I have brushed up my "Cottage" into a pretty look, and my "Heath" is
almost safe, but I must stand or fall by my "House." I had on Friday a
long visit from M---- alone; but my pictures do not come into his rules
or whims of the art, and he said I had "lost my way." I told him that I
had "perhaps other notions of art than picture admirers have in general.
I looked on pictures as _things to be avoided_, connoisseurs looked on
them as things to be _imitated_; and that, too, with such a deference
and humbleness of submission, amounting to a total prostration of mind
and original feeling; as must serve only to fill the world with
abortions." But he was very agreeable, and I endured the visit, I trust,
without the usual courtesies of life being violated.
What a sad thing it is that this lovely art is so wrested to its own
destruction! Used only to blind our eyes, and to prevent us from seeing
the sun shine, the fields bloom, the trees blossom, and from hearing the
foliage rustle; while old--black--rubbed out and dirty canvases take the
place of God's own works. I long to see you. I love to cope with you,
like Jaques, in my "sullen moods," for I am not fit for the present
world of art.... Lady Morley was here yesterday. On seeing the "House,"
she exclaimed, "How fresh, how dewy, how exhilarating!" I told her half
of this, if I could think I deserved it, was worth all the talk and cant
about pictures in the world.
_Constable._