Memories and impressions; a study in atmospheres

Front matter

L I II II I llll " — — ^— ^— ~— w^:

FORD MADOX HUSPFER

The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library.

Contents

PAGE

Dedication ix

I. The Inner Circle i

II

"1VJOVEMBER 7th. Dined with William Ros- 1 ^ setti and afterward to Browning's, where there was a woman with a large nose. Hope I may never meet her again. Browning's conversational powers very great. He told some good stories, one about the bygone days of Drury Lane — about the advice of a very experienced stage-carpenter of fifty years' standing at the theatre, given to a young man who wished for an engagement there but had not, it was objected, voice enough. The advice was to get a pot of XXXX (ale) and put it on the stage beside him, and, having the boards all to himself, he was first to drink and then to halloa with all his might, then to drink again, and so on — which the aspirant literally did— remaining, of course, a muff, as he had begun. However, I spoil that one! Browning said that one evening he was at Carlyle's. That sage teacher, after abusing Mozart, Beethoven, and modern music generally, let Mrs. Carlyle play to show Browning what was the right sort of music, which was some Scotch tune on an old piano with such base as pleased Providence — or, rather, said Browning, as did not please Providence. An Italian sinner, who belonged to the highest degree of criminality, which requires some very exalted dignitary of the church before absolution can be obtained for atrocities too heinous for the powers of the ordinary priest, Browning likened to a spider who, having fallen into a bottle of ink, gets out and crawls and sprawls and blots right over the whole of God's table of laws.

"... 8th. Painted at William Rossetti's from eight till twelve. Gabriel came in. William, wishing to go early, Gabriel proposed that he should wait five minutes and they would go together, when, William being got to sleep on the sofa, Gabriel commenced telling me how he intended to get married at once to Guggums (Miss Biddall) — ofF to Algeria! ! ! and so poor William's five minutes lasted till 2.30 a.m.

"... I went to a meeting of the sub-committee about the testimonial of Ruskin's, he having noticed my absence from the previous one with regret. Ruskin was playful and childish and the tea-table overcharged with cakes and sweets as for a juvenile party. Then about an hour later cake and wine were again produced, of which Ruskin again partook largely, reaching out with his thin paw and swiftly absorbing three or four large lumps of cake in succession. At home he looks young and rompish. At the meeting at Hunt's he looked old and ungainly, but his power and eloquence as a speaker were Homeric. But I said at the time that but for his speaking he was in appearance like a cross between a fiend and a tallow-chandler. ... At night to the Working Men's College with Gabriel and then a public meeting to hear Professor Maurice spouting and Ruskin jawing. Ruskin was as eloquent as ever, and is widely popular with the men. He flattered Rossetti in his presence hugely and spoke of Munroe in conjunction with Baron Marochetti as the two noble sculptors whom all the aristocracy patronized — and never one word about Woolner, whose bust he had just before gone into ecstasies about and invited to dinner. This at a moment when Woolner's pupils of the college were all present. Rossetti says Ruskin is a sneak and loves him, Rossetti, because he is one, too, and Hunt he half likes because he is half a sneak, but he hates Woolner because he is manly and straightforward, and me because I am ditto. He adored Millais because Millais was the prince of sneaks, but Millais was too much so, for he sneaked away his wife and so he is obliged to hate him for too much of his favorite quality. Rossetti, in fact, was in such a rage about Ruskin and Woolner that he bullied Munroe all the way home, wishing to take every cab he encountered.

" January 27th. To Jones's (Sir Edward Burne- Jones) yesterday evening with an outfit that Emma had purchased at his request for a poor, miserable girl of seventeen he had met in the streets at 2 a.m. The coldest night this winter — scarcely any clothes, and starving, after five weeks of London life. Jones gave her money and told her to call next morning, which she did, telling her story and that she had parents willing to receive her back again in the country. Jones got me to ask Emma to buy her this outfit and has sent her home this morning. Jones brought Miss Macdonald and I didn't ask any questions. (Miss Macdonald is now Lady Burne- Jones.) This little girl seems to threaten to turn out another genius. She is coming here to paint to-morrow. Her designs in pen-and-ink show real intellect. Jones is going to cut Topsy (William Morris). He says his overbearing temper is becoming quite insupportable as well as his conceit. At Manchester, to give one recording line to it, all that I remember is that an old English picture with Richard II. in it was the only beautiful work of the old masters, and Hunt and Millais the only fine among the new. Hunt, in fact, made the exhibition. The music was jolly and the waiters tried very hard to cheat."

Such were the daily preoccupations of this small circle as recorded — with a spelling whose barbarity I have not attempted to reproduce — in Madox Brown's diary. If the bickerings seem unreasonably ferocious, let it be remembered that in spite of them the unions were very close. Rossetti, who called Ruskin and himself sneaks, put up with Ruskin's eccentricities and Ruskin put up with Rossetti's incredible and trying peculiarities for many years, and Burne- Jones, who was

SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES

FROM PORTRAIT PAINTED BY G. F. WATTS. R.A COURTESY OP FREDERICK KEPPEL f going to cut Topsy for good, retained for this friend of his to the end of their lives a friendship which is among the most touching of modern times. And the secret of it is, no doubt, to be found in the spirit of the last passage that I have quoted. These men might say that So-and-so was a sneak, or that some one else was the prince of sneaks, but they said also that So-and-so "made" an exhibition with his pictures, and that the other man's were the finest of modern works. It was the strong personalities that made them bicker constantly, but it was the strong personalities that gave them their devotion to their art, and it was the devotion to their art that held them all together. It is for this reason that these painters and these poets, distinguished by singular merits and by demerits as singular, made upon the English-speaking world a mark such as perhaps no body of men has made upon intellectual Anglo-Saxondom since the days of Shakespeare. For it is one of the saddening things in Anglo-Saxon life that any sort of union for an aesthetic or for an intellectual purpose seems to be almost an impossibility. Anglo-Saxon writers, as a rule, sit in the British Islands, each on his little hill surrounded each by his satellites, moodily jealous of the fame of each of his rivals, incapable of realizing that the strength of several men together is very much stronger than the combined strengths of the same number of men acting apart. But it was the union of these men in matters of art that gave them their driving force against a world which very much did not want them. They pushed their way among buyers; they pushed their way into exhibitions, and it was an absolutely certain thing that as soon as one of them had got a foothold he never rested until he had helped in as many of his friends as the walls would hold. With just the same frenzy as, in private and among themselves, these men proclaimed each other sneaks, muffs, and even thieves — with exactly the same frenzy did they declare each other to picture buyers to be great and incomparable geniuses. And, as may be observed by the foregoing quotations, for any one of them to leave the other of them out of his praises was to commit the unpardonable sin. So, bickering like swashbucklers or like school-boys about wine, women, and song, they pushed onward to prosperity and to fame.

In those days there was in England a class of rich merchants which retained still the mediaeval idea that to patronize the arts had about it a sort of super-virtue. Such patronage had for them something glamourous, something luxurious, something splendid. They were mostly in the north and in the Midlands. Thus there were Peter Millar, of Liverpool ; George Rae, of Birkenhead ; Leathart, of Gateshead, and Plint, of Birmingham. And while the artists strove among themselves, so did these patrons, each with his own eccentricities, contend for their works. They were as a rule almost as bluff as the artists, and they had also almost as keen a belief that the fine arts could save a man's soul. Here is a portrait of one of these buyers — Mr. Peter Millar, a ship owner of Liverpool, who supported out of his own pocket several artists of merit sufficient to let them starve. His name should have its little niche among the monuments devoted to Good Samaritans and to merchant princes: "I may notice that Mr. Millar's hospitality is somewhat peculiar in its kind. His dinner, which is at six, is of one joint and vegetable, without pudding. Bottled beer for only drink — I never saw any wine. His wife dines at another table with his daughters. After dinner he instantly hurries you off to tea and then back again to smoke. He calls it a meat tea and boasts that few people who have ever dined with him have come back again. All day long I was going here and there with him, dodging back to his office to smoke and then off again after something fresh. The chief things I saw were chain cables forged and Hilton's 'Crucifixion,' which is jolly fine. . . . This Millar is a jolly, kind old man with streaming white hair, fine features, and a beautiful keen eye, like Mulready, and something like John Cross, too. A rich brogue, a pipe of Cavendish, and a smart rejoinder with a pleasant word for every man, woman, or child he meets in the streets are characteristic of him. His house is full of pictures even to the kitchen, which is covered with them. Many he has at all his friends' houses in Liverpool, and his house in Bute is filled with his inferior ones. Many 3 27 splendid Linnells, fine Constables, and good Turners, and works by a Fenchman, Dellefant, are among the most marked of his collection, plus a host of good pictures by Liverpool artists, Davis, Tongue, and Windus chiefly."

These extracts from Madox Brown's diary belong to a period somewhat earlier than that of which I wrote in the preceding chapter. They show the movement getting ready, as it were, to move faster, but moving already, and they reveal the principal figures very much as they were. And gradually these principal actors attracted to themselves each a host of satellites, of parasites, of dependents, of disciples. Some of these achieved fame and died; some of them sponged all their lives and died in the King's Bench Prison; some achieved fame and disgrace; some, like Mr. William de Morgan, still live and have honorable renown; some, like Meredith and like Whistler, became early detached from the great swarm, to shine, solitary planets in the sky. But there are very few of the older or of the lately deceased men of prominence in the arts who were not in one way or other connected with this Old Circle. Thus Swinburne, young, golden-haired, golden-tongued, and spendid, was the constant companion of Rossetti and his wife, the almost legendary Miss Siddall, and later a very frequent inmate of the house in Fitzroy Square. And, indeed, the bonds between this poet and this painter were closer than any such statements can imply. Meredith's connection

ALGERNON CH.ARLES SWINBURNE with the movement was, as to its facts, somewhat more mysterious, but is none the less readily comprehensible. What has been called the famous "Ham and Egg" story seems to put Mr. Meredith in the somewhat ridiculous position of being unable to face the spectacle of ham and eggs upon Rossetti's breakfast table; but this was very unlike Mr. Meredith, who, delicate and austere poet as he was, had, as a novelist, a proper appreciation for the virtues of such things as beef and ale. The position of Mr. Meredith in the household at Cheyne Walk — a large mansion that in Tudor days had been the Dower House of the Queens of England and in which, at one time, D. G. Rossetti, William Rossetti, Swinburne, and Meredith attempted a not very successful communal household — the position of Mr. Meredith in this settlement remains a little mysterious. The ham-and-egg story made it appear that Mr. Meredith did not stop for more than one minute in the establishment, but fled at the sight of the substantial foods upon the table. In a letter to the English Review of last year Mr. Meredith altogether denied the ham-and-egg story, pointing out that his version of the affair would be that, during a stay of an indefinite period in the household at Cheyne Walk, he had observed with alarm Rossetti's habit of consuming large quantities of meat and neglecting altogether to take exercise. Mr. Edward Clodd, on the other hand, informed me the other day that Meredith had assured him that he had never lived with Rossetti at all. I have, however, in my possession letters which, by their date, prove that Mr. Meredith lived there at least one month in the household at Cheyne Walk. Madox Brown's own version of the episode — and he was so constantly at Cheyne Walk that his story, if picturesque, has in it the possibility of truth — Madox Brown's story was as follows:

The Pre-Raphaelite painters and writers were attracted earlier than any other men by the merits and charms of Mr. Meredith's poems. From this connection sprang an acquaintanceship between Rossetti and Meredith, and the acquaintanceship led to the suggestion by Rossetti that Meredith should make a fourth in the household. This suggestion Meredith accepted. The arrangement was that each of the four men should contribute his share of the rent and of household bills, but Mr. Meredith was at that time in circumstances of an extreme poverty and, while paying his rent, he was unable or unwilling to join in the household expenses. Thus he never appeared at table. This may have been because he disliked the food; but the Pre-Raphaelites imagined that he was starving himself for the sake of pride. They attempted, therefore, by sending up small breakfast dishes to his room and by similar attentions to provide him with some measure of comfort. It is possible that these dishes disgusted him, but it is still more possible that they disturbed his pride, which was considerable. According to Madox Brown, the end came one day when the

3° benevolent poets substituted for the cracked boots which he put outside his door to be cleaned a new pair of exactly the same size and make. He put on the boots, went out, and, having forwarded a check for the quarter's rent, never returned.

But supposing this story to be a mere delusion of Madox Brown's — though I can well believe it to be true enough — there is no reason why something of the sort should not have happened, and why Meredith should not equally truthfully represent that Rossetti's methods of housekeeping were trying to his refined sensibilities. For in person and in habits Mr. Meredith, with his mordant humor, his clean, quick intelligence, and his impatience of anything approaching the slovenly, was exactly the man to suffer the keenest anguish in any household that was conducted by the poet-artist. It is true that at that time Rossetti was not sole ruler of the house, but he was certainly the dominant spirit, and his was a spirit in matters of the world easy-going, disorderly, and large in the extreme. You have to consider the Cheyne Walk house as a largeish, rather gloomy Queen Anne mansion with portions of a still older architecture. The furnishings were in no sense aesthetic. It is true there were rather garish sofas designed for and executed by Morris & Company, but most of the things had been picked up by Rossetti without any particular regard for coherence of aesthetic scheme. Gilded sunfishes hung from the ceilings along with drop lustres of the most excruciatingly Victorian type, and gilded lamps from the palace of George IV. at Brighton. There were all sorts of chinoiseries, cabinets, screens, blue china, and peacocks' feathers. The dustbins were full of priceless plates off which Rossetti dined and which the servants broke in the kitchen. Rossetti, in fact, surrounded himself with anything that he could find that was quaint and bizarre, whether of the dead or the live world. So that the image of his house, dominated as it was by his wonderful personality, was that of a singular warren of oddities. Speaking impressionistically we may say that supposing an earthquake had shaken the house down, or, still more, supposing that some gigantic hand could have taken it up and shaken its contents out as from a box, there would have issued out a most extraordinary collection — raccoons, armadillos, wombats, a Zebu bull, peacocks, models, mistresses, and an army of queer male and female "bad hats," who might be as engagingly criminal as they liked as long as they were engaging, as long as they were quaint, as long as they were interesting. They cadged on Rossetti, they stole from him, they blackmailed him, they succeeded, indeed, in driving him mad; but I think they all worshipped him. He had, in fact, a most extraordinary gift of inspiring enthusiasm, this singular, Italianate man, who had all an Italian's powers of extracting money from clients, who worried people to death with his eccentricities, who drove them crazy with his jealousies, who

JAMES M'NEILL WHISTLER

FROM A SKETCH FROM LIFE BY RAJON COURTESY OF FREDERICK KEPPEL charmed them into ecstasies with his tongue and with his eyes. "Why is he not some great king?" wrote one Pre-Raphaelite poet who was stopping with him, to another, "that we might lay down our lives for him ?" And curiously enough, one of the watchers at Whistler's bedside during that painter's last hours has informed me that, something to the discredit of Rossetti having been uttered in conversation, Whistler opened his eyes and said: "You must not say anything against Rossetti. Rossetti was a king."

This may have been said partly to tease his listeners, whose styles of painting were anything rather than Rossettian, but Whistler certainly received nothing but kindness at the hands of the Pre-Raphaelite group. Looking through some old papers the other day I came upon a circular that Madox Brown had had printed, drawing the attention of all his old patrons to the merits of Whistler's etchings, and begging them in the most urgent terms to make purchases because Whistler was " a great genius."

Now, upon one occasion Madox Brown, going to a tea-party at the Whistlers' in Chelsea, was met in the hall by Mrs. Whisder, who begged him to go to the poulterer's and purchase a pound of butter. The bread was cut, but there was nothing to put upon it. There was no money in the house, the poulterer had cut ofFhis credit, and, Mrs. Whistler said, she dare not send her husband, for he would certainly punch that tradesman's head.

So that not nearly all the men whom this circle encouraged, helped, taught, or filled with the contagion of enthusiasm were by any means ignoble. Indeed, every one of them had some quality or other. Thus there was a painter whom we will call P., whose indigence was remarkable, but whose talents are now considerably recognized. This painter had a chance of a commission to make illustrations for a guide-book dealing with Wales. The commission, however, depended upon the drawings meeting with approval, and Mr. P., being without the necessary means of paying for his travels, applied to Madox Brown for a loan. Madox Brown produced the money, and then, remembering that he had intended to take a holiday himself, decided to accompany his friend. They arrived upon a given morning toward two o'clock in some Welsh watering-place, having walked through the day and a greater part of the night with their knapsacks on their backs. They were unable to rouse anybody at the inn, there was not a soul in the streets, there was nothing but a long esplanade with houses whose windows gave onto the ground.

"Well, I'm going to have a sleep," P. said. "But that is impossible," Madox Brown answered. "Not at all," P. rejoined with a happy confidence; and, pulling his knapsack round his body, he produced his pallet-knife. With this in his hand, to the horror of Madox Brown, he approached the drawing-room window of one of the lodging-houses. He slipped the knife through the crack, pushed back the catch, opened the window and got in, followed eventually by his more timid companion. Having locked the door from the inside to prevent intrusion, they lay down upon the sofa and on chairs and proceeded to sleep till the morning, when they got out of the window, once more closed it, and went on their way. I have always wondered what the housemaid thought in the morning when she came down and found the drawing-room door locked from the inside.

On the next night they appeared to be in an almost similar danger of bedlessness. They arrived at a small village which contained only one inn, and that was filled with a large concourse of Welsh-speaking people. The landlord, speaking rather broken English, told them that they could not have a room or a bed. There was a room with two beds in it, but they could not have it. This enraged Mr. P. beyond description. He vowed that not only would he have the law on the landlord, but he would immediately break his head; and Mr. P. being a redoubtable boxer, his threat was no mean one. So that, having consulted with his Welsh friends, the host made signs to them that they could have the room in an hour, which he indicated by pointing at the clock. In an hour, accordingly, they were ushered into a room which contained a large and comfortable double bed. Mr. P. undressed and retired. Madox Brown similarly undressed and was about to step into bed when he placed his bare foot upon something of an exceedingly ghastly coldness. He gave a cry which roused Mr. P. Mr. P. sprang from the bed, and, bending down, caught hold of a man's hand. He proceeded to drag out the man, who displayed a throat cut from ear to ear. "Oh, is that all ?" Mr. P. said, and having shoved the corpse under the bed he retired upon it and slept tranquilly. Madox Brown passed the night in the coffee-room.

Upon this walking tour Mr. P. picked up a gypsy girl who afterward served as a model to many famous academicians. He carried her off with him to London, where he installed her in his studio. There was nothing singular about this; but what amazed Mr. P.'s friends was the fact that Mr. P., the most bellicose of mortals, from that moment did not issue outside his house. The obvious reason for this was a gypsy of huge proportion and forbidding manner who had taken up his quarters at a public-house at the corner of the street. P.'s friends gibed at him for his want of courage, but P. continued sedulously and taciturnly to paint. At last he volunteered the information that he could not afford to damage his hands before he had finished his academy picture. The picture finished, he sallied forth at once, knocked all the teeth down the gypsy's throat, and incidentally broke both his knuckles. The gypsy girl was credited with the retort that was once famous in London. When P., who had been given a box at the Opera, proposed to take her with him, she refused obdurately to accompany him, and for a long time would give no reason. Being pressed, she finally blurted out: "Ye don't put a toad in your waistcoat pocket." In this saying she underrated the charm of one who, till quite a short time ago, was a popular and beloved hostess in London, for she married one of P.'s wealthiest patrons, while poor P. remained under a necessity of borrowing small loans to the end of his life.

Ill

IT has always seemed at first sight a mystery to me how in the seventies and eighties such an inordinate number of poets managed to live in the gloom of central London. Nowadays English poets live, as far as I know — and I have reasons for knowing the addresses of an infinite number of them — English poets live — they cannot by any stretch of imagination be said to flourish, unless they have what is called private means — they live in Bedford Park, a few in Chelsea, and a great many in the country. Bedford Park is a sort of rash of villas crowded not so very close together or so very far out of town; Chelsea has the river to give it air. At any rate, the poets of to-day crowd toward the light.

But in those old days they seemed filled with a passion for gloom. For I cannot imagine anything much more Cimmerian than Bloomsbury and the west central districts of the capital of England. Yet here — I am speaking only impressionistically — all the Pre-Raphaelite poets seemed to crowd together, full of enthusiasm, pouring forth endless songs about the loves of Launcelot and Guinevere, about music and moonlight. You have to think of it as a region of soot-blackened brick houses, with here and there black squares whose grimy trees reach up into a brownish atmosphere. What there is not black is brownish.

Yet here all these dead poets seemed to live. Fitzroy Square, of which I have written, is such a square; the Rossettis always circled round Bloomsbury. Though D. G. Rossetti travelled as far afield as Chelsea, William Rossetti until very lately lived in Euston Square, which, to celebrate a murder, changed its name to Endsleigh Gardens; and Christina — who for me is the most satisfactory of all the poets of the nineteenth century — died in times of fog in Woburn Square.

I suppose they sang of Launcelot and Guinevere to take their own minds off their surroundings, having been driven into their surroundings by the combined desire for cheap rents and respectable addresses. Some of them were conscious of the gloom, some no doubt were not. Mr. Joaquin Miller, coming from Nicaragua and Arizona to stay for a time in Gower Street — surely the longest, the grayest, and the most cruel of all London streets — this author of "Songs of the Sierras" was greeted rapturously by the Pre-Raphaelite poets, and wrote of life in London as a rush, a whirl, a glow — all the motion of the world. He wrote ecstatically and at the same time with humility, pouring out his verses as one privileged to be at table with all the great ones of the earth. In the mornings he rode in the Row among the "swells," wearing a red shirt, cowboy boots and a sombrero; in the evening he attended in the same costume at the dinners of the great intellectuals, where brilliantly he was a feature. Had he not been with Walker, the filibuster, in Nicaragua ? I can dimly remember the face of Mark Twain — or was it Bret Harte ? — standing between open folding doors at a party, gazing in an odd, puzzled manner at this brilliant phenomena. I fancy the great writer, whichever it was, was not too pleased that this original should represent the manners and customs of the United States in the eyes of the poets. Mr. Miller did them good, if it were an injustice to Boston. He represented for the poets Romance.

But if Mr. Miller saw in London life, light, and the hope of fame, and if some others of the poets saw it in similar terms, there were others who saw the city in terms realistic enough. Thus poor James Thomson, writing as B. V., sang of the City of Dreadful Night, and, we are told, drank himself to death. That was the grisly side of it. If you were a poet you lived in deep atmospheric gloom and, to relieve yourself, to see color, you must sing of Launcelot and Guinevere. If the visions would not come, you must get stimulants to give you them. I remember as a child being present in the drawing-room of a relative just before a dinner at which Tennyson and Browning had been asked to meet a rising poet to whom it was desired to give a friendly lift. It was the longest and worst quarter of an hour possible. The celebrities fidgeted, did not talk, looked in Olympian manner at their watches. At last they went in to dinner without the young poet. I was too little and too nervous to tell them that half an hour before I had seen the poor fellow lying hopelessly drunk across a whelk-stall in the Euston Road. One of the grimmest stories that I have heard even of that time and neighborhood was told me by the late Mr. William Sharp. Mr. Sharp was himself a poet of the Pre-Raphaelites, though later he wrote as Fiona Macleod, and thus joined the Celtic school of poetry that still flourishes in the person of Mr. W. B. Yeats. Mr. Sharp had gone to call on Philip Marston, the blind author of "Songtide," and of many other poems that in that day were considered to be a certain passport to immortality. Going up the gloomy stairs of a really horrible house near Gower Street Station, he heard proceeding from the blind poet's rooms a loud sound of growling, punctuated with muffled cries for help. He found the poor blind man in the clutches of the poet I have just omitted to name, crushed beneath him and, I think, severely bitten. This poet had had an attack of delirium tremens and imagined himself a Bengal tiger. Leaving Marston, he sprang on all fours toward Sharp, but he burst a blood-vessel and collapsed on the floor. Sharp lifted him onto the sofa, took Marston into another room, and then rushed hatless through the streets to the hospital that was round the corner. The surgeon in charge, himself drunk and seeing Sharp covered with blood, insisted on giving him in charge for murder; Sharp, always a delicate man, fainted. The poet was dead of hemorrhage before assistance reached him.