into closer intimacy, M.
+Darmesteter and his wife having promised to call; but we learned that
+they had been mistaken as to the situation of our house, and in November
+Mr. Hamerton received this reply to one of his letters:--
+
+"_Novembre_ 18.
+
+"CHER MONSIEUR,--Excusez mon retard à vous remercier de votre aimable
+lettre du 16 courant. Nous rentrons à peine et vous savez ce que c'est
+qu'une rentrée en ville.
+
+"Hafiz malheureusement n'est pas traduit que je sache en français. Il en
+existe une traduction allemande en 3 vol....
+
+"Nous avons bien regretté de ne pouvoir, avant de quitter Paris, faire
+un tour au Parc-des-Princes et présenter nos hommages à Madame Hamerton.
+Ce sera pour l'année qui vient j'espère.
+
+"Croyez moi, cher Monsieur,
+
+"Votre bien dévoué,
+
+"J. DARMESTETER."
+
+Death, alas! prevented another meeting, for M. Darmesteter, who was
+already in weak health, did not live very long after.
+
+Mr. Seeley thought the monograph on Rembrandt "lively, charmingly
+written, and betraying no sign of hurry." This opinion was shared by the
+public, for the sale of the "Portfolio" increased largely. Indeed, the
+new scheme was generally applauded, and many letters were sent both to
+the editor and to the publisher in token of appreciation. Sir F. Burton,
+to whom my husband had applied for a monograph on Velasquez, said in his
+reply: "I have seen the 'Portfolio' in its new form, and I think the
+alterations you have made in the plan and scope of the work most happily
+inspired."
+
+Sir George Reid also wrote:--
+
+"I have seen the 'Portfolio' in its new form, and I think the change a
+wise one in many ways. It recalls the 'Revue des deux Mondes.' It will
+be a far handier shape for the book-shelves; but I feel a--well perhaps
+sentimental regret for the old 'Portfolio.' It seems like the
+disappearance of on old familiar friend--although we know he is still
+alive and well.
+
+"I wish it all prosperity in its new form, and its editor many years of
+happy and useful labor in the service of art."
+
+Mrs. Henry Ady was to write on Bastien Lepage for the "Portfolio," but
+she had not all the documents she wanted, and my husband undertook to
+procure them. A talented French marine-painter, M. Jobert, with whom Mr.
+Hamerton was acquainted, introduced him to M. Emile Bastien Lepage,
+brother of the artist. Note in the diary about it:--
+
+"January 11, 1894. Was much pleased with my visit. Saw many things by
+the painter--many not published; portraits of father and mother, of
+grandfather, of brother Emile, etc., and sketches for girl's funeral
+which he saw; also etchings and a bust of his father. After that he
+showed us a fine structure in carved wood from the church of St. Mark at
+Venice."
+
+My brother, his wife, and their two little girls arrived in Paris to be
+present at the wedding of our niece, Jeanne Pelletier. Stephen also
+came, and on the appointed day we all went to the Lycée Henri IV., where
+the ceremony took place, on January 29. We were much interested, on
+account of the great affection we bore to the bride.
+
+My husband put this note in the diary: "Wedding passed off very well.
+Beautiful ceremony in chapel. I had a talk with L'Abbé Loyson (brother
+of Hyacinthe Loyson). Great numbers of people to congratulate."
+
+Gilbert had long talks on architecture with his brother-in-law, to whom
+he showed several of the new buildings he had been studying for his
+"Parisian Houses," particularly in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne,
+Avenue Bugeaud, and Rue de Longchamp.
+
+When M. Gindriez left, Gilbert tried to resume the "Quest of Happiness,"
+but told me he had determined to remodel the Prologue on positive and
+negative happiness, because he had thought out a scheme of alteration. I
+was very sorry to hear of it, because the work was already so far
+advanced, and the alterations would require so much trouble and time.
+But such considerations had no weight with him when he thought his work
+could be improved, so I kept my disappointment to myself.
+
+Some time in February my husband had received a letter from Sir G. Reid,
+from which I quote the following passage: "I have little doubt that
+before the month of March comes you will be P. G. Hamerton, LL.D. Your
+claims to such recognition have long been beyond all questioning."
+
+This was confirmed by the Secretary of the University of Aberdeen on
+March 3, 1894, in these terms:--
+
+"DEAR SIR,--I have the pleasure of informing you that the Senatus of the
+University at its meeting to-day conferred upon you the Honorary Degree
+of Doctor of Laws (LL. D.).
+
+"I am,
+
+"Yours faithfully,
+
+"ALEXANDER STEWART,
+
+"Secretary of the Senatus."
+
+Three days later Lady Reid wrote:--
+
+"DEAR DR. HAMERTON,--We are delighted to see in this morning's newspaper
+the announcement of your LL.D.-ship. Though we have never had the
+pleasure of meeting, I feel almost as if I had known you for many years,
+your writings having given me such real pleasure ever since I first made
+your acquaintance in 'A Painter's Camp in the Highlands' in 1863.
+
+"I hope you will kindly accept from me your Aberdeen LL.D.-hood, which
+is the outward visible sign of your new academic rank.
+
+"My husband says it is 'a chromatic discord of the 1st Order,' but over
+the arrangements of such things the present generation has no control,
+their form and colors having been settled long ago.
+
+"Sir George unites with me in kindest regards, and in the hope that you
+may long live to enjoy your most well-earned honors.
+
+"Believe me,
+
+"Yours very truly,
+
+"MIA REID."
+
+Shortly after Sir George Reid wrote: "You have done so much for the
+literature of art that the only wonder is your services have not been
+acknowledged by one or other of our Universities long ago. I am very
+glad that the honor has come to you from the University of Aberdeen."
+
+Although my husband cared little for honors, this recognition--freely
+and spontaneously conferred by the University of Aberdeen, without any
+solicitation on his part--gave him real pleasure. He had never expected
+anything in this way from Oxford or Cambridge, because he had never been
+a student of either, and he fancied that this would always be against
+him. It reminds me of what he wrote to Mr. Seeley soon after our arrival
+in Paris, when he suffered from dulness:--
+
+"I never was at Oxford. I always had a boyish dread of being sent there,
+and put into one of the colleges. I think I was marked for Balliol.
+After my escape I felt towards the place much as a sound Protestant
+feels towards the Vatican. Here is a reflection that has sometimes
+occurred to me since my imprisonment here began: 'Dear me! why, if I can
+endure Paris, I might possibly have endured Oxford.'"
+
+After congratulating the editor of the "Portfolio" on his new title, Mr.
+Seeley said: "My brother at Cambridge has been made a Knight Commander
+of St. Michael and St. George. What an extraordinary title for a
+Professor! And you are now a Doctor of Laws. Will you kindly allow us to
+consult you in any legal difficulty?"
+
+The new Doctor [Footnote: Mr. Hamerton and Professor Seeley were born on
+the same day, and there was an interval of only a few weeks between
+their deaths.] answered:--
+
+"I congratulate you on having a brother who is a Knight Commander of St.
+Michael and St. George too. They were both very valiant saints,
+dangerous to dragons and demons. The image that rose to my mind's eye
+when I read your letter was that of your brother in shining golden armor
+riding full tilt with spear in rest against a terrible dragon. I wish
+Lord Shaftesbury had lived to hear of it, for one reason, and your
+father for another.
+
+"Thank you for your congratulations about my LL.D.-ship. In answer to
+your question, I beg to say that whilst the degree is but a just tribute
+to my legal knowledge, it does not confer the right to practise, so that
+you would do better to consult some professional man, such as a
+barrister or an attorney, even though his legal attainments might be far
+inferior to mine."
+
+In the same year Mr. Hamerton was invited by the Society of Illustrators
+to accept a Vice-Presidency along with Sir J. E. Millais, Sir F. Seymour
+Haden, and Mr. Holman Hunt.
+
+Messrs. Scribner having planned a work on American wood-cuts, wrote to
+ascertain if my husband would undertake it. Mr. Burlingame's letter
+explains the scheme.
+
+"DEAR MR. HAMERTON,--In the course of the publication of the Magazine,
+we have printed from time to time what we believe to be some of the best
+American wood-engravings. We are going to make a selection of about
+forty of them, thoroughly representative of the best men and subjects
+(though we have not tried, of course, to have the representation
+_complete_), and issue it as soon as we can in the form of India proofs,
+in a portfolio in a very limited edition--probably of less than 100
+copies, made with the utmost care and all possible accessories to render
+the collection a standard one. Meaning to make it represent the highest
+point of wood-engraving (which is now fast yielding to the mechanical
+processes, so that the moment is perhaps the best we shall have), we
+want to accompany the publication with a short essay on the subject, to
+go with the portfolio in a little book, and afterwards to be bound up
+with the popular edition should we make one."
+
+It was just one of those schemes that my husband could set his heart
+upon--requiring much knowledge and condensed writing. So he gladly
+accepted the task, and applied himself to it as soon as the engravings
+reached him.
+
+On receiving the manuscript Mr. Burlingame wrote: "The paper on the
+engravers so thoroughly fulfilled our expectations, that we were more
+than ever glad that we asked your help in this (to us) important
+matter."
+
+In the spring, before the opening of the Salons, there are always a good
+many minor exhibitions, and these we went to see, in order to judge of
+the prevailing artistic tendencies. I find this note in the diary:--
+
+"March 17, 1894. Went with wife in the afternoon to see some pictures by
+the 'Eclectics' at Petit's. Most of them horribly bad, especially the
+Impressionists, but several by Boudot were excellent. These were
+landscapes, all in perfectly true tone and good color, with a great deal
+of sound, modest drawing. I wish I could paint like him. His work is
+evidently founded on painted studies from nature; indeed, much of it
+must have been painted directly from nature.
+
+"Made a new plan for work, doing two tasks on alternate days: one the
+current book, the other some minor task--an article, for example. In
+this way both would get on, and the interval would not be long enough to
+lose hold of either."
+
+He wrote about it to Mr. Seeley, and explained:--
+
+"I don't know how it will answer yet, but have hopes. My great
+difficulty has always been (and it only increases with age) a certain
+want of readiness and flexibility in turning from one thing to another.
+When I have a book in hand (and I always have one), it is most
+disagreeable to me to turn from it and write an article; and when the
+article is finished I lose always at least a day, and often several
+days, before I get well into swing with the book again. My natural
+tendency is to take up one task, and peg away at it till it is done."
+
+At Roberts Brothers' request, Mr. Hamerton had agreed to write a
+translation of Renan's notice of his sister Henriette. However, he had
+to give it up, not being able to get answers to his letters from M. Ary
+Renan.
+
+As he greatly appreciated the spirit and usefulness of the Institution
+of the Franco-English Guild, founded by Miss Williams, he wrote for its
+"Review" an article on "Languages and Peace," and intended to write
+others. There are some notes in the diary at this time which prove that
+he could find some effects to enjoy in Paris:--
+
+"March 13th. Went with Stephen to see Mr. Barker. We went on a walk to
+the terrace at Meudon, where we joined wife and daughter and Raoul.
+Thence to a pond in the wood. Came back in the evening. Beautiful
+effects on the river."
+
+"April 1st. Went to the Mont Valérien, and greatly enjoyed the views
+about it over Paris on one side, and the country on the other."
+
+The best proof that my husband's nervous system was now strong and
+healthy, is that _for the first time in his life_ he proposed that we
+should go together to the private view of the Champ de Mars to meet the
+President of the Republic. We had a card of invitation, and I was so
+happy to see him well, and to mark the respectful greetings which met
+him from all quarters, that I enjoyed the day thoroughly. He was
+perfectly calm the whole time, in contrast with the excitement surging
+around him, and at night he wrote in the diary:--
+
+"We went, wife and I, to the Champ de Mars, and saw the President of the
+Republic arrive, and all the artistic notabilities who received him.
+After the lunch, saw the exhibition well, and selected two pictures for
+Scribner. Was much impressed by Tissot's 'Life of Christ.'
+
+"We were much amused by the extravagance of the toilettes, particularly
+the feminine."
+
+In April he called upon MM. Louis Deschamps and Checa for notes of a
+biographical kind. There was an instantaneous sympathy between him and
+M. Checa, who was very cordial and communicative, and who soon returned
+his visit. After the publication of the article concerning him, M. Checa
+wrote: "Je vous remercie très vivement de cet article, sûrement le plus
+exact que l'on ait fait sur moi."
+
+In the studio of M. Checa my husband had met an American artist, Mr. R.
+J. Wickenden, who lived at Auvers, and who, being well acquainted with
+his works, wished to paint a portrait of the author. During the sittings
+a friendship was formed between model and painter. The portrait was
+exhibited in America at Mr. Keppel's.
+
+Mr. Hamerton having been invited to preside at a meeting and dinner of
+the Society of Illustrators, and to deliver a lecture on the history of
+their art, fixed an earlier date than he had intended for his proposed
+visit to London, to comply with their wishes.
+
+He started alone on May 4, going by way of Dieppe, and wrote in the
+diary: "Capital passage. Enjoyed sea and color very much indeed."
+
+On the 6th he wrote to M. Raillard that he was well enough, but that on
+arriving at Charing Cross the trunk containing his clothes was missing.
+He ended by saying: "And I have to preside over a dinner to-morrow! At
+all events I cannot do it in a flannel shirt!... I am in a pretty mess!"
+
+He had almost decided to buy a ready-made suit in this emergency, when
+he recovered the lost trunk. After the dinner he wrote me a long account
+of it in French. The reception given him by the Illustrators had been
+most cordial. His speech had been delivered without nervousness or
+hesitation, and with the curious illusion that he was listening to
+somebody else.
+
+There had been an animated debate on the grievances of the Illustrators,
+who complained of the small space allotted to the exhibition of their
+works in the Academy. They seemed disposed to sign a protest, when he
+had offered to go and see Sir Frederick Leighton, and to talk the
+subject over with him, as president of the meeting. He ended his letter
+with a promise to have his photograph taken on the morrow by Messrs.
+Elliott and Fry.
+
+I was very glad of this decision about his portrait, for I had not a
+good likeness of him, except the fine photograph taken by Mr. Palmer;
+and of course since that time his features had altered. They retained
+their expression of intellectuality and dignity, softened, as it were,
+by the discipline and experience of years. Hitherto he had always
+resisted any attempt to publish his portrait among a series of
+celebrities; but this time he yielded to my entreaties; and he was
+afterwards satisfied to have done so, for the three photographs taken on
+the same day were all good likenesses. From the best of them was
+engraved--later--through the care and sympathy of Messrs. Scribner, the
+fine and striking portrait which appeared in their Magazine of February,
+1895.
+
+It was, I believe, a sort of unconscious presentiment which prompted my
+husband to see _all_ his friends during this last visit to England.
+Knowing that he had so much pressing work on hand, I had been surprised
+by his decision to go to London so soon after his last journey, and
+still more to hear that he intended to go to Holmwood to make the
+acquaintance of Mr. C. Gould, the son of his cousin Anne; to Dorking, to
+see Mrs. Hamerton, of Hellifield Peel, and her married daughter; to
+Alresford, to stay a couple of days with Sir Seymour Haden and his wife;
+and then to Southampton, to call upon Mr. R. Leslie. All these
+arrangements surprised me exceedingly; but I came to the conclusion that
+my husband's health must be excellent, since he volunteered to
+undertake, with evident pleasure, what he would have dreaded to do some
+time ago.
+
+Indeed, his letters expressed nothing but enjoyment from all these
+visits, and the keen interest he took in the Academy exhibition.
+
+He was made very welcome by Sir Frederick Leighton, to whom he explained
+the grievances of the Illustrators, and who gave him a promise to do his
+best for them; and Mr. Hamerton was glad to think he might have been of
+use.
+
+A singular occurrence happened shortly after his return. Friends, more
+particularly those who came from abroad, were often debarred from
+accepting his invitations on account of the distance between Paris and
+the Parc des Princes, and the consequent lateness of the hour when they
+could reach their home or hotel after dining at Clématis. Gilbert,
+therefore, had adopted a plan--much in use in the French capital--which
+consists in inviting friends to a conveniently situated restaurant,
+where the goodness of the cookery and attendance may be relied upon. It
+occurred to my husband to try the Terminus Hotel at the Gare du Havre,
+from which many travellers start for England; and he invited M. Raillard
+to test the place with him. They were both pleased with it, and left at
+about ten p.m. It was most fortunate that they did not remain much
+longer, for at eleven an explosion, caused by a dynamite bomb, wrecked
+the room in which they had dined, and wounded several people.
+
+A long-deferred meeting with Mr. Frederick Harrison took place in June,
+and the day was spent in visiting the Louvre, Tuileries, Notre Dame, and
+the Hôtel de Ville.
+
+We had also been expecting with pleasant anticipations the visit of Mr.
+Niles, when we received the sad news of his death at Perugia, and
+learned that he had been in failing health for some years, and had
+decided to come to Europe for rest. My husband's regrets were very
+sincere. From time to time we had news of R. L. Stevenson; those
+received in a letter from Mr. R. A.M. Stevenson, in the course of the
+same mouth, were very pleasing.
+
+"I heard from R. L. Stevenson a few weeks ago. He said: 'If you saw me
+here you would no longer question my wisdom in staying; you would not
+wonder at my preferring this life to that of Bournemouth.' In England he
+passed half his time in bed, the whole winter in the house, and he could
+never walk half-a-mile. Now he is out by six in the morning, sometimes
+bathes, and occasionally spends the whole day in the saddle. He was
+always fond of the open air, and though never strong, was a good walker,
+and, as you know, able to do a little boating. He often spoke to me of
+his visit to you at Autun."
+
+The assassination of President Carnot, which occurred in June, grieved
+and horrified my husband as much as if he had been a Frenchman. He had
+the greatest respect for the scrupulous manner in which M. Carnot
+discharged all his duties, and admired the simple dignity with which he
+held the rank of First Citizen of a great nation. Being himself a
+Liberal--but a Moderate one--it had given him hopes for the stability of
+a Moderate-Liberal Republic, to see at the head of it the
+personification of unsuspected honesty and wise patriotism.
+
+On the whole, he was satisfied with the choice of his successor, and
+amused by this phrase about M. Casimir-Périer in one of Mr. Seeley's
+letters: "I saw a portrait of the new French President lately. He looks
+a man not to be trifled with." The remark has been curiously justified
+since.
+
+Having to go out so frequently now in the afternoons in order to see
+artists and pictures, my husband altered his rules of work, and devoted
+the whole of the mornings to literary composition, and the heat being
+very oppressive this summer, he worked better in the cooler time of day;
+yet I was rather afraid of the consequences when I saw him start for
+Paris with the thermometer standing at 88° or 90° almost every
+afternoon, but he maintained that it did him no harm.
+
+On July 14--the Fête Nationale--Mr. Jaccaci having called with M.
+Vierge, Gilbert went back to dine with him in Paris and to see the
+fireworks. They were both struck by the extraordinary quietness of the
+great town, generally so merry and noisy at that date, but now subdued
+by respectful sympathy for the death of its late President.
+
+Note in the diary: "Never saw streets of Paris so quiet before. Could
+cross easily anywhere. In Avenue de l'Opéra could count people."
+
+We had heard from M. Raillard that the reputation of his father-in-law
+was penetrating into Germany. He had seen some notices and reviews of
+his works, and in August a professor at the Zurich University sent this
+flattering letter:--
+
+"Monsieur,--Je vais publier une petite bibliothèque française à l'usage
+des écoles allemandes, avec des notes en français. Le premier volume
+contiendra une forte partie du fameux livre de Tocqueville sur l'ancien
+régime et la révolution. Le second sera, si vous le permettez, composé
+d'extraits de votre excellent livre, 'Français et Anglais,' traduction
+de M. Labouchère.
+
+"Auriez-vous la bonté de me fournir quelques dates sur votre vie et sur
+vos autres ouvrages, que je pourrais utiliser pour l'introduction?"
+
+Just at the time, when my husband was making extensive plans of work,
+justified as it seemed by the great improvement in his health, he was
+suddenly attacked by a new malady, which he believed to be asthma. There
+were no premonitory symptoms; he was as well as usual in the daytime,
+and even after going to bed, where he always read before going to sleep;
+but directly he fell asleep, he was suddenly aroused again by
+suffocation. In describing his sensations to me, he said it seemed as if
+breathing required--while in a waking state--a slight effort, which he
+made unconsciously, and this being discontinued when sleep arrived,
+produced suffocation. I attributed this painful state to a change in the
+working of his nervous system, and pressed him to see a doctor; but he
+was convinced that he was becoming asthmatic, and that there was no help
+for it.
+
+Although he told me that if he had his choice in the matter, he would
+rather die than be condemned to a life of impotence, with perpetual
+cares and precautions, he bore his sufferings, or rather forebodings,
+with his accustomed courage and patience, and attempted to calm my
+apprehensions by affirming that, though his nights were disturbed, he
+could still get sleep out of bed, in an arm-chair, and now and then in
+the day-time when overpowered by fatigue. The various means of relief
+used by asthmatic people and recommended by different friends
+proving--without exception--utterly inefficacious for him, I attempted
+to console him by pointing out that asthma often manifested itself at
+very long intervals, and that, in general, the worst attacks were hardly
+more painful than those of gout. He answered that he could bear the pain
+of these attacks, but what he dreaded most was chronic asthma, which, by
+lowering his general health, would reduce him to an invalid state.
+
+However, the worst symptoms soon subsided, and about three weeks after
+the first disturbance he was writing to Mr. Seeley: "I am much better,
+though my nights are still frequently interrupted. I require a great
+deal of exercise, more than I can find time for; the more exercise I
+take the better I am." And yet when, shortly afterwards, a specialist
+had to be called in, he declared that his patient "was completely
+overworked mentally and physically," and he ordered him to give up the
+velocipede altogether, and to restrict his walks to short distances and
+a leisurely pace.
+
+I have never been able to understand how it was that physical exercise
+being so hurtful to Gilbert, he should invariably have felt benefited by
+it, so far as his sensations went.
+
+The vacation had come round again, and the impossibility of realizing
+the pleasant plans we had formed obliged our children to alter theirs.
+Stephen went to London, and M. Raillard took his wife through
+Switzerland to Germany. They had frequently written on their way, and
+now told of their impressions of Freiburg, where they decided to remain
+three weeks.
+
+I mentioned before that my husband's knowledge of places which he had
+never seen was surprising. In this instance he could induce Mary and her
+husband to believe that he had actually stayed where they were. The
+attempt amused him, and he read me the following letter before posting
+it:--
+
+"19 _août_ 1894.
+
+"Ma Chère et bonne fille,--Je t'aurais écrit plus tôt pour te souhaiter
+ta fête, qui est aujourd'hui, mais je n'espérais pas que ma lettre pût
+te parvenir, comme tu étais en route. Je n'ai jamais pu savoir ce que
+souhaiter une fête voulait dire, mais si c'est quelque bien,--comme la
+santé, par exemple,--tu sais quels sont mes voeux; enfin je voudrais te
+savoir aussi heureuse que possible:
+
+"Je ne trouve pas que la couleur de la cathédrale de Freiburg soit
+désagréable. Il est vrai que je préfère un gris argenté, mais le ton
+chaud de Freiburg fait bien et il a gagné une certaine patine avec les
+années. On m'a dit quand j'y étais que celle de Strasbourg a la même
+couleur, mais je ne l'ai jamais vue. Quel bonheur pour Freiburg d'avoir
+tous ces petits ruisseaux qui nettoient les rues et qui viennent de la
+rivière Dreisam! Je n'admire pas plus que toi la tendance polychrome
+qu'on voit dans certains détails de la ville.
+
+"Avez-vous vu le château de Zahringen? Il est au nordest de Freiburg, à
+trois kilomètres environ; c'est une promenade très facile.
+
+"Je me suis demandé si à Baie vous vous étiez arrêtés à l'hôtel des
+Trois-Rois. Il y a là un long balcon d'où l'on voit le fort courant du
+Rhin qui passe sous l'ancien pont. Je me rappelle qu'à l'extrémité de ce
+pont, du côté opposé, il y avait une brasserie où, en buvant son verre
+de bière, on pouvait regarder l'eau qui coulait toujours, et si vite.
+
+"À Lucerne, j'ai vu également couler la Reuss sous l'ancien pont où l'on
+voit la Danse de la Mort. Mr. Macgregor a osé descendre cette rivière
+(qui est un torrent très dangereux plus bas) en périssoire. Ce n'est pas
+moi qui essaierai.
+
+"Je continue à mieux aller, je puis maintenant m'endormir assez
+facilement, et je reste généralement dans mon lit toute la nuit, mais
+pas toujours. Mon sommeil est souvent interrompu, mais vite repris. En
+somme grand progrès.
+
+"Bonne-maman va beaucoup mieux aussi, elle prend de la Kola qui lui
+fait, paraît-il, grand bien.
+
+"Stephen a regagné l'appétit et part vendredi pour Londres.
+
+"Mes meilleures amitiés à Raoul, et tous mes souhaits pour un bon séjour
+à Lucerne, cet endroit si ravissant!
+
+"Vieux Papa."
+
+To the infinite amusement of "Vieux Papa," his daughter answered
+immediately, "We never knew that you had been at Freiburg," etc., etc.
+
+In the course of August my husband had the pleasure of becoming
+personally acquainted with Mr. Scribner, who called upon him in the
+company of Mr. Jaccaci.
+
+The improvement in Gilbert's state did not last. We renewed our
+entreaties about having a doctor's advice, and he yielded.
+
+The great physician whom we called in declared it was weakness of the
+heart--due to overwork--that his patient was suffering from, and not
+asthma. He promised to set him up again in four months with his
+prescriptions.
+
+Strange to say, Gilbert was greatly relieved to hear that his case was
+hypertrophy of the heart rather than asthma--for me it was the dreaded
+confirmation of fears that had long haunted me; still, we both derived
+hope and encouragement from the doctor's assurance of an ultimate cure.
+I cannot say that we really believed in a total cure, but we thought it
+possible to recover the former state of health which had preceded the
+attacks of suffocation. "I have not felt old, hitherto," my husband
+said, "certainly not more than if I had been only fifty; but the fact
+is, I am now sixty, and therefore must be prepared to face the advent of
+old age. I will submit to any privation for the sake of health, though
+it seems hard to be deprived of exercise. It is singular that my mental
+state should be clearer and more vigorous than ever before, and that my
+work should be easier and more enjoyable than at any former time."
+
+Mr. Seeley had written:--
+
+"What a good thing you called in this Parisian doctor! It might have
+been serious if you had gone on taking strong exercise in your present
+state of health.
+
+"I can quite understand your feeling of relief that at any rate it is
+not asthma. Perhaps when you take less exercise the gout may return, and
+the heart be relieved at once. That the doctor confidently promises a
+cure in a few months is a great satisfaction to us."
+
+The good results of the prescribed regimen were soon experienced, and I
+hailed--not unhopefully--the return of an attack of gout, predicted by
+Mr. Seeley, which I feared less for Gilbert than the heart troubles. The
+doctor had said, after hearing that the gout had almost entirely
+disappeared, "You have made a bad bargain in exchanging gout for
+hypertrophy."
+
+This is what my husband himself wrote to his friend:--
+
+"The worst of me just now for making inquiries, is that on getting up
+this morning I found I had an attack of gout in my right knee. Hitherto
+it is only slight (I write at two p.m.), but I cannot bend it without
+considerable pain, so I must wait till to-morrow at any rate, before
+trying to go to Paris. It is quite possible that the attack may be very
+slight, but it is also possible that I may be laid up by it. However
+this may be, I will of course keep your letter, and do all in my power
+to help in the present emergency.
+
+"Many thanks for your very kind letter about my doctor's visit. I wish I
+had known him ten years sooner. He is most scrupulously observant of
+things as they really are, and does not set off, as doctors often do,
+from a preconceived notion of his own. The results of the regimen are
+already beneficial. My nights have been gradually improving since it
+began. Last night I slept perfectly till about two in the morning, and
+then awoke without any suffocation, and soon fell asleep again,
+remaining quiet with good breathing till half-past six. About a week
+since I could not sleep _at all_, being immediately awakened by
+suffocation every time I began to drop off.
+
+"Please thank Mrs. Seeley on my part and my wife's for her kind
+sympathy, which we know is most sincere. Tell her I regret to have
+called you her teetotal husband, as I am no better myself. Nay, it is
+you who have the advantage of me with your two glasses of claret, which
+I call downright intemperance." (He was allowed to drink nothing but
+milk.)
+
+Our children feeling uneasy still, and anxious about the state of their
+father, cut their journey rather short to be back again with him. M.
+Raillard wished to see Sens in coming back, and the house we had lived
+in there. So his father-in-law sent him some information about the
+place, and added:--
+
+"Ne manquez pas surtout de voir l'intérieur de la Salle Synodale qui est
+peut-être la plus belle salle gothique du monde après celle de
+Westminster. Le trésor de la Cathédrale est intéressant.
+
+"Je continue à me porter beaucoup mieux. Les nuits sont bonnes.
+
+"À bientôt, puisque vous avez la bonne pensée de revenir.
+
+"Bien cordialement à vous."
+
+The rules of work had been, perforce, relaxed lately, and almost all the
+working time had been devoted to writing the "Quest of Happiness," and
+an article on "Formative Influences" for the "Forum," besides the
+concluding articles for "Scribner's Magazine."
+
+A decided and rapid improvement in health had taken place, and when, at
+the beginning of October, Miss Betham-Edwards came to see us, she found
+my husband much as usual--though looking older--as she told me
+afterwards.
+
+A few days after she had come to _déjeuner_ at Clématis we went to lunch
+with her at her hotel, and spent the whole day together, visiting the
+Musée Carnavalet, and having a long walk the whole way back to the Rue
+d'Alger. We crossed the Cour du Louvre, where my husband explained in
+detail the various transformations and changes in the architecture of
+the palace at different periods of time. Then, in the fading twilight,
+we had a look at the magnificent and poetical vista opened by the
+removal of the Tuileries, before saying goodbye; and when we reached
+Clématis for a late dinner, Gilbert told my mother that he had enjoyed
+the day and did not feel tired in the least.
+
+On the following Sunday we had a long walk in the Avenue du Bois de
+Boulogne with some friends, and near the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile we
+happened to espy the doctor, when my husband remarked cheerfully,
+"Doctor B----, who was to see me again in two months, would be surprised
+to hear that I am cured already."
+
+On October 17, a fire was lighted for the first time this autumn in
+Gilbert's study, and before the flue became heated and a good draught
+produced, the smoke was considerable. I warned him not to remain in the
+room, the air being so bad; he answered that as soon as the work he had
+begun allowed of it, he would go out. I left the door open on purpose,
+and begged him not to close it; but when I went up again with the
+letters--two hours after--I found him still at work, in an atmosphere of
+dense yellow smoke, without possible escape, the door having been closed
+again. As usual, when writing, my husband became so wrapt in his work
+that he was not conscious of anything outside of it.
+
+I became alarmed for him, as I could hardly breathe, but he felt no
+inconvenience just then.
+
+In the afternoon he had a walk, but in the evening he went up again to
+the study, and remained there over an hour, giving a lesson in English
+pronunciation to one of his nephews. The smoke had, however, subsided,
+and the fire burned steadily.
+
+At half-past one I was awakened by a sensation of chill on the
+forehead--it came from my husband's lips--he was giving me, as he
+thought, a _last_ kiss, for he murmured faintly, "J'ai voulu te dire que
+je t'ai bien aimée, car je crois que je vais mourir."
+
+He was deadly pale, but quite collected. I helped him to dress, and we
+managed to reach the garden for purer air. He wrote afterwards in his
+diary that his sufferings had been horrible, and lasted in full two
+hours and a half. I tried to encourage him in the struggle for life, by
+saying that it was asthma, and that I had witnessed a dear relation of
+ours struggling successfully through several similar attacks. I felt
+certain now that it was asthma, and I said so to the doctor on the
+following day. He answered, "It is cardiac asthma, then."
+
+It was freezing hard outside, and as soon as he recovered breathing
+power, I led my husband to the drawing-room sofa, which I wheeled in
+front of the chimney, and the wood being piled up ready for a fire, I
+made a great blaze, and opened the windows wide at the same time. Once
+stretched on the couch and wrapped up in blankets, facing the leaping
+flames, he soon regained vital warmth, and his breathing became more
+regular.
+
+Altogether the crisis had lasted five hours, during which I had remained
+alone with him without even calling a maid, for fear of making him worse
+through annoyance. I affected entire freedom from anxiety as to the end,
+merely expressing sympathy with his momentary sufferings, and I was
+thankful to succeed in deceiving him.
+
+As soon as he felt well enough to be left for a short time, I hastened
+to the doctor's, but went first to tell Mary and her husband of the sad
+occurrence, that they might go to their father while I should be away.
+
+The doctor attributed the attack entirely to the effect of the smoke,
+and said it had nothing to do with my husband's malady--"he had been
+asphyxiated;" it would have no lasting effects, except as to retarding
+the cure; the ground gained since the beginning of the regimen had been
+lost, and it was all to begin over again.
+
+I did not attempt to disguise from him my anxious fears nor my feelings
+when I had witnessed my husband's tortures without any means or hopes of
+alleviating them; "for," I added, "I have been told there is no help in
+cases of acute asthma." "There _was_ not," he answered, "till a quite
+recent discovery; but now immediate relief may be given by injections of
+serum."
+
+Though he assured me that there would be no other attack of the same
+kind if we took care to have only wood fires and no smoke, I insisted
+upon being recommended to a reliable doctor, not far from our house, who
+would promise to come at any time of night if we needed him, and who
+would always have serum in his possession--the great specialist being
+himself at too great a distance from us to be fetched in an emergency.
+The very doctor I wanted happened to be this very day sharing, as he
+often did, the labors and studies of the specialist. He was called in,
+and, after listening to an explanation, gave me the promise I desired,
+and said he would follow me immediately to Clématis to see the patient;
+and if he should see the necessity for it, would ask his friend to join
+him at our house for a consultation.
+
+As he noticed the distress under which I was laboring, the physician
+kindly said before I left him: "I repeat, that I do not apprehend a
+recurrence of what happened last night--but, si par impossible une
+autre crise semblable survenait, rappelez-vous bien que, même suivie de
+syncope, elle ne serait _jamais mortelle_."
+
+I believed him, though my heart was still heavy at the thoughts of the
+sufferings that the future might bring to my husband. I felt greatly
+relieved in being able to give him the doctor's assurance that there was
+no danger for his life.
+
+I was happy on entering the drawing-room to see him quietly talking with
+Mary and Raoul, and eating grapes. He said that, with the exception of
+fatigue, he felt very well indeed. He had taken some broth, and partook
+of a light dinner with pleasure.
+
+The doctor delegated by the physician, after an examination, merely
+confirmed what had been said to me, and saw no necessity for a
+consultation with his friend.
+
+On the morrow we arranged a temporary study to avoid fresh troubles with
+the stove, and kept up good ventilation with a bright wood fire and
+frequent opening of windows looking out on the garden.
+
+Gilbert resumed his ordinary work with great moderation, taking care to
+interrupt whatever he was doing every hour by a short walk in the open
+air, according to medical advice. Four days later I find this entry in
+the note-book: "October 24. Walked in the Bois de Boulogne towards
+evening in an enchantment of color and light; beautiful autumnal color
+on trees."
+
+One of my husband's last satisfactions in life was a letter for Mr.
+Burlingame, about the work lately done for Messrs. Scribner. Here is a
+passage out of it:--
+
+"I have long had in mind to say, _à propos_ of the conclusion of the
+series, how much of a success I think our last plan proved, and how
+cordially we all appreciate the very valuable and punctual fulfilment
+which you kindly gave to it. All our relations during its progress were
+a great pleasure to me; and I hope it will not be long before the
+Magazine may have the benefit of your help again. It will always gratify
+us very much to know of any suggestion or papers that occur to you which
+you might be inclined to send our way.
+
+"Mr. Scribner and Mr. Jaccaci are back again; and we all often speak of
+you with pleasant recollections of your kindness in Paris."
+
+Although Messrs. Scribner's pecuniary arrangements were very liberal, my
+husband's satisfaction in his dealings with them was mostly derived from
+their courtesy; for though he was obliged to take money into
+consideration, it was almost the least weighty of considerations with
+him. He often said he did not like money; he looked upon it as the
+indispensable means of providing necessaries, and thereby affording the
+mind sufficient peace to apply itself to study in freedom from anxious
+cares. He never desired riches or luxury, and hated to have to think
+about money matters or to talk about them, even to me; and aware that
+the subject was more than disagreeable,--painful,--I avoided it as much
+as possible.
+
+After the first terrible attack of suffocation, Mr. Seeley had been
+reluctant to ask for my husband's help; still, as he had recovered so
+soon, and had resumed his ordinary avocations, he was willing and able
+to do several urgent things for the "Portfolio," and Mr. Seeley wrote:--
+
+"You have done, before receiving my last letter, exactly what it asked
+you to do. What a good thing when editor and publisher are in such
+perfect _rapport_.
+
+"I hope you have not had any more attacks."
+
+No, he had not; and his nights were quiet again, though he got up very
+early, at four or five in the morning, and had a nap in the afternoon.
+The only thing he complained of was a sensation of weakness unknown to
+him before. It was not sufficient to be called painful, but still he
+felt it to be there, and hoped to get rid of it when allowed a little
+beer or claret. He so much disliked drinking milk at meal-times that it
+quite spoilt his appetite, until the doctor said he might have water
+during his repasts, and milk in the intervals.
+
+On account of the diminution in strength, I was afraid of the effects
+that fatigue might produce, and did not like to see him go so often to
+Paris as he had lately done, especially to the exhibitions; but when it
+could not be avoided, I managed to go with him, under the pretext that I
+was interested in them myself.
+
+On November 4 he asked me if I should like to go with him to the Louvre,
+where he had to see the Salle des Primitifs. I said yes. He spent an
+hour there, enjoying heartily the best pictures, and extolling their
+merits as we were coming back. According to his habit, he was reading in
+the tram-car on his way home, and I noticed that it was a volume of
+"Virgil," and in looking up from the book to his face, I observed that
+he looked paler than usual. I inquired if he felt tired. He answered,
+"Not in the least." And when we reached home he went up straight to his
+study, and wrote till the bell called him to dinner. We had a pleasant
+talk about the pictures he had just studied, while he was eating with a
+good appetite.
+
+After dinner, as usual, he took up his newspaper and read for about ten
+minutes, when he suddenly threw it aside and told me the action of the
+heart was unsatisfactory. I proposed at once to go to the garden, but
+the suddenness and violence of the attack did not allow him to reach it.
+When in the open air, just above the few stone steps, he had to stop and
+grasp the railing till the last anguish deprived him of breath and of
+life, long before the arrival of the doctors, whom I had sent for as
+soon as he had felt oppressed.
+
+He had never feared death, whatever might await him after--conscious of
+a useful and blameless life. He died as he had desired to die, standing
+alone with me under the moonlit sky, unconfined, escaping from the
+decrepitude of old age, still in the full possession and maturity of his
+talents, and in the active use of them.
+
+Two hours before his death he had been writing these last words for the
+"Quest of Happiness":--
+
+"If I indulge my imagination in dreaming about a country where justice
+and right would always surely prevail, where the weak would never be
+oppressed, nor an honest man incur any penalty for his honesty--a
+country where no animal would ever be ill-treated or killed, otherwise
+than in mercy--that is truly ideal dreaming, because, however far I
+travel, I shall not find such a country in the world, and there is not
+any record of such a country in the authentic history of mankind."
+
+Let us hope he may have found this ideal country in the unknown world.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON ***
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