1847, 1848 AND 1849: AGED SEVENTY-TWO TO SEVENTY-FOUR
HE DISAPPEARS FROM HIS OLD HAUNTS, AND IS INTERESTED IN OPTICS AND
PHOTOGRAPHY
Turner's art life almost ceased during the years 1847, 1848 and 1849.
Three old-new pictures only were exhibited: 'The Hero of a Hundred
Fights,' probably an early picture re-touched, and two works of former
years: 'The Wreck Buoy,' which he repainted, spending 'six laborious
days' upon it, and 'Venus and Adonis,' dating from nearly fifty years
before, after his visit to the Louvre in 1802.
The interest of these years, if it be an interest, is centred in his
cunning and successful efforts to escape from the notice of friends
and companions, and to withdraw his private life from any kind of
intrusion. The doors of Queen Anne Street were locked and barred, and
when he was absent from home, which was often, his old housekeeper,
Hannah Danby, had no knowledge of his hiding-place. Sometimes he
was seen at a council meeting of the Royal Academy or on Varnishing
Day, but his friends were rarely able to obtain speech with him.
Hawkesworth Fawkes tried to keep up acquaintance with his father's old
Mend, and every Christmas a hamper arrived in Queen Anne Street from
Farnley. There is a letter to Hawkesworth dated December 27th, 1847,
beginning:--'
Many thanks for the P.P.P., viz., Pie, Phea, and Pud--the Xmas cheer
in Queen Anne Street.'
One day, so the story runs, an artist took shelter in a public-house,
where he found Turner sitting in the furthest corner with his glass
of grog before him. Said the unnamed artist: 'I didn't know you used
this house. I shall often drop in now I know where you quarter.' Turner
emptied his glass, and as he went out said, 'Will you? I don't think
you will.'
The secret of his hiding-place was not discovered until a day or two
before his death. As everybody now knows, he lived mainly, during
those last years, in the little house with the roof balcony facing the
Thames at Cremorne, in what is called to-day Cheyne Walk. The story
current for years was that he passed the house in one of his rambles,
saw that rooms were vacant, liked the place, and after some bargaining
with the landlady, agreed co become the tenant. He asked her name, and
upon receiving the answer, 'Mrs. Booth,' chuckled, 'Then I'll be Mr.
Booth.' This story is incorrect, as he had made the acquaintance of
Sophia Caroline Booth years before, when she let lodgings at Margate.
As it is believed that Turner paid his last visit to Margate in 1845,
it is probable that he transferred Mrs. Booth to the little house at
Chelsea in that year. Her name appears in a codicil to his will, dated
February 1st, 1849, giving her the same provision as Hannah Danby, his
housekeeper in Queen Anne Street, who had entered his service, a girl
of sixteen, in the year 1801. Hannah Danby and Mrs. Booth both survived
him.
Turner's curiosity, his eagerness for wider knowledge about his art
and all that pertained to it, never relaxed, even in this period
of his failing powers. One of the most interesting chapters in
Thornbury's _Life_ is the account given by Mayall, the photographer
of Regent Street, of Turner's interest in optics and photography. I
append portions of the information furnished by Mayall, whom Thornbury
describes as 'that eminent professor in the progressing and wonderful
art':--
'Turner's visits to my atelier were in 1847, 1848 and 1849. I took
several admirable daguerreotype portraits of him, one of which was
reading, a position rather favourable for him on account of his weak
eyes and their being rather bloodshot.... My first interviews with him
were rather mysterious; he either did state, or at least led me to
believe, that he was a Master in Chancery, and his subsequent visits
and conversation rather confirmed this idea. At first he was very
desirous of trying curious effects of light let in on the figure from
a high position, and he himself sat for the studies.... He stayed
with me some three hours, talking about light and its curious effects
on films of prepared silver. He expressed a wish to see the spectral
image copied, and asked me if I had ever repeated Mrs. Somerville's
experiment of magnetising a needle in the rays of the spectrum. I told
him I had.
'I was not then aware that the inquisitive old man was Turner, the
painter. At the same time, I was much impressed with his inquisitive
disposition, and I carefully explained to him all I then knew of the
operation of light on iodized silver plates. He came again and again,
always with some new notion about light....'
Mayall tells us that Turner when he visited him bore the marks of age;
but in the profile drawing of this period, ascribed to Linnell, with
the straggling hair, the powerful nose, and the enormous stock about
his neck, the face is keen, and the artist has quite caught the gleam
of the grey eye. This drawing is not by Linnell, as has been hitherto
supposed, but by Landseer and Count d'Orsay in conjunction. Mr. A. S.
Bicknell, who was present when the sketch was made, contributed to the
_Athenæum_ of January 9th, 1909, the following letter on this subject,
as interesting as it is authoritative:--'
'A few days ago I first saw a handsome quarto "Turner, by Sir Walter
Armstrong, 1902," in which, as a second frontispiece, I found a head
and shoulders portrait of that great artist, described on the opposite
leaf as "from the sketch in water-colours by J. Linnell, in the
collection of James Orrock, Esq."
'During the last fifty years I have occasionally come across a
reference to this likeness, declaring that it was probably the work
of some contemporary painter, sketched at a meeting or private
entertainment; but as these surmises have at length crystallised into
a positive assertion concerning Linnell, I think it may be well to
place the truth on record.
'My father, Elhanan Bicknell, of Herne Hill, frequently entertained at
dinner a large company of the most distinguished artists and patrons
of art, amongst whom Turner, but never Linnell, was often one. It
being the case that Turner objected to having his portrait taken,
on an occasion of that kind two conspirators, Count D'Orsay and Sir
Edwin Landseer, devised a little plot to defeat the result of this
antipathy. Whilst Turner unsuspiciously chatted with a guest over
a cup of tea in the drawing-room, D'Orsay placed himself as screen
beside him to hide, when necessary, Landseer sketching him at full
length in pencil on the back of a letter. Landseer gave what he had
done to D'Orsay, who, after re-drawing it at home, and enlarging the
figure to eight inches in height, sold it to J. Hogarth, printseller
in the Haymarket, for twenty guineas; and it was then lithographed
and published by the latter, January 1st, 1851, with the title of
Turner's mysterious poem, _The Fallacies of Hope_, at the bottom.
Sixteen copies were included in the Bicknell sale at Christie's in
1863. The Louis XIV. panelling of the room, as well as a piano, inlaid
with Sèvres plaques, are indicated in the background; and I may also
mention that I was present at that party, which took place, to the
best of my belief, about Christmas, 1847, or early in 1849.
'Ruskin, who seldom admitted any blemish, even in the person of his
hero, called this portrait a caricature, but it was nothing of the
kind; I knew Turner extremely well, and I have always considered it to
be a most admirable, truthful likeness; indeed, the only one exactly
portraying his general appearance and expression in his latter years.'
So here we have a likeness of Turner in the period of his decline and
disappearance from his old haunts, an authentic likeness at one of his
re-appearances--chatting with a guest over a cup of tea in a Herne Hill
drawing-room.