1851: AGED SEVENTY-SIX
THE MYSTERY OF THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE REVEALED TO HIS FRIENDS: AND
HIS DEATH
I leaned against the parapet of the Embankment in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea,
and gazed at the row of cosy little houses on the other side of the
road that face the Thames. The house where Turner died, I had been
told, is now 119 Cheyne Walk. My eyes sought 119, but found it not. The
numbers passed from 118 to 120. Then I crossed the road to discover
that Nos. 118 and 119 have been converted into one house. Peering, I
discerned, almost hidden by Virginia creeper, a tablet saying that here
Turner died.
So this was the house. Somewhere near here 'Puggy Booth,' as he was
known to the street boys, 'Admiral Booth' to the tradesmen, moored
his boat. The story was current in Chelsea that he was an Admiral
in reduced circumstances, and Turner was not the man to illumine a
mystery, or end a joke.
We learn from Thornbury that up to the period of his final illness,
he would often rise at daybreak, leave his bed with some blanket or
dressing-gown carelessly thrown over him, and ascend to the railed-in
roof to watch the sunrise, and see the colour flush the morning sky.
There was the railed-in roof, crowning the 'Cremorne Cottage,' that in
Turner's time had green sward to the edge of the river: the house with
three windows only, one in the basement, and one each on the first and
second floors. In the room on the second floor, where he painted his
last four pictures, he died. I remembered what I had read of the talk
of the undertaker's men about the shabbiness of the place, and the
narrowness of the staircase, so circumscribed, that to carry the coffin
up was impossible: they were obliged to convey the body down to the
coffin.
Then my thoughts turned to Turner the artist, the poet in paint, and I
recalled what his great contemporary, Constable, had said of him: that
one of Turner's early pictures, 'a canal with numerous boats making
thousands of beautiful shapes,' was 'the most complete work of genius'
he had ever seen; that 'Turner's light, whether it emanates from sun
or moon, is exquisite'; that 'he seems to paint with tinted steam, so
evanescent and so airy'; and then I repeated the passage about the
golden visions glorious and beautiful, only visions, but pictures to
live and die with.
So I mused, turning from that sad little house, now so cheerful, to
gaze upon the Thames beloved by Turner. He was born near the river; he
chose his rural retreats at Hammersmith and Twickenham because they
were by the banks; and Wapping was the scene of his later jaunts.
Almost his first oil picture, 'Moonlight at Millbank,' was painted
by the riverside; one of his earliest drawings was 'The Archbishop's
Palace at Lambeth.' I rarely pass the wharves south of the Houses of
Parliament without seeing him, as in a vision, squatting on his heels,
and gazing for half an hour at a time at the ripples. The magnificent
new home of his pictures is by the Thames at Millbank, and his last
journey but one was from the Thames: his last journey was to the crypt
of St. Paul's on the hill above the river: there he was rendered to the
mould:--
'Under the cross of gold
That shines over city and river,
There he shall rest for ever
Among the wise and the bold.'
There, in the crypt, he was buried as he desired, by the side of Sir
Joshua Reynolds, and his funeral, as he desired and stipulated in his
will, cost one thousand pounds.
When I returned home from musing before the Turner Cottage, I re-read
the story of the last years of his life, how his hiding-place was
discovered, and so on to the end, and after. The true facts were
revealed through the pertinacity of John Pye the engraver, who 'left
certain memoranda of events connected with "Admiral Booth's" tenancy
of the Cremorne Cottage, and death under its roof, which are of
extraordinary interest.' Pye's memoranda were summarised by Sir Walter
Armstrong in his volume on Turner, partly from a copy made by the late
Sir Frederic Burton, and partly from information supplied to Sir Walter
by Mr. J. L. Roget, through whose hands the whole of Pye's manuscripts
passed.
But first a few words of connecting events before Turner's hiding-place
was discovered. His last appearance in public seems to have been at
the private view of the Royal Academy in 1851: 'he was shaky; he was
feeble; he was no longer the sturdy, dogged, strange being.' After that
appearance, as he had ceased to attend the council meetings, David
Roberts wrote saying how sorry his brother painters were not to see
him, trusting that if he were ill, they would be allowed to visit him,
and promising, that if he desired it, the secret of his dwelling-place
should not be disclosed. Turner made no answer to the letter, but two
weeks later he visited Roberts's studio in Fitzroy Square looking
'sadly broken and ailing.' Turner was much affected by the letter he
had received, and said to Roberts: 'You must not ask me; but whenever I
come to town I will always come to see you.' 'I tried to cheer him up,'
says Roberts, 'but he laid his hand upon his heart and replied, "No,
no! There is something here which is all wrong." Roberts noticed that
his small eyes were as brilliant as those of a child, eyes which some
called grey and some blue. Probably they were grey-blue.
The discovery of his hiding-place was made by Hannah Danby. Turning
over his clothes one day, she found a letter which gave her the clue.
In company with another old woman as old as herself, she went to
Chelsea, and in a shop obtained information that satisfied her as to
the identity of 'Mr. Booth.' She informed Mr. Harpur, one of Turner's
executors, who hastened to Chelsea, 'only in time to find Turner
sinking.' Dr. Price of Margate, an old acquaintanee, was, besides Mrs.
Booth, probably the only other person who shared the secret of his
seclusion. When Turner sent for Dr. Price in the last weeks of 1851, he
was told that death was near. 'Go downstairs,' he said to the doctor,
'take a glass of sherry and then look at me again.' The doctor did so,
but the reply was the same.
Just before his death Mrs. Booth wheeled him to the window to look
upon the winter sunset. He died in her arms, old Turner, old woman,
his head upon her shoulder, on the 19th of December 1851. So passed
the greatest of all landscape painters, weary of men and of orthodox
ways, an old man tired of the fret of life, but not tired of nature,
an enthusiast to the end in his study of light and its brother colour,
and all phenomena, that which is plain to the eyes, and that which
hides. Sentiment was in heyday in 1851, and so David Bogue, who made
the picture of the 'house where Turner died, sent a ray of sunlight
streaming down to the Chelsea room by the river, as if a parent were
smiling on a loving and life-loyal child.
The month following Turner's death, pertinacious Pye, as we read in Sir
Walter Armstrong's summary of his narrative, had an interview with the
owner of the Cremorne Cottage, and was informed that some four or five
years before a lady and gentleman proposed to rent the cottage, but as
they declined to give names and references, it was arranged that the
rent should be paid in advance, and 'the unknown gentleman and lady
became installed in the quiet retreat of their choice.' Some time later
John Pye paid a second visit to Chelsea, and talked with Mrs. Booth.
She appeared, he says, to be about fifty, was 'good-looking, dark, and
kindly-mannered, but obviously illiterate.' She told Pye that Turner
always called her 'old 'un,' and that she called him 'dear,' and that
she first made his acquaintance when he became her lodger near the
Custom House at Margate. She had known him for more than twenty years,
the last five of which had been spent in the Cremorne Cottage. Did any
fires of jealousy break into flame in the bosoms of these two women,
his housekeeper mistresses, Mrs. Booth and Hannah Danby, who knew
Turner so well, and who met by his deathbed?
The following extracts are from an account of the appearance of
Turner's house after his death, given to Thornbury by his 'kind friend
Mr. Trimmer':--
'Backwards stretched a large unfurnished room filled with unfinished
pictures; then a larger and drearier room yet; lastly, a back room,
against the walls of which stood his unfinished productions, large
full-length canvases placed carelessly against the wall, the damp of
which had taken off the colours altogether, or had damaged them....
Then we went into Turner's sleeping apartment; it is surprising how
a person of his means could have lived in such a room; certainly he
prized modern luxuries at a very modest rate. I reserved his studio as
the finale. Often had I seen him emerge from that hidden recess when
shown into his gallery. That august retreat was now thrown open; I
entered. On a circular table lay his gloves and neck-handkerchief. In
the centre of the table was a raised box with a circle in the centre
with side compartments; a good contrivance for an artist, though I had
never seen one of the kind before. In the centre were his colours,
the great object of my attraction. I remember, on my father's once
observing to Turner that nothing was to be done without ultramarine,
his saying that cobalt was good enough for him; and cobalt, to be
sure, there was, but also several bottles of ultramarine of various
depths; and smalts of various intensities, of which I think he made
great use.... Grinding colours on a slab was not his practice, and
his dry colours were rubbed on the palette with cold-drawn oil. His
colours were mixed daily, and he was very particular. If not to his
mind, he would say to Mrs. Danby, "Can't you set a palette better than
this?" Like Wilson, Turner used gamboge: this was simply pounded and
mixed with linseed cold-drawn oil.
'His brushes were of the humblest description, mostly large round
hog's tools and some flat.... Mrs. Danby told me that when he had
nearly finished a picture, he took it to the end of his long gallery,
and put in the last touches.... I next inspected his travelling-box.
Had I been asked to guess his travelling library, I should have said
Young's _Night Thoughts_ and Izaac Walton; and there they were,
together with some inferior translation of Horace....'
'His painting-room had no skylight. It had been originally the
drawing-room, and had a good north light, with two windows.... There
was a small deal box on a side table; my father raised the lid to
show me its contents; it was covered with a glass, and under it was
the cast of the great Turner. Dear old Turner, there he lay, his eyes
sunk, his lips fallen in. He reminded me strongly of his old father,
whom long years before I had seen trudging to Brentford market from
Sandycombe Lodge, to lay in his weekly supplies.'
The _Times_ in the account of Turner's funeral said:--
'Even those who could only sneer and smile at the erratic blaze of his
colour, shifting and flickering as the light of the Aurora, lingered
minute after minute before the last incomprehensible "Turner" that
gleamed on the walls of the Academy, and the first name sought for
upon the catalogue by the critic, artist, and amateur, as well as by
those who could not understand him when they found him, was his also.
Many of the most distinguished of our painters, and many private
friends, paid the last tribute of respect to his remains, and followed
his hearse yesterday, and a long procession of mourning coaches and
private carriages, preceded it to the cathedral.... The coffin bore
the simple inscription: "Joseph Mallord Turner, Esq., R.A., died
December 19th, 1851, aged 79 years."' As the date of Turner's birth
was not given by the _Times_, it was probably unknown at the time.
The date was 1775, and therefore he was seventy-six when he died, not
seventy-nine.
The little, enlarged house in Cheyne Walk is not, like the Carlyle
house in Cheyne Row, a place of pilgrimage. His shrine is the new
Turner Gallery at Millbank. Ten years ago this 'new Turner Wing' of the
National Gallery of British Art was a dream: to-day it is a reality.
Perhaps, who knows, in ten years' time, on the site of Turner's cottage
by the Thames, extending on either side, there may rise that home for
'the maintenance and support of Poor and Decayed Male Artists being
born in England and of English parents only and lawful issue,' which he
desired, which was explicit in his will, and which we, his countrymen,
the heirs of his achievement, have entirely ignored.
PART NINE
AFTER TURNER'S DEATH TO THE OPENING OF THE TURNER GALLERY IN 1910