July 22d.--We left Southport for good on the 20th, and have established
ourselves in this place, in lodgings that had been provided for us by Mr.
Swain; our principal object being to spend a few weeks in the proximity
of the Arts' Exhibition. We are here, about three miles from the
Victoria Railway station in Manchester on one side, and nearly a mile
from the Exhibition on the other. This is a suburb of Manchester, and
consists of a long street, called the Stratford Road, bordered with brick
houses two stories high, such as are usually the dwellings of tradesmen
or respectable mechanics, but which are now in demand for lodgings, at
high prices, on account of the Exhibition. It seems to be rather a new
precinct of the city, and the houses, though ranged along a continuous
street, are but a brick border of the green fields in the rear.
Occasionally you get a glimpse of this country aspect between two houses;
but the street itself, even with its little grass-plots and bits of
shrubbery under the front windows, is as ugly as it can be made. Some of
the houses are better than I have described; but the brick used here in
building is very unsightly in hue and surface.
Betimes in the morning the Exhibition omnibuses begin to trundle along,
and pass at intervals of two and a half minutes through the day,--immense
vehicles constructed to carry thirty-nine passengers, and generally with
a good part of that number inside and out. The omnibuses are painted
scarlet, bordered with white, have three horses abreast, and a conductor
in a red coat. They perform the journey from this point into town in
about half an hour; and yesterday morning, being in a hurry to get to the
railway station, I found that I could outwalk them, taking into account
their frequent stoppages.
We have taken the whole house (except some inscrutable holes, into which
the family creeps), of respectable people, who never took lodgers until
this juncture. Their furniture, however, is of the true lodging-house
pattern, sofas and chairs which have no possibility of repose in them;
rickety tables; an old piano and old music, with "Lady Helen Elizabeth"
somebody's name written on it. It is very strange how nothing but a
genuine home can ever look homelike. They appear to be good people; a
little girl of twelve, a daughter, waits on table; and there is an elder
daughter, who yesterday answered the door-bell, looking very like a young
lady, besides five or six smaller children, who make less uproar of grief
or merriment than could possibly be expected. The husband is not
apparent, though I see his hat in the hall. The house is new, and has a
trim, light-colored interior of half-gentility. I suppose the rent, in
ordinary times, might be 25 pounds per annum; but we pay at the rate of
335 pounds for the part which we occupy. This, like all the other houses
in the neighborhood, was evidently built to be sold or let; the builder
never thought of living in it himself, and so that subtile element, which
would have enabled him to create a home, was entirely left out.
This morning, J----- and I set forth on a walk, first towards the palace
of the Arts' Exhibition, which looked small compared with my idea of it,
and seems to be of the Crystal Palace order of architecture, only with
more iron to its glass. Its front is composed of three round arches in a
row. We did not go in. . . . Turning to the right, we walked onward
two or three miles, passing the Botanic Garden, and thence along by
suburban villas, Belgrave terraces, and other such prettinesses in the
modern Gothic or Elizabethan style, with fancifully ornamented
flower-plats before them; thence by hedgerows and fields, and through two
or three villages, with here and there an old plaster and timber-built
thatched house, among a street full of modern brick-fronts,--the
alehouse, or rural inn, being generally the most ancient house in the
village. It was a sultry, heavy day, and I walked without much enjoyment
of the air and exercise. We crossed a narrow and swift river, flowing
between deep banks. It must have been either the Mersey, still an infant
stream, and little dreaming of the thousand mighty ships that float on
its farther tide, or else the Irwell, which empties into the Mersey. We
passed through the village beyond this stream, and went to the railway
station, and then were brought back to Old Trafford, and deposited close
by the Exhibition.
It has showered this afternoon; and I beguiled my time for half an hour
by setting down the vehicles that went past; not that they were
particularly numerous, but for the sake of knowing the character of the
travel along the road.
July 26th.--Day before yesterday we went to the Arts' Exhibition, of
which I do not think that I have a great deal to say. The edifice, being
built more for convenience than show, appears better in the interior than
from without,--long vaulted vistas, lighted from above, extending far
away, all hung with pictures; and, on the floor below, statues, knights
in armor, cabinets, vases, and all manner of curious and beautiful
things, in a regular arrangement. Scatter five thousand people through
the scene, and I do not know how to make a better outline sketch. I was
unquiet, from a hopelessness of being able to enjoy it fully. Nothing is
more depressing to me than the sight of a great many pictures together;
it is like having innumerable books open before you at once, and being
able to read only a sentence or two in each. They bedazzle one another
with cross lights. There never should be more than one picture in a
room, nor more than one picture to be studied in one day. Galleries of
pictures are surely the greatest absurdities that ever were contrived,
there being no excuse for them, except that it is the only way in which
pictures can be made generally available and accessible.
We went first into the Gallery of British Painters, where there were
hundreds of pictures, every one of which would have interested me by
itself; but I could not fix nay mind on one more than another, so I
wandered about, to get a general idea of the Exhibition. Truly it is
very fine; truly, also, every great show is a kind of humbug. I doubt
whether there were half a dozen people there who got the kind of
enjoyment that it was intended to create,--very respectable people they
seemed to be, and very well behaved, but all skimming the surface, as I
did, and none of them so feeding on what was beautiful as to digest it,
and make it a part of themselves. Such a quantity of objects must be
utterly rejected before you can get any real profit from one! It seemed
like throwing away time to look twice even at whatever was most precious;
and it was dreary to think of not fully enjoying this collection, the
very flower of Time, which never bloomed before, and never, by any
possibility, can bloom again. Viewed hastily, moreover, it is somewhat
sad to think that mankind, after centuries of cultivation of the
beautiful arts, can produce no more splendid spectacle than this. It is
not so very grand, although, poor as it is, I lack capacity to take in
even the whole of it.
What gave me most pleasure (because it required no trouble nor study to
come at the heart of it) were the individual relics of antiquity, of
which there are some very curious ones in the cases ranged along the
principal saloon or nave of the building. For example, the dagger with
which Felton killed the Duke of Buckingham,--a knife with a bone handle
and a curved blade, not more than three inches long; sharp-pointed,
murderous-looking, but of very coarse manufacture. Also, the Duke of
Alva's leading staff of iron; and the target of the Emperor Charles V.,
which seemed to be made of hardened leather, with designs artistically
engraved upon it, and gilt. I saw Wolsey's portrait, and, in close
proximity to it, his veritable cardinal's hat in a richly ornamented
glass case, on which was an inscription to the effect that it had been
bought by Charles Kean at the sale of Horace Walpole's collection. It is
a felt hat with a brim about six inches wide all round, and a rather high
crown; the color was, doubtless, a bright red originally, but now it is
mottled with a grayish hue, and there are cracks in the brim, as if the
hat had seen a good deal of wear. I suppose a far greater curiosity than
this is the signet-ring of one of the Pharaohs, who reigned over Egypt
during Joseph's prime ministry,--a large ring to be worn on the thumb, if
at all,--of massive gold, seal part and all, and inscribed with some
characters that looked like Hebrew. I had seen this before in Mr.
Mayer's collection in Liverpool. The mediaeval and English relics,
however, interested me more,--such as the golden and enamelled George
worn by Sir Thomas More; or the embroidered shirt of Charles I.,--the
very one, I presume, which he wore at his execution. There are no
blood-marks on it, it being very nicely washed and folded. The texture
of the linen cloth--if linen it be--is coarser than any peasant would
wear at this day, but the needle-work is exceedingly fine and elaborate.
Another relic of the same period,--the Cavalier General Sir Jacob
Astley's buff-coat, with his belt and sword; the leather of the
buff-coat, for I took it between my fingers, is about a quarter of an
inch thick, of the same material as a wash-leather glove, and by no means
smoothly dressed, though the sleeves are covered with silver-lace. Of
old armor, there are admirable specimens; and it makes one's head ache to
look at the iron pots which men used to thrust their heads into. Indeed,
at one period they seem to have worn an inner iron cap underneath the
helmet. I doubt whether there ever was any age of chivalry. . . . It
certainly was no chivalric sentiment that made men case themselves in
impenetrable iron, and ride about in iron prisons, fearfully peeping at
their enemies through little slits and gimlet-holes. The unprotected
breast of a private soldier must have shamed his leaders in those days.
The point of honor is very different now.
I mean to go again and again, many times more, and will take each day
some one department, and so endeavor to get some real use and improvement
out of what I see. Much that is most valuable must be immitigably
rejected; but something, according to the measure of my poor capacity,
will really be taken into my mind. After all, it was an agreeable day,
and I think the next one will be more so.
July 28th.--Day before yesterday I paid a second visit to the Exhibition,
and devoted the day mainly to seeing the works of British painters, which
fill a very large space,--two or three great saloons at the right side of
the nave. Among the earliest are Hogarth's pictures, including the
Sigismunda, which I remember to have seen before, with her lover's heart
in her hand, looking like a monstrous strawberry; and the March to
Finchley, than which nothing truer to English life and character was ever
painted, nor ever can be; and a large stately portrait of Captain Coram,
and others, all excellent in proportion as they come near to ordinary
life, and are wrought out through its forms. All English painters
resemble Hogarth in this respect. They cannot paint anything high,
heroic, and ideal, and their attempts in that direction are
wearisome to look at; but they sometimes produce good effects by
means of awkward figures in ill-made coats and small-clothes, and hard,
coarse-complexioned faces, such as they might see anywhere in the street.
They are strong in homeliness and ugliness, weak in their efforts at the
beautiful. Sir Thomas Lawrence attains a sort of grace, which you feel
to be a trick, and therefore get disgusted with it. Reynolds is not
quite genuine, though certainly he has produced some noble and beautiful
heads. But Hogarth is the only English painter, except in the landscape
department; there are no others who interpret life to me at all, unless
it be some of the modern Pre-Raphaelites. Pretty village scenes of
common life,--pleasant domestic passages, with a touch of easy humor in
them,--little pathoses and fancynesses, are abundant enough; and Wilkie,
to be sure, has done more than this, though not a great deal more. His
merit lies, not in a high aim, but in accomplishing his aim so perfectly.
It is unaccountable that the English painters' achievements should be so
much inferior to those of the English poets, who have really elevated the
human mind; but, to be sure, painting has only become an English art
subsequently to the epochs of the greatest poets, and since the beginning
of the last century, during which England had no poets. I respect Haydon
more than I once did, not for his pictures, they being detestable to see,
but for his heroic rejection of whatever his countrymen and he himself
could really do, and his bitter resolve to achieve something higher,--
failing in which, he died.
No doubt I am doing vast injustice to a great many gifted men in what I
have here written,--as, for instance, Copley, who certainly has painted a
slain man to the life; and to a crowd of landscape-painters, who have
made wonderful reproductions of little English streams and shrubbery, and
cottage doors and country lanes. And there is a picture called "The
Evening Gun" by Danby,--a ship of war on a calm, glassy tide, at sunset,
with the cannon-smoke puffing from her porthole; it is very beautiful,
and so effective that you can even hear the report breaking upon the
stillness, with so grand a roar that it is almost like stillness too. As
for Turner, I care no more for his light-colored pictures than for so
much lacquered ware or painted gingerbread. Doubtless this is my fault,
my own deficiency; but I cannot help it,--not, at least, without
sophisticating myself by the effort. The only modern pictures that
accomplish a higher end than that of pleasing the eye--the only ones that
really take hold of my mind, and with a kind of acerbity, like unripe
fruit--are the works of Hunt, and one or two other painters of the
Pre-Raphaelite school. They seem wilfully to abjure all beauty, and to
make their pictures disagreeable out of mere malice; but at any rate, for
the thought and feeling which are ground up with the paint, they will
bear looking at, and disclose a deeper value the longer you look. Never
was anything so stiff and unnatural as they appear; although every single
thing represented seems to be taken directly out of life and reality,
and, as it were, pasted down upon the canvas. They almost paint even
separate hairs. Accomplishing so much, and so perfectly, it seems
unaccountable that the picture does not live; but Nature has an art
beyond these painters, and they leave out some medium,--some enchantment
that should intervene, and keep the object from pressing so baldly and
harshly upon the spectator's eyeballs. With the most lifelike
reproduction, there is no illusion. I think if a semi-obscurity were
thrown over the picture after finishing it to this nicety, it might bring
it nearer to nature. I remember a heap of autumn leaves, every one of
which seems to have been stiffened with gum and varnish, and then put
carefully down into the stiffly disordered heap. Perhaps these artists
may hereafter succeed in combining the truth of detail with a broader and
higher truth. Coming from such a depth as their pictures do, and having
really an idea as the seed of them, it is strange that they should look
like the most made-up things imaginable. One picture by Hunt that
greatly interested me was of some sheep that had gone astray among
heights and precipices, and I could have looked all day at these poor,
lost creatures,--so true was their meek alarm and hopeless bewilderment,
their huddling together, without the slightest confidence of mutual help;
all that the courage and wisdom of the bravest and wisest of them could
do being to bleat, and only a few having spirits enough even for this.
After going through these modern masters, among whom were some French
painters who do not interest me at all, I did a miscellaneous business,
chiefly among the water-colors and photographs, and afterwards among the
antiquities and works of ornamental art. I have forgotten what I saw,
except the breastplate and helmet of Henry of Navarre, of steel, engraved
with designs that have been half obliterated by scrubbing. I remember,
too, a breastplate of an Elector of Saxony, with a bullet-hole through
it. He received his mortal wound through that hole, and died of it two
days afterwards, three hundred years ago.
There was a crowd of visitors, insomuch that, it was difficult to get a
satisfactory view of the most interesting objects. They were nearly all
middling-class people; the Exhibition, I think, does not reach the lower
classed at all; in fact, it could not reach them, nor their betters
either, without a good deal of study to help it out. I shall go to-day,
and do my best to get profit out of it.
July 30th.--We all, with R----- and Fanny, went to the Exhibition
yesterday, and spent the day there; not J-----, however, for he went to
the Botanical Gardens. After some little skirmishing with other things,
I devoted myself to the historical portraits, which hang on both sides of
the great nave, and went through them pretty faithfully. The oldest are
pictures of Richard II. and Henry IV. and Edward IV. and Jane Shore, and
seem to have little or no merit as works of art, being cold and stiff,
the life having, perhaps, faded out of them; but these older painters
were trustworthy, inasmuch as they had no idea of making a picture, but
only of getting the face before them on canvas as accurately as they
could. All English history scarcely supplies half a dozen portraits
before the time of Henry VIII.; after that period, and through the reigns
of Elizabeth and James, there are many ugly pictures by Dutchmen and
Italians; and the collection is wonderfully rich in portraits of the time
of Charles I. and the Commonwealth. Vandyke seems to have brought
portrait-painting into fashion; and very likely the king's love of art
diffused a taste for it throughout the nation, and remotely suggested,
even to his enemies, to get their pictures painted. Elizabeth has
perpetuated her cold, thin visage on many canvases, and generally with
some fantasy of costume that makes her ridiculous to all time. There are
several of Mary of Scotland, none of which have a gleam of beauty; but
the stiff old brushes of these painters could not catch the beautiful.
Of all the older pictures, the only one that I took pleasure in looking
at was a portrait of Lord Deputy Falkland, by Vansomer, in James I.'s
time,--a very stately, full-length figure in white, looking out of the
picture as if he saw you. The catalogue says that this portrait
suggested an incident in Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto; but I do not
remember it.
I have a haunting doubt of the value of portrait-painting; that is to
say, whether it gives you a genuine idea of the person purporting to be
represented. I do not remember ever to have recognized a man by having
previously seen his portrait. Vandyke's pictures are full of grace and
nobleness, but they do not look like Englishmen,--the burly, rough,
wine-flushed and weather-reddened faces, and sturdy flesh and blood,
which we see even at the present day, when they must naturally have
become a good deal refined from either the country gentleman or the
courtier of the Stuarts' age. There is an old, fat portrait of Gervoyse
Holles, in a buff-coat,--a coarse, hoggish, yet manly man. The painter
is unknown; but I honor him, and Gervoyse Holles too,--for one was
willing to be truly rendered, and the other dared to do it. It seems to
be the aim of portrait-painters generally, especially of those who have
been most famous, to make their pictures as beautiful and noble as can
anywise consist with retaining the very slightest resemblance to the
person sitting to them. They seldom attain even the grace and beauty
which they aim at, but only hit some temporary or individual taste.
Vandyke, however, achieved graces that rise above time and fashion, and
so did Sir Peter Lely, in his female portraits; but the doubt is, whether
the works of either are genuine history. Not more so, I suspect, than
the narrative of a historian who should seek to make poetry out of the
events which he relates, rejecting those which could not possibly be thus
idealized.
I observe, furthermore, that a full-length portrait has seldom face
enough; not that it lacks its fair proportion by measurement, but the
artist does not often find it possible to make the face so intellectually
prominent as to subordinate the figure and drapery. Vandyke does this,
however. In his pictures of Charles I., for instance, it is the
melancholy grace of the visage that attracts the eye, and it passes to
the rest of the composition only by an effort. Earlier and later
pictures are but a few inches of face to several feet of figure and
costume, and more insignificant than the latter because seldom so well
done; and I suspect the same would generally be the case now, only that
the present simplicity of costume gives the face a chance to be seen.
I was interrupted here, and cannot resume the thread; but considering how
much of his own conceit the artist puts into a portrait, how much
affectation the sitter puts on, and then again that no face is the same
to any two spectators; also, that these portraits are darkened and faded
with age, and can seldom be more than half seen, being hung too high, or
somehow or other inconvenient, on the whole, I question whether there is
much use in looking at them. The truest test would be, for a man well
read in English history and biography, and himself an observer of
insight, to go through the series without knowing what personages they
represented, and write beneath each the name which the portrait
vindicated for itself.
After getting through the portrait-gallery, I went among the engravings
and photographs, and then glanced along the old masters, but without
seriously looking at anything. While I was among the Dutch painters, a
gentleman accosted me. It was Mr. J------, whom I once met at dinner
with Bennoch. He told me that "the Poet Laureate" (as he called him) was
in the Exhibition rooms; and as I expressed great interest, Mr. J------
was kind enough to go in quest of him. Not for the purpose of
introduction, however, for he was not acquainted with Tennyson. Soon Mr.
J------ returned, and said that he had found the Poet Laureate,--and,
going into the saloon of the old masters, we saw him there, in company
with Mr. Woolner, whose bust of him is now in the Exhibition.
Gazing at him with all my eyes, I liked him well, and rejoiced more in
him than in all the other wonders of the Exhibition.
How strange that in these two or three pages I cannot get one single
touch that may call him up hereafter!
I would most gladly have seen more of this one poet of our day, but
forbore to follow him; for I must own that it seemed mean to be dogging
him through the saloons, or even to look at him, since it was to be done
stealthily, if at all.
He is as un-English as possible; indeed an Englishman of genius usually
lacks the national characteristics, and is great abnormally. Even the
great sailor, Nelson, was unlike his countrymen in the qualities that
constituted him a hero; he was not the perfection of an Englishman, but a
creature of another kind,--sensitive, nervous, excitable, and really more
like a Frenchman.
Un-English as he was, Tennyson had not, however, an American look. I
cannot well describe the difference; but there was something more mellow
in him,--softer, sweeter, broader, more simple than we are apt to be.
Living apart from men as he does would hurt any one of us more than it
does him. I may as well leave him here, for I cannot touch the central
point.
August 2d.--Day before yesterday I went again to the Exhibition, and
began the day with looking at the old masters. Positively, I do begin to
receive some pleasure from looking at pictures; but as yet it has nothing
to do with any technical merit, nor do I think I shall ever get so far as
that. Some landscapes by Ruysdael, and some portraits by Murillo,
Velasquez, and Titian, were those which I was most able to appreciate;
and I see reason for allowing, contrary to my opinion, as expressed a few
pages back, that a portrait may preserve some valuable characteristics of
the person represented. The pictures in the English portrait-gallery are
mostly very bad, and that may be the reason why I saw so little in them.
I saw too, at this last visit, a Virgin and Child, which appeared to me
to have an expression more adequate to the subject than most of the
innumerable virgins and children, in which we see only repetitions of
simple maternity; indeed, any mother, with her first child, would serve
an artist for one of them. But, in this picture the Virgin had a look as
if she were loving the infant as her own child, and at the same time
rendering him an awful worship, as to her Creator.
While I was sitting in the central saloon, listening to the music, a
young man accosted me, presuming that I was so-and-so, the American
author. He himself was a traveller for a publishing firm; and he
introduced conversation by talking of Uttoxeter, and my description of it
in an annual. He said that the account had caused a good deal of pique
among the good people of Uttoxeter, because of the ignorance which I
attribute to them as to the circumstance which connects Johnson with
their town. The spot where Johnson stood can, it appears, still be
pointed out. It is on one side of the market-place, and not in the
neighborhood of the church. I forget whether I recorded, at the time,
that an Uttoxeter newspaper was sent me, containing a proposal that a
statue or memorial should be erected on the spot. It would gratify me
exceedingly if such a result should come from my pious pilgrimage
thither.
My new acquaintance, who was cockneyish, but very intelligent and
agreeable, went on to talk about many literary matters and characters;
among others, about Miss Bronte, whom he had seen at the Chapter
Coffee-House, when she and her sister Anne first went to London. He was
at that time connected with the house of ------ and ------, and he
described the surprise and incredulity of Mr.------, when this little,
commonplace-looking woman presented herself as the author of Jane Eyre.
His story brought out the insignificance of Charlotte Bronte's aspect,
and the bluff rejection of her by Mr. ------, much more strongly than
Mrs. Gaskell's narrative.
Chorlton Road, August 9th.--We have changed our lodgings since my last
date, those at Old Trafford being inconvenient, and the landlady a sharp,
peremptory housewife, better fitted to deal with her own family than to
be complaisant to guests. We are now a little farther from the
Exhibition, and not much better off as regards accommodation, but the
housekeeper is a pleasant, civil sort of a woman, auspiciously named Mrs.
Honey. The house is a specimen of the poorer middle-class dwellings as
built nowadays,--narrow staircase, thin walls, and, being constructed for
sale, very ill put together indeed,--the floors with wide cracks between
the boards, and wide crevices admitting both air and light over the
doors, so that the house is full of draughts. The outer walls, it seems
to me, are but of one brick in thickness, and the partition walls
certainly no thicker; and the movements, and sometimes the voices, of
people in the contiguous house are audible to us. The Exhibition has
temporarily so raised the value of lodgings here that we have to pay a
high price for even such a house as this.
Mr. Wilding having gone on a tour to Scotland, I had to be at the
Consulate every day last week till yesterday; when I absented myself from
duty, and went to the Exhibition. U---- and I spent an hour together,
looking principally at the old Dutch masters, who seem to me the most
wonderful set of men that ever handled a brush. Such lifelike
representations of cabbages, onions, brass kettles, and kitchen crockery;
such blankets, with the woollen fuzz upon them; such everything I never
thought that the skill of man could produce! Even the photograph cannot
equal their miracles. The closer you look, the more minutely true the
picture is found to be, and I doubt if even the microscope could see
beyond the painter's touch. Gerard Dow seems to be the master among
these queer magicians. A straw mat, in one of his pictures, is the most
miraculous thing that human art has yet accomplished; and there is a
metal vase, with a dent in it, that is absolutely more real than reality.
These painters accomplish all they aim at,--a praise, methinks, which can
be given to no other men since the world began. They must have laid down
their brushes with perfect satisfaction, knowing that each one of their
million touches had been necessary to the effect, and that there was not
one too few nor too many. And it is strange how spiritual and suggestive
the commonest household article--an earthen pitcher, for example--
becomes, when represented with entire accuracy. These Dutchmen got at
the soul of common things, and so made them types and interpreters of the
spiritual world.
Afterwards I looked at many of the pictures of the old masters, and found
myself gradually getting a taste for them; at least, they give me more
and more pleasure the oftener I come to see them. Doubtless, I shall be
able to pass for a man of taste by the time I return to America. It is
an acquired taste, like that for wines; and I question whether a man is
really any truer, wiser, or better for possessing it. From the old
masters, I went among the English painters, and found myself more
favorably inclined towards some of them than at my previous visits;
seeing something wonderful even in Turner's lights and mists and yeasty
waves, although I should like him still better if his pictures looked in
the least like what they typify. The most disagreeable of English
painters is Etty, who had a diseased appetite for woman's flesh, and
spent his whole life, apparently, in painting them with enormously
developed busts. I do not mind nudity in a modest and natural way; but
Etty's women really thrust their nudity upon you with malice
aforethought, . . . . and the worst of it is they are not beautiful.
Among the last pictures that I looked at was Hogarth's March to Finchley;
and surely nothing can be covered more thick and deep with English nature
than that piece of canvas. The face of the tall grenadier in the centre,
between two women, both of whom have claims on him, wonderfully expresses
trouble and perplexity; and every touch in the picture meant something
and expresses what it meant.
The price of admission, after two o'clock, being sixpence, the Exhibition
was thronged with a class of people who do not usually come in such large
numbers. It was both pleasant and touching to see how earnestly some of
them sought to get instruction from what they beheld. The English are a
good and simple people, and take life in earnest.
August 14th.--Passing by the gateway of the Manchester Cathedral the
other morning, on my way to the station, I found a crowd collected, and,
high overhead, the bells were chiming for a wedding. These chimes of
bells are exceedingly impressive, so broadly gladsome as they are,
filling the whole air, and every nook of one's heart with sympathy. They
are good for a people to rejoice with, and good also for a marriage,
because through all their joy there is something solemn,--a tone of that
voice which we have heard so often at funerals. It is good to see how
everybody, up to this old age of the world, takes an interest in
weddings, and seems to have a faith that now, at last, a couple have come
together to make each other happy. The high, black, rough old cathedral
tower sent out its chime of bells as earnestly as for any bridegroom and
bride that came to be married five hundred years ago. I went into the
churchyard, but there was such a throng of people on its pavement of flat
tombstones, and especially such a cluster along the pathway by which the
bride was to depart, that I could only see a white dress waving along,
and really do not know whether she was a beauty or a fright. The happy
pair got into a post-chaise that was waiting at the gate, and immediately
drew some crimson curtains, and so vanished into their Paradise. There
were two other post-chaises and pairs, and all three had postilions in
scarlet. This is the same cathedral where, last May, I saw a dozen
couples married in the lump.
In a railway carriage, two or three days ago, an old merchant made rather
a good point of one of the uncomfortable results of the electric
telegraph. He said that formerly a man was safe from bad news, such as
intelligence of failure of debtors, except at the hour of opening his
letters in the morning; and then he was in some degree prepared for it,
since, among (say) fifteen letters, he would be pretty certain to find
some "queer" one. But since the telegraph has come into play, he is
never safe, and may be hit with news of failure, shipwreck, fall of
stocks, or whatever disaster, at all hours of the day.
I went to the Exhibition on Wednesday with U----, and looked at the
pencil sketches of the old masters; also at the pictures generally, old
and new. I particularly remember a spring landscape, by John Linnell the
younger. It is wonderfully good; so tender and fresh that the artist
seems really to have caught the evanescent April and made her permanent.
Here, at least, is eternal spring.
I saw a little man, behind an immense beard, whom I take to be the Duke
of Newcastle; at least, there was a photograph of him in the gallery,
with just such a beard. He was at the Palace on that day.
August 16th.--I went again to the Exhibition day before yesterday, and
looked much at both the modern and ancient pictures, as also at the
water-colors. I am making some progress as a connoisseur, and have got
so far as to be able to distinguish the broader differences of style,--
as, for example, between Rubens and Rembrandt. I should hesitate to
claim any more for myself thus far. In fact, however, I do begin to have
a liking for good things, and to be sure that they are good. Murillo
seems to me about the noblest and purest painter that ever lived, and his
"Good Shepherd" the loveliest picture I have seen. It is a hopeful
symptom, moreover, of improving taste, that I see more merit in the crowd
of painters than I was at first competent to acknowledge. I could see
some of their defects from the very first; but that is the earliest stage
of connoisseurship, after a formal and ignorant admiration. Mounting a
few steps higher, one sees beauties. But how much study, how many
opportunities, are requisite to form and cultivate a taste! The
Exhibition must be quite thrown away on the mass of spectators.
Both they and I are better able to appreciate the specimens of ornamental
art contained in the Oriental Room, and in the numerous cases that are
ranged up and down the nave. The gewgaws of all Time are here, in
precious metals, glass, china, ivory, and every other material that could
be wrought into curious and beautiful shapes; great basins and dishes of
embossed gold from the Queen's sideboard, or from the beaufets of
noblemen; vessels set with precious stones; the pastoral staffs of
prelates, some of them made of silver or gold, and enriched with gems,
and what have been found in the tombs of the bishops; state swords, and
silver maces; the rich plate of colleges, elaborately wrought,--great
cups, salvers, tureens, that have been presented by loving sons to their
Alma Mater; the heirlooms of old families, treasured from generation to
generation, and hitherto only to be seen by favored friends; famous
historical jewels, some of which are painted in the portraits of the
historical men and women that hang on the walls; numerous specimens of
the beautiful old Venetian glass, some of which looks so fragile that it
is a wonder how it could bear even the weight of the wine, that used to
be poured into it, without breaking. These are the glasses that tested
poison, by being shattered into fragments at its touch. The strangest
and ugliest old crockery, pictured over with monstrosities,--the Palissy
ware, embossed with vegetables, fishes, lobsters, that look absolutely
real; the delicate Sevres china, each piece made inestimable by pictures
from a master's hand;--in short, it is a despair and misery to see so
much that is curious and beautiful, and to feel that far the greater
portion of it will slip out of the memory, and be as if we had never seen
it. But I mean to look again and again at these things. We soon
perceive that the present day does not engross all the taste and
ingenuity that has ever existed in the mind of man; that, in fact, we are
a barren age in that respect.
August 20th.--I went to the Exhibition on Monday, and again yesterday,
and measurably enjoyed both visits. I continue to think, however, that a
picture cannot be fully enjoyed except by long and intimate acquaintance
with it, nor can I quite understand what the enjoyment of a connoisseur
is. He is not usually, I think, a man of deep, poetic feeling, and does
not deal with the picture through his heart, nor set it in a poem, nor
comprehend it morally. If it be a landscape, he is not entitled to judge
of it by his intimacy with nature; if a picture of human action, he has
no experience nor sympathy of life's deeper passages. However, as my
acquaintance with pictures increases, I find myself recognizing more and
more the merit of the acknowledged masters of the art; but, possibly, it
is only because I adopt the wrong principles which may have been laid
down by the connoisseurs. But there can be no mistake about Murillo,--
not that I am worthy to admire him yet, however.
Seeing the many pictures of Holy Families, and the Virgin and Child,
which have been painted for churches and convents, the idea occurs, that
it was in this way that the poor monks and nuns gratified, as far as they
could, their natural longing for earthly happiness. It was not Mary and
her heavenly Child that they really beheld, or wished for; but an earthly
mother rejoicing over her baby, and displaying it probably to the world
as an object worthy to be admired by kings,--as Mary does, in the
Adoration of the Magi. Every mother, I suppose, feels as if her first
child deserved everybody's worship.
I left the Exhibition at three o'clock, and went to Manchester, where I
sought out Mr. C S------- in his little office. He greeted me warmly,
and at five we took the omnibus for his house, about four miles from
town. He seems to be on pleasant terms with his neighbors, for almost
everybody that got into the omnibus exchanged kindly greetings with him,
and indeed his kindly, simple, genial nature comes out so evidently that
it would be difficult not to like him. His house stands, with others, in
a green park,--a small, pretty, semi-detached suburban residence of
brick, with a lawn and garden round it. In close vicinity, there is a
deep clough or dell, as shaggy and wild as a poet could wish, and with a
little stream running through it, as much as five miles long.
The interior of the house is very pretty, and nicely, even handsomely and
almost sumptuously, furnished; and I was very glad to find him so
comfortable. His recognition as a poet has been hearty enough to give
him a feeling of success, for he showed me various tokens of the
estimation in which he is held,--for instance, a presentation copy of
Southey's works, in which the latter had written "Amicus amico,--poeta
poetae." He said that Southey had always been most kind to him. . . .
There were various other testimonials from people of note, American as
well as English. In his parlor there is a good oil-painting of himself,
and in the drawing-room a very fine crayon sketch, wherein his face,
handsome and agreeable, is lighted up with all a poet's ecstasy; likewise
a large and fine engraving from the picture. The government has
recognized his poetic merit by a pension of fifty pounds,--a small sung,
it is true, but enough to mark him out as one who has deserved well of
his country. . . . The man himself is very good and lovable. . . . I
was able to gratify him by saying that I had recently seen many favorable
notices of his poems in the American newspapers; an edition having been
published a few months since on our side of the ocean. He was much
pleased at this, and asked me to send him the notices. . . .
August 30th.--I have been two or three times to the Exhibition since my
last date, and enjoy it more as I become familiar with it. There is
supposed to be about a third of the good pictures here which England
contains; and it is said that the Tory nobility and gentry have
contributed to it much more freely and largely than the Whigs. The Duke
of Devonshire, for instance, seems to have sent nothing. Mr. Ticknor,
the Spanish historian, whom I met yesterday, observed that we should not
think quite so much of this Exhibition as the English do after we have
been to Italy, although it is a good school in which to gain a
preparatory knowledge of the different styles of art. I am glad to hear
that there are better things still to be seen. Nevertheless, I should
suppose that certain painters are better represented here than they ever
have been or will be elsewhere. Vandyke, certainly, can be seen nowhere
else so well; Rembrandt and Rubens have satisfactory specimens; and the
whole series of English pictorial achievement is shown more perfectly
than within any other walls. Perhaps it would be wise to devote myself
to the study of this latter, and leave the foreigners to be studied on
their own soil. Murillo can hardly have done better than in the pictures
by him which we see here. There is nothing of Raphael's here that is
impressive. Titian has some noble portraits, but little else that I care
to see. In all these old masters, Murillo only excepted, it is very
rare, I must say, to find any trace of natural feeling and passion; and I
am weary of naked goddesses, who never had any real life and warmth in
the painter's imagination,--or, if so, it was the impure warmth of an
unchaste woman, who sat for him.
Last week I dined at Mr. F. Heywood's to meet Mr. Adolphus, the author of
a critical work on the Waverley Novels, published long ago, and intended
to prove, from internal evidence, that they were written by Sir Walter
Scott. . . . His wife was likewise of the party, . . . . and also a
young Spanish lady, their niece, and daughter of a Spaniard of literary
note. She herself has literary tastes and ability, and is well known to
Prescott, whom, I believe, she has assisted in his historical researches,
and also to Professor Ticknor; and furthermore she is very handsome and
unlike an English damsel, very youthful and maiden-like; and her manners
have all ardor and enthusiasm that were pleasant to see, especially as
she spoke warmly of my writings; and yet I should wrong her if I left the
impression of her being forthputting and obtrusive, for it was not the
fact in the least. She speaks English like a native, insomuch that I
should never have suspected her to be anything else.
My nerves recently have not been in an exactly quiet and normal state. I
begin to weary of England and need another clime.
September 6th.--I think I paid my last visit to the Exhibition, and feel
as if I had had enough of it, although I have got but a small part of the
profit it might have afforded me. But pictures are certainly quite other
things to me now from what they were at my first visit; it seems even as
if there were a sort of illumination within them, that makes me see them
more distinctly. Speaking of pictures, the miniature of Anne of Cleves
is here, on the faith of which Henry VIII. married her; also, the picture
of the Infanta of Spain, which Buckingham brought over to Charles I.
while Prince of Wales. This has a delicate, rosy prettiness.
One rather interesting portion of the Exhibition is the Refreshment-room,
or rather rooms; for very much space is allowed both to the first and
second classes. I have looked most at the latter, because there John
Ball and his wife may be seen in full gulp aid guzzle, swallowing vast
quantities of cold boiled beef, thoroughly moistened with porter or
bitter ale; and very good meat and drink it is.
At my last visit, on Friday, I met Judge Pollock of Liverpool, who
introduced me to a gentleman in a gray slouched hat as Mr. Du Val, an
artist, resident in Manchester; and Mr. Du Val invited me to dine with
him at six o'clock. So I went to Carlton Grove, his residence, and found
it a very pretty house, with its own lawn and shrubbery about it. . . .
There was a mellow fire in the grate, which made the drawing-room very
cosey and pleasant, as the dusk came on before dinner. Mr. Du Val looked
like an artist, and like a remarkable man. . . . We had very good talk,
chiefly about the Exhibition, and Du Val spoke generously and
intelligently of his brother-artists. He says that England might furnish
five exhibitions, each one as rich as the present. I find that the most
famous picture here is one that I have hardly looked at, "The Three
Marys," by Annibal Caracci. In the drawing-room there were several
pictures and sketches by Du Val, one of which I especially liked,--a
misty, moonlight picture of the Mersey, near Seacombe. I never saw
painted such genuine moonlight. . . .
I took my leave at half past ten, and found my cab at the door, and my
cabman snugly asleep inside of it; and when Mr. Du Val awoke him, he
proved to be quite drunk, insomuch that I hesitated whether to let him
clamber upon the box, or to take post myself, and drive the cabman home.
However, I propounded two questions to him: first, whether his horse
would go of his own accord; and, secondly, whether he himself was
invariably drunk at that time of night, because, if it were his normal
state, I should be safer with him drunk than sober. Being satisfied on
these points, I got in, and was driven home without accident or
adventure; except, indeed, that the cabman drew up and opened the door
for me to alight at a vacant lot on Stratford Road, just as if there had
been a house and home and cheerful lighted windows in that vacancy. On
my remonstrance he resumed the whip and reins, and reached Boston Terrace
at last; and, thanking me for an extra sixpence as well as he could
speak, he begged me to inquire for "Little John" whenever I next wanted a
cab. Cabmen are, as a body, the most ill-natured and ungenial men in the
world; but this poor little man was excellently good-humored.
Speaking of the former rudeness of manners, now gradually refining away,
of the Manchester people, Judge ------ said that, when he first knew
Manchester, women, meeting his wife in the street, would take hold of her
dress and say, "Ah, three and sixpence a yard!" The men were very rough,
after the old Lancashire fashion. They have always, however, been a
musical people, and this may have been a germ of refinement in them.
They are still much more simple and natural than the Liverpool people,
who love the aristocracy, and whom they heartily despise. It is singular
that the great Art-Exhibition should have come to pass in the rudest
great town in England.