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