On his return home, Haydon found that the freedom of his native town had been voted to him in his absence, and that the directors of the British Institution had awarded him one hundred guineas as a mark of their approbation of his "Solomon." He exults as usual. It was indeed "Solomon in all his glory." "Considering," he says, "the excellence of the picture, there was nothing surprising in the enthusiasm of the artists, the public, the nobility!" "And yet," he adds, what did all this do for me? Nothing, literally; not a single commission, large or small, followed!" The picture which the British Institution had rewarded with a prize of one hundred guineas, was afterwards forgotten by all, thrown back upon his hands, seized for rent, stowed away in a dark hole to rot, for no one would pay even the warehouse room. After the death of the artist it was purchased by Sir Edwin Landseer; and when exhibited in the British Gallery this year, it excited a good deal of interest and admiration. His next picture," Christ's Entry into Jerusalem," occupied him for nearly six years, amid difficulties and distresses of every kind. Still he paints away with the same exulting faith in himself, the same trust in God; harassed by embarrassments of the meanest kind; borrowing of every one who would lend, in debt to every one who would trust,"two hundred to pay next week, not a sixpence towards it" but it matters not. He is lifted above all sublunary ills by visions of future greatness. "Let me," he exclaims, 'let me but be successful in realizing my conceptions in my day's labor, and what shall subdue me but extinction ?" This year, 1815, Haydon was diverted from his studies and his troubles by his acquaintance with Wordsworth, who sat for one of the heads in his picture that of the "Meditative Philosopher." Yet more exciting, absolutely distracting, was the crisis of public affairs, Napoleon's return from Elba, and the battle of Waterloo. He describes his own and the public enthusiasm with his usual lively, graphic energy. He was "as a man intoxicated." All his friends, however, did not share in this jubilation. "As for Hazlitt," he says, "it is not to be believed how the destruction of Napoleon affected him; he was for a time prostrated in mind and body, walked about unwashed, unshaven, as if in a kind of stupor." There was another and a greater man than Hazlitt whom the fall of Napoleon also struck down as with a blow; that was Byron. Haydon, in his estimate of the characters of Wellington and Napoleon, showed more discrimination; yet how little did he then anticipate that he would be called upon to represent both these great men! the victor contemplating the field of his triumph, the vanquished meditating in his sea-girt prison. In the height of the national enthusiasm, Parliament voted half a million for a Waterloo monument, in which painting, sculpture and architecture were to have been combined. The committee applied to the Royal Academy for advice, - the Academicians returned no answer whatever; because, forsooth, the Government had returned no answer when they had sent in a statement relative to the advancement of Art! Thus between disgust and bewilderment on the part of our statesmen, and the most childish pique on the part of our artists, or the body of men who represented their interests, the whole project fell to the ground, to Haydon's infinite rage and mortification. Haydon's idea for a monument commemorating the close of a war, which had begun amid the terrors of revolution and had ended in the restoration of order, was a series of compositions in painting and sculpture which should illustrate "the best government for calling forth the energies of man, for regulating without cramping the spirit of liberty." He does not give us in detail the invention and arrangement of his subjects; it is, however, clear, that in his design he anticipated what has since heen done by Bendemann in the throne room at Dresden, in the fresco illustrating the progress of human culture; and by Kaulbach, in the great hall of the museum at Berlin, in his six grand compositions illustrating the great epochs of history. But who was there, at that time capable of entertaining or even of comprehending such an idea? Who were the artists among us capable of carrying it out? Haydon's grand project had to contend at once with the prejudices arising out of interest, and the prejudices arising out of ignorance. The artists were opposed to what they could not execute, the statesmen to what they could not understand. Sir George Beaumont wrote to him at this time, earnestly advising him to desist from all pen and paper controversy with his opponents. "If any severe remarks are made on you or your works, paint them down. You can. But if you retort in words, action will produce reaction, and your whole remaining life will be one scene of pernicious contention." Haydon answered by assuring his sensible friend that he would abide by his advice, "having long been convinced that to paint his way to his grand object was the only wise plan." But in a few months, we find him, to use his own expression, "at it again!" attacking the Academicians with weapons which apparently lay readier to his hand then brush or pencil, "with fury, ridicule, sarcasm; with reason, argument, eloquence; and he describes these attacks as generating against him a degree of public and private animosity, which in the end ruined his own prospects. It cannot be denied that the Royal Academy as then constituted, did really deserve a good share of the contempt, wrath and ridicule which Haydon poured out upon it. We remember hearing Sir Martin Shee eulogized as an excellent president, because he considered only the interests and the dignity of the Academy, as if the Academy had been incorporated only for their own interest. At that time the Academy, that is to say, the greater number of the Academicians, taking a strangely narrow view of their responsibilities as a body of men, had placed themselves in opposition to the British Institution. The Directors of the Institution had opened an exhibition, the first of a series which has since hecome so popular, composed of a selection from the best ancient pictures in the private galleries of our nobility and gentry. The Academy met this attempt to improve the taste of the people by a pamphlet which Haydon calls that "infamous Catalogue Raisonnée:" if a copy could be met with now, it would be designated we imagine as merely contemptible. The object was to prove that an exhibition of the ancient masters could be undertaken with no other view than to put down National Art, and to ruin English artists. The Titians and Rembrandts were derided under the title of the black masters. Those who admired or purchased such things were turned into clumsy ridicule. The purpose was base, and the taste, the style, and the grammar were worthy of the purpose. There were neither authors nor publishers' name appended to this precious production; but if it did not emanate from one of the Academy, as was generally supposed, it was at least hailed with delight by some of the leading Academicians. Northcote " ordered a long candle, and went to bed to read it in an ecstasy." We can remember well other Academicians of greater name rubbing their hands, and chuckling over it with a most undisguised relish of its contents. Probably there is not an Academician now living who would not trample it under his feet. Hazlitt exposed with a just and manly scorn the vulgar idea that the modern artists were to be benefited by discrediting, by extinguishing, if that were possible, all that their great predecessors had accomplished of highest and best. "What!" he exclaims," have they no conscious affinity with true genius, no claim to the reversion of true fame, no right of succession to this lasting inheritance and final reward of great exertions, which they would therefore destroy to prevent others from enjoying it? Does all their ambition begin and end in their 'patriotic sympathy' with the sale of modern works of art, and have they no fellow-feeling with the hopes and final destiny of human genius? What poet ever complained of the respect paid to Homer as derogatory to himself?" Haydon, who all his life had been advocating the public patronage of modern art, had sufficient sense and generosity to see and to say, that all real progress must be founded in a just appreciation of the great men who have gone before; and that the best means to extend the patronage of Art is, to elevate the public mind to the comprehension and estimation or what is most excellent in Art. The present state of Art in England is not yet, perhaps, a subject of much congrat ulation; but at least it proves the truth of Burke's saying, that "whatever attracts public attention to the fine arts, must in the end be for the benefit of artists." Our artists of forty years ago, were not so well aware of this fact as they are now. The part which Haydon took in the affair of the Catalogue Raisonnée did him honor. He was still farther uplifted by the arrival of Canova. The Italian sculptor, then at the height of his fame, gave in the strongest terms his tes timony to the value of the Elgin Marbles. The Dilettante Society and Payne Knight were for the time discomfited, and Haydon pours out his soul in self-glorification, and in admiration of Canova. Some things he has preserved of the conversation and opinions of the sculptor, are interesting and characteristic. Speaking of Fuseli, Canova said "Vi sono nelle arti due cose, il fuoco e la fiamma. Fuseli non ebbe che la fiamma: Raffaele, il fuoco." (On repeating this to Wordsworth, he remarked, "Canova forgot the third, and that is, il fumo, of which Fuseli had plenty!") Haydon once asked Canova how he liked West: "Comme ca! Du moins il compose bien? Non, monsieur, il met des figures en groupes." "There was," adds Haydon, "jealousy at the name of Flaxmann: when we talked of his designs, there was an expression I did not like." But if Haydon intends here to impute to Canova any mean jealousy, he shows ignorance of the character of the Italian. It was not the jealousy of a small mind, but rather an intuitive consciousness of the only superiority he admitted. Every one knows Canova's reply when he was requested to undertake a work for one of our English universities: "I am sorry the English possess a Flaxmann and do not know it." Another triumph, which Haydon fully appreciated, was the beautiful sonnet which Wordsworth addressed to him, which need not be given here. The readers of Wordsworth know it well as among his finest; most artists have, or ought to have it by heart. Haydon exults again, with pardonable delight,— he actually revels in his triumph * The one beginning High is our calling, friend!' in which he associates the poet and the painter. Now, reader, was not this glorious? and you, young student, when you are pressed down by want in the midst of a great work, remember what followed Haydon's perseverance the freedom of his native town-the visit of Canova and the sonnet of Wordsworth ; and if that do not cheer you up and make you go on, you are past all hope! I felt as it were lifted up in the great eye of the world - I then relapsed into melancholy sensitiveness! my heart yearned in gratitude to God as my protector, my divine inspirer. The great Spirit, who had led me through the wilderness, who had fired my soul when a boy unconscious of my future fate. (Vol. i. p. 301.) 66 tian Hall at a rent of £200, in which to exhibit his picture, and on the result of this exhibition depended his salvation or his ruin; there was no other alternative, no middle course for him. It succeeded. The public enthusiasm was this time really excited; the room was every day crowded; money came pouring in. But he complains with a curious narvetée as well as obliquity of moral vision, that this success raised "a base appetite" in some of his creditors to have a share in his receipts, and that at the moment he was reaping the fruits of his labor, he was overwhelmed with lawyers' letters. The picture was, in many respects, fine and And then to shadow such glory, and tame striking. Some parts of the composition exdown such exultation, came the usual mise- cellent. The figure, for instance, of the poor ries: no money, distracting debts, bills often penitent girl shrinking from sight, contrasted renewed, again due, and nothing to meet with the buoyant faith of a woman who is them; "want staring him in the face." As if spreading her garment in the way, we rememall this were not enough he fell passionately in ber as particularly good. Several of the heads love. The object of his attachment was a being recognized as portraits of distinguished beautiful and amiable woman, a young widow persons, added to the interest the pictures inwith two infant children; nothing could be spired; Wordsworth figured as the meditative more rash, more imprudent; but, as he says philosopher, and Voltaire as the sceptic. most characteristically, all resistance to the new Keats, Hazlitt, and others were introduced as passion was relinquished with a glorious de- spectators; after the manner of the old Florfiance of restraint." The lovers were engaged, entine painters, who made their grandest reliand his Mary consented to wait for better times. gious scenes a vehicle for portraiture. There During the Session of 1817, Parliament had were doubts about the head of Christ: Mrs. voted a large sum of money for building addi- Siddons, Walter Scott, and Wordsworth aptional churches. Haydon represented that if proved; but notwithstanding this intoxicatwhile the churches were building, they were ing praise, Haydon himself had the candor to so arranged as to admit of an altar-piece for feel and to confess that there, where the chief every church; and if Government allotted, interest and excellence ought to have been for this purpose, a small per-centage out of concentrated, he had failed, and that the head the money voted, it would be a great encour- of Christ was weak and commonplace. The agement to high art, and "a certain prospect exhibition was open for two months, and the of reward to those who had devoted them- receipts amounted to £1,760. The picture selves to it;" himself included of course. was then carried down to Scotland, and exThere was, however, some reason in his prohibited with a like success in Edinburgh and position. He addressed a letter on the subject to Sir Charles Long (Lord Farnborough,) who laid it before the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Vansittart replied oracularly, "Let us build churches first and think of decorating them afterwards." "That is to say," as Haydon well remarks, "let us build churches without a thought about pictures, and then when churches are built without any reference to pictures, let us think of hanging up pictures in churches where there are no lights to see them." Is not this the principle on which our most thinking people have decorated the new House of Lords? In the beginning of 1820, Haydon at length completed his large picture of the "Entry into Jerusalem;" -after six years of hard work, during which he had been generously assisted by Jeremiah Harman, Watson Taylor, Coutts, Thomas Hope, and others. He would not starve, and to beg he was not ashamed. With out a shilling in his pocket he hired the Egyp Glasgow. Haydon relates that once on going into the exhibition-room at Glasgow, with his hat on, an old Scotchman came up to him, and said with an air of solemn rebuke, "I think you should tak your hat off in sic an awfu' presence!" But with all this enthusiasm, no one thought of securing the picture for any place of worship, or for the advantage and instruction of the people: ultimately it was sold to pay a debt, and shipped off to America. His predilection for large works was not damped however. He ordered a canvas nineteen feet long by sixteen high, and dashed in his first conception of the "Raising of Lazarus." "But how was I to get through it? Go on,' said the inward voice I had heard from my youth, work and trust!' and work and trust I did." Thus ended the year 1820, a year of brief intoxicating prosperity, and thus ends the autobiography. The narrative is now taken up by the editor, who however leaves Haydon, wherever it is possible, to speak for himself; and we proceed with this sad eventful history. man. lating embarrassment, distress, and want. We shall not pursue, along the darkening pages, the history of these abject miseries; — The year 1821 beheld the sanguine artist debts, lawyers' letters, executions, insult, rising in reputation. We can remember hear- wretchedness, money begged or borrowed ing of him in connection with distinguished from reluctant friends, often not a shilling in names. In his painting room might be found the house for food. His wife's poor trinkets, Walter Scott and Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, his children's clothes pawned; his drawings, Barry Cornwall, Miss Mitford (who addressed his books, often the very implements of his art, to him a charming sonnet), Mrs. Siddons, Mr. hastily sold or sacrificed. On one occasion, Rogers, besides his old friends who had not when his wife was confined, there was no quite forsaken him,- Wilkie, Lord Mulgrave, bread in the house, because the baker would and Sir George Beaumont. He was himself, no longer give credit, and no water, because when not depressed and distracted by pecu- the rates were unpaid. Many, perhaps too niary distresses," a capital converser,-excel- many, in the struggle of an uncertain profeslent company," as was said of him by one sion have suffered the like extremities; but who knew him well-full of spirit and ener- who, like Haydon, has chronicled them from gy, with a fine head and animated coun- day to day, till they become so heart-sickentenance, open attractive manners, a little too ing, so exasperating in their monotony, that self confident perhaps, but even those who the reader almost loses patience, loses symfelt inclined to say doubtingly, "You talk this pathy? Far from wondering at the final well, sir!" were borne down by his unhesi- catastrophe, he only wonders it was so long tating "By heaven! I'll do it too." In his delayed, and feels that an existence which own opinion he only wanted money to be a Haydon endured for twenty-five years must happy man, and plenty of work to be a great have put an end to any other man in a twelveBut commissions did not come, and month. It is a horrible picture. The gloom, debts accumulated, and after waiting four the trouble, darkened and deepened, till the years, a long time for one of Haydon's im- immediate pressure seems to have left him no patient temperament, - he married his beau- conscience, no feeling for others. His own, tiful widow, and took her children not only to his children's wants, break down what is left his home, but to his heart. Though the step to him of honest pride. Fiercely he protests was imprudent, yet he might have done worse. against his fate; passionately he appeals against True, marriage, by increasing his responsibili- it to God and man. Yet we read without surties took away what was left to him of inde- prise, with a painful conviction that some dependent action. It enhanced the pressure of gree of self-control in the first instance might every difficulty. It doubled the bitterness of easily have averted this extremity of misery every pain. Yet there is something in the and degradation. It seems cruel that after strength of the deepest and holiest of human years of toil "he had nothing left on earth he affections which elevates and purifies life. could call his own, but his brains." But in Haydon as a husband and a father was not a money matters no experience made him wise, wiser man, but he was in many respects a bet- and no distress made him prudent; for ter and a happier man. He blesses God that him adversity had not its appointed uses, sweet marriage softened his heart without weakening or bitter. He had a rapid, vigorous pencil; his energies. His wife's sweetness tamed down his fierce restless nature, and she became to him truly what he fondly called her, a "heroine in adversity and an angel of peace." She aided him in other ways besides thus softening his temper, sitting patiently to him for his female figures, sometimes for five hours together. Dark clouds came over him, moments of heartsinking; but then again he prays with an assured mind; and from his strife with the world, money-lenders, lawyers and creditors, he returns to his wife and to his painting room, to intoxicating visions of glory, and to "all the concealed comfort locked up in woman's love." From this time the entries in his journal indicate by many sweet spontaneous touches the presence of an angel of peace within his heart and within his home; but, alas! they are filled also with daily pictures of accumu he could always sell his small groups and sketches; he had been advised to make money in this way, and by painting a few portraits, while proceeding with his great unprofitable pictures; but he would not condescend to this till it was too late. It could not be said that he was self-deluded; he saw the way clearly before him: He thus argues the point with himself: Too proud to do small modest things that I might obtain fair means of existence as I proceeded with my great work, I thought it no degradation to borrow, to risk the insult of a refusal, and to be bated down like the meanest dealer. Then I was liberal in my art, I spared things for the art by means of them; this is no expense for casts and prints, and did great true; yet, to be strictly correct, you should do nothing, however necessary, which your income does not warrant you in doing. But ought I, after such efforts as I had made to have been giano: During the sack of Rome he was left in this position by the Directors of the Brit- working in his room, intent on one of his ish Institution or the Government? Under any great pictures, when two of Bourbon's solother Government in Europe, after what I had diers rushed in to murder and pillage; they done, I should not have been allowed to remain one moment in necessity. were arrested by the sight of the picture, stood before it for a few minutes, and then This was his view of the case. Of his own walked quietly and silently away. But we social obligations, so far as money was con- must here dismiss the chapter of Haydon's cerned, he seems scarcely to have thought at mistakes and delinquencies in pecuniary matall, till embarrassments closed like a net around ters-if unjustifiable, yet pitiable; and the him; on the contrary, of the obligations of retribution, though it may be deserved, is sad society towards himself he appears to have en- and terrible. tertained a very definite, though somewhat peculiar notion: "He believed that he was the apostle and martyr of High Art, and, as such, had a sort of right to support from those who would not find him the employment he was always craving." (Vol. iii. p. 321.) When his picture of "Lazarus" was finished, he exhibited it in the Egyptian Hall; but it did not even pay the expenses. The head of Lazarus-staring ghastly with awakening life- -is finely conceived; the head and figure of Christ a failure—and worse-posiNothing so wrenches the heart as to find tively mean and bad. Wherever refined or scattered through the later memoranda solemn purely intellectual feeling was required, Haywarnings to others against debt, against doing don has seldom succeeded. As in the expres evil in the prospect of some uncertain future sion of power he is almost always exaggergood; advice to his sons never to incur a pe-ated, so in the expression of refinement he is cuniary obligation for any self-gratification; almost always weak or vapid. and we find afterwards one of them-noble boy!-living on bread and water at his college, rather than do so, while Haydon himself was reduced to the meanest subterfuges to keep himself out of prison. He boasts, in several places, of the scholars he had formed since distinguished men-boasts that he had trained them in Art without the remuneration In 1823 we find him in the King's-Bench. But even here the wonderful ardor and vivacity of the man was not subdued. Dr. Johnson would have styled him "an incompressible fellow." He drew up a petition to the House of Commons, which was presented by Mr. Brougham. It commenced thus: of a single farthing. But these gentlemen the purchase of the Elgin Marbles in discussing It is now seven years since the Committee for might tell, if they would, what a price they had the subject of their deliberation, submitted to the paid for his instructions. The manner in which attentive consideration of the House how highly he wronged his pupils, not only taking, on va- the cultivation of the Fine Arts had contributed rious pretences, the money out of their pock- to the reputation, character and dignity of every ets, but prevailing on them to sign bills, which Government by which they had been encouraged, he left them to meet or go to prison, is among and how intimately they were connected with the most unpardonable traits revealed in his the advancement of every thing valuable in scibiography. As the father of a family, he con-ence, literature, or art. fesses to the wickedness and indelicacy of such conduct. "But," he adds, "I was in such a state of desperation that I wondered at nothing." Then, after a recommendation of himself, he humbly prays— There are two ways in which your petitioner to the genius of the country towards historical presumes to think that a successful excitement painting could be given, viz., the purchase and presentation of pictures to adorn the altars of Yet, even in the midst of these dark humili-churches or the sides of public halls, and the ations, there are strange gleams of light-employment of artists of distinguished reputarecords of the generous kindness he received tion to produce them. from others. On one occasion a sheriff's officer, sent to arrest him, was so struck and agitated by the picture of "Lazarus," that he allowed him to go free till a certain hour, at That the House will appoint such a Commitwhich Haydon gave his word to appear. The tee as investigated the subject of the Elgin mareditor remarks that "The compunction of the bles to inquire into the state of encouragement bailiff before the great canvas of 'Lazarus,' of historical painting, and to ascertain the best was as striking an incident, in its way, as method of preventing by moderate and judicious that of the bravos arrested in their murder-patronage, those who devote their lives to such ous intent by the organ playing of Stradella;" honorable pursuits, so essential (as your Comwe believe it was the exquisite voice of mittee has affirmed) to science, literature, and Stradella, singing his own music, which so art, from ending their days in prison and in distouched the hearts of the assassins. But grace. however this may be, a nearer parallel may He dates this petition from the King's-Bench be found in the well-known story of Parmi- Prison. VOL. IV. 2 |