“OF all the cants that are canted in this canting world,” wrote Sterne,
“kind Heaven defend me from the cant of Art!” We have no intention of
tapping our little cask of cant, soured by the thunder of great men’s
fame, for the refreshment of our readers: its freest draught would be
unreasonably dear at a shilling, when the same small liquor may be had
for nothing, at innumerable ready pipes and conduits.
But it is a main part of the design of this Magazine to sympathise with
what is truly great and good; to scout the miserable discouragements that
beset, especially in England, the upward path of men of high desert; and
gladly to give honour where it is due, in right of Something achieved,
tending to elevate the tastes and thoughts of all who contemplate it, and
prove a lasting credit to the country of its birth.
Upon the walls of Westminster Hall, there hangs, at this time, such a
Something. A composition of such marvellous beauty, of such infinite
variety, of such masterly design, of such vigorous and skilful drawing,
of such thought and fancy, of such surprising and delicate accuracy of
detail, subserving one grand harmony, and one plain purpose, that it may
be questioned whether the Fine Arts in any period of their history have
known a more remarkable performance.
It is the cartoon of Daniel Maclise, “executed by order of the
Commissioners”, and called The Spirit of Chivalry. It may be left an
open question, whether or no this allegorical order on the part of the
Commissioners, displays any uncommon felicity of idea. We rather think
not; and are free to confess that we should like to have seen the
Commissioners’ notion of the Spirit of Chivalry stated by themselves, in
the first instance, on a sheet of foolscap, as the ground-plan of a model
cartoon, with all the commissioned proportions of height and breadth.
That the treatment of such an abstraction, for the purposes of Art,
involves great and peculiar difficulties, no one who considers the
subject for a moment can doubt. That nothing is easier to render it
absurd and monstrous, is a position as little capable of dispute by
anybody who has beheld another cartoon on the same subject in the same
Hall, representing a Ghoule in a state of raving madness, dancing on a
Body in a very high wind, to the great astonishment of John the Baptist’s
head, which is looking on from a corner.
Mr. Maclise’s handling of the subject has by this time sunk into the
hearts of thousands upon thousands of people. It is familiar knowledge
among all classes and conditions of men. It is the great feature within
the Hall, and the constant topic of discourse elsewhere. It has awakened
in the great body of society a new interest in, and a new perception and
a new love of, Art. Students of Art have sat before it, hour by hour,
perusing in its many forms of Beauty, lessons to delight the world, and
raise themselves, its future teachers, in its better estimation. Eyes
well accustomed to the glories of the Vatican, the galleries of Florence,
all the mightiest works of art in Europe, have grown dim before it with
the strong emotions it inspires; ignorant, unlettered, drudging men, mere
hewers and drawers, have gathered in a knot about it (as at our back a
week ago), and read it, in their homely language, as it were a Book. In
minds, the roughest and the most refined, it has alike found quick
response; and will, and must, so long as it shall hold together.
For how can it be otherwise? Look up, upon the pressing throng who
strive to win distinction from the Guardian Genius of all noble deeds and
honourable renown,—a gentle Spirit, holding her fair state for their
reward and recognition (do not be alarmed, my Lord Chamberlain; this is
only in a picture); and say what young and ardent heart may not find one
to beat in unison with it—beat high with generous aspiration like its
own—in following their onward course, as it is traced by this great
pencil! Is it the Love of Woman, in its truth and deep devotion, that
inspires you? See it here! Is it Glory, as the world has learned to
call the pomp and circumstance of arms? Behold it at the summit of its
exaltation, with its mailed hand resting on the altar where the Spirit
ministers. The Poet’s laurel-crown, which they who sit on thrones can
neither twine or wither—is _that_ the aim of thy ambition? It is there,
upon his brow; it wreathes his stately forehead, as he walks apart and
holds communion with himself. The Palmer and the Bard are there; no
solitary wayfarers, now; but two of a great company of pilgrims, climbing
up to honour by the different paths that lead to the great end. And
sure, amidst the gravity and beauty of them all—unseen in his own form,
but shining in his spirit, out of every gallant shape and earnest
thought—the Painter goes triumphant!
Or say that you who look upon this work, be old, and bring to it grey
hairs, a head bowed down, a mind on which the day of life has spent
itself, and the calm evening closes gently in. Is its appeal to you
confined to its presentment of the Past? Have you no share in this, but
while the grace of youth and the strong resolve of maturity are yours to
aid you? Look up again. Look up where the spirit is enthroned, and see
about her, reverend men, whose task is done; whose struggle is no more;
who cluster round her as her train and council; who have lost no share or
interest in that great rising up and progress, which bears upward with it
every means of human happiness, but, true in Autumn to the purposes of
Spring, are there to stimulate the race who follow in their steps; to
contemplate, with hearts grown serious, not cold or sad, the striving in
which they once had part; to die in that great Presence, which is Truth
and Bravery, and Mercy to the Weak, beyond all power of separation.
It would be idle to observe of this last group that, both in execution
and idea, they are of the very highest order of Art, and wonderfully
serve the purpose of the picture. There is not one among its
three-and-twenty heads of which the same remark might not be made.
Neither will we treat of great effects produced by means quite powerless
in other hands for such an end, or of the prodigious force and _colour_
which so separate this work from all the rest exhibited, that it would
scarcely appear to be produced upon the same kind of surface by the same
description of instrument. The bricks and stones and timbers of the Hall
itself are not facts more indisputable than these.
It has been objected to this extraordinary work that it is too
elaborately finished; too complete in its several parts. And Heaven
knows, if it be judged in this respect by any standard in the Hall about
it, it will find no parallel, nor anything approaching to it. But it is
a design, intended to be afterwards copied and painted in fresco; and
certain finish must be had at last, if not at first. It is very well to
take it for granted in a Cartoon that a series of cross-lines, almost as
rough and apart as the lattice-work of a garden summerhouse, represents
the texture of a human face; but the face cannot be _painted_ so. A
smear upon the paper may be understood, by virtue of the context gained
from what surrounds it, to stand for a limb, or a body, or a cuirass, or
a hat and feathers, or a flag, or a boot, or an angel. But when the time
arrives for rendering these things in colours on a wall, they must be
grappled with, and cannot be slurred over in this wise. Great
misapprehension on this head seems to have been engendered in the minds
of some observers by the famous cartoons of Raphael; but they forget that
these were never intended as designs for fresco painting. They were
designs for tapestry-work, which is susceptible of only certain broad and
general effects, as no one better knew than the Great Master. Utterly
detestable and vile as the tapestry is, compared with the immortal
Cartoons from which it was worked, it is impossible for any man who casts
his eyes upon it where it hangs at Rome, not to see immediately the
special adaptation of the drawings to that end, and for that purpose.
The aim of these Cartoons being wholly different, Mr. Maclise’s object,
if we understand it, was to show precisely what he meant to do, and knew
he could perform, in fresco, on a wall. And here his meaning is; worked
out; without a compromise of any difficulty; without the avoidance of any
disconcerting truth; expressed in all its beauty, strength, and power.
To what end? To be perpetuated hereafter in the high place of the chief
Senate-House of England? To be wrought, as it were, into the very
elements of which that Temple is composed; to co-endure with it, and
still present, perhaps, some lingering traces of its ancient Beauty, when
London shall have sunk into a grave of grass-grown ruin,—and the whole
circle of the Arts, another revolution of the mighty wheel completed,
shall be wrecked and broken?
Let us hope so. We will contemplate no other possibility—at present.
IN MEMORIAM
W. M. THACKERAY
IT has been desired by some of the personal friends of the great English
writer who established this magazine, {564} that its brief record of his
having been stricken from among men should be written by the old comrade
and brother in arms who pens these lines, and of whom he often wrote
himself, and always with the warmest generosity.
I saw him first nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed to become
the illustrator of my earliest book. I saw him last, shortly before
Christmas, at the Athenæum Club, when he told me that he had been in bed
three days—that, after these attacks, he was troubled with cold
shiverings, “which quite took the power of work out of him”—and that he
had it in his mind to try a new remedy which he laughingly described. He
was very cheerful, and looked very bright. In the night of that day
week, he died.
The long interval between those two periods is marked in my remembrance
of him by many occasions when he was supremely humorous, when he was
irresistibly extravagant, when he was softened and serious, when he was
charming with children. But, by none do I recall him more tenderly than
by two or three that start out of the crowd, when he unexpectedly
presented himself in my room, announcing how that some passage in a
certain book had made him cry yesterday, and how that he had come to
dinner, “because he couldn’t help it”, and must talk such passage over.
No one can ever have seen him more genial, natural, cordial, fresh, and
honestly impulsive, than I have seen him at those times. No one can be
surer than I, of the greatness and the goodness of the heart that then
disclosed itself.
We had our differences of opinion. I thought that he too much feigned a
want of earnestness, and that he made a pretence of under-valuing his
art, which was not good for the art that he held in trust. But, when we
fell upon these topics, it was never very gravely, and I have a lively
image of him in my mind, twisting both his hands in his hair, and
stamping about, laughing, to make an end of the discussion.
When we were associated in remembrance of the late Mr. Douglas Jerrold,
he delivered a public lecture in London, in the course of which, he read
his very best contribution to Punch, describing the grown-up cares of a
poor family of young children. No one hearing him could have doubted his
natural gentleness, or his thoroughly unaffected manly sympathy with the
weak and lowly. He read the paper most pathetically, and with a
simplicity of tenderness that certainly moved one of his audience to
tears. This was presently after his standing for Oxford, from which
place he had dispatched his agent to me, with a droll note (to which he
afterwards added a verbal postscript), urging me to “come down and make a
speech, and tell them who he was, for he doubted whether more than two of
the electors had ever heard of him, and he thought there might be as many
as six or eight who had heard of me”. He introduced the lecture just
mentioned, with a reference to his late electioneering failure, which was
full of good sense, good spirits, and good humour.
He had a particular delight in boys, and an excellent way with them. I
remember his once asking me with fantastic gravity, when he had been to
Eton where my eldest son then was, whether I felt as he did in regard of
never seeing a boy without wanting instantly to give him a sovereign? I
thought of this when I looked down into his grave, after he was laid
there, for I looked down into it over the shoulder of a boy to whom he
had been kind.
These are slight remembrances; but it is to little familiar things
suggestive of the voice, look, manner, never, never more to be
encountered on this earth, that the mind first turns in a bereavement.
And greater things that are known of him, in the way of his warm
affections, his quiet endurance, his unselfish thoughtfulness for others,
and his munificent hand, may not be told.
If, in the reckless vivacity of his youth, his satirical pen had ever
gone astray or done amiss, he had caused it to prefer its own petition
for forgiveness, long before:—
I’ve writ the foolish fancy of his brain;
The aimless jest that, striking, hath caused pain;
The idle word that he’d wish back again.
In no pages should I take it upon myself at this time to discourse of his
books, of his refined knowledge of character, of his subtle acquaintance
with the weaknesses of human nature, of his delightful playfulness as an
essayist, of his quaint and touching ballads, of his mastery over the
English language. Least of all, in these pages, enriched by his
brilliant qualities from the first of the series, and beforehand accepted
by the Public through the strength of his great name.
But, on the table before me, there lies all that he had written of his
latest and last story. That it would be very sad to any one—that it is
inexpressibly so to a writer—in its evidences of matured designs never to
be accomplished, of intentions begun to be executed and destined never to
be completed, of careful preparation for long roads of thought that he
was never to traverse, and for shining goals that he was never to reach,
will be readily believed. The pain, however, that I have felt in
perusing it, has not been deeper than the conviction that he was in the
healthiest vigour of his powers when he wrought on this last labour. In
respect of earnest feeling, far-seeing purpose, character, incident, and
a certain loving picturesqueness blending the whole, I believe it to be
much the best of all his works. That he fully meant it to be so, that he
had become strongly attached to it, and that he bestowed great pains upon
it, I trace in almost every page. It contains one picture which must
have cost him extreme distress, and which is a masterpiece. There are
two children in it, touched with a hand as loving and tender as ever a
father caressed his little child with. There is some young love as pure
and innocent and pretty as the truth. And it is very remarkable that, by
reason of the singular construction of the story, more than one main
incident usually belonging to the end of such a fiction is anticipated in
the beginning, and thus there is an approach to completeness in the
fragment, as to the satisfaction of the reader’s mind concerning the most
interesting persons, which could hardly have been better attained if the
writer’s breaking-off had been foreseen.
The last line he wrote, and the last proof he corrected, are among these
papers through which I have so sorrowfully made my way. The condition of
the little pages of manuscript where Death stopped his hand, shows that
he had carried them about, and often taken them out of his pocket here
and there, for patient revision and interlineation. The last words he
corrected in print were, “And my heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss”.
GOD grant that on that Christmas Eve when he laid his head back on his
pillow and threw up his arms as he had been wont to do when very weary,
some consciousness of duty done and Christian hope throughout life humbly
cherished, may have caused his own heart so to throb, when he passed away
to his Redeemer’s rest!
He was found peacefully lying as above described, composed, undisturbed,
and to all appearance asleep, on the twenty-fourth of December 1863. He
was only in his fifty-third year; so young a man that the mother who
blessed him in his first sleep blessed him in his last. Twenty years
before, he had written, after being in a white squall:
And when, its force expended,
The harmless storm was ended,
And, as the sunrise splendid
Came blushing o’er the sea;
I thought, as day was breaking,
My little girls were waking,
And smiling, and making
A prayer at home for me.
Those little girls had grown to be women when the mournful day broke that
saw their father lying dead. In those twenty years of companionship with
him they had learned much from him; and one of them has a literary course
before her, worthy of her famous name.
On the bright wintry day, the last but one of the old year, he was laid
in his grave at Kensal Green, there to mingle the dust to which the
mortal part of him had returned, with that of a third child, lost in her
infancy years ago. The heads of a great concourse of his fellow-workers
in the Arts were bowed around his tomb.
ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER
INTRODUCTION TO HER “LEGENDS AND LYRICS”
IN the spring of the year 1853, I observed, as conductor of the weekly
journal _Household Words_, a short poem among the proffered
contributions, very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses
perpetually setting through the office of such a periodical, and
possessing much more merit. Its authoress was quite unknown to me. She
was one Miss Mary Berwick, whom I had never heard of; and she was to be
addressed by letter, if addressed at all, at a circulating library in the
western district of London. Through this channel, Miss Berwick was
informed that her poem was accepted, and was invited to send another.
She complied, and became a regular and frequent contributor. Many
letters passed between the journal and Miss Berwick, but Miss Berwick
herself was never seen.
How we came gradually to establish, at the office of _Household Words_,
that we knew all about Miss Berwick, I have never discovered. But we
settled somehow, to our complete satisfaction, that she was governess in
a family; that she went to Italy in that capacity, and returned; and that
she had long been in the same family. We really knew nothing whatever of
her, except that she was remarkably business-like, punctual,
self-reliant, and reliable: so I suppose we insensibly invented the rest.
For myself, my mother was not a more real personage to me, than Miss
Berwick the governess became.
This went on until December, 1854, when the Christmas number, entitled
_The Seven Poor Travellers_, was sent to press. Happening to be going to
dine that day with an old and dear friend, distinguished in literature as
Barry Cornwall, I took with me an early proof of that number, and
remarked, as I laid it on the drawing-room table, that it contained a
very pretty poem, written by a certain Miss Berwick. Next day brought me
the disclosure that I had so spoken of the poem to the mother of its
writer, in its writer’s presence; that I had no such correspondent in
existence as Miss Berwick; and that the name had been assumed by Barry
Cornwall’s eldest daughter, Miss Adelaide Anne Procter.
The anecdote I have here noted down, besides serving to explain why the
parents of the late Miss Procter have looked to me for these poor words
of remembrance of their lamented child, strikingly illustrates the
honesty, independence, and quiet dignity, of the lady’s character. I had
known her when she was very young; I had been honoured with her father’s
friendship when I was myself a young aspirant; and she had said at home,
“If I send him, in my own name, verses that he does not honestly like,
either it will be very painful to him to return them, or he will print
them for papa’s sake, and not for their own. So I have made up my mind
to take my chance fairly with the unknown volunteers.”
Perhaps it requires an editor’s experience of the profoundly unreasonable
grounds on which he is often urged to accept unsuitable articles—such as
having been to school with the writer’s husband’s brother-in-law, or
having lent an alpenstock in Switzerland to the writer’s wife’s nephew,
when that interesting stranger had broken his own—fully to appreciate the
delicacy and the self-respect of this resolution.
Some verses by Miss Procter had been published in the _Book of Beauty_,
ten years before she became Miss Berwick. With the exception of two
poems in the _Cornhill Magazine_, two in _Good Words_, and others in a
little book called _A Chaplet of Verses_ (issued in 1862 for the benefit
of a Night Refuge), her published writings first appeared in _Household
Words_, or _All the Year Round_. The present edition contains the whole
of her _Legends and Lyrics_, and originates in the great favour with
which they have been received by the public.
Miss Procter was born in Bedford Square, London, on the 30th of October,
1825. Her love of poetry was conspicuous at so early an age, that I have
before me a tiny album made of small note-paper, into which her favourite
passages were copied for her by her mother’s hand before she herself
could write. It looks as if she had carried it about, as another little
girl might have carried a doll. She soon displayed a remarkable memory,
and great quickness of apprehension. When she was quite a young child,
she learned with facility several of the problems of Euclid. As she grew
older, she acquired the French, Italian, and German languages; became a
clever pianoforte player; and showed a true taste and sentiment in
drawing. But, as soon as she had completely vanquished the difficulties
of any one branch of study, it was her way to lose interest in it, and
pass to another. While her mental resources were being trained, it was
not at all suspected in her family that she had any gift of authorship,
or any ambition to become a writer. Her father had no idea of her having
ever attempted to turn a rhyme, until her first little poem saw the light
in print.
When she attained to womanhood, she had read an extraordinary number of
books, and throughout her life she was always largely adding to the
number. In 1853 she went to Turin and its neighbourhood, on a visit to
her aunt, a Roman Catholic lady. As Miss Procter had herself professed
the Roman Catholic Faith two years before, she entered with the greater
ardour on the study of the Piedmontese dialect, and the observation of
the habits and manners of the peasantry. In the former, she soon became
a proficient. On the latter head, I extract from her familiar letters
written home to England at the time, two pleasant pieces of description.