allusion in his memoirs. Somewhere about the time when he was able
to maintain himself, he married a certain Joanna--her surname is not
known--but not at Ashburton. It can hardly be doubted that this was
the “little girl down the lane” who had cheered him with her smile and
voice in his hours of deepest gloom.
The entry of this marriage has not yet been found, but it will be
lighted on some day in the register of one of the Exeter churches. To
her he often alluded in his poems, as Anna. In an ode to a tuft of
violets we find the following:--
Come then--ere yet the morning ray
Has drunk the dew that gems your crest,
And drawn your balmiest sweets away;
O come and grace my Anna’s breast.
O! I should think--that fragrant bed
Might I but hope with you to share--
Years of anxiety repaid
By one short hour of transport there.
To her he appears to have been deeply attached. He moved her to
Ashburton, and there visited her when he could escape from his literary
labours in London, and there she faded, and was buried on 27 December,
1789. Gifford was stricken by her loss in the most sensitive part
of the human heart, for over her grave he poured forth the pathetic
lament:--
I wish I was where Anna lies,
For I am sick of lingering here,
And every hour affliction cries,
“Go, and partake her humble bier.”
I wish I could! For when she died
I lost my all; and life has proved
Since that sad hour a dreary void,
A waste, unloving and unloved.
Perhaps the surest testimony to the pain left in his soul by her loss
is his silence in his _Autobiography_ concerning her. She--and his love
and his sorrow--were too sacred to be brought before the public eye.
He never mentioned her, or that he had been married, even to his best
friends; and in Murray’s _Reminiscences_ it is asserted that Gifford
never was married.
In Lord Grosvenor’s house Gifford proceeded with his translation of
_Juvenal_, that had occupied him off and on for some years. His bitter
humour agreed with the biting sarcasm of the Roman poet, and the
work on which he was engaged was one of love. But, previous to its
publication, he hurled his _Baviad_ at the heads of the Della Cruscan
school of poetasters, in 1794. The name signifies “of the Bran,”
and was adopted by a literary coterie, to signify that their poetic
productions were sifted, and of the purest wheat. It was a mutual
admiration society, and was composed of Robert Merry, a fanatical
Republican, who had married Miss Brunton, the celebrated actress, and
sister of the still more celebrated Louisa, who became Countess of
Craven; another member of the society was Mrs. Piozzi; others were Mrs.
Robertson and Bertie Greathead. This set inundated the newspapers,
magazines, and annuals with a flood of weak and watery “poetry.”
As Byron says, addressing this set:--
With you I was not: Gifford’s heavy hand
Has crush’d, without remorse, your numerous band.
In 1795 appeared the _Mæviad_, a satire of the same class, in which,
although equally personal, there was less unnecessary virulence.
Following up a line of composition so congenial to his temper and
talents, he published, in 1800, his _Epistle to Peter Pindar_, of which
some lines are given in the article devoted to that abusive poet. This
roused Wolcot to fury, and he sought out and found the rival satirist
in the publisher’s shop.
An amusing account of the fray is given by Mr. Moonshine, “The Battle
of the Bards.” Sir Walter Scott says of it: “Though so little an
athlete, he nevertheless beat off Dr. Wolcot, when that celebrated
person, the most unsparing calumniator of his time, chose to be
offended with Gifford for satirizing him in his turn. Peter Pindar made
a most violent attack, but Gifford had the best of the affray, and
remained, I think, in triumphant possession of the field of action, and
of the assailant’s cane.”
Scott had a high opinion of Gifford as a poet in his peculiar line. He
wrote in 1805: “I have a good esteem of Mr. Gifford as a manly English
poet, very different from most of our modern versifiers.”
In 1802, Gifford published his principal work, his English version of
_Juvenal_, the production of which had engrossed the greater part of
his life, and which was issued with a dedication to Earl Grosvenor.
Soon after the publication of the _Baviad_, and the _Mæviad_, Gifford
issued, as editor, the _Anti-Jacobin_ (1797-8). In 1805, he published
an edition of Massinger; in 1816, an edition of Ben Jonson. His version
of Persius did not appear till 1821, after which date he completed an
edition of Ford.
In 1814, he was at Ryde, whither he had taken his old housekeeper.[21]
He wrote: “My poor housekeeper is going fast. Nothing can save her, and
I lend all my care to soften her declining days. She has a physician
every second day, and takes a world of medicines, more for their profit
than her own, poor thing. Guess at my expenses, but I owe in some
measure the extension of my feeble life to her care through a long
succession of years, and I would cheerfully divide my last farthing
with her.”
When the scheme was first started to issue the _Quarterly Review_, to
counteract the influence of the _Edinburgh Review_, Gifford was at once
proposed as editor. Sir Walter Scott, 25 October, 1808, wrote of the
selection: “Gifford will be admirable at service, but will require,
or I mistake him much, both a spur and a bridle--a spur on account of
habits of literary indolence, induced by weak health, and a bridle
because, having renounced in some degree general society, he cannot be
supposed to have the habitual and distinctive feeling enabling him to
judge at once and decidedly on the mode of letting his shafts fly down
the breeze of popular opinion. But he has worth, wit, learning, and
extensive information.”
From this time the influence and celebrity of Gifford may be deemed
established; nor were his services as a party man forgotten by those
who could reward him, as he possessed two sinecures, the controllership
of the lottery, at a salary of £600 per annum, and paymastership of
the band of gentlemen pensioners, at £300 per annum. As editor of
the _Quarterly_, he received a salary of £900 per annum, and also a
pension of £400 from his former pupil, now Earl Grosvenor. He bitterly
lamented, long ere this, that before the means of helping his little
brother, nursed in the almshouse at Ashburton, was in his power, that
little brother had died.
He was alone in the world, and his early trials, his loss of the only
beings whom he had loved, soured his temper, and made him savage and
virulent in his treatment of such as differed from him. One great
defect he showed as editor. He would not consider a work to be
reviewed on its own merits, but looked first to see what were the
politics of the author before he praised or condemned the book.
In personal appearance he was not striking. George Ticknor, in his
_Life, Letters, and Journals_, says, under 19 June, 1814: “Among other
persons I brought letters to Gifford, the satirist, but never saw him
till yesterday. Never was I so mistaken in my anticipations. Instead of
a tall and handsome man, as I had supposed him from his pictures, a man
of severe and bitter remarks in conversation, such as I had good reason
to believe him from his books, I found him a short, deformed, and ugly
little man, with a large head sunk between his shoulders, and one of
his eyes turned outward, but withal one of the best-natured, most open,
and well-bred gentlemen I have met.”
From the ability and keenness of the _Baviad_ and _Mæviad_, and from
a promise made in his edition of the latter to continue his satirical
writings, it was hoped that he would do this, but he did not. Byron
says:--
“Why slumbers Gifford?” once was asked in vain.
Why slumbers Gifford? let us ask again.
Are there no follies for his pen to purge?
Are there no fools whose backs demand the scourge?
Are there no sins for satire’s bard to greet?
Stalks not gigantic Vice in every street?
Shall peers or princes tread pollution’s path
And ’scape alike the law’s and Muse’s wrath?
Nor blaze with guilty stare through future time,
Eternal beacons of consummate crime?
Arouse thee, Gifford! be thy promise claim’d,
Make bad men better, or, at least, ashamed.
One curious peculiarity Gifford had. He made his old housekeeper sit in
his study doing her needlework whilst he was engaged on his literary
labours. To the end he maintained a warm friendship with Dr. Ireland,
Dean of Westminster, son of a butcher of Ashburton, and a schoolfellow
in former days, and when he died he bequeathed to him his library.
“The last month of Gifford’s life was but a slow dying”, says Mr.
Smiles. “He was sleepless, feverish, oppressed by an extreme difficulty
of breathing, which often deprived him of speech; and his sight had
failed. Towards the end of his life he would sometimes take up a pen,
and after a vain attempt to write, would throw it down, saying, ‘No,
my work is done.’ Even thinking caused him pain. As his last hour drew
near, his mind began to wander. ‘These books have driven me mad,’ he
once said; ‘I must read my prayers.’ He passed gradually away, his
pulse ceasing to beat five hours before his death. And then he slept
out of life on the 31st December, 1826, in his 71st year.”
He left £25,000 of personal property. He left the bulk of it to the
Rev. John Cookesley, son of his early patron, whom he also instituted
residuary legatee. He also left a sum of money the interest of which
was to be distributed annually among the poor of Ashburton.
Finally, one touching trait in the character of Gifford was his
exceeding love for children. Looking back at his own desolate, loveless
childhood, full of hardship, his heart expanded towards all little
ones, and he delighted in attending juvenile parties, and rejoiced
at seeing the children frisking about in the happiness of youth. His
domestic favourites were his dog and his cat, both of which he dearly
loved. He was also most kind and considerate to his domestic servants;
and all who knew him well knew that his bark was worse than his bite;
he made no answer, did not retaliate when attacked vindictively,
insultingly by Hazlitt, and when William Cobbett called him “the
dottrel-headed old shuffle-breeches of the _Quarterly Review_” he cast
back no vituperative term in reply.
Gifford was a staunch friend. He left his house in James Street,
Buckingham Gate, to the widow of his old friend Hoppner, the portrait
painter.
Sir Walter Scott wrote on 17 January, 1827: “I observe in the papers my
old friend Gifford’s death. He was a man of rare attainments and many
excellent qualities. His _Juvenal_ is one of the best versions ever
made of a classic author, and his satire of the _Baviad_ and _Mæviad_
squabashed at one blow a set of coxcombs who might have humbugged the
world long enough. As a commentator he was capital, could he but have
suppressed his rancours against those who had preceded him in the
task; but a misconstruction or misinterpretation, nay, the misplacing
of a comma, was in Gifford’s eyes a crime worthy of the most severe
animadversion. The same fault of extreme severity went through his
critical labours, and in general he flagellated with so little pity,
that people lost their sense of the criminal’s guilt, in dislike of the
savage pleasure which the executioner seemed to take in inflicting the
punishment. This lack of temper probably arose from indifferent health,
for he was very valetudinary, and realized two verses, wherein he says
Fortune assigned him:--
One eye not over good,
Two sides that to their cost have stood
A ten years’ hectic cough,
Aches, stitches, all the various ills
That swell the devilish doctor’s bills,
And sweep poor mortals off.
But he might also justly claim as his gift the moral qualities
expressed in the next fine stanza:--
A soul
That spurns the crowd’s malign control,
A firm contempt of wrong;
Spirits above affliction’s power,
And skill to soothe the lingering hour
With no inglorious song.
“He was a little man, dumped up together, and so ill made as to seem
almost deformed, but with a singular expression of talent in his
countenance.”
Gifford was buried in Westminster Abbey, and his schoolfellow and
lifelong friend, Dean Ireland, was afterwards buried in the same grave.
The authorities for his life are his own biographical account of his
early life, and Smiles’s _Memoir and Correspondence of John Murray, the
Publisher_. London, 1891.
Also a “Life,” by Mr. J. S. Amery, in the now extinct _Ashburtonian_,
1891.
Also a brief account by the Rev. Treasurer Hawker in “Two Ashburton
Scholars,” in the _Transactions_ of the Devonshire Association, 1876.
BENJAMIN R. HAYDON
The only painting by which this artist is generally known is that of
Napoleon standing on a cliff at S. Helena, gazing on the departing
glories of the day as the sun sets in the ocean. There is feeling and
pathos in the picture, as there is in Watts’s “Young Man with Great
Possessions,” although in both only the back is seen of the personage
depicted. Haydon did his “Napoleon Musing” over a good many times. He
sold a copy to the King of Hanover.
On 7 March, 1844, he entered in his diary: “I have painted nineteen
Napoleons. Thirteen Musings at S. Helena, and six other Musings. By
heavens! how many more?”
And of all his pictures Haydon thought least of this. But he was a man
mistaken in his estimate of his own powers and of what he could do. He
wanted to be an heroic painter, but projected his own personality upon
his canvas, and as he was a man with disproportionately short legs, his
“Moses,” his “Alexander,” and other heroes must be short nether-limbed
as well.
The Haydons of Cadhay, in Ottery S. Mary parish, were an ancient
family. They built the south porch of the collegiate church in 1571,
and set up on it the inscription “He that no il will Do no thynt yt
lang yto,” or in plainer English, “He that no ill will do, let him
do nothing that belongs thereto”; a motto that it had been well for
Benjamin had he retained it and acted on it to the end.
The authentic pedigree of the Haydons goes back to the reign of Henry
III. They were, originally, of Ebford, in Woodbury parish, and did not
acquire Cadhay till the beginning of the seventeenth century; but in
the eighteenth century they got into difficulties through expensive
lawsuits, and lost both Cadhay and Ebford, and disappeared as water
that sinks into the sand. The last of whom we know anything was Gideon
Haydon, of Cadhay, who died in 1707, and left two sons, Gideon and John.
Benjamin Robert Haydon in his _Autobiography_ says: “My father was the
lineal descendant of one of the oldest families in Devon, the Haydons
of Cadhay. The family was ruined by a chancery suit, and the children
were bound out to various trades. Among them was my grandfather, who
was bound out to Mr. Savery, of Slade, near Plymouth. He conducted
himself well, and gained the esteem of his master, who in time made him
his steward. In a few years he saved money, and on the death of Mr.
Savery set up a bookseller’s shop in Plymouth, where he died in 1773
from disease of the heart. My grandfather married Mary Baskerville, a
descendant of the great printer. At my grandfather’s death my father
succeeded to the business, and married a Miss Cobley, daughter of a
clergyman, who had the living of Ide, near Exeter. He was killed early
in life by the fall of a sounding-board on his head while preaching.”
Unfortunately B. R. Haydon does not give the Christian names of his
father and grandfather, so that we are not able to say where they hitch
on to the submerged Haydons of Cadhay.
[Illustration: B. R. HAYDON
_From a drawing by David Wilkie_]
B. R. Haydon left at his death not only an _Autobiography_ extending
to the year 1820, but also a _Journal_ in twenty-six folio volumes.
The former has been published entire, but the _Journal_ has been
compressed, and the whole edited in three volumes by Mr. Tom Taylor
(London, 1853). It is not my intention in a short article to go through
the entire Life and further to compress it, but rather to pick out
a few salient points, and to draw from other sources more impartial
estimates of Haydon than he formed of himself and of his work.
As the opening of his _Autobiography_ contains some lively sketches of
old Plymouth, I shall extract these.
“My father sent me to the grammar school under the Rev. Dr. Bidlake,
a man of some taste. He painted and played on the organ, patronized
talent, was fond of country excursions, wrote poems which nobody ever
read.
“Finding that I had a taste for art, he always took me, with another
boy, from our studies to attend his caprices in painting. Here his odd
and peculiar figure, for his back was bent from fever, induced us to
play him tricks. As he was obliged to turn round and walk away to study
the effect of his touches, we used to rub out what he had done before
he returned, when his perplexity and simplicity were delightful to
mischievous boys. Once he sent my companion to cut off the skirt of an
old coat to clean his palette with, and the boy cut off the skirt of
his best Sunday coat. Poor dear Dr. Bidlake went to Stonehouse Chapel
in his great-coat the next Sunday, and when he took it off to put on
the surplice the clerk exclaimed in horror, ‘Good God, Sir! somebody
has cut off the skirt of your coat!’”
“My father used to show my drawings to his customers. One of them was
a very great man in the town--merchant and, I believe, consul. John H.
[Hawker] was a very worthy but pompous man, exceedingly vain, very
fond of talking French before people who could not speak a word of it,
and quoting Italian sayings of which he knew little; liked everything
but steady attention to his business, was a good father, good husband,
and to play soldier for a week at any time would have laid his head
upon the block. During the dread of invasion volunteer corps became the
rage. The very infants in the nursery played soldiers too. Mr. John
[Hawker] either raised or joined a corps of volunteers, and warier
men made him colonel, that the expense might not fall on their heads.
Colonel he was, and devoted himself to the occupation with so much
sincerity that his men in discipline and order would certainly not have
disgraced a marching militia regiment. After review days, nothing gave
the Colonel so much delight as marching right through the town from the
Hoe, to the horror and consternation of the apple-women. The moment the
drums and trumpets were heard sounding at the bottom of Market Street,
the scramble to get out of the way among the poor old women is not to
be imagined. Market Street in Plymouth is a sort of hill, and how often
as a boy have I left my drawing, dashed down and out to the top of the
hill to see the Colonel in all his glory.
“First came in view his feather and cap, then his large, red,
pride-swollen, big-featured face, with a smile on it in which grim war,
dignity, benevolent condescension, stolidity, and self-satisfaction
were mixed in equal proportions; then came his charger, curvetting
with graceful fire, now hind-quarters this side, now fore-quarters
that side, with the Colonel--sword drawn and glittering in the
sun--recognizing the wives and children of the ironmongers, drapers,
and grocers who crowded the windows to see him pass. Then came the
band, big drum and trumpets; then the grenadier company with regular
tramp; then the Colonel’s eldest son, John, out of the counting-house,
who was captain; then his lieutenant, an attorney’s clerk; then the
Colonel and band turned to the right down Broad Street--the music
became fainter and fainter, the rear lagged after. The Colonel drew
up his regiment before his own parlour windows, and solaced by white
handkerchiefs and fair lips, dismissed his men, and retired to the
privacy of domestic life until a new field day recalled him to the
glory of the Hoe and the perils of apple-stalls and slippery streets.”
B. R.’s father had been a fast and dissipated man, but before he
utterly sank past recovery, he pulled himself together and became
a man of business, always somewhat shifty, and disposed to enjoy
himself rather than stick to work. On one occasion the bookseller
was asked angrily by a important customer why he had not fulfilled
his oft-repeated promise to procure some young walnuts to which he
had access, and his reply was that there had been such a demand for
gun-stocks from the war then raging in the Peninsula that there were no
trees left.
A somewhat congenial spirit came to Plymouth and settled into his
house. This was a Mr. Cobley, brother of Mrs. Haydon, a man fond of
society and of his bottle, accomplished, and so habitually indolent
that when he came to see his sister on a six weeks’ visit he never had
the energy to remove, got embedded in the family, stayed thirty years,
and quitted it and life together.
B. R. does not appear to have had much love for his father, but he
always speaks of his mother with the tenderest affection, and _her_
opposition to her only boy’s choice of the profession of a painter cost
him a severe struggle before he could disregard her entreaties to abide
by his father’s trade.
Haydon was little more than a boy in years when he left home in May,
1804, and plunged into the uncertain depths of London life. He had an
introduction to Northcote, a Devonshire man like himself, but jealous,
spiteful, and unwilling to help a struggling beginner. And he was
fortunate in attracting the notice of Fuseli, Keeper of the Royal
Academy, who liked him, and helped him to master the rudiments of his
profession.
Haydon admired the effects of London smoke.
“By Gode,” said Fuseli to him one day, “it’s like the smoke of the
Israelites making bricks.” “It is grand,” retorted B. R., “for it is
the smoke of a people who would have made the Egyptians make bricks for
them.”
He became friendly with Wilkie, then a raw, red-headed Scotch lad,
who had made a hit, and taken the town by storm with his “Village
Politicians.”
David Wilkie was canny about money. One day he was showing his fellow
pupils some drawing-paper he was using. “Why, Wilkie!” exclaimed
Haydon, “where did you get this? Bring us a quire to-morrow.”
He promised that he would. The next day, and the day after, no
drawing-paper. When remonstrated with, David quietly excused himself,
“Weel, weel, jest give me the money first, and ye’ll be sure to hae the
paper.”
When thus starting as a painter, a hint was given to Haydon, by this
success of Wilkie, what was the line that he should pursue, what was
the style of picture that would appeal to the public. But he was too
obstinate to take the hint. His idea was the High Art, heroic subjects
from mythology or classic history, or from the Old Testament, on huge
canvases--themes that interested few, and of a size that few could buy.
“Your paintings are too big,” said a duchess to him one day; “we have
not houses that can contain them.”
“It is not that,” replied Haydon; “it is that your hearts are too
contracted to appreciate them.”
In 1807 Haydon was summoned to Plymouth by the failure of his mother’s
health.
“Incessant anxiety and trouble, and her only son’s bursting away from
her at a time when she had hoped for his consolations in her old age,
gradually generated that dreadful disease _angina pectoris_. Her doom
was sealed, and death held her as his own, whenever it should please
him to claim her. Her fine heroic face began to wither and grow pale;
loss of exercise brought on weakness and derangement. She imagined that
the advice of an eminent surgeon in London might save her, and though I
and everybody else knew that nothing could be done, we acceded to her
wish immediately.