Chapter I: First Studio in London (3)

I have just returned from a fortnight in Bath, where I have at
last finished the Johnnies,[22] I believe, and hope you will
like them; they are at all events much improved. I am glad for
the poor lad that the _corvee_ of settling is over; he was dying
to get back to his work. If zeal and enthusiasm can make an
artist, he ought to become one.

I don't attempt to give you home news, as you are amply supplied
with that article by Mamma. Everybody here is in great sorrow
for the poor Queen. She bears up under her overwhelming grief
with admirable fortitude, and expresses her anxious desire to do
_her duty as he_ would have wished it, but she speaks of all
earthly happiness as at an end. The tender sympathy manifested
by the whole nation is touching, but deserved.

Whether there will be war or not, the beginning of the year will
show; it is, I think, more than probable; there is no
probability of the Americans giving up Mason and Slidell. If we
do fight, it will be agreeable to feel that we are supported by
the sympathy and approval of _all Europe_; that we are entirely
in the right is _universally_ recognised, even by those who have
no love for us. Sooner or later, a war with America was, I fear,
unavoidable. There is a limit to what even we can overlook. All
this need not prevent your coming to England that I can see; it
won't stop the Exhibition, nor make any perceptible difference
in anybody's doings, except perhaps the picture buyers.--Your
very affect. brother,

FRED.

_Sunday, 1862._

Arrived here safe and sound on Thursday night, and began my work
on Friday. I am making studies[23] for the "Eastern King" which
I shall begin to paint shortly after New Year. I found the frame
for the large "Johnny" on my return. It improves the picture
very much, and looks very handsome. I also found a letter from
Henry Greville waiting for me. He says the Queen bears up
admirably, because, she says, _he_ would have wished it, but
that she always talks of her earthly career as at an end. The
equerries, &c., will remain attached to the court.

In 1862 Leighton sent eight pictures to the Royal Academy, and six were accepted. Before the sending in he writes to his father:--

1862.

DEAR PAPA,--I am afraid I don't take exercise _very_ regularly,
still, I walk a _little_ nearly every day.

With regard to the volunteering, the zeal for the matter is
necessarily not what it was when every third man really expected
to be called to defend the country. Nevertheless, the movement
is not dead, but has found a level on which I fancy it will
remain; the _shooting_ will keep it together a good deal. We
(the artists) shall join the great business at Brighton on
Easter Monday.

Had I thought you would have taken my remark about the M. Angelo
and the Johnnies so much to heart, I should have thought twice
before I made it. Against what I said you must set the paragraph
in the _Athenaeum_ two or three weeks back--my doubt is not
whether they will be admired--I think they will be _that_--my
only question is whether they will be _cared_ for. Mrs. Austin
admires and likes the M.A. beyond anything, and if she could
afford it would, I believe, buy it at once.

You will perhaps be surprised to hear that the pictures from
which I expect most are the three which you have not seen--the
"Eastern King" and the two others I mentioned in my last. One of
them is Pocock's smaller order, a girl with a _swan_ (not with
_peacocks_ as the _Athen._ says)--the other is a kitcat of a
girl listening to a shell. Both these are very luminous, and are
in that respect the best things I have done.

And later:--

LONDON, 1862.

DEAR PAPA,--I think I may confirm the report made to you of the
success of my pictures, particularly the "Odalisque" and
"Echoes" (by-the-bye, I have just received a letter from
somebody who wants to know if they are sold). What the papers
say, you have seen. You will be glad to hear that I have
received congratulations on all sides, which gives me the idea
of being tolerably secure; at all events, I got no such last
year, nor indeed at all since the "Cimabue." That two of my
pictures should not have been accepted does not indeed surprise
me, and least of all would it do so if they were rejected on the
score of _number_, but I have reason to suspect that they were
_not_ liked; in fact I _know_ it. I have put my name down as a
candidate for associateship.

I don't think I have anything of interest to communicate; nobody
has as yet asked the price of the "Eastern King" or the "Michael
Angelo." There is no mistake now about what people in this
country like to buying point; whether I shall conform to their
taste is another question.

Pocock liked the "Michael Ang." much, but did not seem to wish
to have it. The same remark applies to the Johnnies.

Millais has been, and liked the yellow woman[24] extremely. I
think he liked them all _of their kind_, but the yellow woman
was his favourite by far. Stephens has also seen my pictures. He
seemed altogether much pleased, but most especially with the
design for the "Eastern King," which is also Fred Cockerell's
favourite.

To his mother he wrote:--

1862.

I have deferred answering your letter till now, that I might be
able to inform you definitely of my fate as regards the Royal
Academy. I have just been there; I must tell you at once the
least pleasant part of my news--they have rejected the large
"Johnny" and "Lord Cowper." On the other hand, the other
pictures are well hung; two (the "Odalisque" and the yellow
woman), _very_ well, being on _the line_ in the _East Room_. The
"Michael Angelo," the "E. King," and the shell girl are just
above the line and well seen--the small "Johnny" just below the
line. I think the pictures all look well, though not so luminous
as in the studio. I am confirmed in my opinion that the Academy
Exhibition is a false test of colour; what looks sufficiently
_silvery there_ is _chalky_ out of it. The "Odalisque" looks
best from general aspects. Lady Cowper wrote me a very nice note
about the rejection of her son's portrait, and said she was
delighted to get it so soon. I am sorry about the large
"Johnny," because my chance of selling it is much diminished.

That Leighton received great encouragement from personal friends there can be no doubt. The following is one of very many letters he received which expressed warm appreciation.

64 RUTLAND GATE.

MY DEAR MR. LEIGHTON,--I do not know how to express my thanks to
you. I have this moment come home and found your beautiful
drawing, and can hardly hold my pen, I am in such a state of
delight at possessing such a reminiscence of my favourite
picture. You really _do_ not know what pleasure you have given
me, and I think it _too kind_ of you to have parted with this to
give to me. One thing you may be quite sure of, that the
"Eastern King" will receive the greatest homage to the end of
days from his devoted admirer and your sincere friend,

MARY SARTORIS.[25]
_Past Midnight, Tuesday._

Among Leighton's friends was Charles Dickens. The following notes, written in 1863, have turned up in a packet of miscellaneous correspondence:--

OFFICE OF "ALL THE YEAR ROUND,"
NO. 26 WELLINGTON STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C.,
_Thursday, April 9, 1863_.

MY DEAR LEIGHTON,--I owe you many thanks for your kind reminder.
It would have given me real pleasure to have profited by it had
such profit been possible, but a hasty summons to attend upon a
sick friend at a distance so threw me out on Friday and Saturday
in obliging me to prepare for a rush across the Channel, that I
saw no pictures and had no holiday. I was blown back here only
last night, and believe that I shall deliver your message to
Mrs. Collins to-day; that is to say, I am going home this
afternoon and expect to find her there.

When the summer weather comes on, I shall try to persuade you to
come and see us on the top of Falstaff's Hill. A hop country is
not to be despised by an artist's eyes.--Faithfully yours
always,

CHARLES DICKENS.

GAD'S HILL PLACE,
HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Saturday, July 18, 1863_.

MY DEAR LEIGHTON,--Shall I confess it? I never went out to
breakfast in my life, except once to Rogers'. But what I might
have done under this temptation is a question forestalled by my
having engaged to go down to Bulwer Lytton's in Hertfordshire on
Monday, to stay a few days.--Cordially yours,

CHARLES DICKENS.

It was in 1863 that Leighton paid the notable visit to his friend of the Roman days, George Mason, to whom the world's Art owes so much. Assuredly, without Leighton's encouragement and help, those lovely idylls which stand with the most precious treasures of the English school of painting would never have been created. Mason had returned to England in 1856; he married and settled in his own manor-house, Wetley Abbey. Children were born and expenses increased, and little or nothing was there with which to meet them. After Rome England seemed a hopeless place to work in, and Mason's surroundings were quite dumb to his artistic sense. Leighton, when he heard of his depression and poverty, sought him out in his rural retreat, beamed mental sunshine on his spirits, made him walk with him, pointing out the pictorial beauties of Mason's own native country, and ended by taking him a tour through the Black Country. Mason's poetic sense was again awakened; an artistic purpose was again inspired; and, feeling the despair of hopeless poverty removed (Leighton was ever ready with substantial aid), he painted the pictures for which the world has so much reason to be grateful. When in 1872--nine years after this visit--George Mason died, Leighton arranged for a sale of his pictures and property, from the proceeds of which his wife and children obtained an income of L600 a year. Leighton wrote to Mrs. Matthews at the time of Mason's death: "Poor Mason's death has been a great shock to me, though indeed I should have been prepared for it at any time. His loss is quite irreparable for English Art, for he stood entirely alone in his especial charm, and he was one of the most lovable of men besides."

FOOTNOTES:

[8] The critics, judging from the following extracts, were amiably inclined towards him that year:--"Among the pictures familiar to London loungers of 1858, is Mr. F. Leighton's scene from 'Romeo and Juliet,' a work lost and, it may be submitted, undervalued, owing to the disadvantageous place given it in Trafalgar Square. The depth and richness of its colour, the picturesque manner in which the story is told, the contrast in some of the heads, that, for instance, of Friar Lawrence, hopeful in the consciousness of knowledge of Juliet's secret, with that of the entrancing maiden of Verona, or again with that of the weeping nurse, whose grief is a trifle too _accentue_. The truthful conception and careful labour of this picture have now a chance of being appreciated, and but that Pre-Raphaelitism is resolute not to give in, might fairly have entitled it to the prize bestowed elsewhere."--_Athenaeum_, 1858.

"We will take the second-named gentleman first, and come at once to his 'Fisherman and Syren.' The picture is not of any commanding size, nor does it relate any very exciting legend. The story is of the mystic Undine tinge, and with a shadowy semblance in it to that strange legend, current among the peasants of Southern Russia, of the 'White Lady' with the long hair, who, with loving and languishing gestures, decoys the unwary into her fantastic skiff, then, pressing her baleful lips to theirs, folds them to her fell embrace, and drags them shrieking beneath the engulfing waves. The 'Fisherman and Syren' of Mr. Leighton has something of this unreal, legendary fatality pervading it throughout. There is irresistible seductiveness on the one side, pusillanimous fondness on the other. That it is all over with the fisherman, and that the syren will have her wicked will of him to his destruction, is palpable. But it is not alone for the admirable manner in which the story is told that we commend this picture; the drawing is eruditely correct, most graceful, and most symmetrical. The syren is a model of form in its most charming undulations. The fisherman is a type of manly elegance. That Mr. Leighton understands, to its remotest substructure, the vital principle of the line of beauty, is pleasurably manifest. But there is evidence here even more pleasing that the painter, in the gift of a glowing imagination, and a refined ideality, in his mastery of the nobler parts of pictorial manipulation, is worthy to be reckoned among the glorious brotherhood of disciples of the Italian masters--of the grand old men whose pictures, faded and time-worn as they are, in the National Gallery hard by, laugh to scorn the futile fripperies that depend for half their sheen on gilt frames and copal varnish. This young artist is one of Langis' and Nasasi's men. He has plainly drunk long and eagerly at the painter's Castaly. The fount of beauty and of grace that assuaged the thirst of those who painted the 'Monna Lisa' and the 'Belle Jardiniere'; who modelled the 'Horned Moses' and the 'Slave'; who designed Peter's great Basilica, and the Ghiberti Gates at Florence."--_Daily Telegraph_, 3rd May 1858.

[9] The Prince of Wales, who lent the picture to the exhibition of Leighton's works at Burlington House, 1897.

[10] Mr. Augustus Craven's wife, _nee_ Pauline la Ferronnay, was the authoress of the famous book, _Le Recit d'une soeur_, in which several of the most charming scenes took place at Naples.

[11] Mr. George Aitchison wrote: "In 1859, while at Capri, he drew the celebrated Lemon Tree, working from daylight to dusk for a week or two, and giving large details in the margin of the snails on the tree."

[12] The drawing had been lent to Ruskin at the time he was lecturing at Oxford.

[13] Leighton knew Mr. Chorley through Mrs. Sartoris. He accompanied the great _cantatrice_ when she made a tour abroad. "Mrs. Kemble's children and their nurse are with them, and Mary Anne Thackeray, a life-long friend, and Mr. Chorley, and the great Liszt, who subsequently joined them in Germany."--Preface by Mrs. R. Ritchie to "A Week in a French Country House," by Mrs. Adelaide Sartoris.

[14] Leighton was perfectly right. "Orphee" was produced at Covent Garden, and the great artist, Madame Viardot, sang in it superbly. The opera was given after one or two acts of a well-known work, and I can vouch for the fact, having been one of the audience, that the house was very nearly empty at the close of "Orphee," Lord Dudley and a very few true lovers of music only remaining in the stalls to the end.

[15] The lady was Mrs. Sandbach, a _Hollandaise_, who was Maid of Honour to the Queen of Holland. In after years, on an occasion when she and I paid a visit together to Leighton's studio in Holland Park Road, she recounted the incident above related by Leighton, which happened in the palace at the Hague when she was in waiting. She also added that from her description Leighton painted what she had seen in her dream to perfection; but that he subsequently added two _amorini_, which in her opinion did much to mar the otherwise true feeling of the picture.

[16] See sketches in the Leighton House Collection. The picture itself is, I believe, in America.

[17] _Ibid._

[18] A visitor to Leighton's "private view" wrote him the following suggestions:--

13 CHESTER TERRACE, N.W., _Easter Monday_.

DEAR MR. LEIGHTON,--Pardon intrusion. I thought much of your
beautiful pictures after my yesterday's visit, and I anticipated
a struggle with the difficulty you mentioned of worthily naming
them.

Don't think me impertinent for volunteering the result. It
seemed impossible without verbal description to explain the
sacred subject to the profane imagination, while a prose
translation of its sentiment must be heavy and subversive of
romance.

I think, were I fortunate enough to own the picture, I would
call it "Not Yet," and I would put some little lines in the
catalogue, which, for aught any one knows, might have come from
some volume of rhyme, and which should explain that it is a
story of a dream, and that the rejection is not final: something
in this spirit, only better:--

"Not yet--not yet--
Still there is trial for thee, still the lot
To bear (the Father wills it) strife and care,
With this sweet consciousness in balance set
Against the world, to soothe thy suffering there.
Thy Lord rejects thee not."
Such tender words awoke me, hopeful, shriven,
To life on earth again from dream of heaven.

For the beauty at the fountain I once thought the best title
might be some couplet like the following:--

"So tranced and still half-dreamed she, and half-heard
The splash of fountain and the song of bird."

But my wife, from my description of the picture, suggested a
name better suited to the "suggestiveness" of the work:--

"Lieder ohne Worte": don't you think it rather pretty?

In the multitude of counsellors some one says there's wisdom,
and this liberty we take with you may beget some thought that
had not struck you.

I have Mr. Cockerell's commands to express to you the
gratification his visit afforded him and his sense of your
kindness and attentions.--I am, faithfully yours,

RALPH A. BENSON.

Another friend wrote of "Lieder ohne Worte," adding a poem suggested by the "Francesca":--

TRINITY HOUSE, E.C., _8th April 1861_.

MY DEAR LEIGHTON,--If you did not paint better than I write you
would not be the man of abounding promise that you are.

What I meant to say was that Law and Restraint are healthy life
and the infraction of them ghostly death and dissolution, and
that meaning is in your picture, whether you know it or not.
Your "daemon" may have put it there, but then you can trust
_your_ daemon.

Still, best love to the little girl at the fountain, who knows
that though Speech may be silver, Silence is Golden.--Ever
yours, with many thanks,

ROBIN ALLEN.
FRED. LEIGHTON, Esq.

LEIGHTON'S "FRANCESCA DI RIMINI."

"That day they read no more." Virtue grows faint,
One hand lies powerless, the wife's sweet face
Is half-convulsed by loss of self-restraint.
Outstretched to resist, remaining to embrace,
The extended arm will clasp her guilty lover,
And all the bright, pure world beyond for her be over.

Their very forms grow blurred and change their colour
Into dim snaky wreaths of purple pallor,
Fading away with Honour's fading Law
Into the pale sad ghosts that Dante saw;
Which we too see, crowned with departing glory,
When Leighton's genius deepens Dante's Story.

R.A.
_6th April 1861._

[19] D.G. Rossetti, in a letter to William Allingham, May 10, 1861, writes: "Leighton might, as you say, have made a burst had not his pictures been ill-placed mostly--indeed one of them (the only very good one, _Lieder ohne Worte_) is the only instance of very striking unfairness in the place."

[20] "_Lieder ohne Worte._"

[21] "Paolo and Francesca."

[22] These two pictures were painted from John Hanson Walker. Leighton sent both to the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1862 with the titles "Duet" and "Rustic Music." The first only was accepted.

[23] See water-colour and chalk drawings: Leighton House Collection.

[24] "Sea Echoes."

[25] The Hon. Mrs. Alfred Sartoris, sister-in-law of Leighton's friend, Mr. Edward Sartoris.