1857-1858.
Small immediate results of the expedition to the Highlands.--Unsuitable
system of work.--Loss of time.--I rent the house and island of
Innistrynich.--My dread of marriage and the reasons for
it.--Notwithstanding this I make an offer and am refused.--Two young
ladies of my acquaintance.--Idea of a foreign marriage.--Its
inconveniences.--Decision to ask for the hand of Mdlle. Gindriez.--I go
to Paris and am accepted.--Elective affinities.
The immediate artistic results of the expedition to the Highlands were
very small. I had gone there to paint detailed work from nature, when I
ought to have gone to sketch, and so adapt my work to the peculiar
character of the climate.
The tendency then was to detail, and the merit and value of good
sketching were not properly understood. There has been a complete
revolution, both in public and in artistic opinion, since those days.
The revival of etching, which in its liveliest and most spontaneous form
is only sketching on copper, the study of sketches by the great masters,
the publication of sketches by modern artists of eminence in the
artistic magazines, have all led to a far better appreciation of
vitality in art, and consequently have tended to raise good sketching
both in popular and in professional estimation. At the Paris Exhibition
of 1889 the Grand Prizes for engraving were given to an English
sketching etcher, Haden, and to two French etchers, Boilvin and Chauvel.
In 1857, I and many others looked upon sketching as defective work,
excusable only on the plea of want of time to do better. The omissions
in a sketch, which when intelligent are merits, seemed to me, on the
contrary, so many faults. In a word, I knew nothing about sketching. My
way was to draw very carefully and accurately, and then fill in the
color and detail in the most painstaking fashion from nature. I went by
line and detail, nobody having ever taught me anything about mass and
tonic values, still less about the difference between art and nature,
and the necessity for transposing nature into the keys of art. The
consequence was a great waste of time, and of only too earnest efforts
with hardly anything to show for them.
Here I leave this subject of art for the present, as it will be
necessary to recur to it later.
My guardian, like all women, had an objection to what was not customary,
and as my camp was considered a piece of eccentricity, she wanted me to
take a house on Lochaweside. The island called Innistrynich, which is
near the shore, where the road from Inverary to Dalmally comes nearest
to the lake, had a house upon it that happened to be untenanted. There
were twelve small rooms, and the camping experience had made me very
easy to please. It was possible to have the whole island (about thirty
acres) as a home farm, so I took it on a lease. This turned out a
misfortune afterwards, as I got tied to the place, not only by the
lease, but by a binding affection which was extremely inconvenient, and
led to very unfortunate consequences.
My dear guardian had another idea. Though she had prudently avoided
marriage on her own account, she thought it very desirable for me, and
sometimes recurred to the subject. Her heart complaint made her own life
extremely precarious, and she wished me to have the stay and anchorage
of a second affection that might make the world less dreary for me after
she had left it. At the same time it may be suspected that she looked to
marriage as the best chance of converting me to her own religious
opinions, or at least of obtaining outward conformity. To confess the
plain truth, I had a great dread of marriage, and not at all from any
aversion to feminine society, or from any insensibility to love.
My two reasons were these, and all subsequent observation and experience
have confirmed them. For a person given up to intellectual and artistic
pursuits there is a special value in mental and pecuniary independence.
So far as I could observe married men in England, they enjoyed very
little mental independence, being obliged, on the most important
questions, to succumb to the opinions of their wives, because what is
called "the opinion of Society" is essentially feminine opinion. In our
class the ladies were all strong Churchwomen and Tories, and the men I
most admired for the combination of splendid talents with high
principle, were to them (so far as they knew anything about such men)
objects of reprobation and abhorrence. No mother was ever loved by a son
more devotedly than my guardian was by me, and yet her intolerance would
have been hard to bear in a wife. Kind as she always was in manner, the
theological injustice which had been instilled into her mind from
infancy made her look upon me as bad company for my friends, as a
heretic likely to contaminate their orthodoxy. I could bear that, or
anything, from her, but I determined that if I married at all it should
not be to live under perpetual theological disapprobation.
The other grave objection to marriage was the dread of losing pecuniary
independence. I cared nothing for luxury and display, having an
unaffected preference for plain living, and being easily bored by the
elaborate observances of fine society, so that comparative poverty had
no terrors for me on that account; but there was another side to the
matter. A student clings to his studies, and dreads the interference
that may take him away from them. An independent bachelor can afford to
follow unremunerative study; a married man, unless he is rich, must lay
out his time to the best pecuniary advantage. His hours are at the
disposal of the highest bidder.
There was a young lady in Burnley for whom I had had a boyish attachment
long before, and whom I saw very frequently at her father's house in the
years preceding 1858. He was a banker in very good circumstances, and a
kind friend of mine, as intimate, perhaps, as was possible considering
the difference of years. He had been a Wrangler at Cambridge, and now
employed his forcible and fully matured intellect freely on all subjects
that came in his way, without deference to the popular opinions of the
hour. These qualities, rare enough in the upper middle class of those
days, made him very interesting to me, and I liked my place in an
easy-chair opposite to his, when he was in the humor for talking. He had
three handsome daughters, and his eldest son had been my school-fellow,
and was still, occasionally at least, one of my companions. Their mother
was a remarkably handsome and amiable lady, so that the house was as
pleasant as any house could be. We had music and played quintets, and
the eldest daughter sometimes played a duet with me. She was a good
amateur musician, well educated in other ways, and with a great charm of
voice and manner. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that
the old boyish attachment revived on my side, though there was nothing
answering to it on hers.
My good friend, her father, sometimes talked to me about marriage, and
expressed the regret that in a state of civilization like ours, and in
our class, a family of children should be a cause of weakness instead of
strength. In a primitive agricultural community, sons are of great
value, they are an increase of the family force; in a highly-civilized
condition, they only weaken the father by draining away his income.
"Daughters," said my friend, "are of use in primitive societies and in
the English middle class, because they do the work of the house, and
spare servants; but our young ladies do nothing of the least use, and
require to be first expensively educated, and afterwards expensively
amused." My friend then went into details about the cost of his own
family, which was heavy without extravagance or ostentation. All this
was intended to warn me, but I asked if he had any objection to me
personally as a son-in-law. He answered, with all the kindness I
expected, that there was no objection to make (he was too intelligent to
see anything criminal in my philosophical opinions), and that in what he
had said about the costliness of marriage he had spoken merely as a
friend, thinking of the weight of the burden I might be taking upon
myself, and the inconvenience to my own life in the future.
One afternoon his daughter and I were alone together, playing a duet,
when I asked her if she would have me, and she laughingly declined. I
remember being so little hurt by the refusal that I said: "That is not
the proper way to refuse an, offer; you ought to express a little
regret--you might say, at least, that you are sorry." Then the young
lady laughed again, and said: "Very well, I will say that I am sorry, if
you wish it." And so we parted, without any further expression of
sentiment on either side.
I never could understand why men make themselves wretched after a
refusal. It only proves that the young lady does not care very much for
one, and it is infinitely better that she should let him know that
before marriage than after. It was soon quite clear to me that, in this
case, the young lady's decision had been the wise one. We were not
really suited for each other, and we should never have been happy, both
of us, in the same kind of existence. Perhaps she was rather difficult
to please, or indifferent to marriage, for she never accepted anybody,
and is living still (1889) in happy independence as an old maid, within
a short distance of Hellifield Peel. I had a little indirect evidence,
thirty years afterwards, that she had not forgotten me. Most likely she
will survive me and read this. If she does, let the page convey a
complete acknowledgment of her good sense.
This was the only offer of marriage I ever made in England. There was a
certain very wealthy heiress whose uncle was extremely kind to me, and
he pushed his kindness so far as to wish me to marry her. She was
well-bred, her manners were quite equal to her fortune, and she had a
good appearance, but the idea of marriage did not occur to either of us.
Some time afterwards, her uncle said to a friend of mine: "I cannot
understand Hamerton; I wanted him to marry my niece, and he has gone and
married a French woman." "Oh!" said the other, "that was only to
improve his French!"
There was another case that I would have passed in silence, had not
people in Lancashire persistently circulated a story of an offer and a
refusal. A young lady, also a rich heiress, though not quite so rich as
the other, had a property a few miles distant from mine. She was a very
attractive girl, very pretty, and extremely intelligent, and we were
very good friends. To say, in this case, that the idea of marriage never
occurred would he untrue; but when I first knew her she was hardly more
than a child, and afterwards it became apparent to me that to live
happily in her house I should have to stifle all my opinions on
important subjects, so I never made the offer that our friends and
perhaps she herself expected. Whether she would have accepted me or not
is quite another question. Had I made any proposal I should have
accompanied it by a very plain statement of my obnoxious opinions on
religion and politics, and these would almost certainly have produced a
rupture. After my marriage, and before hers, we met again in the old
friendly way. I was paying a call with my wife, in a country house in
Lancashire, when a carriage came up the drive--_her_ carriage--and the
lady of the house, extremely fluttered, asked me if I had no objection
to meet Miss ----. "On the contrary," I said, "I like to meet old
friends." The young lady visibly enjoyed the humor of the situation, and
the embarrassment of our hostess. We talked easily in the old way, and
afterwards my wife and I left on foot, and _her_ carriage passed us,
rather stately, with servants in livery. "There goes your most dangerous
rival," I said to my wife, and told her what story there was to tell.
"She is much prettier than I am," was the modest answer, "and evidently
a good deal richer; and she is a charming person." In due time Miss ----
married very suitably. Her husband is a good Churchman and Conservative,
who takes a proper interest in the pursuits belonging to his station.
My guardian was of opinion that with my philosophical convictions, which
were at that time not only unpopular, but odious and execrated in our
own class in England, I should have to remain an old bachelor. She
herself would certainly never have married an unbeliever, and
although her great personal affection for me made her glad to
have me in the house, she must have felt that it was like sheltering
a pariah. Her sister once heard some rumor or suggestion, connecting
my name with that of a pious young lady, and looked upon it as a
sort of sacrilege. Under these circumstances I came at last to
the conclusion that, being under a ban, I would at least enjoy my
liberty, either by living my own life as a bachelor, or else by
marrying purely and simply according to inclination, without any
reference to the opinion of other people.
It was at this time that the idea of a foreign marriage first occurred
to me as a possibility. I had never thought of it before, and if such an
idea had entered my head, the clear foresight of the enormous
inconveniences would have immediately expelled it. A foreign marriage
is, in fact, quite an accumulation of inconveniences. One of the two
parties must always be living in a foreign country, and in all their
intercourse together one of the two must always be speaking a foreign
language. The families of the two parties will never know each other or
understand each other properly; there will be either estrangement or
misunderstanding. And unless there is great largeness of mind in the
parties themselves, the difference of national customs is sure to
produce quarrels.
All this was plain enough, and yet one morning, when I was writing on my
desk (a tall oak desk that I used to stand up to), the idea suddenly
came, as if somebody had uttered these words in my ear: "Why should you
remain lonely all your days? Eugénie Gindriez would be an affectionate
and faithful wife to you. She is not rich, but you would work and fight
your way."
I pushed aside the sheet of manuscript and took a sheet of note-paper
instead. I then wrote, in French, a letter to a lady in Paris who knew
the Gindriez family, and asked her if Mademoiselle Eugénie was engaged
to be married. The answer came that she was well, and that there had
been no engagement. Soon afterwards I was in Paris.
I called on M. Gindriez, but his daughter was not at home. I asked
permission to call in the evening, and she was out again. This was
repeated two or three times, and my wife told me afterwards that the
absences had not been accidental. At last we met, and there was nothing
in her manner but a certain gravity, as if serious resolutions were
impending. Her sister showed no such reserve, but greeted me gayly and
frankly. After a few days, I was accepted on the condition of an annual
visit to France.
From a worldly point of view, this engagement was what is called in
French _une folie_, on my part, and hardly less so on the part of the
young lady. We had, however, a kind of inward assurance that in spite of
the difference of nationality and other differences, we were, in truth,
nearer to each other than most people who contract matrimonial
engagements. The "elective affinities" act in spite of all appearances
and of many realities.
We have often talked over that time since, and have confessed that we
really knew hardly anything of each other, that our union was but an
instinctive choice. However, in 1858 I had neither doubt nor anxiety,
and in 1889 I have neither anxiety nor doubt.