[Illustration: SCARBOROUGH.]
I have put this plate last in the series, thinking that the reader will
be glad to rest in its morning quietness, after so much tossing among
the troubled foam. I said in the course of the introduction, that
nothing is so perfectly calm as Turner's calmness; and I know very few
better examples of this calmness than the plate before us, uniting, as
it does, the glittering of the morning clouds, and trembling of the sea,
with an infinitude of peace in both. There are one or two points of
interest in the artifices by which the intense effect of calm is
produced. Much is owing, in the first place, to the amount of absolute
gloom obtained by the local blackness of the boats on the beach; like a
piece of the midnight left unbroken by the dawn. But more is owing to
the treatment of the distant harbor mouth. In general, throughout
nature, Reflection and Repetition are _peaceful_ things; that is to say,
the image of any object, seen in calm water, gives us an impression of
quietness, not merely because we know the water must be quiet in order
to be reflective; but because the fact of the repetition of this form is
lulling to us in its monotony, and associated more or less with an idea
of quiet succession, or reproduction, in events or things throughout
nature:--that one day should be like another day, one town the image of
another town, or one history the repetition of another history, being
more or less results of quietness, while dissimilarity and
non-succession are also, more or less, results of interference and
disquietude. And thus, though an echo actually increases the quantity of
sound heard, its repetition of the notes or syllables of sound, gives an
idea of calmness attainable in no other way; hence the feeling of
calm given to a landscape by the notes of the cuckoo. Understanding
this, observe the anxious _doubling_ of every object by a visible echo
or shadow throughout this picture. The grandest feature of it is the
steep distant cliff; and therefore the dualism is more marked here than
elsewhere; the two promontories or cliffs, and two piers below them,
being arranged so that the one looks almost like the shadow of the
other, cast irregularly on mist. In all probability, the more distant
pier would in reality, unless it is very greatly higher than the near
one, have been lowered by perspective so as not to continue in the same
longitudinal line at the top,--but Turner will not have it so; he
reduces them to exactly the same level, so that the one looks like the
phantom of the other; and so of the cliffs above.
Then observe, each pier has, just below the head of it, in a vertical
line, another important object, one a buoy, and the other a stooping
figure. These carry on the double group in the calmest way, obeying the
general law of vertical reflection, and throw down two long shadows on
the near beach. The intenseness of the parallelism would catch the eye
in a moment, but for the lighthouse, which breaks the group and prevents
the artifice from being too open. Next come the two heads of boats, with
their two bowsprits, and the two masts of the one farthest off, all
monotonously double, but for the diagonal mast of the nearer one, which
again hides the artifice. Next, put your finger over the white central
figure, and follow the minor incidents round the beach; first, under the
lighthouse, a stick, with its echo below a little to the right; above, a
black stone, and its echo to the right; under the white figure, another
stick, with its echo to the left; then a starfish,[X] and a white spot
its echo to the left; then a dog, and a basket to double its light;
above, a fisherman, and his wife for an echo; above them, two lines of
curved shingle; above them, two small black figures; above them, two
unfinished ships, and two forked masts; above the forked masts, a house
with two gables, and its echo exactly over it in two gables more; next
to the right, two fishing-boats with sails down; farther on, two
fishing-boats with sails up, each with its little white reflection
below; then two larger ships, which, lest his trick should be found out,
Turner puts a dim third between; then below, two fat colliers, leaning
away from each other, and two thinner colliers, leaning towards each
other; and now at last, having doubled everything all round the beach,
he gives one strong single stroke to gather all together, places his
solitary central white figure, and the Calm is complete.
[X] I have mentioned elsewhere that Turner was fond of this subject
of Scarborough, and that there are four drawings of it by him, if
not more, under different effects, having this much common to the
four, that there is always a starfish on the beach.
It is also to be noticed, that not only the definite repetition has a
power of expressing serenity, but even the slight sense of _confusion_
induced by the continual doubling is useful; it makes us feel not well
awake, drowsy, and as if we were out too early, and had to rub our eyes
yet a little, before we could make out whether there were really two
boats or one.
I do not mean that every means which we may possibly take to enable
ourselves to see things double, will be always the most likely to insure
the ultimate tranquillity of the scene, neither that any such artifice
as this would be of avail, without the tender and loving drawing of the
things themselves, and of the light that bathes them; nevertheless the
highest art is full of these little cunnings, and it is only by the help
of them that it can succeed in at all equaling the force of the natural
impression.
One great monotony, that of the successive sigh and vanishing of the
slow waves upon the sand, no art can render to us. Perhaps the silence
of early light, even on the "field dew consecrate" of the grass itself,
is not so tender as the lisp of the sweet belled lips of the clear waves
in their following patience. We will leave the shore as their silver
fringes fade upon it, desiring thus, as far as may be, to remember the
sea. We have regarded it perhaps too often as an enemy to be subdued;
let us, at least this once, accept from it, and from the soft light
beyond the cliffs above, the image of the state of a perfect Human
Spirit,--
"The memory, like a cloudless air,
The conscience, like a sea at rest."
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| Transcriber's Note |
| |
| There was one instance each of 'sea-shell' and 'seashell'. |
| These have not been changed. |
| |
| One instance of the 'oe' ligature has been transcribed as |
| oe. |
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