Volume 74 — HAYDON’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.[1]

HAYDON’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.^[1]

We fear that, of late, there has been considerable deterioration in the tone of contemporary criticism. Works which, in themselves, contain nothing either interesting or memorable, have been puffed into notice on account of the celebrity of the editorial accoucheur, or the former reputation of the party to whom they more particularly refer. Others, which set nature, truth, and common-sense at defiance, and which are, both in conception and composition, extravagant and absurd, are lauded to the skies as the productions of great and commanding genius. Belonging to the former class are the Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, to which Lord John Russell, actuated no doubt by the most pious and praiseworthy motives, has consented to appear as sponsor. Anything less interesting than the Memoirs, more weakly gossiping than the Journal, and more deplorably dull than the Correspondence of the Bard of Erin, it would be difficult for the imagination of man to conceive; and yet for a time, and until the work got into circulation, there was no limit to the roaring of the laudatory bellows. Belonging to the latter class are sundry works of fiction, of which the present season has produced a remarkably contemptible crop. Journals of some pretension have not hesitated—from what motive we shall not inquire—to characterise the silliest of these as among the most truthful, eloquent, and interesting publications of the year. Few can have forgotten the shout of exultation with which Lord Holland’s Reminiscences were hailed by a certain section of the press, and the persevering attempt to cram down the public throat that farrago of imbecility and scandal. Even in the domain of poetry, fustian has been mistaken for inspiration; and the crude fancies of a whimsical brain have been represented as the noblest efforts of sublime and godlike genius.

This tendency towards undue and extravagant laudation may perhaps in some degree be accounted for by the paucity of new works of merit. Certainly there has been very little of late in the productions of the press to stimulate curiosity or excite interest; and the critics, who are in the main endowed with a much larger share of good-nature than they receive credit for, grow weary of snarling, and, in the absence of better material, take to praising books which, in better and more fruitful times, they would unhesitatingly have condemned. The error is on the gentle side, and we cannot harshly condemn it. But, on the other hand, we now and then meet with remarkable instances of neglect. Judging from the notices which we have seen in various literary journals, and the slight and almost supercilious tone of their commentaries, we are led to believe that the work presently before us—the autobiography of Haydon the painter—has not as yet received, at the hands of the critics, the full measure of consideration. Works of this kind are not to be judged by strictly artistic rules. It is impossible that a diary, extending over the period of many years—indeed the active part of a lifetime—and faithfully chronicling the thoughts, deeds, and struggles of the writer, should be otherwise than unequal in its interest. In the career of all men there are elevations and depressions—fits of energy and times of carelessness—high aims and humble objects—alternations of triumph and despair. Sometimes we are inclined to smile at the eagerness displayed in the pursuit of a phantom; sometimes we are moved to tears by the cry of agony wrung from a disappointed spirit. Sunshine and shadow, calm and tempest—these follow each other in the life of man as certainly as in external nature; and sometimes, even when the clouds are at the darkest, a gleam comes athwart the mass to light up the glories of the rainbow. The value of an autobiography is its truth. If it has been written, not for the purpose of giving a true impression of thought or a just portraiture of self, but for posthumous exhibition, in order that men may know the altitude of him who wrote it, vanity is almost sure to assume the place of truth, and the picture, however skilfully designed, has small resemblance to the original. The author, in designing his own mausoleum, forgets the rules of proportion, and over the remains of an ordinary mortal would construct the pyramid of a king. If, on the other hand, it be a genuine chronicle, in which thoughts are entered and deeds described irrespective of all considerations as to after judgment or approval, we have indeed a record over which it is salutary to ponder. For, not only in his strength, but in his weakness also, is the man confessed; and which of us, looking to himself, can deny that in weakness rather than in strength is the true character revealed? What need we care for journals compiled purposely to show that the writer has, in his own day, mingled on easy terms with the great and illustrious of this world—that he has dined with a duke, was on intimate terms with an earl, and has heard from the lips of beauty the warmest encomiums on his genius? Alas for the little vanity that can see, in such things as these, a passport to posthumous consideration! Is Virgil remembered through his works, or through the reflected credit of his having been the favourite of Mæcenas? Would Shakespeare even have been heard of as the friend of Lord Southampton, without his immortal legacy? No. The way to the Temple of Fame does not lie through Holland House, Woburn Abbey, Bowood, or any other seat of titled hospitality. No man can cheat posterity into the belief that he was really great, by registering the blandishments of society, however these may have convinced himself of the extraordinary range of his genius. We can give but a passing regard to the eccentric flitting of the butterfly.

Read Moore’s Journal, and then tell us what matter of interest you have found—what lesson of value you have received? Of bons mots and anecdotes current among the loungers of society, there are a few good, many indifferent, and a multitude heinously bad. There are notes of balls and dinners, tavern bills, Tivoli amusements, and theatrical small-talk—numerous instances of fulsome compliment addressed to the author, and apparently received by him as genuine without hesitation—the contents of Falstaff’s pocket with scarce a scintillation of his wit. But where are the notices of the serious struggle of life—where the aspirations of high genius elaborately working out its aims—where the traces of that self-denial and energy without which even the choicest gifts of genius are vouchsafed in vain? Of these there is no vestige. We are indeed very sorry that such a book has been given to the world; for, while it tends to lower greatly, in the estimation of all thinking men, the character of one who was at least a sparkling poet, it conveys a false impression of life, and we believe was intended to do so.

Most unlike the flippant journals of Moore is the stern autobiography of Haydon. No matter what judgment may be passed upon the rashness, imprudence, inconsistencies, or even follies of the man, these volumes contain as true a record of the struggles of a life as ever yet was exposed to the public view. In them there is nothing concealed, nothing falsified. Haydon never set down a word, which he did not believe to be true, nor ever forged a sentiment in order that it might raise him in the world’s esteem. Doubtless he expected—for an inordinate estimation of his own importance in regard to his art was his foible—that these volumes would hereafter be perused by many an aspirant after fame; but we can nowhere trace any indication of their being otherwise than a faithful transcript of his thoughts. Over and over again we find him referring to former entries—blaming himself for having entertained too rash an impression, or retracting some accusation set down in an irritated moment—but never do we perceive him engaged in framing an imposture for posterity. The hopes and the disappointments, the success and the failure of each day and of each scheme, are chronicled with a minuteness which gives decisive evidence of their truth; and we hesitate not to say that, within the compass of these volumes—most ably edited and arranged by Mr Taylor—is expressed a deeper tragedy than any which has been shadowed on the stage. It is a work that ought to be studied, not for its artistic but for its practical lesson, by every student of art, whether his implement be the brush, the chisel, or the pen; and, although poor Haydon would have revolted from the thought, it is nevertheless true that he is more likely to be known to posterity on account of this expressive journal of his, than from all the yards of canvass that he covered with his historical compositions.

The story of Haydon is indeed a sad one, though by no means without its parallels. Nature designed him to be a painter, and, as is customary in such cases, he overcame at an early age the parental opposition, and enlisted himself as a child of art. In this commercial and money-seeking country of ours, parents very often take upon themselves to decide the future destiny of their children without any regard to the peculiar direction of their talents or bent of their inclination. Nothing is more common than to hear elderly men, connected with trade or manufactures, complain that gross injustice was practised towards them in their boyhood, and that, if they had been allowed to take their own way, they would, to a certainty, have become shining lights of art, literature, or science, instead of having simply made their fortunes by attending to foreign exportation. We confess that we always listen to such murmurs without an atom of sympathy. We don’t believe that the gentleman who has just cleared ten thousand pounds by a lucky consignment to Australia, could ever have written a stanza worthy of a reviewer’s scalpel, or that the wholesale fabricator of calico could by any effort have painted a picture which the easiest Boniface would have hoisted as a signboard attractive to his hostelry. We are inclined to hold that, in the great majority of cases, the parental judgment is correct, and the influence legitimately exercised. Were it not so, the stage would be inundated with recruits; and the attainment of the part of Romeo (whenever there was a good-looking Juliet) be an object of ambition, perhaps at the risk of bloodshed. Even among the Anglo-Saxons, practical as they may call themselves, there is, in early youth, a considerable feeling of romance; and no boy would willingly devote himself to a perch on a three-legged stool if he saw a reasonable prospect of achieving fame or independence otherwise. For our own part, we believe that the annual sacrifice of talent is very small, and that, of genius infinitesimally less. For, where true genius exists, it is irrepressible. Let parents strive as they may, they cannot extinguish the flame in one who is a poet born. No adverse circumstances, no accumulation of distasteful labour will put it out—it is like the fire which the Ghebirs adore—stop it up at one place, and it is sure to break forth at another. So with the genuine painter. Bind him apprentice to an attorney, and his art breaks out on the blotting-sheet—try to make a mechanic of him, and the walls are defiled with charcoal. Mere talent may succumb: genius never does. And very often men of genius have, through being thwarted in the earlier part of their career, and through subjection to a training altogether alien from their fancy, received most wholesome lessons and impressions which afterwards have been of signal benefit. Haydon, we suspect, obtained his liberty too early. A few years of servitude might have been of great use in the way of teaching him prudence, and as a corrective against rashness, impetuosity, and defiance. They might, at any rate, have tended to lessen his overweening confidence in his own ability, and have sent him better prepared to woo fortune in that particular walk for which he certainly was designed. But, from the very first, he was opinionative, self-willed, and impatient of restraint. An accidental perusal of Reynolds’s Discourses seems to have strengthened his hankering after art into an inflexible resolution to pursue it. He says—“I read one. It placed so much reliance on honest industry; it expressed so strong a conviction that all men were equal, and that application made the difference, that I fired up at once. I took them all home, and read them through before breakfast the next morning. The thing was done. I felt my destiny fixed. The spark which had for years lain struggling to blaze, now burst out for ever.” At this time Haydon could not have been much above eighteen. His father, a respectable tradesman in Plymouth, but by no means opulent in his circumstances, made the usual remonstrances, and he was further assailed by his mother with every argument which love and anxiety could suggest. Nothing, however, would serve young Benjamin but an immediate removal to London, where, uncontrolled, he might work out the plans which he had conceived for the future, and devote himself thoroughly and entirely to the study of art, in what he conceived to be the highest walk. Haydon had no notion whatever of intellectual progression, and therefore fell into the error committed by many artists and writers, who, not content with gradual advancement, strive to anticipate their time. For portrait-painting—undoubtedly the most lucrative department of his profession, and a very high one, as is testified by the masterpieces of Vandyke, Velasquez, Titian, and Rembrandt, besides a host of later distinguished painters—he entertained an intense contempt. Utterly destitute of worldly prudence, and reckless to a culpable degree in pecuniary matters, he could not be brought to understand that the first duty of every man, whether gifted with genius or not, is to labour for his livelihood, and to avail himself, for that purpose, of all the means within his power. To the end of his days Haydon never understood this. He seemed to think that the possession of genius gave him an absolute claim upon the purses of the opulent; and that they were, if not legally, at all events morally bound to come forward and buy his pictures whether they wanted them or not. Be it remembered that a picture by Haydon was no trifle, nor adapted for the capacity of every drawing-room. Here is his own account of his system and method, in connection with his picture of the “Raising of Lazarus.”

“I always filled my painting-room to its full extent; and had I possessed a room 400 feet long, 200 feet high, and 400 feet wide, I would have ordered a canvass 199–6 long by 199–6 high, and so have been encumbered for want of room, as if it had been my pleasure to be so. My room was 30 feet long, 20 wide, 15 high. So I ordered a canvass 19 long by 15 high, and dashed in my conception, the Christ being 9 feet high. This was a size and a subject which I loved to my very marrow.”

No wonder that with these views he was doomed to repeated disappointment—that Lady Beaumont objected to the purchase of his “Macbeth” because “we have no room”—and that, on another occasion, when a gentleman had offered six hundred guineas for the “Judgment of Solomon,” (12 feet 10 inches by 10 feet 10 inches) his lady said, “But, my dear, where am I to put my piano?” And that bargain was at an end. By making his pictures utterly disproportionate to the size of ordinary dwelling-houses, Haydon, as a matter of course, deprived himself of the chance of disposing of his pictures to that very numerous and opulent class of persons who are sincerely attached to art, and willing to buy its choicest productions on a moderate scale. People will not build houses for pictures. They want pictures that will suit their rooms, and, if artists will be foolish enough to expand their ideas over whole acres, they must necessarily pay the penalty of their folly. Large art is not high art, nor is it necessary for sublimity to expand the human figure into the colossal dimensions of a giant. But more of this hereafter. On his arrival in London, Haydon waited upon Northcote, likewise a Plymouth man, with a letter of introduction.

“I went. He lived at 39 Argyle Street. I was shown first into a dirty gallery, then up-stairs into a dirtier painting-room, and there, under a high window with the light shining full on his bald grey head, stood a diminutive wizened figure in an old blue striped dressing-gown, his spectacles pushed up on his forehead. Looking keenly at me with his little shining eyes, he opened the letter, read it, and, with the broadest Devon dialect, said, ‘Zo, you mayne tu bee a peinter doo-ee?—what zort of peinter?’ ‘Historical painter, sir.’ ‘Heestoricaul peinter! why, yee’ll starve with a bundle of straw under yeer head!’

“‘I zee,’ he added, ‘Mr Hoare zays you’re studying anatomy; that’s no use. Sir Joshua didn’t know it; why should you want to know what he didn’t?’ ‘But Michael Angelo did, sir.’ ‘Michael Angelo! What’s he tu du here? you must peint portraits here!’ This roused me, and I said, clinching my mouth, ‘But I won’t.’ ‘Won’t?’ screamed the little man, ‘but you must! your vather isn’t a monied man, is he?’ ‘No, sir; but he has a good income, and will maintain me for three years.’ ‘Will he? hee’d better make ’ee mainteen yeezelf!’ A beautiful specimen of a brother artist, thought I. ‘Shall I bring you my drawings, sir?’ ‘Ees, you may,’ said he, and I took my leave.”

Ten thousand pities for Haydon that he did not take Northcote’s words to heart. By laying himself out for portrait painting, at least for a time, and studying the essentials, Haydon would have acquired more rapidly than in any other manner the mechanical portion of his art, and probably would have been gradually weaned from that extravagance of manner which disfigured many of his most ambitious works. He might also have learned independence, which, under his circumstances, was a duty, and so have early avoided the fatal habit of looking to others for support. Fuseli gave him worse counsel, and confirmed him in his resolution to adhere to what is, absurdly enough, denominated the “Grand Style.”

Whilst drawing as a student at the Academy, he became intimate with Wilkie, then just entering on his career of fame. They were marked contrasts to each other both in theory and conduct. Haydon was all for the grand style; Wilkie for the familiar. The one was disputatious and combative; the other gentle and submissive. The former was reckless as to means; the latter careful and provident. And yet, notwithstanding these discrepancies, Haydon was probably more attached to Wilkie than to any other person in the world. They entered life together, they worked together, and they gloried in each others’ early triumphs; nor, as is too often the case, was their friendship ever obliterated. It is true that throughout Haydon’s journals there are scattered gibes at the worldly-wisdom, and sneers at the timidity of his friend—hints at occasional coolness, and complaints of national parsimony; and several times there are indications of a little jealousy, not unnatural from a man whose temper had been tried by frequent and sore disappointment. But for all that, it is plain that Haydon really loved his early fellow-student. Apparently, for a time, there was estrangement and coolness, but never entire separation; and when Wilkie died, no one mourned for him more sincerely and deeply than did Haydon. The entries in his journal for 1841, the year of Wilkie’s death, are most affecting; and perhaps it would be impossible to give a better idea of the man, than by transcribing the following passage:—

“May 15th.—I dreamt I was sleeping in the tombs of the kings at Jerusalem, and awoke in a wild confusion, and thought, in the dim twilight of daybreak, the arch of my bed was the cold cave. Poor Wilkie! he seemed to look on me, and to say, ‘Did I ever give you cause of offence? Did I not bear and forbear? Did I not assist you with money? Was not our friendship unalloyed until you tried to destroy the Institute in which you were brought up? When did I leave you? Did I not enjoy your genius—bear testimony to your great talents? My character was different from yours. You have no right to reproach me for not being willing to go to the extremes of your hatred, and involve myself in suspicions which I did not deserve. No, my dear Haydon, I loved you as much as, nay more than, any man; and while we entertained the same views, saw each other daily, and pursued the same objects, nothing disturbed our happiness. When you did not fear ill-usage as I did; when worse treatment afflicted and nearly destroyed me, you ought not to blame me for wishing for that peace so natural to my nature?’

“This passed through my imagination as I lay dosing; and I hugged my pillow, and seemed to wish never again to wake.

“‘But,’ I replied, ‘you were a slave to the great and the world. You feared to show regard to a man the world had deserted. You shrank from an ardent heart, whose only fault was its excess of affection,’” &c.

And so on; rather, as is evident, for the purpose of excusing to himself what share he might have had in their estrangement, than of reviving past ground of offence. But again and again he breaks out into a cry of lamentation, as if thenceforward for him there would be less of sunshine on the world.

But perhaps we anticipate too much. Wilkie, who had the start of his friend by dint of previous study in Edinburgh, rapidly rose into notice. In 1806 he received no less than three commissions for the “Village Politicians,” “The Blind Fiddler,” and “The Rent Day”—was patronised by Lords Mansfield and Mulgrave, and by Sir George Beaumont—and, in short, became a lion. Haydon all this while was drawing and studying anatomy under the late Sir Charles Bell, who was then laying the foundation of his future distinction. From these lectures and expositions he received much practical benefit.

His first picture, “Joseph and Mary resting on their way to Egypt,” which was exhibited in 1807, does not seem to have been very successful, and cost him enormous labour from his inexperience and ignorance of vehicle. But, through Wilkie, he became acquainted with the Beaumonts and Lord Mulgrave; was invited as a guest to their tables; and occasionally, by way of signifying his independence, waxed contradictory and argumentative, and made himself disagreeable. At no time of his life was Haydon qualified to shine in society. Imbued with vanity, he was never satisfied unless allowed to play the first fiddle, and even then he wished to concentrate the whole orchestra in himself. In a young man, who had seen nothing whatever of the world, this egotism was peculiarly offensive; and it is highly creditable to the good-nature and forbearance of his early patrons, that they overlooked his impertinence, and did not withdraw their encouragement. One or two commissions he received, and in 1810 gained the prize of one hundred guineas offered by the directors of the British Gallery for the best historical picture. That which he sent in was the “Dentatus,” already painted for Lord Mulgrave.

By this time Haydon was twenty-four. He had made a great stride in art by studying and drawing from the Elgin marbles, which had just come to this country, and which, to his credit, he was the first to appreciate. This made him a master of form and proportion, the qualities in which he excelled—grouping, expression, and fine harmonious colouring were those in which he was deficient. Hitherto he had been supported by his father, but now came his trials. That resource was withdrawn. It is but justice to Haydon’s memory to say that he does not appear to have been extravagant, or to have been addicted to the pursuit of pleasure. His life was remarkably pure and blameless, and he did not squander money upon mere sensual gratifications. But he grudged no expense for the purposes of art. His extravagance lay in models, which he cast and drew with an enthusiasm which is almost ludicrous—in a huge painting-room, and such like. He had no capital to start with; and, as he would paint neither portraits nor small pictures, he was forced to depend upon the doubtful success of immense historical pieces, which, in this country, have never found a ready sale. Then he had already quarrelled with the Academy on the old ground of injustice in the hanging of his pictures. It is the stock complaint of young artists; but it is to be hoped that the majority of those to come will behave more temperately than Haydon, and take warning by his example. His note, referring to this period, is valuable.

“This year (1810) might be considered as the beginning of those painful contests which have tormented my life for so many years. I was not independent, and had my fortune to get like Wilkie, who was at one time, I think, almost as fierce as myself; but the first blow Wilkie got, his sagacity showed him the power of his rivals, and he sunk down in submission, whilst my blood rose like a fountain. I returned, with all my might, blow for blow, and heated a furnace for my foe so hot, that I singed myself, reckless of consequences.

“All my youthful readers will say, ‘you were right.’ No, my young friends, I was not right; because I brought useless obstructions in my path, which, though they did not entirely prevent the development of my genius, brought it out in such agonising distresses, as will make you wonder, as you proceed, that I did not go raving mad; though, from the state of ignorance existing as to the value of High Art, I question whether, if I had been as quiet as a kitten, or more abject than Wilkie, the result would not have been just the same; whereas, by the eternal uproar I made, I indisputably kept alive the public attention.”

Rather paradoxical this! A confession of error, and a vindication of it in the same sentence. The truth is, Haydon’s combativeness was so largely developed, that under no possible circumstances could he have remained at peace.

He had begun by squabbling with the Academy, and he now squabbled with Sir George Beaumont, the first man of influence who had taken him by the hand, about “Macbeth.” The result was, that the picture was thrown on his hands, Haydon being at this time beyond £600 in debt. To his great misfortune, he had become intimately acquainted with Mr Leigh Hunt, then editor of the Examiner, a journal which then owed its reputation entirely to the catholicity of its abuse, from which, as now, the realms of Cockneydom were alone excepted. Haydon was exceedingly imprudent in having associated himself with such company, and afterwards acknowledged it, as the following extract will show:—

“Exasperated by the neglect of my family, tormented by the consciousness of debt, cut to the heart by the cruelty of Sir George, fearful of the severity of my landlord, and enraged at the insults from the Academy, I became furious. An attack on the Academy and its abominations darted into my head. I began by refuting an article by Payne Knight, on Barry, in the Edinburgh Review, which came out in the previous year. Sitting down one evening, I wrote on all night, and by morning I had completed my exposure for the Examiner, and walked about the room as if revenged and better.

“To expose the ignorance of a powerful patron (thus offending the patrons) and to attack the Academy (thus insuring an alliance of the academicians with the patrons) would have been at any time the worst and most impolitic thing on earth. I should have worked away and been quiet. My picture rose very high, and was praised. The conduct of Sir George was severely handled. People of fashion were beginning to feel sympathy. In fact, had I been quiet, my picture would have sold, the prize of three hundred guineas would have been won, and, in a short time, I might, in some degree, have recovered the shock his caprice had inflicted.

“But no. I was unmanageable. The idea of being a Luther or John Knox in art got the better of my reason. Leigh Hunt encouraged my feelings, and without reflection, and in spite of Wilkie’s entreaties, I resolved to assault. ‘Hunt,’ said Wilkie, ‘gets his living by such things; you will lose all chance of it. It is all very fine to be a reformer; but be one with your pencil and not with your pen!’”

Sounder advice could not have been given; but the rabies was upon Haydon, and he would not listen. First appeared the attack upon Payne Knight—next that on the Academy. Very improperly, as it appears to us, John Hunt, the brother of Leigh, on being questioned, divulged the name of the writer. Haydon tells the consequences.

“From this moment the destiny of my life may be said to have changed. My picture was caricatured, my name detested, my peace harassed; so great was the indignation at my impertinence that all merit was denied to ‘Macbeth.’

“West went down and did his best as president to damn the picture before a crowded room. Sir George was at once praised for his resistance to my insolent attempt to force on him a picture he, in fact, never ordered (it was said); and no excuse or palliation for me, either in the case of Sir George or the Academy, was listened to for a moment. I was looked at like a monster, abused like a plague, and avoided like a maniac.”

There is, of course, an immense deal of exaggeration in this. Haydon was not quite so formidable as he evidently wishes us to believe; neither were shafts from such a quiver armed with so formidable a barb. But he certainly did enough to make himself unpopular with the Academy, and to alienate those who, up to that time, had shown the warmest disposition to befriend him. Wilkie, whose name he had very improperly introduced in his diatribes, as one equally injured with himself, wrote him a most sensible, kind, and affectionate letter, which terminated thus:—

“You have certainly got plenty of work on your shoulders, and I should advise you to get out of it in the best way you can. But is this the way an artist should be engaged? Why not follow up the reputation your painting might gain you, and let that carry you through? It will lessen the respect people would have for your talents as a painter, when they find them employed disputing in a newspaper.

“I shall be miserable till I hear that you are going on with your picture—I shall then be assured that you have regained your peace of mind.”

Wilkie might have spared himself the trouble. Haydon had now convinced himself that he was a deeply injured man, had thrown down the gauntlet of defiance, and begun to write. His notion evidently was that he had made the whole of the Academicians his enemies for life.

How stood the fact? This escapade of his occurred in 1812, and immediately afterwards he began to paint the “Judgment of Solomon.” He was awfully in debt, which was constantly increasing, and at last we find him in perfect despair for a dinner. The kind-hearted owner of an eating-house, where he had dined for years, allowed him to run a score; and his landlord consented to wait for better times. It is a curious feature in human life that indulgences, so given, rarely stimulate to exertion. Haydon seems to have considered them as the proper acknowledgments of his genius, and to have idled more than he ever formerly had done. He got, too, into some sort of entanglement with “an infernal woman,” which seems to have caused him needless remorse, since he says, he “came off, thank God, without actual falling;” but possibly he may have committed himself unwarily, through the new habit, unfortunately acquired, of writing letters for the Examiner. He was then in the country; but, returning to London, he appears to have worked lazily, and for many months to have been in great distress, without credit anywhere, except for food and lodging. His new friends, Leigh and John Hunt, were then imprisoned for their libel on the Prince of Wales, and he had no one to apply to. He was very indolent, studying Italian when he should have been painting, and then chronicling his defalcations in his journal, without any visible effort at amendment. At last, in 1814, his position became desperate. From Hilton, an old fellow-student of his, he borrowed a considerable sum; but this would not suffice, and, just as his eyesight was failing, from inanition as he says, West, the President of the Academy, whom he had attacked, came in to his assistance. Although straightened in his own means, West sent him £15, an act of kindness which Haydon, indeed, acknowledges to have been “noble,” but which does not seem in the least degree to have modified his belief in the unrelenting persecution of the Academy. Men of letters and artists are strangely liable to this sort of delusion. Starting with an exaggerated view of their own importance, they regard criticism as the result of a deliberate conspiracy to put them down. They are such consummate gluttons of praise that they construe everything like censure into the outpouring of diabolical malignity. Certainly up to this time it does not appear that Haydon had suffered anything at the hands of the Academicians. If jealousy in any quarter prevailed, he had himself to blame as the aggressor; but there is not, in these journals, a scrap of evidence that the leading artists regarded him otherwise than with forbearance and compassion.

At length his picture was finished, but he would not exhibit it at the Academy. He sent it to the Water-Colour Society, which then admitted pictures, and it proved entirely successful. The “Judgment of Solomon” is generally considered as the best of Haydon’s paintings; it was again exhibited this season at the British Institution, and stood its ground well among some of the masterpieces of antiquity. It was purchased on the third day by the partners of a Devonshire banking-house, for the sum of six hundred guineas, the receipt of which enabled Haydon to discharge his most pressing claims, but it did not extricate him from his difficulties. On a review of his liabilities, just before sending the picture for exhibition, it appeared that he owed upwards of £1100.

Haydon’s exultation was naturally very great. He had indeed achieved a triumph, but, with his usual pugnacity, he could not entertain the idea of a triumph disconnected with the humiliation of an enemy. He estimated the value of success by the amount of opposition encountered, and, as usual, magnified the latter. That he was sincere, however, in his delusion, no one, we think, can doubt. The following is his pæan:—

“The success of Solomon was so great, and my triumph so complete, that had I died then my name must have stood on record as a youth who had made a stand against the prejudices of a country, the oppressions of rank, and the cruelty and injustice of two public bodies.

“It was a victory in every sense of the word. In my pursuit, I had proved the power of inherent talent, and I had done good to this great cause as far as I could do it. I did not command bayonets and cannons; would to God I had! But what I did command, I wielded with firmness and constancy. I had shown one characteristic of my dear country—bottom. I had been tried and not found wanting. I held out when feeble, and faint, and blind, and now I reaped the reward.”

So that, in the opinion of Haydon, he had not only to contend against the opposition of the Academy, but against the prejudices of the country, and the ill-will of the aristocracy! The last charge, in particular, is most ungracious. No one can peruse these volumes attentively without feeling amazed at the extent of the private liberality shown in his instance. The perverseness of the man in supposing himself to be the victim of a conspiracy, is the more unaccountable because he actually was receiving substantial acknowledgment of his talents. A few pages later, we find this entry: “The British Institution, on the proposition of Sir George Beaumont, seconded by Lord Mulgrave, voted me one hundred guineas, as a mark of admiration for the ‘Judgment of Solomon.’”

Some recreation was doubtless necessary for the re-establishment of his health, but hardly to the extent he allowed himself. More than six months elapsed before he commenced seriously to work at his next picture. His difficulties were again increasing.

“February 25th (1815).—The more I reflect on my nature, the more I am convinced of my adaptation to great difficulties. I am once again without a farthing. I have paid off the greatest part of my debts. The price of ‘Solomon’ was so inadequate, that my models and journey have swept off most of the rest. So far from being depressed, my breast broadens at the contemplation of conquering. I look upon all difficulties as stimulants to action. I have £200 to pay the twenty-first of next month. As yet I have not a sixpence towards it; but in God I trust who has always relieved me. Let me but be successful in realising my conceptions in my day’s labour, and what shall subdue me but extinction?”

That Haydon was a fervent believer in Christianity, and constant in prayer, is evident from every page of his journal. There is in the first of these volumes a very remarkable account of a conversation which he held with Shelley, and another literary character (whose name, we presume, from his being still alive, is withheld), on the subject of Christianity; and Haydon records emphatically the keen disgust with which he listened to their flippant blasphemies. Nevertheless, we agree with Mr Taylor that his religiousness is rather puzzling. His prayers are most special—he implores direction for mixing colours, and perfecting a head; and, in regard to his worldly circumstances, he seems rather to have expected a miraculous interposition in his favour, than a blessing on his earnest labour. How else can we understand his remarkable indifference to pecuniary matters, and the almost defiant strain in which the foregoing paragraph is written? He had just begun a work, “The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem,” which, even with unremitting effort, would take a long time before it could be completed, and which was actually not completed until six years had expired. He was worse than penniless—he was deep in debt, and he had to support himself all that time. It never seems to have occurred to him that, even if his picture should be successful to an extent hitherto unparalleled, he must be a loser, inasmuch as he would be necessitated to borrow money in the mean time, and could not hope ultimately to clear such a sum as would defray the intermediate expenses. On he went. £200 paid in advance from a Liverpool commission (which, alas, was not executed till a long period afterwards), and a similar sum from Sir George Beaumont for the despised “Macbeth,” were all the earnings—if we may call them so—which he received. But he took to borrowing. First he had recourse to the money-lenders, who discounted bills on the usual extortionate terms. Then he got £300 from a Mr Harman; £400 from old Mr Coutts the banker, having been acquainted previously with Miss Mellon; also, he fell back upon Sir George Beaumont, from whom he received an additional supply. The latter urged and entreated him most earnestly to turn his talents to some purpose.

“Pray excuse me if I again take the opportunity of recommending some profitable mode of practice. I know you object to portraits, although the dignity you would be able to give them, so far from degrading, would greatly add to your reputation; and the greatest artists have not considered the practice as beneath their notice. Again, painting fancy heads, and other smaller works, would be a relief from severer studies, and be very likely to answer the purpose. Indeed, my dear sir, you must attend to this necessary concern, or circumstances more mortifying than what I recommend cannot fail to attend you.”

Even Haydon could not deny the truth of this, but the pride of the artist in the Grand Style rebelled. He had somehow or other convinced himself, that, instead of his working like an ordinary mortal for his own support, it was the duty of the country to support him; and, true to that convenient faith, he thus reasoned:—

“His letter was prophetic; but all my friends were always advising me what to do, instead of advising the Government what to do for me. Now, a different course, I have no hesitation in saying, would have prevented my necessities, and developed what powers I had. Dear Sir George’s advice was kind and good, but it was yielding the question of public support; and as I had made up my mind to bring that about by storm, I disdained Sir George’s timid caution, and flew at my picture, come what might.”

It is not very easy to understand what Haydon meant. Supposing that he had received a Government commission in the Grand Style, which was the only one he would condescend to undertake, that could not have benefited him more than his private pictures, unless, indeed, he was to have been allowed his own time, and to have painted upon salary. He appears to have been a slow worker, and very liable to fits of intermission, which, we believe, is the invariable tendency in the composition of all large and lengthy works. A very large picture is like an epic—no man can accomplish it at a heat. It must be studied, altered, and retouched—laid aside and again resumed, with time enough in the intervals to allow the imagination to cool, before the artist can satisfy himself of the worthiness of his own work. That Art ought to be countenanced and encouraged by the State, we maintain as strenuously as Haydon; but we demur to the proposition that it is the duty of the Government to provide for every clever painter who chooses to be eccentric enough to deprive himself of the opportunities of his profession.

With singular bad taste, and almost inconceivable impudence, Haydon varied his toils by attacking the Academy afresh; and, if his own account of his literary performances be true, it is no wonder if he made enemies. He says:—

“It is a pity I allowed my mind to act again through the pen when the pencil was my real instrument, but the temptation was irresistible; and then I thought of doing good by implanting sound principles of patronage in a proper quarter. I might, perhaps, have done this without irritating and exasperating the Academicians. Yet, regarding them as a great body who influenced and prejudiced the aristocracy, it was impossible to touch on art without finding the Academy at every point checking, misleading, and obstructing. Every weapon of attack was resorted to—ridicule, sarcasm, allegory, and insinuation, with such success that a member said, ‘By-and-by a man will be afraid to become an Academician.’”

And why was all this anger, the reverse of celestial, displayed? Simply, in so far as we can see, because Haydon thought that his pictures had not been well hung at the Academy, and because he was not an Academician himself. Pass we to 1820 when his picture at last was completed. A room was engaged for its exhibition at the rate of £300 a-year; and yet so poor was Haydon that he was again compelled to borrow from Sir George Beaumont and Messrs Coutts the sum necessary to procure the fittings. The exhibition was upon the whole successful. In London the profit, after payment of expenses, amounted to nearly £1300; and in Edinburgh and Glasgow, where the picture was likewise exhibited, he appears to have drawn about £900. All that, however, had been long anticipated. He was hopelessly in the mire; and, to make matters worse, he married!

Within eighteen months afterwards, he was lodged in the King’s Bench Prison, and finally passed through the Insolvent Court.

“It is pleasant,” says Mr Taylor, “to find so many proofs of substantial sympathy in the letters Haydon received during his confinement. Lord Mulgrave, Sir Edward Codrington, Brougham, Sir Walter Scott, Barnes (of the Times), his fast friend, Miss Mitford, were all prompt and helpful. His active friend and physician, Dr Darling, with Sir George Beaumont, Wilkie, and others as practically benevolent, bought at the sale many of his casts, prints, and painting materials, so that he might have a nucleus for beginning work upon on coming out of prison.”

From the King’s Bench he addressed a petition to the House of Commons, setting forth his own case as an instance of the deplorable lack of encouragement given to historical painters in England, and praying that such assistance might be given to that branch of art, as might place the professors of it on a level with the sculptors to whom government patronage had been liberally extended. This was, so far as we know, the first time that the claims of art for national encouragement were broadly and boldly asserted; and Haydon was not the man to be silenced by a single refusal—for years afterwards he continued to assail Ministers on the subject.

“Nothing daunted, he kept pouring in page after page of passionate pleading on Sir Charles Long, on Mr Vansittart, on Mr Robinson, on the Duke of Wellington, on Lord Grey, on Sir Robert Peel, on Lord Melbourne, on Sir Robert Peel again, and seemed to be making no way whatever with any of them. But our new Houses of Parliament are to have their statues, and their frescoes, and their oil pictures; and Haydon lived to take a part (though an unsuccessful one) in the first competition intended to test the capability of our artists for such work.”

Rejoicing as we do at the recent encouragement given by the state, for the prosecution of art in the higher branches, we are yet apprehensive of the effect this may have upon the rising school of painters. We should be sorry to see their attention exclusively turned to the “grand style,” which, in painter’s language, means the composition of gigantic pictures. If one Haydon, allowed to be the best historical painter of his time, could not, although seldom in want of commissions, provide for the necessities of a single year, how is it possible for twenty Haydons to thrive, even though the state were annually to assign a large sum for their employment? It is not with us, as it was in Italy, where the decoration of the churches afforded the noblest scope for the genius of the painter—so much so, that they are now regarded by the world as the temples of art rather than of religion. It is in vain to hope that in a Protestant country this will be allowed. No regard for art, or sympathy for its professors, will persuade us to convert our churches into picture-galleries; and if the same rigid rule has not been applied to sculpture, it is on account of the monumental associations inseparably connected with the marble. Our public and municipal halls are decorated, not with historical paintings, but with portraits, which has ever been in Britain the favourite branch of art. We do not put up gladiators or Venuses in our streets and squares—we place there the statues of kings, warriors, and statesmen. Italian art can flourish kindly only under an Italian sky. The construction of our mansions is in accordance with the nature of our climate. Except in those dwellings of the high nobility, which are literally palaces, there are no galleries or saloons adapted for the reception of large works, and the best proof of the unfitness of these for our domestic arrangements is that they seldom retain their value. For example, just three years after its completion, Haydon’s large picture of the “Entry into Jerusalem” was sold for £240—that of “Lazarus,” which he esteemed even more, for £300; and the creditor, who bought it for exhibition, lost as much more by the speculation.

Art, like everything else, must be regulated, depressed, or elevated according to the demand for its productions. The epic is considered, almost universally, as the highest form of poetry; but it is extremely doubtful whether a new epic, even of the highest merit, would now command a sale. Is the state, then, with the view of elevating the public taste, to give commissions for epics? The idea is sufficiently absurd; and yet poetry, from its universality, is clearly to be ranked above painting.

And yet we have a British school, and its productions are greatly admired and prized. We shall not, for obvious reasons, refer to living artists, though, if we were to do so, we could mention several names which undoubtedly will hereafter be classed with those of the highest European renown. But take Wilson, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Wilkie, and Turner. None of these men pretended to the “Grand Style,” and yet see how their fame endures! Who would not rather have a masterpiece from the hands of one of them, than a specimen of gigantic grotesqueness neither classical nor romantic, such as is now called in the style of the highest art? It is a vast mistake to suppose that figures constructed from the models of prize-fighters, or of the nymphs of the Walhalla, are either heroic or beautiful. The style and expression of art, like those of thought, must vary according to the country that gives them birth.

We are led to make these observations, because we wish to see the British school remain uncontaminated by imitation. At present, the tendency is to Germanise, and to adopt the German manner. Hence the rage for frescoes, and for unlimited cartoons. In the indulgence of this, we see nothing but future disappointment for the artists. It is to the great body of the public that artists must ultimately look for encouragement; and, whatever may be their confidence in their own theories, they cannot hope to change the popular perception. Let art, by all means, be encouraged; but in the proper direction. There is a very great deal in the observation of Haydon, that the noble and wealthy of this country are well disposed towards the encouragement of art, but sadly ignorant of its principles. We are quite of his opinion that there ought to be in every one of our universities an æsthetical chair, for the purpose of tracing the history of art, and exercising its productions. This would greatly tend to elevate the general taste, and would, we think, be of much benefit to the artists, whose position, as a highly intellectual class of men, has not yet been sufficiently recognised.

Unfortunate Haydon! After obtaining his discharge, he had to begin life anew; but with the burden of a wife and family. Even his obstinacy gave way before the absolute necessity of something like remunerative labour, and he began to paint portraits, and small pictures; but he was successful in neither department. He had studied the heroic so long that he could not get rid of it.

“The great drawback,” says Mr Taylor, “was the reception his critics gave his portraits when exhibited. Their attacks took what Haydon calls ‘a new direction.’ The painter was assailed through the personal peculiarities of his sitters. It is natural enough to find the angry artist expressing an opinion that this is a cruel and deep-laid plot to injure him, at his starting on this more lucrative branch of his calling; but we shall perhaps do the critics more justice, if we believe that Haydon’s portraits had something about them provokingly open to ridicule. The heroic style of treatment could hardly have been adapted to a comfortable citizen family, or a provincial ex-mayor. Indeed, I am assured that, in the latter performance, he had represented the mayor of proportions too heroic even to have got through a door-way, out of which he was supposed to have issued in his civic state.”

In fact, he hated portrait-painting, and complained of being cramped in the composition of small pictures. He longed to be at the gigantic canvass again. Still, he had a good deal of employment, and, had he persevered, might have overcome his difficulties; but a new commission tempted him, and he again plunged into the Grand Style. In 1827, he was again arrested for debt.

The rest of his story is a record of perpetual struggle, not so much against debt as against payment. He became familiar with the King’s Bench Prison, where he painted his “Mock Election,” and “Chairing of the Member;” and, when not in jail, exerted his powers of borrowing to the uttermost. He had no hesitation in applying to those upon whom he had not the slightest claim, and expressed himself as an injured man if they refused. He painted the “Reform Banquet,” and lost money by it. He pestered Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington to take colossal pictures until his importunity became intolerable. He addressed a furious letter to his kind friend and most indulgent landlord, Newton, to whom he was indebted for heavy arrears of rent, and threatened him with a notice to quit! Then he lectured on art—and lectured well—but that would not suffice for his support. A more wretched life than his it is hardly possible to conceive. The gleams of fortune that visited him—for some of his pictures brought good prices, and one was purchased by the King—were all illusory; he was inextricably and hopelessly entangled. And yet all this while he was in communication with some of the first men, both political and literary, of the age—was addicted to no degrading vice, and endeavoured, as he best could, to rear and educate his children. Indeed, in his domestic relations, he appears in a most amiable light, striving manfully to avert the blow of misfortune from those whom he was bound to protect, however heavily it might fall on his own head. What agony must have possessed the soul of this unfortunate man, when he penned the following sentence!

“The greatest curse that can befall a fellow in England is to have a son gifted with a passion and a genius for high art. Thank God, with all my soul and all my nature, my children have witnessed the harassing agonies under which I have ever painted; and the very name of painting, the very name of high art, the very thought of a picture, gives them a hideous and disgusting taste in their mouths. Thank God, not one of my boys, nor my girl, can draw a straight line even with a ruler, much less without one; and I pray God, on my knees, with my forehead bent to the earth, and my lips to the dust, that He will in His mercy afflict them with every other passion, appetite, or misery—with wretchedness, disease, insanity, or gabbling idiotism, rather than a longing for painting—that scorned, miserable art—that greater imposture than the human species it imitates!”

Evidently this was not his serious thought—it was but a wild and frantic ejaculation, uttered in a paroxysm of despair; but it serves to show how tremendous his agony must have been. When that was penned, he was well-nigh sixty years of age; and what triumphs had he to show? In his fortunes he was an utterly broken man, almost a beggar; for what else is he who is constantly supplicating for loans which he knows he can never repay? Some of his best pictures, on which he rested his hopes of fame, had been thrown aside and neglected. He had not made friends with his cotemporaries, and he was distanced in popularity by many of the rising generation of artists. With all his vanity, he could not delude himself into the idea that he had won the popular support—the failure of his later Exhibitions had given too distinct a proof of the reverse. He had passed the best years of his life in active opposition to the Academy, and now he found himself almost an outcast from his fellows.

There can be, we think, no doubt that in secret he deeply regretted this, and deplored the rashness of his former conduct. In 1826 he attempted a reconciliation, but his pride interfered to prevent it. It was then that he held the following conversation with the elder Reinagle, which will explain what we have just said regarding the neglect of his pictures.

“‘Where is your Solomon, Mr Haydon?’ ‘Hung up in a grocer’s shop.’ ‘Where your Jerusalem?’ ‘In a wareroom in Holborn.’ ‘Where your Lazarus?’ ‘In an upholsterer’s shop in Mount Street.’ ‘And your Macbeth?’ ‘In Chancery.’ ‘Your Pharaoh?’ ‘In an attic, pledged.’ ‘Good heavens! and your Crucifixion?’ ‘In a hay-loft.’ ‘And Silenus?’ ‘Sold for halfprice.’”

Haydon constantly uses, in his Journal, expressions which would lead to the conclusion that he had suffered some heinous wrong or insult at the hands of the Academicians. We believe that charge to be utterly unfounded; indeed, the only grievance that he has particularised is the unfortunate position assigned to his “Dentatus,” in the exhibition of 1809. He himself admits, that whenever he chose to approach the Academicians individually, he was kindly and courteously received; and, so late as 1842, an overture appears to have been made to him on the part of his brethren. The entry is characteristic.

“October 11th.—Collins called to-day, and in the course of conversation said, ‘I really think you ought to join us.’ I said nothing.

“The state of the question is this. All the objects I have fought for are coming. If they are realised without the Academy claiming me as a member, I am victorious, isolated, unsanctioned by rank or station. If they induce me to join them, and the victory comes after, they will claim a share in the honour of an achievement they have always tried to oppose. So, if I am great, and let things take their course, whether I benefit or not individually, my character is consistent before the country. I would not lose that character in dear old England for all the treasures of the earth.

“My dear old friend and fellow-student, Collins, is anxious for me to join the Academy; but how can I? It is too late. After having brought up my family, through every species of misery, to distinction and honour, am I now to show that, after all, their honours were necessary? Oh! no, no; the compromise of principle would be dreadful. Let me do as I have lived, O God! and give me strength of mind to resist temptation, for I see it’s coming. And let me live in the hearts of my countrymen, like John Milton and William Shakespeare! Ah! may I be worthy—may I be worthy! Amen.”

But the heaviest blow of all was yet to fall upon him. In 1843, that grand dream of his life—a competition of native artists for the purpose of testing their capability of executing great monumental and decorative works—was realised, and cartoons were directed to be given in. Haydon became a competitor. We never saw the cartoons which he exhibited, and consequently cannot offer any opinion upon their merits; but this much seems certain, that he had greatly overrated his own capabilities of execution. Mr Taylor says,—

“He would not admit to himself that his powers were impaired; that he was less fit for great achievements than when he painted Solomon and Lazarus. But if he held this opinion himself, he held it alone. It was apparent to all, and to none more than to his warmest and truest friends, that years of harassment, humiliation, distraction, and conflict, had enfeebled his energies, and led him to seek in exaggeration (to which even in his best days he had been prone) the effect he could no longer attain by well-measured force. His restless desire to have a hand in all that was projected for art had wearied those in authority; and even his old and sincere friend, the secretary of the Commission, was unable to put forward his name without the chance of doing him more injury than service. He had shown himself too intractable to follow, and he had not inspired that confidence which might have given him a right to lead.”

On the day appointed for the decision, his cartoons were passed over, and the prize was awarded to others!

This was the prostrating stroke, and from it he never recovered. Although he did not directly question the justice of the decision, he appears to have persuaded himself that an evil influence was at work against him; and that it was predetermined by his enemies, that, come what might, he should not carry the prize. “The Academy,” says he, “the Government, and the Commission, thoroughly understand each other. They have all made up their minds that I must be sacrificed, as a successful rebel, because I have succeeded, in spite of four ruins, and will keep my ground in spite of four more. My cartoons, therefore, it was clearly predetermined, were not to be rewarded, on the principle of authority being supported at all hazards.” These are but wild and wayward words; but they show how deeply the arrow had penetrated. It is impossible not to feel for Haydon, who really had done more than any other man to force the subject of the encouragement of art upon the government, and had made enormous sacrifices by doing so. But he was beaten in a fair competition, such as he had himself recommended, and he had no cause to complain. Perhaps, indeed, the consciousness that the decision was a just one, was, to a man imbued with such vanity as his, the bitterest pang of all. With regard to future public employment, irrespective of his defeat, he had so unmercifully abused the patience of every man in power, and made such a glaring revelation of his impracticable nature, that no one would have been justified in offering it to him. Still, we think that some generosity might have been shown, and some acknowledgment made, to a man distinguished in his day, now well up in years, and who had laboured incessantly, and almost single-handed, for that very object which the Government had recognised as legitimate. We grant the difficulty of the case; but we cannot read this tragedy without feeling a poignant regret that something was not done to avert the woeful catastrophe.

But the old spirit was not yet extinguished, and after a brief interval, the misery of which no one can tell, for the news of his disappointment brought a swarm of creditors upon him, he again set to work, painting Napoleons, Wellingtons, anything, to provide for immediate necessities, but having in his heart one last object—an exhibition of pictures, on the subjects which he had long before proposed for the decoration of the old House of Peers—to prove to the world the extent of his powers, and the injustice of the award of the Royal Commissioners. He worked hard, and he worked long, but still he could not get over the feeling of disappointment, and the wound was opened afresh when the commissions were actually given. “All the young men,” he writes, “have got commissions—Bell, Marshall, Foley, Maclise, and others. I am totally left out, after forty-one years’ suffering and hard work, with my Lazarus, and Curtius, and Uriel, before their eyes; and being, too, the whole and sole designer for the House of Lords, in the first instance, and the cause of the thing being done at all.” This brings us to the conclusion of the year 1845. What follows is the first entry in his journal for the last year of his life.

“1846. January 1st.—O God, bless the beginning, progression, and conclusion of this year, for Jesus Christ’s sake, my dear family, my art, and myself!

“The ‘Nero’ to-day looks well; but I am very uneasy. I cannot keep my word for want of means. I paid away too rapidly, and left myself bare; and have now to struggle—paint—conceive—borrow—promise, and fly at my picture—get enchanted—and awake out of a delicious dream to think of the butcher. But in God I trust. At sixty, men are not so bold as at twenty-five; but why not? If Napoleon had behaved with the same spirit in 1815 as on the 13th Brumaire, he would not have died at St Helena.

“There is no competition till next year. If I lose this moment for showing all my works, it never can occur again....

“I shall never have a great opportunity again of connecting myself with a great public commission by opposition, and interesting the public in the contrast. If I miss it, it will be a tide not taken at its flood.”

It can have been only in the desperate hope of still obtaining public employment that Haydon persisted in the execution of these large pictures; for the next entry in his journal is a statement of the profit and loss on his various exhibitions for the twenty-six years immediately preceding. Four of these exhibitions were profitable, while six entailed a loss. Deducting the loss from the profits, there remains a balance of £1466 in the artist’s favour for ten exhibitions, and of this no less than £1453 was derived from the “Entry into Jerusalem.” Setting that one picture aside, the profits upon Haydon’s exhibitions in the gross barely sufficed to cover the expenditure. All his later exhibitions had proved failures, therefore it is not likely that Haydon could have expected a direct return from the efforts of his old age. He wished probably to keep himself before the view of the public, in the hope that his case, certainly a hard one, might awaken sympathy, and lead to a withdrawal of that sentence of exclusion which he believed to have been passed against him.

But he was imprudent in all things. Three months before his exhibition opened, he sent an advertisement to the newspapers, in which he impugned not only the selection of artists by the Commission, but the style of the artists selected: at least that is the only interpretation which we can put upon an announcement which is rather a criticism upon others than an appeal in behalf of himself. The following is an extract from it:—

“This exhibition will open in no spirit of opposition to the Government plan about to be put in force, but with the view of letting the public see that works, endeavoured to be executed on the principles of the great masters of the British school, founded on those established by the greater men of other schools, are perfectly consistent with the decoration of any building, Grecian or Gothic, and that there is no necessity for endangering the practice of the British schools by the adoption of the wild theories of a sect of foreigners, who have considered the accidental ignorance of an early age as a principle fit to guide an enlightened one. The British school was progressing to excellence five years ago, and would have attained it, had not the weak recommendation of absurd fancies thrown the young men off the right road, and the whole school into confusion. Backgrounds are now considered a vulgarity; rotundity of imitation, the proofs of a debased mind; nature, a nuisance, and the necessity of models, evidence of no poetry of soul; portraits are beginning to appear with coats of arms sticking to their noses; the petty details of decoration and patterns of borders take place of expression and features; and all those great doctrines which the experience of centuries established, are now questioned with the dandy air of infinite superiority to Titian, Rubens, Velasquez, Reynolds, Vandyke, Michael Angelo’s Prophets, or Raffaele’s Cartoons. The end of such a state of things may be easily predicted; and Mr Haydon respectfully hopes his humble attempt to prove there is no occasion to change the principles of the school for the purpose of decoration will be supported by the sound sense of the people. He was the first to petition the House for State support to high art—he was the first to petition for schools of design—he was the first to plan the decoration of the old House of Lords, and to keep up the excitement till it was resolved to decorate the new—he has devoted forty-two years, without omission of a day, to simplify the principles of the art for the instruction of the people; and having been utterly neglected when all his plans have been adopted, he appeals to the public to support his exhibition, that he may be able to complete the series he has planned.”

Ah, poor Haydon! All his experience had not sufficed to teach him that appeals of this nature are the weakest that can be urged. He dwells upon his many efforts, his long labours, and the neglect of him as an artist, as if these were so many claims to public support; not reflecting that, to the uninitiated (and how few are initiated in art!) these very circumstances would appear conclusive arguments against him. A mere tyro would, in this case, have had a better chance than a veteran. If a young man, hitherto unknown, had risen up, denounced the prevailing taste as vicious, flung down his gauntlet to the Commissioners, and declared that he was ready to give proof, by his own works, that they were corrupting instead of advancing art, the curiosity of the public might have been stimulated by the mere audacity of the challenge. But Haydon, by his own confession, had been forty-two years before the public; and during twenty-six of these his reputation, instead of increasing, had declined. He was a man marked by many defeats, and was now reclaiming against the last of these as a wrong. And he had none to back him. No portion of the press maintained that, in the matter of the decision as to the cartoons, the judgment of the Commissioners was wrong. Therefore we are not surprised that this announcement, appeal, or criticism of his passed almost unregarded by the many. Some, who remembered his earlier efforts, may have regarded it with pity or with sorrow—pity for the disappointments of the man, and sorrow for the imprudence of the appeal. But it failed to awaken sympathy, because he asked it only as an artist. Had the appeal been made solely on behalf of Haydon—had it been stated that, after so many years of labour and misfortune, his last hope of success rested upon this exhibition—we are anxious to believe that the public would have responded readily to such a call. But he did not ask support for himself; he asked it for his principles, which few cared for or understood. In art, novelty is much. People will rush for a year or two to gaze at pre-Raphaelite paintings, or any other whimsical monstrosity, not because they really admire, but because the spectacle is something new. But that does not last long; and the enterprising innovator must either fall back upon the principles of common sense, or submit to become a laughingstock. Poor Haydon had no novelty to offer as an enticement. He and his paintings and his principles had been long before the public, and had not met with due appreciation. If there was no reaction in his favour before, it was in vain to expect it now.

Darker and darker gather the clouds as we approach towards the close of his existence. More miseries—more hardships! On the 6th of April his last exhibition, consisting of the “Banishment of Aristides,” and the “Burning of Rome,” was opened, and the receipts of the first day amounted to £1, 1s. 6d. On no one day were two pounds taken at the doors! And why was this? Because, as we verily believe, the bulk of the British public care nothing about what is called “High Art,” and because Haydon had outlived his reputation.

If the former of our conclusions is challenged, and if we are asked to reconcile this alleged indifference of the public to “High Art,” with the enthusiasm which greeted Haydon’s earlier picture of the “Entry into Jerusalem,” we refer to what we have just said regarding the advantage which the assertor of some supposed new principle possesses over the veteran whose day has gone by. When the “Entry into Jerusalem” was painted, Haydon, then comparatively a young man, was at open warfare with the Academy, setting old constituted authority at defiance, and was, in point of fact, a far better historical painter than West, the President, whose meagre works were still within the recollection of the public. He was then fighting what seemed a winning battle. The subject, too, had its high and awful interest; whereas no one, in truth, cared the value of a straw for Aristides. There was, and is, no party in the country in favour of gigantic pictures. Haydon, with all his talent, never reached sublimity; and there are none of all his works that can properly be styled perfect. As we have already said, even his most popular pictures were characterised by a certain degree of exaggeration, which tendency was not modified by experience; and that which was originally a blemish, his innate pugnacity prompted him to defend and repeat as a beauty. As to the latter conclusion, we apprehend we need say nothing. There is always a culminating point; and men regard with far more earnest interest the rising than the setting star.

But to poor Haydon himself, knowing, what the world did not, the depth of misery at home, and forced to contemplate the future lot of his dear ones—to a man of his pride, vanity, high impressions of art, and stubbornness—what must have been the effect of this decisive proof that the sympathy of the public was not with him? We find it in his own journal. At the time his pictures were exhibited—at the time when life or death were staked upon the cast—that diminutive human abortion, Tom Thumb, was strutting on a table for the delectation of the London gazers. We do not blame them. All men have their tastes, and so have women and children; and many thousands would rather have seen that dwarf gesticulate than have listened to the full melodies of Shakespeare. Why not? It was the same in ancient times. The Romans never could get up a national drama—they preferred a show of gladiators, or an exhibition of the combats of beasts, to the most powerful efforts of the tragic muse.

But who could have said that to Haydon in the midst of his frantic despair? Few men of genius—and it boots not now to inquire how much of the blame was his own—have been so sorely tried at the last. Far greater men than he was have gone to their graves, indifferent as to the opinion of their contemporaries, and in the assured faith that posterity would do them justice—but these were men who never had relied on the current of popular opinion, and were content to die without immediate acknowledgment. Haydon was not one of them. He could not, like Correggio, commit his fame, with confidence, to the verdict of a coming generation; he required the decision instantly, and was compelled to do so, because upon that his reason or his life depended. Awful was the abyss before him!

Here is his commentary upon the miserable receipts of his exhibition on Easter Monday, a day to which he had looked forward in sanguine expectation that the tide would turn in his favour. £1, 3s. 6d. was taken at the door.

“They rush by thousands to see Tom Thumb. They push, they fight, they scream, they faint, they cry Help and Murder! and oh! and ah! They see my bills, my boards, my caravans, and don’t read them. Their eyes are open, but their sense is shut. It is an insanity, a rabies, a madness, a furor, a dream.

“I would not have believed it of the English people.”

Singular instance of faith, that could withstand, for so many years, the almost daily and ever-increasing experience of the fickleness of the world!

“May 18th.—I closed my exhibition this day, and have lost £111, 8s. 10d. No man can accuse me of showing less energy, less spirit, less genius, than I did twenty-six years ago. I have not decayed, but the people have been corrupted. I am the same, they are not; and I have suffered in consequence.

“I used to accuse Napoleon of want of energy in not driving out the senate after Waterloo, as he did on the 18th Brumaire. But he knew men better than I. It would have been useless; he was not altered, they were.”

And yet he painted on—hard, energetically at work, between the intervals of absolute distraction—on his picture of Alfred, intended to be the third of the series. He did so, because in art only could he find a momentary respite from his miseries. He even worked with more frantic energy than before; for abstraction of thought was his opiate, and in visions of the past alone could he take refuge from the anguish of the present. But the moment he dropped the pencil from his wearied hand, the Furies were again upon him.

“23d.—Awoke at three, in very great agony of mind; and lay awake till long after five, affected by my position. Prayed God, as David did, and fell asleep happier, but still fearing.

“I took the original sketch of Uriel, and went to my landlord, and asked him to buy it in vain. At last I offered it to him if he would lend me £1 to pay an instalment, when failure would have been certain ruin. He assented, and I left a beautiful sketch. I then came home, and darted at my picture. I have done a great deal this week under all circumstances, and advanced the masses of the drapery for my jury. Here lie Aristides and Nero, unasked for, unfelt for, rolled up—Aristides, a subject Raffaele would have praised and complimented me on! Good God!—and £111, 11s. 5d. lost by showing it!”

On June 11th there is this entry:—

“I have £15 to pay to-morrow, without a shilling. How I shall manage to get seven hours’ peace for work, and yet satisfy my creditors, Heaven only knows.

“£30, Newton, on the 25th; £31, 17s. 6d., Newman, same day; £26, 10s., Coutts, on the 24th; £29, 16s. 9d., Gillotts, on the 29th; £17, 10s. 6d. to baker,—in all £136, 14s. 10d. this month, with only 18s. in the house; nothing coming in—all received; one large picture painting, and three more getting ready, and Alfred’s head to do. In God alone I trust, in humility. * * *

“16th.—I sat from two till five staring at my picture like an idiot, my brain pressed down by anxiety and anxious looks of my dear Mary and children, whom I was compelled to inform.”

He had written to Sir Robert Peel, among others, stating his circumstances. The answer was prompt and kind, and in these terms:—

“Sir,—I am sorry to hear of your continual embarrassments. From a limited fund which is at my disposal, I send as a contribution to your relief from those embarrassments the sum of £50.”

But that could not rescue the poor man. As the month drew towards its termination, the horror became greater that his intellect could bear. The following are the last entries in his journal.

“18th.—O God, bless me through the evils of this day. Great anxiety. My landlord, Newton, called. I said, ‘I see a quarter’s rent in thy face, but none from me!’ I appointed to-morrow night to see him, and lay before him every iota of my position. ‘Good-hearted Newton!’ I said, ‘don’t put in an execution.’ ‘Nothing of the sort,’ he repeated, half hurt.

“I sent the Duke, Wordsworth, dear Fred, and Mary’s heads to Miss Barrett to protect. I have the Duke’s boots and hat, and Lord Grey’s coat, and some other heads.

“20th.—O God, bless us all through the evils of this day. Amen.

“21st.—Slept horribly. Prayed in sorrow, and got up in agitation.

“22d.—God forgive me. Amen.

Finis

of

B. R. Haydon.

“Stretch me no longer on this rough world.’—Lear.

“End of twenty-sixth volume.”

He died by his own hand.

A more profoundly melancholy history than this it is impossible to conceive. But if the records of one life of ambition and misery, fairly and truthfully written, can avail as a warning to others, these volumes have not been published in vain. Genius, it must be acknowledged, too often needs a monitor. It is rash and eccentric—over-confident, and always seeking to conquer; with its eye bent on the glories from afar, it cannot guide its steps along the common pathway of existence. Of devotion to art, or literature, or science in any branch, we desire to speak most reverently. We know that many of the most important services rendered to mankind have been performed by humble men labouring sedulously in seclusion, and shutting themselves out from the external world almost as carefully as did the alchemists of old, when brooding over their electuaries and alembics. But these men were, like all others, subject to the laws of society, and were compelled, somehow, to earn their daily bread, however humble might be their fare. And in this they followed the apostolic example, for we find that even Paul, after he had received his world-wide mission, did not deem himself absolved from the common lot, but laboured diligently at his craft, as a duty, that he might not be a burden upon his fellows. The possession of genius does not exempt men from the ordinary cares of life; they are, after all, but men; they must eat, drink, be clothed and lodged like the other children of Adam; there is no exemption in their favour from the weight of the primitive curse. It is one thing to abandon high aims and impulses in order to acquire wealth, and another to labour diligently in order that they may have the freer scope. It is all very well to talk disparagingly about Pegasus in the yoke; to that restraint Pegasus must needs submit, else a worse thing will befall him. Some faint suspicion of this seems to have passed across the mind of Haydon when he penned the following observation: “Homer begged; Tasso begged in a different way; Galileo was racked; De Witt assassinated, and all for wishing to improve their species. At the same time Raffaele, Michael Angelo, Zeuxis, Apelles, Rubens, Reynolds, Titian, Shakespeare, were rich and happy. Why? because with their genius they combined practical prudence. I believe this is the secret.” Haydon, however, could not shape his course accordingly. From first to last he belonged to that unhappy class who are constantly looking out for what they call “the good time coming;” forgetting that every man must be the architect of his own fortune, that the success of to-morrow depends upon the labour of to-day, and that as we sow, so also must we reap. We doubt not that he indulged in glowing anticipations of fame and fortune; but he neglected to take the simplest means towards their attainment, thereby placing himself, from the very commencement of his career, at a sore disadvantage. It cannot be too often repeated, that to an artist or a literary man, early debt is ruin. It is easy to find an excuse for incurring the first obligation; but the very facility with which that has been obtained becomes a temptation to a second; and very soon the unfortunate borrower finds himself so entangled, that no late exertion of industry can set him free. If we are met with the question, What ought Haydon to have done in the earlier part of his career? We answer unhesitatingly, that he ought to have painted portraits—sign-posts—anything, rather than have sacrificed his independence. After all, as we have seen, he was driven to paint portraits in his latter years; but the employment which he then felt as a degradation, and regarded with disgust, would, had he applied himself to it earlier, have been the means not only of affording him a competency, but of giving him free and unharassed leisure to carry out his more ambitious schemes. The casual reader of this work will be amazed to find so many entries of squandered time. In the very midst of his difficulties, months would elapse without Haydon’s taking up his pencil, and those periods of idleness he condemns as “the delinquency of infatuation.” For our part, we should not be inclined to use so harsh a term. Such works as Haydon was engaged in will not admit of continuous and unbroken application. In their composition the faculties must be exerted to the utmost, and both passion and imagination must be excited. That is the case alike with the painter and the poet—if it is otherwise, the pictures of the one and the words of the other will be cold and unsympathetic. Now such a mood of mind is exceedingly exhausting, and moreover cannot always be assumed at pleasure. Some men—we might instance Schiller—have sacrificed their lives in the attempt to prolong this excitement; for nature, whenever overtasked, demands a period of repose, or at least a change of exertion. We have Haydon’s own authority for the fact that, while engaged in composition, he was always under the influence of strong emotion. It is no wonder, therefore, that he frequently felt himself unable to continue—that is, to raise himself to the point of elevation of idea which he had previously reached. But instead of using these intervals profitably, he threw away his time, dreaming and speculating, until the goad of necessity or the prick of conscience roused him to another effort. And how profitless these efforts were, his history too plainly shows.

We have not thought it necessary to attempt, in this article, any criticism of Haydon as a painter. In truth, the materials for doing so are not within our reach, for his pictures are dispersed, and for the greater part forgotten. Nor can he be said to be the founder of a school; for although he numbered among his pupils Sir Edwin Landseer, and Sir Charles Eastlake, the present distinguished President of the Academy, the traces of his style are visible in the works of neither of these eminent men. He will be remembered hereafter rather from his enthusiasm—we had almost said fanaticism—in the cause of High Art, than on account of his works; and these volumes will unquestionably remain, remarkable in literature, as the most faithful record extant of the miserable effects which ensue from the misapplication of genius, from abandonment of prudence, from defiance of public opinion, and from the indulgence of overweening vanity. They ought, as we have already said, to be attentively perused by every student of art and literature; for they convey an important lesson, which is not the less likely to have its effect because our sympathies are keenly excited by the misfortunes, the trials, and miserable fate of the man. May his unhappy story be a warning to those who, proud in the real or fancied possession of genius, believe that nothing more is required to carry them to the summit of their ambition—may all such read and ponder, and recoil from the abyss which yawns for every one who disregards the common duties and daily responsibilities of existence!

539