A painter's camp

Book II. In Scotland. Book III. In France. BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 6 1867

STEREOTYPED AT THE

BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY,

No. 4 Spring Lane.

Presswork by John Wilson and Son.

^ffaiiottatelg fmrikfr

WILLIAM WYLD,

MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF AMSTERDAM, CHEVALIER OF THE LEGION OF HONOR, ETC.

THE SEVEREST OF MY CRITICS, AND ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS.

Preface

TO THE FIRST EDITION,

IT is known to all who are acquainted with the present condition of the fine arts in England that landscape-painters rely less on memory and invention than formerly, and that their work from nature is much more laborious than it used to be.

Having studied principally in the northern districts, I had to contend against great difficulties of climate. These difficulties I have entirely overcome, having painted from nature on the most exposed moors of Lancashire and the Scottish Highlands in the worst possible weather, and in all seasons of the year.

With no more than such ordinary powers of physical strength and endurance as are to be found amongst average English gentlemen, I have worked from nature on the spot seven or eight hours a day, in the wildest situations, and in the most merciless storms of winter. I have carried through the most delicate processes in color, hour after hour, when shepherds refused to wander on the hills and sheep were lost in the drifted snow.

If anybody cares to know how this was accomvi Preface.

plished, this book will tell him. If the reader happens to be a painter by profession, he will appreciate the utility of the expedients I found it to my advantage to adopt.

The expeditions here narrated were not undertaken in the spirit of whim or freak, or from a love of adventure, as persons unacquainted with the objects of a landscape-painter will in all probability suppose. They were not undertaken in any way for pleasure, but as seriously as any other human labor ; and had no other motive than that strong desire which every real artist must feel — to get the utmost amount of attainable truth into my work.

It seems necessary to say this at the outset, because, amongst all the difficulties I have ever encountered, the most insuperable has always been an ignorant misunderstanding of motives ; and if the reader happened to share this, the whole scope and purpose of the book would be utterly unintelligible to him.

All persons are not artists, and cannot, therefore, be expected to understand, without a little explanation, that artistic labor is an exceedingly delicate affair, and requires for its successful performance some degree of protection from rain, hail, snow, and wind.

But any one, especially if he happens to be a man of business, may, if he chooses, ascertain practically the desirableness of shelter when one has careful work to do. Let him take his papers out of doors some wild winter's day, with nothing in the way of furniture but a portable three-legged stool and a portfolio. Let him carry this apparatus into the middle of some exposed field, and then apply himself as he best may,

Preface. vii

without shelter, in the rain and wind, to the prosecution of his business. There is not a clerk nor an attorney in England who would work under such conditions. Men of business are always far too shrewd — understand the laws of work far too well — not to perceive the immense advantage to the workman of having his body at ease, that he may give his undivided attention to the labor in hand. So their offices and counting-houses are comfortably furnished, and are full of all sorts of contrivances for the orderly arrangement of their materials. And does the reader suppose that delicate drawing does not require at least as tranquil a nerve as the addition of a column of figures, or the composition of a letter? It is just as rational for a landscape-painter to take a tent with him to shelter him whilst he works from nature, as it is for a lawyer to rent chambers, or a cotton manufacturer to build himself a counting-house.

Notwithstanding these very obvious considerations, the author has usually found certain invincible misconceptions in most people who are not professed landscape-painters.

Firstly, everybody fancied that I took to tent life because I preferred a tent to a house. This idea was constantly expressed in some such observation as this : " Well, upon my word, I can't see what you like so much in a tent. I prefer a good strong stone house with a well-slated roof."

Secondly, a few thought it was from dislike to inns, and argued that the inns were very comfortable, &c.

I did not take to encamping because I preferred a tent to a house as a habitation, but simply because I found it considerably more portable. My largest tent viii Preface.

weighs about one hundred weight — a comfortable house weighs above a thousand tons. It takes about twenty minutes to pitch the most elaborate of all my tents — a good house cannot be built and made ready for habitation in less than twenty months. My best tent cost me a little over twenty pounds — a comfortable house would cost at least a thousand. To have a house of this kind built on every spot where I have pitched my tent would have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.

I am certainly not very fond of inns ; but that is not the reason why I prefer my tent to them. The real reason is, because it is necessary for me to pitch my tent exactly (that is, to a few inches) in such a position that I may see a good natural composition through my plate-glass window without stirring from my seat. Now, after considerable experience of Highland inns, I may be permitted to state that as a rule they are not provided with plate-glass windows — that, in fact, at this moment I remember no instance of a plate-glass window in any inn or hotel north of the Clyde — and common glass distorts objects; and, therefore, it is of no use trying to see through it, for any purpose of art.

And there is yet another objection. So far as my memory serves me, Highland inns are somewhat heavy tabernacles, weighing, I should say, a good many tons each ; and, being usually built on the earth, and not erected on wheels, it is exceedingly difficult to stir one of them without pulling it down. So when the view visible from one's bedroom window (in the height of the season, usually a garret) does not happen to be quite suitable as a composition, what is to be done if it should happen to rain? — and rain is a natural

Preface. ix

phenomenon which not unfrequently occurs in the Highlands of Scotland. What painters residing at inns usually do in wet weather is no great mystery. They read the newest Glasgow Herald they can lay hold of, or study Black* s Guide, or smoke tobacco, or drink whiskey, or talk to the landlady — all very praiseworthy and profitable occupations, no doubt, only they don't paint from nature.

The light sketching tents sold by the colormen are good things in their way for summer, but of little use in winter. It is impossible to work long in the snow without a fire as well as shelter. In my tent I work just as well in winter as in summer, having a little stove to heat it. The season of the year is, in fact, a matter of absolute indifference to me, so far as it concerns my work, except that in winter the days are shorter.

HOW THE NOTION OF ENCAMPING DEVELOPED ITSELF.

First form of the idea. Something to shelter a painter from the wind and rain, and yet enable him to see. This led to the devising of a hut for shelter, with plate-glass windows to see through.

Second for 7ii of the idea. Suppose the hut erected ; somebody must sleep in it to guard it at night. It was a long way from home ; if I slept in it myself, I should be spared a long walk at each end of the day. This led to sleeping in the hut.

Third form. The small troubles of life reminded me that servants are useful people. Accommodation for a servant was wanted. I devised a combination of tent and hut for him. This led to a transition from huts to tents; and now, 1866, my camp is all of canvas— two ordinary tents and a studio tent.

Lastly, I may as well confess that, having tried camp life, I took a great liking for it, and to this day enjoy nothing so much, unless it be sailing.

Contents

BOOK I. — IN ENGLAND.

CHAP. PAGE

I. A Walk on the Lancashire Moors i

Book III. — In France

I. First Head Quarters. — A Little French

City 247

II. The Slopes of Gold 296

III. Second Head Quarters. — A Farm in the

Autunois 313

IV. A River Voyage in a Basket 337

A PAINTER'S GAMP

Chapter I. A Walk On The Lancashire Moors

I HAD a wild walk yesterday. I have a notion of encamping on the Boulsworth moors to study heather ; and heartily tired of being caged up here in my library, with nothing to see but wet gardenwalks and dripping yew trees, and a sun-dial whereon no shadow had fallen the livelong day, I determined, in spite of the rain, to be off to the moors to choose a site for my encampment. Not very far from this house still dwells an old servant of my uncle's, with whom I am on the friendliest terms. So I called upon this neighbor on my way, and asked him if he would take a walk with me to the hills. Jamie stared a little, and remarked that " it ur feefil weet," but accompanied me nevertheless, and a very pleasant walk we had of it.

i o>

2 A Walk on tJie

By climbing over innumerable stone-walls, and following here and there the course of a narrow, sloppylane for a few hundred yards, we got at last on the wild heath. I think no scenery in England could be sadder or wilder than such scenery as that in such weather. Fancy a vast bleak range of hills partitioned into fields by leagues upon leagues of stone-walls, with here and there a dreary village where the quarrymen live who work in the stone-quarries on the hills, and one or two desolate mansions of the Elizabethan age standing forlorn on the bare hills, their fair parks cut up into pastures, their oak-woods felled long ago, their wainscoted chambers empty and cold, and their lofty gables rent and tottering. These, with the uncouth manners of the peasantry, and the harshness of their northern dialect, recall vividly that wonderful flight of Jane Eyre from the house of Mr. Rochester. Those passages of landscape-description which every one has admired in that marvellous novel were studied by the young woman who wrote it from this very country I am trying to describe now. We passed one or two little out-of-the-way houses that answered exactly to the description of that where Jane Eyre found shelter and friends, and any painter who would illustrate that part of the novel should come here for his backgrounds.

Having found a wild mountain-road, we followed it till we came to the real heather region. I examined very carefully every spot which appeared favorable for camp-work, but have not yet decided which to choose finally. We had crossed the border of Yorkshire before we turned to come home, and I

Lancashire Moors. 3

found a very fine wild valley, with one side of it covered with magnificent stones, as big as Highland cottages, scattered about like pebbles on the sea-shore. After spending some time amongst these stones seeking for natural compositions, I was forced to return homewards by another route, as night was coming on, and the moors were misty, and we were very likely to be lost.

And lost we were, and that utterly ; for when we got out upon the great broad summit of the moor, night had come on, and I could not see my hand. Jamie was about a. hundred yards from me, when he began to get confused, and cried out, —

" Mestur Gilburd, Mestur Gilburd, con yau tell me where Worsthorn lies?"

"Yes, certainly," I answered in the most perfect confidence ; "it lies down there in the west, where the wind comes from."

"Nay, nay," said Jamie; "I know naut abaat it mysen, but I dunnot think yau'll find it, sur, if yau go thither."

"Well, which way must we go, then?"

" I connot tell."

So I told Jamie to wait till we got together, and then I said we had better walk on till we came to a wall which I knew crossed the moor near some recent enclosures. And we kept together in the darkness, stumbling and falling over the boggy ground, through the pelting rain, as we best could, till I fell into a ditch, and in stretching forth my hands felt what seemed to be a rock immediately in front of me, and then by touching its surface, as a blind man reads an embossed book, discovered that it was of rude masonry,

4 A Walk on the

and not rock, and then called out in triumph that I had found the wall. On this rose a difference between us as to the direction in which we ought to follow our newly-found guide ; but, happily for both of us, I yielded the point, and followed Jamie along the wall-side for what seemed an interminable distance, till we came suddenly against another wall, that ran at right angles to the first, and then we knew that the road lay there on the other side.

" Our anxieties over, I wanted to have a cigar, but my pockets were wet and matches spoiled. So we marched quickly along the road, which was just visible, and mile after mile of the black moorland passed away to the rear unperceived.

At last we came to a village, and seeing, by the glimmering light from a window, a crooked branch of oak, without bark or leaf, suspended over an open door, I knew that we were at the sign of the Crooked Billet in Worsthorn, and entered therein and lighted my long-deferred cigar, and refreshed myself and Jamie with hot ale and the contemplation of a brightly-blazing fire, and then we came home.

Barbarous is the artistic design of the old carved bed I slept in here last night, and slender are its claims to a sculptor's admiration ; but as I lay meditating in it after a luxurious bath, and watched the firelight glance unsteadily on grim visages carved deep in the dark panels, and on the absurd old pillars rashly built to outrage all the laws of construction and common sense, with their huge carved blocks of timber, held together by weak and slender shafts — and on the great oak tester these pillars

Lancashire Moors, 5

painfully carried century after century, they themselves trembling at every sound under their ponderous burden — I forgave for once all these picturesque barbarisms, and thought myself happy to lie once more under that threatening old tester, rather than out on the wet moor, with the cold low rain-cloud for a canopy.

Chapter II. The Author Invents A New Hut

AM quite determined to encamp to study heather ; there is none of it near enough to go to every day, and I must have a few careful studies of it, no matter what trouble and inconvenience they cost me. These green fields and pleasant pastures are all very well in their way, but no preparation for the Highland foregrounds : I hate prim hedges and smooth meadows, belted with plantations. The only valuable bit of study near at hand is a little sandstone stream ; but one cannot long work at the same kind of subject without getting contracted ideas.

If I go and live a month on the moor, I think it will be long enough to produce a satisfactory oil study of foreground detail. Then, if I find that camp life suits me, I intend to follow out the plan in the Highlands of Scotland for some months every year.

I have been very busily occupied with the invention of a new hut, which is at last finished, and which appears to promise every accommodation I require in a wonderfully small space. The hut is erected in the garden here, where it excites a good deal of curiosity. It consists entirely of panels, of which the largest are two feet six inches square : these panels can be carried separately on pack-horses, or even on men's backs, and then united together by iron bolts into a strong little

The Author invents a new Hut. 7

building. Four of the largest panels serve as windows, being each of them filled with a large pane of excellent plate-glass. When erected, the walls present a perfectly smooth surface outside, and a panelled interior ; the floor being formed in exactly the same manner, with the panelled or coffered side turned towards the earth, and the smooth surface uppermost. By this arrangement, all the wall-bolts are inside, and those of the floor underneath it, which protects them not only from the weather, but from theft, an iron bolt being a great temptation to country people on account of its convenience and utility. The walls are bolted to the floor, which gives great strength to the whole structure, and the panels are carefully ordered, like the stones in a well-built wall, so that the joints of the lower course of panels do not fall below those of the upper. The roof is arched, and covered with water-proof canvas. I have been careful to provide a current of fresh air, by placing ventilators at each end of the arch, which insures a current without inconvenience to the occupant.

This hut is a perfect masterpiece of joiner's work, and I have no doubt will completely answer my purpose. It would ha've been a great treasure in the Crimea, but the design is too expensive and too elaborate for military purposes. For the study of snow in windy weather, when the drifts are most beautiful, it will be a most precious addition to nvy artistic apparatus, for I shall be able to sit comfortably inside, and still see my subject through the plate-glass just as well as without it, and yet be perfectly protected from the wind. I have described this little hut in detail, because I think some, such invention might be of real

8 The Author invents a new Hut.

service to our modern school of naturalistic landscape-painters, whose work from nature is of so exceedingly arduous a character that it ought to have every facility that human ingenuity can contrive for it. I hope, ultimately, to ascertain experimentally how far inventions of this kind may assist artists in their endeavors after truth, and to publish for their benefit any results I may arrive at.

Since the hut was set up in the garden, many of our friends have seen it. One young lady thought it would make a good kennel for my big Newfoundland dog ; but an old lady of rank would not hear of any such disparaging comments upon it, and declared very positively that she considered the hut a bit of most refined luxury, adding that she could live in it herself very happily indeed, if necessary.

I have invited one of my most intimate friends, and we have inaugurated the hut with a small banquet, at which we two only were present. The house being at no great distance, everything passed off satisfactorily enough, but I look forward with some anxiety to the difficulties of the culinary department when I am alone on the hill, with no friendly kitchen within call.

Chapter III. Under Canvas. — The Weather Unpropitious

I" AM in camp at last, on the frontier line between ■*- Lancashire and Yorkshire, on avast moor which extends far in every direction. We carted the hut over the hills, and have erected it in a very convenient position. The road led us over ground so treacherous that we were often axle-deep in the morass ; but we arrived here safely after all, and built the hut in its place before nightfall, when the men left me.

The rain pelted furiously in the evening, and I was fortunate in getting my house built during the fine hours of the afternoon. The wind, too, rose at night, and howled wofully enough over the moor ; but the hut seemed wonderfully snug and cosy when I lighted my pipe, and made myself a cup of tea.

When the pipe was finished, I slung my hammock and fell asleep ; but during the night there came a storm of wind and rain that made the hut tremble and quake before it. I awoke suddenly, and when restored to a full consciousness of my position, found myself alone, in a sailor's hammock, in a slight little wooden cabin, on the stormy heights of a northern moor.

My first sensation was that of imminent danger at sea. I thought the spray beat against the window of my cabin, but it was only the furious rain ; I thought the sails flapped above me in the storm, but it was io Under Canvas.

only the canvas roof; I expected the cabin to pitch and roll, but it remained steadfast, though trembling in every fibre.

Then, at last, I became aware that I was not at sea, but only alone on the hills, a thousand feet above it ; and I turned in my hammock with an ineffable sensation of profound comfort and satisfaction.

On awaking the next morning, I felt so warm and comfortable that the idea of getting up was exceedingly repugnant to me ; but having reflected that I had no servants to prepare my breakfast, I came to the wise conclusion that I had better bestir myself, and get forward with my work. I had done very little towards effecting a convenient arrangement of all my things when a boy arrived with milk, and offered to fetch me water, and show me the nearest spring.

Whoever would realize my position here should read Jane Eyre over again, and pay particular attention to her description of the moor country. I am at the highest point of the mountain road from Burnley to Heptonstall, about two hundred yards from the border line of Lancashire. I enjoy my rambles on the moor exceedingly. I like the long lines of these hills, with their endless variety and sweet subtlety of curve. They are not mountains, nor have they any pretension to the energetic character of the true mountain form ; but they have a certain calm beauty, and a sublime expression of gigantic power in repose, that we do not find in the loftier ranges. If I were not determined to study in the Highlands of Scotland, I could find work enough in these Lancashire and Yorkshire highlands to last my life. They are deficient, however, in the grand element of water; and

The Weather unpropitious. I 1

that is a sufficient reason why I have no business to remain here very long, when thousands of noble effects are passing every day from the great northern lakes unobserved and unrecorded.

I am down in a little dell for shelter, and because the foreground here suits me ; but I have only to walk a few yards to see Pendle and all the blue Craven hills, which, from this elevation, look exceedingly grand ; a few hundred feet lower, the base of Pendle shuts out all the others. There is a perfectly delightful little dell close at hand, that is completely hidden from the road, and I half repent I did not establish myself there instead of here, where my hut is visible to the passers-by, which will probably cause me some annoyance. As to the other hollow, I found it out by accident, and too late. It is a sweet natural lawn of short, soft grass, surrounded by a gigantic wall of ponderous rocks, all crowned and tufted with purpleflowering heather. A tiny stream of crystalline purity winds through this exquisite hollow ; and one cannot help imagining that the fairies dance by moonlight on its delicate grass, and revel by its little stream.

I mentioned in the first chapter what a noble valley there is near here, and what magnificent stones. For studies of massive individual stones, the Flask Moor is as good as a Highland glen. Blocks, equal in size to a good dining-room, are strewn about with such colossal energy as almost to revive in one the infantine conception of divine operation, and to lead one to imagine that a giant-god of mighty muscle and sinew had hurled them about in the sportiveness of supernatural strength.

There are a few farm-houses in these wilds, some

12 Under Canvas.

of them old, but for the most part not picturesque, and especially deficient in color. The stone-walls that cut up the country into thousands of parallelograms and trapeziums do not carry their geometry over the great heights of Boulsworth ; but wherever land is enclosed in this region, it is always by these dull, brownish-gray stone lines, hateful alike to the hunter and the artist.

The weather has been exceedingly rough since I took up my residence here. The first night was wet, as I said above, but the second a storm came on at dusk, and during the whole night a hurricane blew from the east, catching one end of my hut, and making it tremble and vibrate all night long. I had some fears for the gables, which are not so well supported as the other panels. However, they stood perfectly stanch ; but often, during the night, violent squalls shook my frail habitation, and rattled its contents loudly. My tin salt-box rattled the whole night, or at least was busy rattling every time I awoke. A gust of extraordinary violence would come at intervals, flapping the canvas so that it gave loud reports, as a ship's sails do in a tempest. The driven rain whipped the window, pans danced and jingled on their shelves, the boards of die hut shrieked in the storm's path, and the canvas flapped with sharp reports like pistolshots. I determined quietly what I would do if the wrind tore the roofoif; and having arranged all the details to my satisfaction in a sort of programme, turned over, and fell asleep ; and though sometimes awaking afterwards to find myself in the dark, with such a confusion of noises about me as might almost have frightened me, I always immediately recollected

The Weather un-proftitious. 13

where I was, turned over quietly, and fell asleep again. Sometimes the flapping of the canvas sounded unpleasantly like the efforts of some robber to break into the hut ; but I did not think a thief would have the sense to choose a confusing night. My dog was well off the wind, as his kennel is to the west. In the morning I made an unpleasant discovery. Before the hut was bolted together, I wished to grease the joints with tallow ; but the joiner who made it, being very proud of his workmanship, had persuaded me that the joints were so exquisitely fitted that there was no occasion for tallow at all ; so I omitted that precaution, and the water gets in. I tried to tallow the joints inside, but could not keep the wet out.

The morning was terrific, and it rained incessantly all day ; still I worked very steadily at my foreground. I drew the ground with perfect ease in all its detail, as deliberately as if I had been copying a picture in the Louvre. The subject I intend to paint here is an admirable study of foreground, rich in every variety of moorland vegetation, and I shall stay here until I have every leaf and blade of it on canvas. The season is already too far advanced for the finest purple of the heather bloom ; but what remains of it is still precious, and an infinite variety of color lies half hidden under the blasted stems of the burnt heath. Delicate little ferns of the purest green lie close to spots of scarlet as bright as the plumage of tropical birds. Then there are those exquisite oases, where the grass is shorter, and softer, and greener than palace lawns, and where, when you go near enough, you may see that a spring, pure and abundant, washes continually every blade with its sweet waters.

14 Under Canvas. — The Weather unprofiztious.

The evening did not promise much comfort : it was excessively stormy, and I did not lay my carpet down, on account of the wet. I did contrive, however, to give some appearance of comfort to matters, and drank my cup of tea in peace ; after which I got a pipe and a book. I set pans to catch the water, which now dropped at many places, and having hung my hammock in the middle, instead of at one side of the hut, as usual, and unscrewed the legs from my table to get it out of the way, got into bed, and fell asleep directly, in the midst of a thousand noises.

The storm went on, I suppose, during the night with its old fury, for this morning it seems not at all abated. The wind, however, has veered to the north-east, and so I am better sheltered than yesterday. I am getting a little tired of hearing the water drop into my pans, and beat against my house, but so accustomed to it that it is beginning to seem quite the normal state of things, and an odd sort of feeling begins to gain upon me that I am alone in a dreary land, where it raineth forever and forever.