1853-1854.
Acquaintance with R. W. Mackay.--His learning and accomplishments.--His
principal pursuit.--His qualities as a writer.--Value of the artistic
element in literature.--C. R. Leslie, R. A.--Robinson the
line-engraver.--The Constable family.--Mistaken admiration for minute
detail.--Projected journey to Egypt.--Mr. Ruskin.--Bonomi.--Samuel
Sharpe.--Tennyson.
My lodgings were at Maida Hill, and I soon became personally acquainted
with a writer whom I knew already by correspondence, Mr. R. W. Mackay,
author of "The Progress of the Intellect."
Mr. Mackay was for many years a kind friend of mine. An incident
occurred long afterwards which put an end to this friendship. I made
some reference to him in a review that was not intended to be unkind or
depreciatory in any way, as I always felt a deep respect for Mr. Mackay,
but unhappily he saw it in another light, and so it ended our
intercourse. In 1853, and for long afterwards, there was nothing to
foreshadow a rupture of this kind, and I am still able to write of my
old friend as if he had always remained so.
Mr. Mackay was primarily a scholar and secondarily an artist. He had
been educated at Cambridge, and being gifted with an extraordinary
memory, he accumulated learning in very abundant stores. As to his
memory, it is said that he once accepted a challenge to recite a
thousand lines of Virgil, and did it without error. He had a good
practical knowledge of French and German. He possessed a large
collection of water-color sketches made during his travels in Italy and
elsewhere, work of a kind that an amateur might judiciously practise, as
there was no false finish about them. They recalled scenes that had
interested him either by their natural beauty, which he appreciated, or
by association with classical literature.
I hardly like to use the word "gentleman," because it is employed in so
many different senses, but I never knew anybody who realized my
conception of that ideal more perfectly than Mr. Mackay. In him, as
Prince Leopold said of another, all culture and all refinement met. He
was extremely simple in all his ways, and averse to every kind of vanity
and ostentation. He had a sufficient fortune for a refined life, and did
not care for any kind of wasteful extravagance. All belonging to him was
simple and in good taste. He did not see very much society; that which
he did see included several men and women of distinguished ability.
Mr. Mackay's chief pursuit was one to which I would never have devoted
laborious years--theology on the negative side. His idea was that the
liberation of thought could only be accomplished by going painfully over
the whole theological ground and _explaining_ every belief and phase of
belief historically and rationally. My opinion was, and is, that all
this trouble is superfluous. The true liberation must come from the
enlargement of the mind by wider and more accurate views of the natural
universe. As this takes place, the mediaeval beliefs must drop away of
themselves, and we now see that this process is actually in operation.
So far from devoting a life to the refutation of theological error, I
would not bestow upon such an unnecessary and thankless toil the labor
of a week or a day.
The habit of study and reflection had done Mr. Mackay some harm in one
respect; it had withdrawn him too much from commonplace reality. He
always seemed to be moving in a dream, and to recall himself to the
actual world by an effort. This is a result of excessive culture that I
have observed in other cases. My conclusion is that all the culture in
the world, all the learning, all the literary skill and taste put
together, are not so well worth having as the keen and clear sense of
present reality that common folks have by nature.
Mr. Mackay was a laborious and careful writer, and he had a good style
of its kind, though it was more remarkable for strength and soundness
than for vivacity and ease. It was too much of one texture to be
attractive, and so he never became a popular author. Of course the
heterodoxy of Mr. Mackay's opinions was one great cause of his failure
to catch the public ear in England, but even that difficulty can be got
over by a great literary artist. He tried to do his best, as to literary
form, but he never condescended to write for the market in any way, and
used to maintain that if a book was to be profitable it _must_ be
written for the market.
I do not quite agree with this opinion. I should say, rather, that
literature resembles painting in being one of the fine arts, and that
when a book, like a picture, is a fine work of art, it has a great
chance of being a commercial success.
Renan's books have been very successful literary speculations, because
Renan is a first-rate artist. Mackay would have been a better artist in
literature if he had not been so much overpowered by the immense masses
of his materials.
Amongst the new friends I gained at Mr. Mackay's house was C. R. Leslie,
the painter. I was charmed with him from the first, and retain to this
day the liveliest recollection of his exquisitely urbane manners, and
even of the tones of his voice. Leslie was a man of unquestionable
genius, but entirely free from the tendency to despise other people,
which so often accompanies genius. On first meeting with him I took him
for a clergyman, and told him of it later. He felt rather flattered than
otherwise by the mistake, and I have no doubt that his modest nature
would at once refer to points on which the average clergyman would
probably be his superior. Some artists are lost in admiration of their
own works, so that the way to please them is to praise what they have
done themselves; but the way to please Leslie was to praise what
Constable had done. His admiration for Constable was quite as strong a
passion as Mr. Ruskin's admiration of Turner, though it did not express
itself in such perfervid language. I might at that time have become
Constable's pupil, indirectly. Leslie would have educated me in the art
of that master. I had nothing to do but work by myself, copying studies
and pictures by Constable in a studio of my own within a short distance
of Leslie's house, and he would have come to me often to advise.
Robinson, the eminent line-engraver, strongly urged me to put myself
under Leslie's direction, and this, I believe, was the Academician's
kind, indirect way of offering it. On the other hand, I did not wish to
hurt Pettitt by leaving him, and Constable's choice of quiet rural
subjects was to me, at that time, uninteresting. I disliked tame
scenery, not having as yet the artistic perceptions which are needed for
the appreciation of it.
Leslie introduced me to Constable's family, who were very kind, and they
showed me all the sketches of his that remained in their possession. My
love for precise and definite drawing made me unable to see the real
merits of those studies, though I was not much mistaken in thinking that
drawing of the quality I then cared for was not to be found in them.
Constable was essentially what the French understand by the word
_paysagiste_; that is, an artist who studies the every-day aspects of
common nature broadly. He would have done me much good at that time, if
I had felt interested in him, but the lover of the Western Highlands
could not bring himself to care for the fields and hedgerows about
Flatford. Pettitt, at any rate, loved our Lake District and Wales.
Again, though I had a hearty and just admiration for Leslie's unrivalled
power of painting expression in the faces of ladies and gentlemen in
drawing-rooms, I had never seen any landscape by him except tame
backgrounds, which seemed to me quite secondary, as they were.
I had at that time a mistaken belief (derived originally from Mr. Ruskin
and confirmed by Mr. Pettitt) that there was something essentially
meritorious in bestowing great labor on a work of art. It is well for an
artist to be habitually industrious, because that increases his skill,
but it is a matter of indifference whether this or that picture has cost
much or little labor, provided that the artist has clearly expressed
what he desired. Mr. Robinson, the line-engraver, gave me a good lesson
on this subject. We were looking at a drawing by Millais in Indian ink
which was penned all over in minute hatchings. I was full of admiration
for the industry of the artist, but Robinson thought it labor thrown
away. I met Mr. Ruskin personally one evening, and we examined a
water-color by John Lewis which was on a table-desk. The drawing was
fortunately glazed, for as Mr. Ruskin was holding the candle over it the
composite dropped on the glass. He pointed out the minute beauties of a
camel's eye, which was painted so carefully that even the hairs of the
eyelash were given, and the reflections on the mirror of the eye. This
praise of minute detail was at that time only too much in accordance
with my own taste. I had an intense admiration for such feats of skilled
industry as the wonderful lattices that Lewis used to paint with the
eastern sunshine streaming through them on a variety of different
surfaces. I met John Lewis himself. He was a fine-looking man, with a
beard which at that time was of the purest silvery white. I afterwards
had the advantage of a little correspondence with Lewis. He wrote well,
and expressed his opinions about art-work very clearly in his letters.
They amounted chiefly to this: Work always as much from nature as
possible, and give all the care you can.
At that time I had a settled scheme for going to travel and work in
Egypt, and it would have been better for me than Scotland on account of
the greater sameness of the effects. I mentioned this project to Mr.
Ruskin, who said that he avoided travelling in countries where he could
not be sure of ordinary comforts, such as a white table-cloth and a
clean knife and fork; still, he would put up with a great deal of
inconvenience to be near a mountain. Talking of Turner's paintings in
comparison with his water-colors, he said he would rather have half the
drawings than all the oil pictures. He compared a drawing of Nemi with
an oil picture that we could see at the same time, two works almost of
the same date, and gave reasons for preferring the water-color.
My Egyptian scheme brought me into relations with Bonomi, who at that
time was a famous traveller. Bartlett, the artist-traveller, whose works
had been very widely spread abroad by engraving, told me that when he
was ill of a fever at Baalbec he was nursed by a sheik who wore a beard
and rode an Arab horse. This sheik spoke English, and was, in fact,
Bonomi, who had adopted the manners of the wandering Arabs, and would
have remained amongst them if his English friends had not persuaded him
to return.
Bonomi was one of the liveliest little men I ever met. I feel almost
guilty of a fraud with regard to him, for his amiability towards me was
due in great part to his belief of my statement that I was going to
Egypt; yet I never went there, and shall certainly not go now. My only
excuse is that I sincerely believed the same statement myself. He said
that the effects of color and light in Egypt at morning and evening were
perfectly inconceivable. He recommended me to travel, not on the Nile
itself, but on the bank with camels, as that gave a greatly superior
view, both of the country and the river.
Mr. Samuel Sharpe was a charming, straightforward old gentleman, who
said what he thought, without any feeble concession to other people's
opinions. He did not share the prevalent enthusiasm for Turner, which
was of course in great part factitious, as many of the people who
praised Turner so warmly then had laughed at his pictures a few years
before. Mr. Sharpe thought that Turner was an unsafe guide for a young
landscape-painter to imitate. It is remarkable, as a matter of fact, how
little practical influence Turner has had upon the progress of landscape
art. Another and a stronger proof of the independence of Mr. Sharpe's
judgment was his opinion about England and Russia. He did not think it
necessary to oppose Russia's progress towards Constantinople by force,
but thought there was room enough for the two empires without collision.
If Mr. Sharpe's opinion had prevailed, there would have been no Crimean
War, but he and those who thought with him were very much isolated at
that time.
I met at his house a cousin of Miss Martineau, who told us some good
stories, especially about Tennyson. On this a brother of our host said
that he was once travelling when he met with a party of tourists, among
whom he recognized the Laureate. "Who _is_ that gentleman?" said they.
"He has been the life and soul of our party, and we cannot get a clue to
his name, for he has baffled us in every way, tearing it off his luggage
and out of the book he was reading." Mr. Sharpe betrayed the secret, not
much to the Laureate's satisfaction. When travelling in Scotland some
time afterwards I myself met with Tennyson, so a tourist kindly
explained who he was in these words: "That's Alfred Tennyson, _the
American poet_."
Such is fame!