NAPLES--POMPEII--ROME--THE GERMAN RESTER GOT RID OF--SOCIAL SUCCESS IN
ROME--LEAVES FOR FLORENCE--BARTHOLDY AND THE NIOBE GROUP--LADY DILLON--
THE WELLINGTON PALACE--PISA--TOUR IN THE NORTH--MEETS STACKELBERG
AGAIN--RETURNS TO FLORENCE AND ROME--HOMEWARD BOUND--CONCLUSION.
With one exception there were no Englishmen, artists or others, in
Naples at that time, but a number of Frenchmen, with some of whom
Cockerell struck up a great intimacy. In spite of national feeling,
which was running very high at the time, he got on very well with them,
but he says in a letter from Rome they were dreadful time-servers in
their political views. Of course it was a difficult moment for
Frenchmen. After Napoleon's abdication at Fontainebleau in April 1814,
they had had to accommodate themselves to a revival of the ancient
monarchy, which could not be very satisfactory to anyone, and now
Napoleon was back again in France. Between two such alternatives no
wonder that their judgment oscillated; but to Cockerell--patriotic,
enthusiastic, and troubled by no awkward dilemmas--their vacillation was
unintelligible.
The one Englishman was Gell (afterwards Sir William), who speaks of a
stay they made together at Pompeii as the pleasantest time he had spent
in his three years' tour.
During this time Cockerell worked hard, and besides what he did which
could only be of use to himself, he made himself so familiar with
Pompeii that Gell proposed to him to join him in writing an itinerary of
that place.
Altogether, leaving Athens on the 15th of January, it was six months
before Cockerell got to Rome. Between Naples and Rome the country seems
to have been in a very unquiet state, and Carl Rester, who was still
with him, writes afterwards: "You remember how anxious about brigands we
all were on the journey."
Soon after they arrived, Rester, who must by now have become an irksome
burden, started from Rome to walk to his own home at Frankfort. He took
a long time about it, but he got there at last in December, only to find
his family so reduced by the wars that he determined, as he says, not to
be a burden to them, but to show his gratitude to his benefactor by
asking for more favours and throwing himself as a burden upon him. So he
determined to extend his walk to England. Before leaving his native
town, however, he says he published in the local newspaper the following
strange tribute to Cockerell's generosity:
"Magna Britannia victoriosa, gloriosa, bene merens, felix. Carolus
Robertus Cockerell nobilis Anglus et moribus et scientiis praeclarus me
infelicem perditum Germaniae prolem, primis diebus 1815 e Morea barbaris
deportavit. Ad Corfum deinde amicis meis Anglis restituit et patriae
advicinavit per Napolem universum, Romae me secum ducentem [for ducens]
humaniter semper et nobili amicitia me tractavit a London, Old
Burlington Street, No. 8, nobilissimi parentes ipsum progenuerunt
dignissimum membrum magnae nationis et hominem ubicunque aestimatissimum
Pro gratia universis Anglis et ipsi
Carolus Rester germanus.
Gallis merentibus, Britannia juncta Germanis felix Auspicium semper
semperque erit." (Are these two last lines elegiacs?--ED.)
He arrived at Bois le Duc early in March 1816, and after an illness
there of seven weeks, writes to Cockerell to beg his assistance to get
him over to England, that he might be the better able to sponge upon him
there. I never heard what became of him afterwards.
Cockerell then was in Rome, and here he first began to enjoy the harvest
of his labours. He says there were no English there at the time except
Lady Westmoreland, mother of the British minister at Florence, but there
was a large society of foreign artists, into which he threw himself.
There were the brothers Riepenhausen, painters; Schadow, a sculptor
from Berlin; Ingres, who drew his portrait;[49] Cornelius of Munich, and
others of his school; Knoering, a Russian; Mazois, author of "Le Palais
de Scaurus" and an itinerary of Pompeii; Catel, a French architect;
Thorwaldsen, Overbeck, Vogel, portrait painter; Bartholdy, Prussian
consul-general; Hess, a painter from Vienna; Canova, and Checcarini, who
did the Neptune and Tritons in the Piazza del Popolo at the bottom of
the drive up to the Pincio. The air of Rome was steeped in classicism.
In this company every event was described in classical figures: their
café was the Café Greco, which still exists; the front half was called
the Pronaos. There all the artistic world collected and made
acquaintance.
"If I were a little more vain I should be out of my wits at the
attention paid me here. I have a daily levee of savants, artists and
amateurs come to see my drawings; envoys and ambassadors beg to know
when it will be convenient for me to show them some sketches; Prince
Poniatowski and the Prince of Saxe-Gotha beg to be permitted to see
them. I say they are slight, and in truth poor things, but at any rate
they were done on the spot, and they, 'C'est la Grèce enfin, c'est là le
véritable pays. Ah, Monsieur, que vous êtes heureux d'avoir parcouru ce
beau pays!' Then I explain to them some constructions or beauties which
they don't understand. 'Ah, que c'est merveilleux, mais vous les
publierez, vous nous donnerez le bonheur de les posséder, mais ce sont
des choses fort intéressantes, enfin c'est de la Grèce.' And in truth
publishers and readers have been so long restricted to the Roman
antiquities, which have been published and read over and over again a
thousand times, that the avidity for novelty is beyond measure, and
Greece is the fashion here as everywhere else.
There is not a single English artist here and only a few passengers.
Lady Westmoreland is one. She is a very clever, well-bred, agreeable
chatterer, who has been very civil to me, and made me lose several hours
which might have been better employed. Fortunately she is going away. I
have several letters for the Roman nobles, but I have not presented them
that I may have my time to myself.
So Canova is gone to England. I hope it is not to execute the paltry
monument of Lord Nelson which he has published here. It would be a
disgrace to us all. Fancy the great Nelson as a Roman in petticoats! I
do trust whenever a monument is erected to him it may be as original,
national, and characteristic as was the man and the great nation he
sprang from. Every age hitherto has had ingenuity enough to make its
costume interesting in sculpture; we are the first who have shown such
poverty of ideas as to despise our age and our dress.
I hope he will not be made too much of in England. It is true that
nobody ever worked the marble as he does, and it is this finish of his
which has deceived and captivated the world, but it is nothing but
artificiality, and there is no nature about it. When he attempts the
sublime he is ludicrous. In seeking grace he is more successful; but,
after all, his Terpsichore was conceived in the Palais Royal, and her
headdress is exactly the latest hairdressers' fashion. It is
exasperating to think of his success when Flaxman, as far his superior
as Hyperion to a satyr, an artist looked up to by the schools of the
Continent as a great and extraordinary genius, is neglected by us
because he is not a foreigner.
It is exceedingly gratifying to me to find everything in my portfolio
turning to account. I had the pleasure of showing to Colonel Catinelli,
who lately fortified Genoa, my fortifications of Syracuse, and the
sketches I made of that subject in Greece. He assures me that they are
invaluable notices new to modern warfare, and that they prove that,
compared to the ancients, we who imagine ourselves so well informed on
the matter, know nothing at all.
Then I have above 150 inscriptions among my papers, and I find most of
them are unpublished. I have had them copied fairly, and they are now in
the hands of a great savant, M. Akerblad, for his perusal. He promises
to give me his notes on them.
I do think I have not made a bad use of my opportunities, if I may
judge by the interest taken in the various new notices on different
subjects I have brought with me, and the flattering consideration
everywhere shown me, I get so many invitations, and am so harassed to
show distinguished persons of all nations my drawings, that I can get no
time to myself. And in order to have something to show I have been
obliged to finish up some of my sketches, which has occupied the whole
of the last two months. I have now a portfolio of about fifteen of some
of the most interesting scenes in Greece fit to show, and I generally
find them as much as my visitors want to see.
Finding at last that my time and occupations were too much infringed
upon by gaieties, I left Rome to seek more quiet in Florence. I found it
at first, and for more than six weeks was as busy as it was possible to
be. My life was a curious one. I rose early, and after working all day,
dined alone at a trattoria, refusing frequently three or four
invitations in a day. Then I slept three or four hours on a sofa, and
rose in the night to work calmly until four or five in the morning, when
I took another nap, and rose at seven. This odd life got wind; and as I
was a great deal known here, either by reputation or by name and family,
I occasioned a good deal of wonder, particularly among those who are
astonished at anyone's occupying himself earnestly except for a
necessity. The interest in me was also increased rather than diminished
by my shyness when I did show in company. I had so much lost the habit
of society by the long sojourn in Turkey, and, looking on it with a new
eye, was often so disgusted with the follies of it, and showed my
disgust, that I got a character for being a cynic. But instead of taking
offence people only made the more of me, and I was constantly invited
out, more to gratify my hosts' curiosity than to give pleasure to me. To
have travelled in Greece, still more to have been a discoverer there, is
enough to make a lion; while the fame of my drawings, which few of the
many who saw them understood and all were therefore willing to think
wonderful, completed the business. It was at this time that I brought
out my drawing of the Niobe and the etchings from it."
B. Bartholdy, Prussian consul-general in Rome, an intelligent man and
much interested in art, had travelled up from Rome to Florence with
Cockerell and made himself one of his most intimate acquaintances.
Walking together one day in the Uffizi, they examined the group of the
Niobe. It is now neglected and forgotten, but in those days it occupied,
in the estimation of artists, the place to-day held by the Elgin
Marbles. With the Venus de' Medici, the Apollo Belvedere, and the Torso
in the Vatican, these statues were regarded as the greatest remains
antiquity had bequeathed to the modern world. But, prized and studied
as they were, the purpose of so many figures, evidently meant to stand
together, had never yet dawned on the minds of their admirers. The
figure of Niobe, which is the largest, had been placed in the middle,
and the rest in a circle round her. It was felt indeed that this could
not be right, but no one had anything better to suggest, and it remained
one of the favourite puzzles for art lovers to wrangle over. Into the
middle of this clouded state of intelligences Cockerell dropped as from
another planet. The experience of the Æginetan statues, which he had
arranged so laboriously, besides the constant sight of what remained of
the Parthenon and other Greek monuments, made the notion of a pediment
or [Greek: haetos] so familiar as to present itself to his mind at once
as the only possible destination for so many statues. He says the first
suggestion came on that occasion from Bartholdy. "I have told Schlegel
and all parties that it was first proposed by you;" to which Bartholdy
replies: "J'aurai le plaisir de pouvoir dire que vous avez fait
fructifier un petit grain tombé de la main d'un amateur des beaux arts
qui sans cela serait resté stérile." But it was probably the company of
Cockerell and the associations with Ægina &c. which suggested the notion
to Bartholdy. At all events, beyond that first suggestion, Bartholdy did
nothing. It was Cockerell who measured the statues, arranged them,
proved the case, and made the etching which hangs to this day in the
Niobe Room in the Uffizi Gallery, showing the arrangement which he
proposed. In recognition, however, of the part Bartholdy had had in it,
the plate was dedicated to him.
For the introduction of Cockerell as a lion into society--if that be a
thing to be desired--this discovery was most opportune. He had arrived
with a great reputation as a traveller, a discoverer, and unraveller of
age-long puzzles, as in the case of the Temple of the Giants, and now
here was a proof of his powers exhibited in the centre of artistic
Europe.
"I had shown my drawing to several people and amongst the ambassadors
and distinguished persons here--all of whom, _de rigueur_, more or less
pretend to understand the arts--and it gained universal approbation. It
was talked about by all, and written about by Demetrius Schinas and
other obscure poets and prose writers. I was flattered, invited, and
made much of. Our ambassador boasts that the solution has been proved by
an Englishman; others bow and beg to be allowed to send copies of my
etching to their Governments, to Metternich, &c. It was formally
presented to the Grand Duke, and I have received from the Academy here a
handsome letter and diploma of Academician of Florence. It is to be
published in the official work on the Gallery. I have presented it
myself to Madame de Staël, and my friends have sent it to all parts of
the Continent."
He was now regularly launched in the fashionable society of Florence.
The reigning beauty at this time, the centre of all jollity and
brightness, was Lady Dillon. All the young men were at her feet, and
Cockerell was as deeply smitten as anybody. As already mentioned, during
the time that he was in Syracuse he had learnt the art of cameo-cutting.
He now made use of it--or at least of the preliminary stage, which is to
make a model in wax--to execute a highly finished portrait of her, which
still exists in the possession of her descendants. It shows a head of
great beauty, and is executed with admirable skill and minuteness.
The whole English nation was now jubilant over the success of its army
at Waterloo, and was considering the rewards to be offered to its idol,
the Duke of Wellington. He was to have a magnificent palace, surpassing
the glories of Blenheim, and architects were called upon to give reins
to their imagination in preparing designs in competition. The celebrity
which my father had by now made for himself obtained him, through the
medium of Lord and Lady Burghersh, his fast friends, a formal invitation
to send in designs for the Wellington Palace.
The opportunity was of course magnificent, but nothing he had been doing
for years had in the least adapted him to take advantage of it.
"Although my occupation in the Wellington Palace is a very honourable
one, and the study and exercise of invention in the course of it may be
profitable, yet I cannot help wishing I had never been invited to give
an idea for it, for I have spent a vast deal of time over it, and it
will add nothing to my reputation, even if it does not detract from it.
If such a design was difficult to everyone, you may imagine what it was
to me who have never attempted anything original before. I consulted
every architectural work of Europe (they are all in the library here),
and I would have consulted every professional man I could get at if
there had been any here whose opinion was worth having. Then I composed
general ideas, and finally fixed on one which pleased Mr. North and
several other persons to whom I showed it; but when I went into detail I
found the difficulties increase immeasurably, and the notions which were
plausible while they were vague could not be put into execution. Plan
would not agree with elevation. Doors and windows would not come into
their right places. I invented roundabout ways for simple ends. In fact
I worked furiously, and for the first time realised the practical
difficulties of the profession. At last, when I had filled a portfolio
with sketches and schemes, I completed a set and showed them to Lord and
Lady Burghersh, who said they were pleased with them.
I began to feel that I had too large an acquaintance in Florence--too
many visits and invitations. My wound [?], of which I did not get the
better, confined me, and that made me generally unwell and obliged me to
go through a course of physic. Altogether I got out of heart with my
work and determined to get away. I went to Pisa for the month of July,
and except for visits from Pigou I was quite alone. There I undid all I
had done before, and finding that to do the thing well I should need
more time than I could possibly give, I determined to make some small
sketches which, prettily finished, might attract attention and show that
I was in some sort capable. Finally, I made some sketches and sent them
with an explanation to Lady Burghersh and a request to forward them to
the proper quarter."
The difficulties he had encountered over these drawings so disgusted him
with architecture that he seems to have even proposed to his father to
throw it up and become a painter, as that, he thought, was the
profession for which he was best suited. But Mr. Cockerell, who was a
steady business man, had no notion of his son becoming what he would
have considered a bohemian, and refused to sanction any such change.
The only thing to do, then, was to continue his studies. The Wellington
Palace drawings had at any rate weaned him of any idea that pure Greek
architecture was applicable to modern architectural designing, and he
had little knowledge of any other. He started for a tour of the north
of Italy. His letters contain few criticisms. Palladio, probably as
being most akin to what he had hitherto studied, pleased him more than
any other architect. In Venice he fell in with Stackelberg, who had been
home to Russia while his travels in Greece were still fresh enough to
claim attention, and had been received with every sort of distinction.
He was now on his way back to Rome to settle there and bring out the
various books he subsequently published.
The two joined forces, and having run through all the principal towns,
returned southwards to Florence.
Shortly after, in company with Lord and Lady Dillon, he went to Rome. He
was now a recognised lion, everywhere fêted and made much of. Bartholdy
writes of him: "Cockerell est gâté par les femmes." Nevertheless he
worked hard. Amongst other things he finished the drawing of the Forum
Romanum, the engraving of which is well known. The Duchess of Devonshire
wished to insert a reduction of it in her "Virgil," and writes to thank
him for "the beautiful drawing you _was_ so good as to do for me."
He had left also in Rome the bulk of his, and Haller's, drawings for the
intended book on Greek architecture. These he picked up, and having seen
all the architecture Italy had to show him, he started in March for
England. In Paris he remained some little time. A letter from his
father during his stay there is worth transcribing in part.
"I send a few hints as to what you should observe in Paris; not things
of that high order to which you have so long been used, but yet
important to study in order to supply the luxurious indulgence so much
coveted by the great here, by whom a complete knowledge of them in their
professors of architecture is expected.
You have raised a name here so high that everything in perfection will
be expected of you; at least in all that relates to taste in the arts,
and in all the subordinate degrees of contrivances, as well as in
decoration. The last is that which affords the most extensive
employment, and you will be surprised to find more importance attached
to the decorations of a salon than to the building of a temple. If,
therefore, you can bend to the consideration of what is called the
'fittings up' of the interior of the best hotels and palaces of Paris,
the graces of their _meubles_, and the harmony of their colours in
hangings, painting, and gilding, you may be the general arbiter of taste
here; and as there are very few persons who are real judges of
compositions even classical, much less sublime, and there must be few
opportunities of exercising those parts of your studies here, it will be
really useful if you allow yourself to look at those minor objects at
Paris which in truth they judge well of.
Percier[50] is the first architect in Paris; he will tell you what is
worth seeing. Dismalter & Jacob are the first decorators in furniture
&c., 57 Rue Meslée.
Your friends Lord Burghersh and Lord Dillon proclaim your name without
ceasing, and much is expected of you. The Duke of Gloucester has
commanded me to introduce you to his acquaintance. You have been spoken
of at Carlton House, where I have reason to think there is great
likelihood of your being noticed advantageously; but you must not be
disappointed to find very common things occupying the minds of a large
majority of a nation of _boutiquiers_, and we must take the world as we
find it, believing always that good sense, refined judgment, and true
taste will ultimately prevail.
Do not imagine that I am thinking of money as the only thing worth your
attention. I consider that as the last object. The first, a higher order
of taste and information, you possess amply. The second is to learn to
suit in some measure the times we live in and the objects which occupy
the multitude, and it is worth attending to. The third and last is the
profit which follows; but that must come of itself, and is not worth
pursuing.
You will think me lecturing to the last, but I really mean no more than
to express my hope that you will not despise trifles, if elegant,
finding yourself for the moment amongst a nation of triflers, because
they have long been considered and imitated by ourselves and the rest of
Europe as accomplished in matters of ornament, though not in subjects of
use.
Your family are now on tiptoe for your arrival, and daily drink their
affectionate good wishes to the homeward bound. None is behind another
in their impatience; for myself, it is always present to me.
Nevertheless, I am not selfish enough to wish you to leave unseen, for
the sake of a few days more, anything which you ought to be acquainted
with."
My father arrived in London on the 17th of June, 1817, having left it on
the 10th of April, 1810. Besides his own, he had brought with him all
Haller's drawings for the intended book which was to be the complete and
final authority on Greek architecture and the grand result of his seven
years of travel. Haller was to come to England to see it through the
press. Had it appeared at once it would have been most _à propos_. Greek
architecture was all the fashion. Unhappily, the intention was thwarted
by the sudden death of Haller, which took place at Ambelakia, in the
Vale of Tempe, of a congestion of the lungs, caught while making
excavations in the month of September 1818. The loss of this valuable
help disheartened my father, who had no taste for the work. He was
already busy in other ways, and the task which should have had his
first attention gradually sank into the background. One by one those who
had taken part in the discoveries died: Stackelberg in 1836, Linckh and
Foster not many years after. But the book remained a load on my father's
conscience all his life, and it was not till 1859, more than forty years
later, that it saw the light. The interest in the events and actors had
died down, and the novelties had become common property. His unfortunate
dislike for writing lost him much of the credit he might have reaped,
while others profited by his experience. His collection of inscriptions
was picked over by Walpole; Hughes fills out his pages with his letters;
Bronstedt uses his drawings. It is Stackelberg who relates how he
discovered the bas-reliefs at Phigaleia; Beaufort anticipates anything
he might have had to tell of Karamania; Wordsworth plundered his
portfolio; and in the absence of any consecutive account of his own, it
has been often only by the help of the writings of others that it has
been possible for me to piece together his disjointed and often undated
diaries.
FOOTNOTES:
[49] See frontispiece.
[50] Charles Percier (1764-1838), originator of the so-called "Empire"
style in furniture, architect of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, and
of parts of the Louvre and of the Tuileries.
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