EARLY DAYS.
1775 TO 1789.
The appearance of Turner’s genius in this world is not to be accounted
for by any known facts. Given his father and his mother, his grandfather
and grandmother, on the father’s side, which is all we know of his
ancestry, given the date of his birth, even though that was the 23rd
April (St. George’s day, as has been so childishly insisted on), 1775,
there seems to be positively no reason why William Turner, barber, of
26, Maiden Lane, opposite the Cider Cellar, in the parish of St. Paul’s,
Covent Garden, and Mary Turner, _née_ Marshall, his wife, should have
produced an artist, still less, one of the greatest artists that the
world has yet seen. There is only one fact, and that a very sad one,
which might be held to have some connection with his genius. “Great wits
are sure to madness near allied,” sang Dryden,[1] and poor Mrs. Turner
became insane “towards the end of her days.” This, however, will in no
way account for the special quality of Turner’s genius. He arose like
many other great men in those days to help in opening the eyes of
England to the beauties of nature, one of the large and illustrious
constellation of men of genius that lit the end of the last and the
beginning of the present century, and with that truth we must be
content.
The earliest fact that we have on record which had any influence on
Turner is that his paternal grandfather and grandmother spent all their
lives at South Molton in Devonshire. Although he is not known to have
visited Devonshire till he was thirty-seven years of age;[2] he appears
to have been proud of his connection with the county, and to have
asserted that he was a Devonshire man. This is, as far as we know, the
solitary effect of Turner’s ancestry upon him. Of his father and mother
the influence was necessarily great. From his father he undoubtedly
obtained his extraordinary habits of economy, that spirit of a petty
tradesman, which was one of his most unlovely characteristics, and, be
it added, his honesty and industry also. Of his father we have several
descriptions by persons who knew him; of his mother, one only, and that,
unfortunately, not so authentic. We will give the lady the first place,
and it must be remembered that this unfavourable picture is drawn by Mr.
Thornbury from information derived from the Rev. Henry Syer Trimmer, the
son of Turner’s old friend and executor, the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer,
of Heston, who obtained it from Hannah Danby, Turner’s housekeeper in
Queen Anne Street, who got it from Turner’s father.
“In an unfinished portrait of her by her son, which was one of his
first attempts, my informant perceived no mark of promise; and he
extended the same remark to Turner’s first essays at landscape.
The portrait was not wanting in force or decision of touch, but the
drawing was defective. There was a strong likeness to Turner about
the nose and eyes; her eyes being represented as blue, of a lighter
hue than her son’s; her nose aquiline, and the nether lip having a
slight fall. Her hair was well frizzed--for which she might have
been indebted to her husband’s professional skill--and it was
surmounted by a cap with large flappers. Her posture therein
(_sic_) was erect, and her aspect masculine, not to say fierce; and
this impression of her character was confirmed by report, which
proclaimed her to have been a person of ungovernable temper, and to
have led her husband a sad life. Like her son, her stature was
below the average.”
This as the result of a painted portrait by her son, and verbal
description by her husband, is not too flattering, and it is all we know
of the character and appearance of poor Mary Turner. Of her belongings
we know still less. She is said to have been sister to Mr. Marshall, a
butcher, of Brentford, and first cousin to the grandmother of Dr. Shaw,
author of “Gallops in the Antipodes,” and to have been related to the
Marshalls, formerly of Shelford Manor House, near Nottingham.[3] We are
able to add to this scanty information that she was the younger sister
of Mrs. Harpur, the wife of the curate of Islington, who was grandfather
of Mr. Henry Harpur, one of Turner’s executors. He (the grandfather)
fell in love with his future wife when at Oxford, and their marriage
brought her sister to London. We are also informed that the
hard-featured woman crooning over the smoke, in an early drawing by
Turner in the National Gallery (_An Interior_, No. 15), is Turner’s
mother, and the kitchen in which she is sitting, the kitchen in Maiden
Lane. We have also ascertained that one Mary Turner, from St. Paul’s,
Covent Garden, was admitted into Bethlehem Hospital on Dec. 27th, 1800,
one of whose sponsors for removal was “Richard Twenlow, Peruke Maker.”
This unfortunate lady, whether Turner’s mother or not, was discharged
uncured in the following year. Altogether what we know about Turner’s
mother does not inspire curiosity, and we fear that she was never
destined to figure in an edition of “The Mothers of Great Men.” The “sad
life” which she is said to have led her husband could scarcely have been
sadder than her own.
Of his father we have fuller information.
“Mr. Trimmer’s description of the painter’s parent, the result of
close knowledge of him, is that he was about the height of his son,
spare and muscular, with a head below the average standards”
(whatever that may mean) “small blue eyes, parrot nose, projecting
chin, and a fresh complexion indicative of health, which he
apparently enjoyed to the full. He was a chatty old fellow, and
talked fast, and his words acquired a peculiar transatlantic twang
from his nasal enunciation. His cheerfulness was greater than that
of his son, and a smile was always on his countenance.”
This description is of him when an old man, but he must have been not
very different from this when about one year and eighteen months after
his marriage, which took place on August 29th, 1773, the little William
was born. He was not a man likely to alter much in habit or appearance.
He was always stingy, if we may judge by the story of his following a
customer down Maiden Lane to recover a halfpenny which he omitted to
charge for soap, and from his son’s statement that his “Dad” never
praised him for anything but saving a halfpenny. As barbers are
proverbially talkative, and as persons do not generally develop
cheerfulness in later life, we may consider Mr. Trimmer’s portrait of
the old man to be essentially correct of him when young, especially as
we find that Turner the younger was always “old looking,” a peculiarity
which is generally hereditary.
The house (now pulled down) in which Turner was born, and in which, for
at least some time after, father, mother, and son resided together, is
thus described by Mr. Ruskin: “Near the south-west corner of Covent
Garden, a square brick pit or well is formed by a close-set block of
houses, to the back windows of which it admits a few rays of light.
Access to the bottom of it is obtained out of Maiden Lane, through a low
archway and an iron gate; and if you stand long enough under the archway
to accustom your eyes to the darkness, you may see, on the left hand, a
narrow door, which formerly gave access to a respectable barber’s shop,
of which the front window, looking into Maiden Lane, is still extant.”
Maiden Lane is not a very brilliant thoroughfare, and was still narrower
and darker at this time, but still this picture, though doubtless
accurate, seems to make it still darker, and in the engraving of the
house in Thornbury’s life of Turner, even the front window that looked
into Maiden Lane is rendered ominously black by the shadow of a watchman
thrown up by his low-held lantern. To us it seems that there is plenty
of dark in Turner’s life without thus unduly heightening the gloom of
his first dwelling-place. A barber cannot do his work without light, and
we have no doubt that whatever sorrow fell upon Turner in his life was
in no way deepened by his having to pass through a low archway and an
iron gate in order to get to his father’s shop.
[Illustration: HOUSE IN MAIDEN LANE IN WHICH TURNER WAS BORN.]
The house in Maiden Lane would have been a cheerful enough and a
wholesome enough nest for little William[4] if it had contained a happy
family presided over by a sweetly smiling mother. This want is the real
dark porch and iron gateway of his life, the want which could never be
supplied. In that wonderful memory of his, so faithful, by all
accounts, to all places where he had once been happy, there was no
chamber stored with sweet pictures of the home of his youth; no
exhaustless reservoir of tender, healthy sentiment, such as most of us
have, however poor. Here is a note of pathos on which we might dwell
long and strongly without fear of dispute or charge of false sentiment.
Children, indeed, do not miss what they have not: present sorrows did
not probably affect his appetite, future forebodings did not dim his
hopes; but then, and for ever afterwards, he was terribly handicapped in
the struggle for peace and happiness on earth, in his desire after right
thinking and right doing, in his aims at self-development, in his chance
of wholesome fellowship with his kind, in his capacity for understanding
others and making himself understood, for all these things are more
difficult of attainment to one who never has known by personal
experience the charm of what we mean by “home.”
This want in his life runs through his art, full as it is of feeling for
his fellow-creatures, their daily labour, their merry-makings, their
fateful lives and deaths; there is at least one note missing in his
gamut of human circumstance--that of domesticity. He shows us men at
work in the fields, on the seas, in the mines, in the battle, bargaining
in the market, and carousing at the fair, but never at home. This is one
of the principal reasons why his art has never been truly popular in
home-loving domestic England.
It is not good for man, still less for a boy, to be alone, and we do not
think we can be wrong in thinking that he was a solitary boy. How soon
he became so we do not know. We may hope that in his earliest years at
least he was tenderly cared for by his mother, and petted by his father.
There is no reason why we may not draw a bright picture of his
childhood, and fancy him walking on Sundays with his father and mother
in the Mall of St. James’s Park, wearing a short flat-crowned hat with a
broad brim over his curly brown hair, with snowy ruffles round his neck
and wrists, and a gay sash tied round his waist, concealing the junction
between his jacket-waistcoat and his pantaloons; but this bright period
cannot have lasted long. Soon he must have been driven upon himself for
his amusement, and fortunate it was for him that nature provided him
with one wholesome and endless.
It is known that one artist, Stothard, was a customer of his father, and
it is probable that as there was an academy in St. Martin’s Lane, and
the Society of Artists at the Lyceum, and many artists resided about
Covent Garden, the little boy’s emulation may have been excited by
hearing of them, and perhaps chatting with them and seeing their
sketches.
He certainly began very early. We are told that he first showed his
talent by drawing with his finger in milk spilt on the teatray, and the
story of his sketching a coat-of-arms from a set of castors at Mr.
Tomkison’s the jeweller, and father of the celebrated pianoforte maker,
must belong to a very early age.[5] The earliest known drawing by him of
a building is one of Margate Church, when he was nine years old, shortly
before he went to his uncle’s at New Brentford for change of air. There
he went to his first school and drew cocks and hens on the walls, and
birds, flowers, and trees from the school-room windows, and it is added
that “his schoolfellows, sympathizing with his taste, often did his
sums for him, while he pursued the bent of his compelling genius.” Very
soon after this, if not before, he began to make drawings, some of these
copies of engravings coloured, which were exhibited in his father’s shop
window at the price of a few shillings, and he drew portraits of his
father and mother, and of himself at an early age. It is said that his
father intended him to be a barber at first,[6] but struck with his
talent for drawing soon determined that he should follow his bent and be
a painter. He is said to have delighted in going into the fields and
down the river to sketch, but all the very early drawings we have seen,
including those purchased at his father’s shop, are drawings of
buildings, mostly in London. Of these there is one of the interior of
_Westminster Abbey_, in Mr. Crowle’s edition of “Pennant’s London,” now
in the print room of the British Museum. There is nothing to distinguish
these from the work of any clever boy, but this drawing and one in the
National Gallery, of a scene near Oxford, both probably copied from
prints, show a sense not only of light but colour. We have also seen a
copy of Boswell’s “Antiquities of England and Wales,” with about seventy
of the plates very cleverly coloured by him when a boy at Brentford.
Whatever defects Turner, the barber, may have had as a father, neglect
of his son’s talents was not one of them, and, though very careful for
the pence, he showed that he could make a pecuniary sacrifice when he
had a chance of furthering his son’s prospects, for he refused to allow
him to become the apprentice of one architect who offered to take him
for nothing, and paid the whole of a legacy he had been left to place
him with another, and we may presume a better one.
The information given by Mr. Thornbury about his early training,
scholastic and professional, is very meagre, inconsecutive, and
puzzling. According to him it was in 1785 that Turner, having been
previously taught reading, but not writing, by his father, went to his
first school, which was kept by Mr. John White, at New Brentford; in
1786 or 1787, by which time at least his destination for an artist’s
career appears to have been settled, he was sent to “Mr. Palice, a
floral drawing-master,” at an Academy in Soho, and in 1788, to a school
kept by a Mr. Coleman at Margate; at some time before 1789, to Mr.
Thomas Malton, a perspective draughtsman, who kept a school in Long
Acre, and in this year to Mr. Hardwick, the architect, and to the school
of the Royal Academy. He also went to Paul Sandby’s drawing school in
St. Martin’s Lane. During all, or nearly all this time, he was,
according to Mr. Thornbury, employed: 1. In making drawings at home to
sell. 2. In colouring prints for John Raphael Smith, the engraver,
printseller, and miniature painter. 3. Out sketching with Girtin. 4.
Making drawings of an evening at Dr. Monro’s[7] in the Adelphi. 5.
Washing in backgrounds for Mr. Porden. If he was really employed in this
way from 1785 to 1789, and could only read and not write when he began
this extraordinary course of training, it is no wonder that he remained
illiterate all his life, or that his mind was utterly incapacitated for
taking in and assimilating knowledge in the usual way. Spending a few
months at a day school, and a few more at a “floral drawing master,”
then a few more at school at Margate, making drawings for sale,
colouring prints, fruitlessly studying perspective, bandied about from
school master to drawing master, and from drawing master to
architect--such a life for a young mind from ten to fourteen years of
age is enough to spoil the finest intellectual digestion.
One fact, however, comes clear out of all this confusion, that of
regular and ordinary schooling he had little or none, and there is no
reason to suppose that it was because of the peculiar quality of his
mind that he always spoke and wrote like a dunce. He never had a fair
chance of acquiring in his youth more than a traveller’s knowledge of
his own language, and so his mind had a very small outlet through the
ordinary channels of speech. On the other hand, faculties of drawing and
composition were trained to the utmost, and this compensated him in a
measure. His mind had only one entrance, his eye, and only one exit, his
hand; but they were both exceptional, and cultivated exceptionally.
[Illustration: CHATEAU D’AMBOISE.
_From “Rivers of France.”_]
There was, however, much of pleasure in this life for a boy like Turner,
for though he evidently worked hard, he liked work and the work he had
to do was especially congenial to him. He met friends and encouragers on
all sides; from his father to his school-fellows. However much reason he
may have had for disappointment in later years, there was none in his
early life. He was “found out” in his childhood. Encouraged by his
father, with his drawings finding a ready sale to such men as Mr.
Henderson, Mr. Crowle, and Mr. Tomkison, with plenty of employment in no
slavish mean work for such a youngster, such as colouring prints and
putting in backgrounds to drawings, with Mr. Porden generously offering
to take him as an apprentice for nothing, with a kind friend like Dr.
Monro always willing to give him a supper and half-a-crown for sketches
of the country near his residence at Bushey, or the result of an
evening’s copying of the then best attainable water colours; his life
was far more agreeable, far more tended to make him think well of the
world and of the people in it than has been usually represented, and
probably as good as he could have had for attaining early proficiency in
his art. London at that time was not a bad place for a landscape artist.
It was neither so clouded nor so sooty as it is now; there were
healthier trees in it, and more of them, a more picturesque and a purer
river, and within less than half an hour’s walk from Maiden Lane there
were green fields, for north of the British Museum the country was still
open.
But he was not entirely dependent upon his art and his employers for
enjoyment, or for forming his opinion of the human race. There were
houses at which he visited and where he was received warmly. When at
school at Margate he got an “introduction to the pleasant family of a
favourite school-fellow;” at Bristol there was Mr. Narraway,[8] a
fellmonger in Broadmead, and an old friend of his father, at whose house
he drew two of the children and his own portrait; and at the house of
Mr. William Frederick Wells, the artist, he was evidently one of the
family, as is proved by the charmingly tender reminiscences of Mrs.
Wheeler.
“In early life my father’s house was his second home, a haven of
rest from many domestic trials too sacred to touch upon. Turner
loved my father with a son’s affection; and to me he was as an
elder brother. Many are the times I have gone out sketching with
him. I remember his scrambling up a tree to obtain a better view,
and then he made a coloured sketch, I handing up his colours as he
wanted them. Of course, at that time, I was quite a young girl. He
was a firm affectionate friend to the end of his life; his feelings
were seldom seen on the surface, but they were deep and enduring.
No one would have imagined, under that rather rough and cold
exterior, how very strong were the affections which lay hidden
beneath. I have more than once seen him weep bitterly, particularly
at the death of my own dear father,[9] which took him by surprise,
for he was blind to the coming event, which he dreaded. He came
immediately to my house in an agony of tears. Sobbing like a child,
he said, ‘Oh, Clara, Clara! these are iron tears. I have lost the
best friend I ever had in my life.’ Oh! what a different man would
Turner have been if all the good and kindly feelings of his great
mind had been called into action; but they lay dormant, and were
known to so very few. He was by nature suspicious, and no tender
hand had wiped away early prejudices, the inevitable consequence of
a defective education. Of all the light-hearted merry creatures I
ever knew, Turner was the most so; and the laughter and fun that
abounded when he was an inmate of our cottage was inconceivable,
particularly with the juvenile members of the family.”--THORNBURY’S
_Life of Turner_ (1877), pp. 235, 236.
A man who knew this lady for sixty years, and about whom so kind a heart
could have thus written, could not have been driven to a life of morbid
seclusion because the world had treated him so badly in his youth. His
home may have been, and probably was a cheerless one, and we may well
pity him on that account. The rest of our pity we had better reserve for
his want of education, and the secretive, suspicious disposition which
nature gave him, and which he allowed to master his more genial
propensities.
[Illustration: decorative bar]