consisted of two Greek vases which were so much alike in style and shape
and size that they would make a pair. But one of them was obviously a
modern copy of the Amymone vase in the Jatta collection at Ruvo; and
people in the auction room resented this, and called out to the
auctioneer to go on to the next lot. He said, “But really, gentlemen,
are there no bids at all for this?” and I said, “Oh, ten shillings,” and
he knocked it down to me. And thus I not only got the copy but got the
other vase as well; and this is genuine enough and very interesting too,
as it depicts the race in which a lighted torch was carried by runners
in relays.
All these Greek vases here were made between 600 and 400 B.C. or
thereabouts. In the early style the figures are painted in black and
purple on the pale yellow of the clay: in the next style the clay is
orange and the painting is technically better, and large portions of the
vases are painted black: in the next stage the process is
reversed--instead of black figures on an orange or yellow background,
there is now a black background with red figures, red being now the
colour of the clay. These red-figured vases show Greek art at its very
best, and the others mark the stages that led up to it. Personally, I do
not care much for vases earlier than these. Very nice vases were found
at Ialysos in the island of Rhodes, and Ruskin bought them for the
British Museum; but they have none of those great qualities that make
Greek art worth studying, nor even a foretaste of such qualities. In its
maturity Greek art was far the greatest that the world has ever seen,
but it was not so in its infancy or its senile decay.
Apart from any merit they may have as works of art, Greek vases often
have a human interest, especially if they are inscribed. One vase here
tells you as an interesting fact, “Tleson, the son of Nearchos, made
me.” Another says, “Zephyria is a beauty”; and there is the lady
herself, attired in a very big helmet and a little pair of drawers,
wielding a shield and spear as she performs a Pyrrhic dance. (There is a
picture of this vase in the _Revue Archéologique_ for 1895, vol. XXVI,
page 221.) Another depicts a man conversing with a youth, and the man
has the features of Socrates and satyr’s ears as well. This vase came
out of a tomb at Siana in the island of Rhodes, and is as fresh as when
it left the potter’s hands at Athens: its only blemish is the imprint of
his thumb, made by touching it before the clay was dry. Others are
interesting for their former owners’ sake. One belonged to Fergusson,
the historian of architecture, and another to Samuel Rogers, the poet,
and others to great collectors of the Vulci period, such as Beugnot and
Durand.
Being at Burgos, 3 September 1877, I went out to the Monastery of San
Pedro de Cardeña, the burial-place of the Cid. The monastery had been
uninhabited for forty years: the keys were kept at a village some way
off, and the man who kept them had gone out shooting. (Whilst waiting
for his return, I saw a little of Spanish agriculture: the oxen treading
out the corn, and the peasants winnowing it by throwing it up into the
air and trusting to the wind to blow the chaff away.) When he returned,
we went down to the monastery; and in the library he suggested that I
might like to take away a book or two in remembrance of the place. I had
scruples, but he really was considering the best interests of the books
themselves. If I had taken them, they might be here in safety; and they
have rotted away.
The museums at Athens were a sore temptation to collectors, when I first
went there more than forty years ago. There were a dozen of these
museums scattered about the town: some of them mere sheds, and hardly
any with glass cases for the smaller things, but only wire netting. And
there were such beautiful little things that would so easily come
through the mesh and go into a collector’s pocket; and they could not
possibly be reclaimed, as they were not marked or numbered, and the
inventories were vague. In my innocence I bought a vase from a
distinguished man (a Greek) and paid him rather a high price for it,
forgetting that he probably had stolen it, and I might just as well have
stolen it myself.
A very curious vase was discovered in Ægina and placed in one of these
museums, a shed on the Acropolis. The vase had a globular body and a
griffin’s neck and head above, with the griffin’s beak as spout. A long
time afterwards the British Museum bought a vase exactly like it,
discovered (it was said) in Thera. As there was one vase of this kind,
there might very well be others; but the vase from Ægina was no longer
to be found in any museum at Athens.
There was a good collection of ancient coins in one of these museums,
and on the night of 10/11 November 1887 the best part of the collection
disappeared. It was stolen by a well-known resident at Athens, Dr
Pericles Raphtopoulos, who was afterwards unwise enough to go to Paris
and steal a collection there, not realising that the French police-force
was more efficient than the Greek. But the facts had not come out when I
reached Athens in the early spring (1888) and everybody told me that
the Keeper had been selling the finest specimens, one by one, and
replacing them by imitations, until at last he saw the game was up, and
sold off all the fine coins that remained. (In reality, the imitations
had been bought to illustrate some lectures.) There is much public
spirit in Greece; and many people were giving their private collections
to the nation, to make good the loss. I fancied that the next Keeper
might sell all these as well; but the answer was, “Oh, no, we will not
have a Greek again,” and they appointed Dr Pick.
Accidents will happen in the very best museums. In 1845 the Portland
vase was smashed in the British Museum, and in 1900 the François vase
was smashed in the Museo Archeologico at Florence. The damage in London
was done by an outsider: not so at Florence, if what I heard was true. I
was told (at the time) that the Keeper was reprimanding a mutinous
subordinate: the vase was on its pedestal in the centre of the room: the
insubordinate person threw a heavy stool at his superior’s head, but
unfortunately missed him and hit the vase instead. The bits were put
together so very skilfully that, when I saw the vase again, I hardly
noticed the repairs.
At the British Museum there used to be officials called Attendants. They
were appointed by the Lord Chancellor, the Primate and the Speaker, and
usually were men of whom they had some personal knowledge. One of these
Attendants had been a servant of a former Primate, and he was like a
father to the students, taking care of their drawings and easels, and
giving them much good advice. I happened to be dining with some friends
in Portland Place, and was amazed to see him officiating as butler there
in his most archiepiscopal style. (The butler of the house had got the
gout, and he had been called in.) When I saw him next, he spoke
apologetically--“Not a very satisfactory dinner, sir, I fear, when I had
the pleasure of meeting you last week. All aspics and jellies, sir, and
there should have been lamb cutlets.”
One of my friends had a particularly pompous butler. A girl gave my
friend a kitten, and he called it Cissy after her. Missing the kitten
one morning, he inquired, “Where’s Cissy?” The butler bowed. “I beg your
pardon, sir, you may not have observed it, but Cissy is a Lady’s name,
and the cat is a Gentleman cat.”
At a sale at Christie’s in 1903 I saw a painting that attracted me, and
I bought it, and hung it in the Tallet here. It was catalogued only as a
portrait, 30 × 25, English School, and “the property of a gentleman”;
but it appears to be a portrait of James Barry (1741-1806) painted by
himself, when he was young. There are other portraits of him painted by
himself at other times of life: one at the National Portrait Gallery,
another at the South Kensington Museum, another at the Society of Arts,
and probably others elsewhere. He also painted himself as Timanthes in
the _Victors at Olympia_, one of his big pictures at the Society of
Arts; and it seems clear to me (though Boswell did not see it) that Dr
Johnson was thinking of Pliny’s criticism of Timanthes, when he made his
celebrated criticism on Barry’s pictures there, 26 May 1783--“Whatever
the hand may have done, the mind has done its part. There is a grasp of
mind there which you will find nowhere else.” Pliny had said, “cum sit
ars summa, ingenium tamen ultra artem est.”
In those six huge pictures he depicts the progress of the human race
from the time of Orpheus onward till it comes to Navigation and Commerce
and the Society of Arts, and thus into Elysium, with a glimpse of
Tartarus beyond. This last bit was invidious, and he was asked for
explanations “respecting the emaciated leg which belongs to the garter
and star precipitating into Tartarus, which was said to be a portrait
made out of resentment to a great nobleman.” Up in Elysium, Marcus
Brutus is leaning on the shoulder of Sir Thomas More; Lycurgus is
examining the laws of William Penn, who is supported by King Alfred;
Annibale Carracci is talking to Pheidias, with Giles Hussey just behind
him; and so on throughout a picture forty-two feet long. And all these
people in Elysium wear the clothes they wore on earth. Barry had made
progress since the _Death of Wolfe_. West painted that exactly as it
happened, with everyone in uniform. Most artists thought it should have
been idealized; and, as a protest, Barry painted it with all the figures
in the nude.
Barry was in Rome from 1766 to 1770, and Winckelmann was there till
1768; and Winckelmann irritated Barry. Amongst other things, “Abbé
Wincleman, who has also passed a magisterial censure upon all the
English poets, was, to my own knowledge of him, so little acquainted
with the language they wrote in, that he was scarcely able to understand
even an ordinary article of intelligence in one of our gazettes.” That
comes in his _Inquiry into the real and imaginary obstructions to the
acquisition of the Arts in England_, published in 1775. Speaking of this
in 1798, he says--“My idea of writing on that subject arose from the
ill-founded, scurrilous aspersions on the climate and on the genius and
capacity of the people of our islands, which made part of the history of
the art, written by the Abbé Wincleman, and (whilst I was at Rome) much
read and talked of, to the great annoyance of our little colony at the
English coffee-house.” The coffee-house was in the Piazza di Spagna, and
the colony then numbered about thirty artists, English, Scotch and
Irish.
He says in his _Inquiry_, “They ascribe the grand style of design of the
Greeks and Italians to the frequent opportunities that occur in such
warm climates of seeing the people naked.... In our countries the
practice of boxing alone furnishes more frequent exhibitions of the
naked, and of the best kind, than any that are now to be met with in
Italy.” I fancy he was wrong about the quantity of nudity, but right
about its quality. Better models could be found in England than anywhere
abroad, if artists took the trouble to secure them.
Looking at their landscapes, I sometimes think that English artists care
less for getting the finest point of view than getting the most
comfortable place to pitch their easel and camp-stool. And usually they
take professional models for the figure, as these are easiest to get.
They have not the enterprise of Giovanni di Bologna in asking an entire
stranger to be sculptured in the nude. The _Rape of the Sabines_ shows
how wise he was in asking Ginori.
Winckelmann said that he saw people in real life, who were more
beautiful than Guido’s _Archangel_ or Raphael’s _Galatea_. And if our
artists took the trouble, they might see people here in England, who are
more beautiful than anything in modern art. One afternoon I saw a bather
walking up the sands; and he caught sight of something in the distance,
and stopped abruptly, putting up his hand to shade his eyes. If I could
have fixed him there in gilded bronze, he might have faced the
_Apoxyomenos_ or any other figure by Lysippos.
When artists find their models fall short of their ideals, they usually
begin idealizing them. And when the models are Italians, this answers
very well, as the Italians are not unlike the ancient Greeks in build,
and the ancient Greeks have given most artists their ideals. But when
the models are English, it does not do at all, the English being
generally built another way. For one thing, the ilio-femoral ligament is
not so short, and an Englishman can therefore straighten out his back to
an extent that few Italians can, and no Greeks ever could. Think of the
_Doryphoros_ and the _Diadumenos_ being measured for frock-coats, and
the amount of padding that the tailor would have to put in the small of
the back to make their coats look right.
The professional models in England used mostly to be Italians; but now
there are many Jews among them, and a few of other races. A model once
explained to me, “Here I am of the Latin race: there I am Slav,” first
pointing towards the buttocks and then towards the chest. We must have
thoroughbred English models, if we want real English art; but the right
people are seldom willing to endure the strain of staying motionless for
fifty minutes at a time, though some of the professional models can do
that five or six times in a day. The only chance would be with
snap-shots or time-studies, taking only a few minutes each.
In looking at the students’ work at the National Competitions of Art
Schools, I always feel that some schools treat their students rather
badly in giving them such wretched models. It must be discouraging to
have to draw these people who are not worth drawing, though not so great
a waste of time as drawing plaster casts and other easy things. You set
beginners to shoot snipe, reckoning that this will teach them to shoot
anything; and you should likewise start beginners at the life-class.
There is a prize for studies from life, given by the Society of Arts out
of the income of a fund that was subscribed as a memorial to Mulready;
and the studies are exhibited at these National Competitions. But the
prize cannot now be given every year, as the income is too small. A
patron of the Arts might well augment that fund.
When models sit for great artists, they will ask them now and then why
they do this or that and why they do it one way rather than another.
Thinking the answers over and comparing them, the models get an insight
into things that few critics understand. I have generally found
professional models acuter than professional critics in their judgments
upon works of art.
In the days of the Pre-Raphaelites the professional critics did their
best to crush the young men who could paint, and now-a-days they praise
the young men who can neither paint nor draw. Both methods are annoying
to real artists, though they will some day make their mark, whatever the
critics may say. But the new method is more harmful, as it gives the
scamps their chance. They see that critics can talk the public into
giving 50 or 100 guineas for things that would not otherwise fetch more
than 18 pence; and they can easily hoax the critics.
I believe that public taste is guided more by Baedeker than by any other
man or body of men or books. When I go sightseeing abroad, I see people
of all nations relying on his Guides. They hardly look at anything
unless it has a star *, and when there is a double star **, their
admiration knows no bounds. Stars, however, rise and set, and single and
double sometimes interchange. I have compared his treatment of the Brera
at Milan in his _Northern Italy_ in the first English edition, 1868, and
in the fourteenth, 1913. (I had these with me on the earliest and the
latest of my visits there.) In 1868 six pictures have a star, and one
has a double star. In 1913 the double star remains, and two of the
single stars, but the other four have disappeared; and there now are
stars to seven pictures that had none in 1868. And people go star-gazing
just the same.
My father made old Baedeker’s acquaintance in 1839 or ’40, and formed a
very high opinion of him. At that time he was a bookseller in Coblence,
and little known outside the Rhineland, the subject of his earliest
Guide. Thirty years ago I thought that Hendschel would oust Bradshaw
just as Baedeker had ousted Murray; but the Continental Bradshaw was
afterwards brought up to date, and Murray’s Guides were not.
There was a big statue of Wellington at Hyde Park Corner, where there is
a little statue of him now; and the big statue stood upon the Arch until
the Arch was taken down and set up further back in 1883. A great-uncle
of mine writes to my maternal grandmother, 23 March 1847, “I have seen
the Wellington Statue. It is not at all too large for the Arch, and is a
noble thing indeed.” It was new then, and everyone was finding fault
with it. It was much too big for the Arch, and it was not a noble thing;
but the present statue of the Duke is an ignoble thing. If things are
bad, by all means do away with them; but do not replace them by things
that may be just as bad, though with another kind of badness. Look at
the great west window in Exeter Cathedral: the new glass has not the
same demerits as the old, but as a work of art it is every bit as bad,
and it is much less interesting.
While the new Cathedral at Westminster was being built, I went in
several times to see it, and once I tested its acoustics very
unexpectedly. The chancel steps had not been built, so I walked up a
plank; and the plank came up like a see-saw when I reached the higher
end. It jerked me off, and I said something suitable. And then my words
ascended to the apse, and were rolled back along the nave and aisles
like a thunderous Amen.--I remember three designs for that Cathedral.
First it was to be a Gothic building, rivalling the Abbey. Then it was
designed as a Basilica, rather like St Paul’s at Rome as rebuilt since
the fire. And then came the Byzantine thing we know: like all Byzantine
things, far better inside than out.
An architect in London designed a house near here, and a specification
was sent down from town: all walls to rest upon a concrete bed of
specified size. The site was solid rock; and tons of granite were
blasted out to make way for the concrete bed.--I happened to tell this
to a ship-owner, and he remarked with some surprise, “I thought it was
only Government officials who did that kind of thing.” And he told me of
a ship of his that was employed in carrying troops. The regulations said
that there must be (I think) eight feet clear height between the decks,
and this ship of his had more, say ten. And temporary decks were built
two feet above the permanent decks in order to reduce the height to
eight.
There is a letter to my mother from one of her aunts, Southsea, 4
October 1861, “We went to see ‘the Warrior’ in dock, and a most
beautiful sight she is. We went all over her, she is immense! It is
thought she must roll much in anything of a heavy sea, and Kit and other
Naval men think she ought not to be sent into danger, such ships being
fitter to defend the coasts instead of new batteries. That unhappy
‘Great Eastern’! Will anyone ever venture in her again?” The Great
Eastern had been caught in an Atlantic gale three weeks before, and the
passengers found it very uncomfortable--“The two cows that fell with
their cowshed down into the ladies’ cabin were killed by the violence of
the shock.” I remember the Great Eastern very well, and also the
Warrior--I saw her first in 1864, in Torbay. She was the earliest of our
ironclads, and was completed in 1861.
In the old days of little wooden ships this part of England had a much
larger share in shipping. Before _Lloyd’s Register_ began, there were
two rival registers of shipping--the shipowners’ red book, which began
in 1799, and the underwriters’ green book, which began some years
before, but lost many of its supporters by changing its system of
classification in 1797. The underwriters had kept surveyors at
twenty-four ports in Great Britain and Ireland; and six of the
twenty-four were less than twenty miles from here--Dartmouth,
Teignmouth, Exmouth, Starcross, Topsham and Exeter. And in 1799 the
shipowners put surveyors at twenty-two of these, omitting Exmouth and
Starcross, and adding six other ports, making twenty-eight in all. There
were eighty-eight surveying ports in 1834, when _Lloyd’s Register_ was
started; and these included Dartmouth, Teignmouth, Topsham and Exeter,
but the two last had only one surveyor between them. In another fifty
years all four had ceased to be surveying ports, and the nearest
surveyor was at Plymouth.
I wrote the article on Ships in the great _Dictionnaire des Antiquités_
edited by Daremberg and Saglio; and while at work on it, I found that I
was cramped for space, and therefore asked for more. But the answer was
that they had given me as much space for ‘Navis’ as they had given
Navarre for ‘Meretrices,’ and my subject could not possibly require more
space than his.
There is an old cottage here called Bowhouse, one of the six old
dwellings that form the hamlet here. I repaired it in 1919 and cut a
window through the west wall, as it was rather dark inside; and three
old coins were found there while the work was going on, one of George
the Third, one of William the Third, and one of Henry the Third. The
George III was underneath the staircase, and might have slipped down
through a crack. The William III was found in sweeping up a floor, but
there was no knowing how it came to be amongst the rubbish there. The
Henry III was embedded in the west wall where the window was cut
through. That is a very thick wall, built of cob, and was found to be
‘as hard as brass’ for cutting. The coin was in the middle of the cob,
and certainly had been there ever since the wall was built.
The coin is one of the ‘short cross’ pennies that were superseded by the
‘long cross’ pennies in 1249. It has the names of Henry as the king,
Adam as the moneyer and London as the mint; and Adam was moneyer there
from 1205 to 1237. Henry the Third did not become king until 1216; but
the coin may perhaps be earlier than that, as Henry the Second put the
name of Henry on these pennies in 1180, and his successors never altered
it. The coin is much the worse for wear, and may have been in use for
many years before it found its way into the wall.
These silver pennies were worth a good deal then. There was an Inquiry
on 20 May 1316 after the death of William le Pruz--the old knight whose
effigy is now in Lustleigh church at the south end of the transept--and
his meadows at Lustleigh were valued at 3_d._ a year an acre, against £5
now, or just 400 times as many pence. But the real value of the meadows
must be pretty much the same.
Under the Corn Production Act of 1917 the Wages Board not only fixed a
minimum wage for agricultural work, but also fixed a maximum for the
deduction from the wage when the worker is provided with a cottage. In
this district the maximum is 3_s._ a week; and I am now paying 3_s._
5_d._ a week on a cottage in rates and taxes and fire-insurance. I get
nothing for the cottage, but only lose by it, and therefore am not eager
to build more.
In this district the old cottages are relatively better than the new,
judging them by the general standard of comfort at the time when they
were built; and some of them are absolutely better, as they have more
spacious rooms. My grandfather writes from here, 1 June 1851, “Prince
Albert must not think of putting labouring men in parlours, if he
expects good hardy soldiers and sailors.” The modern cottages have
parlours, seldom used, and bedrooms that will hardly hold a bed.
Innovations have seldom been improvements here. There are very many new
things that are better than the old; but here one chiefly sees the new
things that are cheaper than the old, and these are not always better.
Many of them are not really cheaper. I have just given the roof of this
house a new coat of thatch that ought to last for twenty years or more.
The thatching here is done with wheat straw; so I grew a crop close by,
and sold the grain and kept the straw. Slate or tile costs more; and
with such roofing I should have to spend a great deal more on fuel, to
keep the house as warm in winter time.
In some ways a thatched roof is better than a cellar as a place for
storing wine: the temperature just suits the wine, and there is not any
damp. My grandfather tried keeping some above his bedroom ceiling; but
it was an inconvenient place for fetching bottles down, and accidents
may happen when thatchers are about.