IMPECUNIOSITY OF ARTISTS.
If there be two things on earth that may be said to have a more direct
affinity for each other than aught else, those two things are Painting and
Poverty. The artistic records of the past literally teem with sorrowful
instances of their close relationship; and unfortunately the alliterative
connection is by no means unknown in the present day.
Ruskin, who upholds contempt for poverty as a characteristic of our age
which is both "just and wholesome," complains that we starve our great men
for the first half of their lives by way of revenge, because they quarrel
with us, and adds,--
"Precisely in the degree in which any painter possesses original
genius, is at present the increase of moral certainty that during his
early years he will have a hard battle to fight: and that just at the
time when his conceptions ought to be full and happy, his temper
gentle, and his hopes enthusiastic--just at that most critical period,
his heart is full of anxieties and household cares: he is chilled by
disappointments, and vexed by injustice, he becomes obstinate in his
errors, no less than in his virtues, and the arrows of his aim are
blunted, as the reeds of his trust are broken.... You may be fed with
the fruit and fulness of his old age, but you were as the nipping
blight in his blossoming, and your praise is only as the warm winds of
autumn to the dying branches.... You feed him in his tender youth with
ashes and dishonour: and then you come to him, obsequious but too
late, with your sharp laurel crown, the dew all dried from off its
leaves: and you thrust it into his languid hand, and he looks at you
wistfully. What shall he do with it? What can he do, but go and lay it
on his mother's grave."
In another part of the same work from which I have quoted, he says, with
exquisite pathos,--
"You cannot consider, for you cannot conceive, the sickness of heart
with which a young painter of deep feeling toils through his first
obscurity--his sense of the strong voice within him which you will
not hear, his vain, fond, wondering witness to the things you will not
see--his far-away perception of things that he could accomplish if he
had but peace and time, all unapproachable and vanishing from him,
because no one will leave him peace or grant him time: all his friends
falling back from him: those whom he would most reverently obey
rebuking and paralyzing him: and last and worst of all, those who
believe in him most faithfully, suffering by him the most bitterly.
The wife's eyes, in their sweet ambition, shining brighter as the
cheek wastes away: and the little lips at his side parched and pale,
which one day, he knows, although he may never see it, will quiver so
proudly when they name his name, calling him 'Our father.'"
But if these pictures are now drawn from artist life, what must that life
have been fifty or a hundred years ago? Art was always a plant of slow
growth in England, and the great masters who were cherished in the Old
World trade guilds, and flourished so grandly in Italy, Flanders, and
Holland, had not a single native representative in this country. And when
at last the land that had so long since produced a Shakespeare, could
boast its Hogarth, native artists were still few and far between, and
their chief means of living was found in painting signs. Neglected and
scornfully humiliated by all classes, isolated from refined society--such
as it was--they suffered the extremes of poverty, with cheerful bravery,
endured with a light heart, paid back scorn with scorn, and were linked
together by sympathy and pity in such a bond of brotherly fellowship as is
now utterly unknown. The taverns were their clubs, bread and cheese their
fare: and if the rent of their garret homes were not forthcoming, they
slept in the streets, and, careless Bohemians that they were, laughed
together over the strangeness, or the dangers, of their nocturnal
exposures. That their lives often found tragic endings may readily be
known. Many a terrible story is extant of their heart-sickness and
despair, of last awful struggles silently, heroically continued against
overwhelming odds, and of lingering sufferings endured with martyr-like
patience.
The earliest exhibitions of pictures--they were mainly street signs and
portraits--were organized by the artists themselves for charitable
purposes, as may be seen by the catalogue of one opened in Spring Gardens,
in 1761; which contained a design by Samuel Wale, one of the founders of
the Royal Academy, engraved by Charles Grignion, representing "The genius
of painting, sculpture, and architecture relieving the distressed;" and
these exhibitions were first established in the reign of George II.
The Samuel Wale here mentioned, afterwards R.A., was himself a
sign-painter; and for many years a whole-length figure of Shakespeare,
painted by him in the zenith of his powers, figured as the sign of a
public-house at the north-west corner of Little Russell Street, in Drury
Lane: while Charles Grignion, when an old man, suffered the then usual
fate of artists old and young; and an appeal made for him by his brethren
in 1808, now before me, speaks of him in his ninetieth year in the deepest
distress, unable to work, with a wife entirely, and a nearly blind
daughter partially, dependent upon him for support, saying, "Behold,
reader, the united claims of virtue, old age, and professional merit, and
filial and parental suffering." It also expressed a not unreasonable hope
that "the claims of, a man who had done so much, and done so well, would
be speedily attended to." Grignion died four years afterwards, his latest
days made smooth by the personal contributions of a few artists and some
of their patrons, so that the general appeal quoted from above seems to
have fallen flatly; as well it might when the public regarded English
artists with contempt, and their brethren were so meanly, miserably poor.
The first native artist whose fame extended beyond his birthplace was
William Hogarth; but poverty, the bitter badge of all his tribe, he too
wore. His father, a north-country schoolmaster, settled in London as an
author and press-reader in the Old Bailey, where on the 10th November,
1697, the great painter to be was born. Everybody knows how the child's
taste for art found its earliest expression in the eagerness with which he
watched some poor artist at his work, and not less well known is the fact
that he was the apprentice of a "silver plate engraver," and afterwards
devoted himself to engraving on copper coats of arms and ornamental
headings for shop bills, creeping upwards from such "small beginnings" to
more ambitious efforts, until at last he made a hit by illustrating
'Hudibras,' the commission for which, it is said, he owed to that
successful caricature of his landlady to which I have previously referred.
There were then in all London but two print-shops, and they dealt
principally in foreign productions; so that it can be easily understood
how, to eke out the shortcomings of his graver, Hogarth taught himself
painting. Speaking long afterwards of this portion of his career, he said,
"I could do little more than maintain myself till I was near thirty;" and
added, "I remember the time when I have gone moping into the city with
scarce a shilling, but as soon as I had obtained ten guineas there for a
plate, I have returned home, put on my sword, and sallied forth again,
with all the confidence of a man who had thousands in his pocket."
At another time he sold to the print-seller, W. Bowles, some plates he had
just finished, by weight at half-a-crown a pound avoirdupois; but even
when Hogarth was a famous man, and, compared with his former state, a
prosperous one, we find such pictures as "The Harlot's Progress" and "The
Rake's Progress" selling at from fourteen to twenty-two guineas each
picture, and "The Strolling Players" bought by Francis Beckford, Esq., for
L27 6_s._: but as he afterwards complained of that price as much too high,
Hogarth took it back, and resold it for the same amount. "Marriage a la
Mode," after the artist had published engravings from the set of six
paintings so called, realised L19 6_s._ In 1797 they were sold for L1381,
and now form part of our national collection through the bequest of Mr.
Angerstein. Another of his famous works, "March of the Guards to
Finchley," was more satisfactorily disposed of by lottery, and it was this
fact that Hogarth referred to when he said, "A lottery is the only chance
a living painter has of being paid for his time." From that lottery sprang
our modern art unions. It was of this picture, in a spirit of bitterness
provoked by the poverty of his dear friend, its painter, that David
Garrick wrote in a letter to Henry Fielding:--
"Its first and great fault is its being too new, and having too great
a resemblance to the objects it represents; if this appears a paradox,
you ought to take particular care in confessing it. This picture has
too much of the lustre, of that despicable freshness which we discover
in nature, and which is never seen in the cabinets of the curious.
Time has not obscured it with that venerable smoke, that sacred cloud
which will one day conceal it from the profane eye of the vulgar, so
that its beauties may only be seen by those who are initiated into the
mysteries of art: these are almost its only faults."
To the last Hogarth seems to have been a needy, struggling man. That
unfrocked clergyman and satirical poet, Churchill, after quarrelling with
the painter "over a rubber of shilling whist," at the Bedford Arms, near
Covent Garden, attacked him with the bitterest scorn and hatred. Hogarth
was then growing old and feeble, his health was bad, and he was
melancholy and depressed by the fact that Sir Robert Grosvenor, having
commissioned him to paint a picture ("Sigismunda"), had refused to pay for
it when finished. At this juncture the mistress of Churchill told the poet
that he had given Hogarth his death-blow; whereupon he unfeelingly
remarked, "How sweet is flattery from the woman we love," adding, "He has
broken into the pale of my private life, and has set the example of
illiberality, _which I wanted_, and as he is dying from the effects of my
former chastisement I will hasten his death by writing his elegy." The
painter's death followed soon after, and all he had to leave his wife were
his unsold plates, the copyrights of which were secured to her for twenty
years by an Act of Parliament.
Amongst Hogarth's foreign predecessors John Mabuse, or Mabegius, an
historical and portrait painter, born in 1499, may be mentioned, for the
sake of telling a story about an ingenious way in which he contrived to
avoid what might have been the very serious consequences of his
impecuniosity. While he was in the service of the Emperor Charles V. (many
of his finest works were painted in this country, he was employed by Henry
VIII. to paint some of the royal children, and he had among his admirers
no less a judge of art than Albert Durer), a lord of the court making
special preparations to receive the Emperor, commanded the whole of the
royal household to be dressed in rich damask brocade. When the painter was
measured for his suit he persuaded the tailor to let him have the
material, and wanting money for a drinking-bout sold it to a
tavern-keeper, having first made a suit of white paper, which he painted
in imitation of the damask, and appeared in it before the Emperor, who
afterwards said the painter's costume was of all he saw the handsomest and
richest. The trick was discovered, but as the Emperor enjoyed the joke and
laughed heartily, no ill came of it. Some similar freak, however, soon
after threw him into prison, where he continued to paint.
The mention of art work done in a prison recalls the name of William
Ryland, an English artist, who was born in London in 1732, studied under
Francis Boucher in Paris, and soon after his return was appointed engraver
to the King. He was the first who engraved in the dotted style, and his
works won him more fame than money. Angelo, the fencing-master, who knew
Ryland from his boyhood, says he lived in a house in which John Gwynn,
the painter, whose 'Essay on Design,' published in 1749, is still known
amongst students, also occupied apartments. Ryland had a wife and children
to support, and in the year 1783, to relieve the pressure of his creditors
(he was then in receipt of a small pension from the King), he forged a
bond for three thousand pounds, to escape probably by its aid from his
pecuniary difficulties and his country. The document forged was a most
extraordinary specimen of imitative art, having thirty or more distinctive
signatures in every variety of handwriting; some bold and large, some
cramped, some small, written in various kinds of inks. When it was
presented for payment at the India House, the cashier after carefully
examining it and referring to the ledger said, "Here is a mistake, sir;
the bond as entered does not become due until to-morrow." Ryland begged
permission to look at the book, and after leisurely and coolly inspecting
it, said, "There must be an error in your entry of one day," and quietly
offered to leave the bond. The cashier, however, believing the entry to be
an erroneous one, paid the money, with which Ryland departed. On the
following day the true bond was presented, and the crime detected; large
placards were soon posted all over London, offering a reward of L500 for
his apprehension.
Ryland's first hiding-place was in the Minories, where he remained
concealed for some days. One evening after dusk he stole out for a walk,
disguised in a seaman's dreadnaught. On Little Tower Hill, one of the
officers in search of him eyed him very earnestly, passed, repassed him,
and then advancing said abruptly and confidentially, "So you are the very
man I am seeking." The artist said so calmly, "I think you are mistaken, I
don't remember you," that the "runner" apologised and wished him "good
night."
He was taken, however, tried and condemned to death, amidst universal
expressions of sorrow and regret. Interest was made to obtain mercy on the
ground of his previous excellent character, and his extraordinary talent
as an artist and engraver. The King's reply was: "No! a man with such
talent could not have been unable to provide amply for all his wants."
Angelo said, "Had a Shakespeare or a Milton committed a similar act of
fraud in those iron days of jurisprudence, their fate had doubtless been
the same." Ryland petitioned for a respite, on the ground that he was
then engraving the last of a series of plates from the paintings of
Signora Angelica Kauffman, and was anxious to complete it to enable his
wife after his execution to support herself and his children. His request
was granted, and it is stated, "he laboured incessantly at this his last
work, and when he received from his printer, Haddril, who was the first in
his line, the finished proof impression, he calmly said, 'Mr. Haddril, I
thank you; my task is now accomplished.'"
Having just mentioned Angelica Kauffman, I may pause to note that the
greatest misfortune of her life has been traced to the poverty of her
father, Johann Kauffman, for though the story, which is as follows, is
discredited by some, it has many believers. She was travelling with him in
her early girlhood through Switzerland, and being very poor they went on
foot, sleeping at night after each long day's journey in some humble
wayside tavern. On one occasion they were refused admission on the ground
that two grand English seigneurs had bespoken all the accommodation. The
poor artist, anxious not to overtax his young daughter's failing strength,
pleaded and protested in vain; and the dispute between him and the
landlord waxing loud and warm, the attention of one of the Englishmen was
attracted, and coming forward he politely invited them to become the
guests of himself and friend. Not quite concealed by the polished courtesy
of his manner lurked that which secretly alarmed and offended the
pale-faced, weary girl, and while her unsuspecting father was full of
grateful thanks, and glad to avail himself of the stranger's apparent
kindness, she whisperingly entreated him to come away. Too anxious on her
account to risk the chance of a night in the open air, her father accepted
the invitation, and at table the nobleman, forgetting the respect due to
her innocence and youth, attempted some liberty, which being repeated,
caused her to rise suddenly and leave the room. Her father followed, and
was induced to go with her out of the house. Some years after, when
Angelica Kauffman had become famous, and was living in England, welcomed
with pride and enthusiasm in the highest society, and sought after by the
noblest and most gifted, she met this peer in one of the most brilliant
circles of the fashionable world, who with great amazement recognised in
the elegant woman and famous artist the humble pedestrian of the Swiss
mountains. Seeking an opportunity he passionately entreated her to
forgive him, pleaded that he had never forgotten her, and never could, and
begged that she would at least accept his most respectful friendship. She
believed him, trusted him, was again insulted, and refused thenceforth to
admit him to her society. To induce her to restore him to her favour, he
offered her marriage, and was calmly and resolutely refused; and on his
rejection forced himself into her presence, and strove even to win by
violence that which no other means could give him, but was again baffled.
To humble and disgrace her he devised a plan, which most probably
suggested to Lord Lytton the story of his play, _The Lady of Lyons_. He
secured the aid of a low-born adventurer, who assumed the name of Count
Frederic de Horn, introduced him in some way to fashionable society,
where, approaching Angelica Kauffman, then twenty-six, and in the full
bloom of womanhood, he rendered the most flattering homage to her genius,
with an air of the most profound respect and admiration, and gradually
became familiar and dear to her; and at last told some strange romantic
story of a terrible misfortune from which she could save him by at once,
and secretly, becoming his wife. The snare caught her; the marriage was
performed by a Catholic priest without writings or witnesses. One day
while painting a portrait of the Queen at Buckingham Palace, in the course
of conversation the young artist confided to her royal friend the secret
of her recent mysterious wedding, which resulted in the Count de Horn
being invited to court. This invitation was, however, not accepted, the
impostor fearing detection. Her father's suspicions being aroused, and the
facts of the marriage explained to him, he made inquiries and induced
others to pursue them, which ended in the appearance of the real Count de
Horn, and the unmasking of the impostor, who only laughed at his dupe, and
commanded her to follow him, claiming that entire control over her person
and property to which the poor woman believed he was entitled, until
further inquiries brought to light the fact that the man had been
previously married, when the false marriage was formally declared null and
void.
For my next anecdote I turn to Elizabeth le Brun, the favourite court
painter of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, who, when her husband's
reckless and heartless extravagance had reduced her to comparative
poverty, found herself unable to terminate the once grand receptions at
which she had received the _creme de la creme_ of her contemporaries.
They crowded her smaller house as they had crowded her larger one, and for
lack of chairs seated themselves upon the floor, and she herself tells the
embarrassment of the Duc de Noailles, who was so old and so excessively
fat, that as he could neither get down so low, nor rise without
assistance, was therefore obliged to endure the terrible fatigue of
standing.
The early years of a more modern, but equally famous, lady-artist, Rosa
Bonheur, were embittered by her father's want of money. As a school-girl
she felt severely the contrast between the silk dresses, silver mugs,
spoons, and forks, with a plentiful supply of pocket-money, which her
companions possessed, and her calico frocks, iron spoon, tin mug, coarse
shoes, and empty pockets; and her earliest ideas of art, as a means of
escaping such humiliating conditions, were thereby developed,
strengthened, and intensified into a restless craving and feverish
anxiety. Hence she soon began to draw and model in imitation of her
father, with a passionate eagerness that kept her constantly at work from
early morning until late at night, and at last startling her father (who
had long and despairingly considered her too indolent, self-willed, and
stupid, ever to be in any way useful) by the progress she made, he took
her through a serious course of preparatory study, and so made her an
artist. The director of the Louvre, M. Jousselin, declared that while she
was there forming her judgment, and training eye and hand, he had never
before witnessed such untiring eagerness and ardour. In her case, the
impecuniosity which Ruskin regards as so often fatal to the aspirations of
young and ambitious artists, appears to have been the strongest incentive.
Surrounded and stimulated by the glorious creations of great artists, the
first to enter the gallery, and the last to leave it, her strongest desire
was to aid her artist father in his weary struggle for the support of his
family; to which she soon began to contribute by the sale of her copies,
making up for the extreme smallness of the sums they commanded by the
rapidity with which she produced them. In her seventeenth year she
achieved such success in making a study from a goat, that she determined
to turn her attention to the painting of animals from life. Too poor to
pay for models, she went out daily into the country to study them in the
fields and lanes. Laden with clay, or canvas, brushes, and colours, she
would set out in the grey dawn, with nothing but a piece of bread in her
pocket for the day's food, and finding a subject, work on it until the
light had faded, and then, soaked by rain, or struggling in the rude wind,
she would make her way, sometimes ten or a dozen miles, through the
darkness, a sun-browned, hardy, peasant-looking girl, to reach home
cheerful, and contented with the day's work, although hungry and exhausted
by fatigue. Another way in which she contrived to get models cheaply was
by passing days amongst the lowing and bleating victims of one of the
great Parisian slaughter-houses, the _Abattoir du Roule_, where, seated on
a bundle of hay, with her colour-box beside her, she painted on from
morning until dusk, frequently so absorbed that she forgot to eat the
piece of bread in her pocket. She also studied from the animals when they
were under the influence of terror and agony, just before they received
the death-stroke; forcing herself to endure a woman's natural repugnance
to such scenes of blood and torture, rendered doubly painful to her by the
loving sympathy with which she regarded all the brute creation. In the
evening she would return home from such studies with her face and clothes
thickly marked by the flies which in such places congregate so thickly.
With equal perseverance she also studied in the stables of the Veterinary
School of Alfort, in the _Jardin des Plantes_, and in all the horse and
cattle fairs held in the neighbourhood of Paris; always in the latter case
wearing male attire, to avoid certain dangers and annoyances to which a
woman would be subjected if dressed in the clothing of her sex. She was
regarded as a good-natured, merry boy, and a clever little fellow, by the
rough characters who visited the fairs, and sympathising with her apparent
poverty, the graziers and horse-dealers whose animals she drew constantly
insisted upon standing treat. Occasionally, too, a village dairy-maid
would make amorous overtures to the handsome "lad." So she gallantly
wrought, and fought, and paved her upward way to fame and prosperity, her
father and nature her only teachers, the former's impecuniosity her
constant incentive.
I am reminded here of Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., for whom also the first
stimulants to activity in the pursuit of art were the poverty and
necessities of his father, an exciseman, actor, and innkeeper, who had
achieved no lasting success in either calling. At one time despairing of
pecuniary success in the profession he began to excel in when but five
years old, he resolved to take to the stage, despite the anxious
opposition of his father, who was then looking forward to his son's
artistic efforts for support, having failed as an actor, failed in
business at Devizes, where he kept "The Black Bear," and having previously
failed as landlord of "The White Lion," at Bath. Bernard in his
'Retrospections,' speaks of "Young Lawrence the painter," then about
seventeen, as "receiving professional instructions from Mr. Hoare of
Bath," and some little time after, with a view to his adopting the stage
as a profession, Tom Lawrence recited before Bernard and John Palmer the
actor, when the latter strove to enforce his father's opinion, and
convince him that his prospects as a painter were superior to those he
would have as an actor. It was some time before he could realize this, and
when he did he said with a sigh, "If I could go upon the stage, I thought
I might be able to help my family much sooner than I can in my present
employment." The earnestness and the regret he expressed in the tone of
these words deeply affected all who were present. It was many years before
Thomas Lawrence escaped from the fangs of impecuniosity, so absorbing were
the drafts made upon his purse by the wants of his parents. His father
used to hawk his son's crayon drawings about London at half a guinea each.
One of his contemporary biographers, says, "Sir Thomas, though he
sometimes confidentially accounted for his straitened circumstances
through life by referring to his early burdens, never regretted them, nor
murmured at their reminiscence."
But the early practice of a painter is seldom profitable, and Nicholas
Poussin asserts that at the commencement of _his_ career his landscapes
sold for less than the cost of canvas, oil, and pigments.
Still more remarkable as an instance of artistic success snatched from the
depths of impecuniosity, is that furnished by the early history of Isaac
Ware, the famous architect. One day while sitting to Roubillac for his
bust, he told him the story of himself as a thin, sickly child, who had
been apprenticed to a chimney-sweep, enduring a life of pain and hardship
at an age when happier children were in the nursery, and winter or summer,
in storm or darkness, out in the streets, wailing forth his pitiful
"s-w-eee-p," before the day broke; chalking on the walls wherever he went
drawings of the buildings he met with in his travels through the streets.
One day a gentleman passing Whitehall on horseback saw the feeble-looking,
sooty child tip-toeing to draw the outlines of the street front of that
building upon its own basement wall; now running into the middle of the
street to look up at the building, now back to continue his drawing. After
watching him some little time the gentleman rode up and called to him,
when the startled boy dropped his chalk in terror, and came forward with
downcast eyes full of fear. To restore confidence the equestrian threw him
a shilling, and after inquiring his name, and that of his master, &c., he
went instantly to the latter, who said the little fellow was of very
little use to him, being so weak, and, complaining of his chalking
propensity, showed his visitor what a state his walls were in through the
young sweep's having drawn upon them various views of St. Martin's Church.
The gentleman concluded his visit by purchasing the remainder of the boy's
time, and taking him away. It was to this noble benefactor that Ware owed
not only his education, which was an excellent one, but the means which
enabled him afterwards to pursue his art studies in Italy, and upon his
return his introduction to commissions as an architect. It is said that
Ware retained the stain of soot in his skin to the day of his death.
This story of Ware's boyhood we owe to Nathaniel Smith, the engraver, who
heard the architect tell it; and speaking of Smith reminds me of a story
told by his son, who was called in his time "Rainy-day Smith." It is a
tale of Alderman Boydell, who at twenty-one years of age walked to London,
because he had no money to come by the waggon, and apprenticed himself to
Mr. Thorns, an engraver and artist, attending whenever possible, an
academy opened in St. Martin's Lane for poor art students by a group of
well-known artists, whose subscriptions paid for its support, and to which
Hogarth contributed his father-in-law's casts and models, learning
perspective at the same time in his own humble lodging after his return at
night. Boydell being out of his time, and unable to obtain regular
employment, used to engrave small plates--views of London and
landscapes--print them himself, make them up into little books, and sell
them to keepers of toyshops to re-sell at sixpence a set of six, or a
penny each. These shops he visited regularly every Saturday to see if any
had been sold, and leave others to replace those that had happily been
disposed of. His best customer was found at the sign of "The Cricket Bat"
(all shops then had signs) in Duke's Court, St. Martin's Lane. On one
occasion his delight was so excessive on finding so many had been sold
there as realized five-and-sixpence, that in an outburst of gratitude to
the shopkeeper he laid out the entire amount with him in the purchase of a
silver pencil case, which he preserved as a memento of the great event all
through the rest of his life.
Of a kindred nature to Boydell's vicissitudes were the earliest
experiences of John Opie. As a lad in Cornwall he was so wretchedly poor
that Dr. Walcot, then practising as a physician at Foy, out of compassion
employed him to clean knives and forks, and to save him from the ill-usage
of his father took him into his own house. John going to the
slaughter-house for paunches to feed the doctor's dog with, made a
portrait of the butcher, which so delighted his employer that he also sat
for a portrait to the errand boy, which production was equally
astonishing. The portraits being shown amongst the doctor's friends and
neighbours, one named Phillips sent to London for a complete set of
artist's materials, which he presented to Opie, who painted with them the
portrait of a parrot so naturally that it spread his fame far and near,
and started him fairly in art as a portrait painter, his fee for a
likeness being seven-and-sixpence. The doctor once asked the lad how he
liked painting, to which question Opie replied enthusiastically, "Better
than my bread and meat." He was soon afterwards in London, where Sir
Joshua Reynolds befriended him, and he became known and popular as "the
wonderful Cornish genius."
George Morland must have found impecuniosity a sharp spur, when his
father, hopelessly weary of his indolence and bad conduct, turned him from
home, saying, "I am determined to no longer encourage your idleness; there
is a guinea, take it and go about your business." George succeeded in
supporting himself, and lived a life of the most degrading dissipation,
his favourite companions being jockeys, ostlers, carters, money-lenders,
gipsies, and women of abandoned character. He so cruelly ill-used his
wife--a sister of James Ward, R.A.--that although strongly attached to
him, she dared not live with him. "He died," as Smith says, "drunk, in a
sponging-house in Eyre Street Hill, near Hatton Garden." Such a career
could not but be fruitful of the troubles, cares, dangers, and
difficulties arising from impecuniosity. At one time, when on an
excursion to the coast of Kent with one of his favourite companions, a
brother artist, probably to escape duns, they spent their money so freely
on the road, that long before they reached their destination they were
penniless and hungry. When nearing Canterbury they espied a homely
roadside alehouse called "The Black Bull," and hailing it with delight
they entered, and soon made alarming havoc amongst the lowly edibles and
potables set before them; smuggled full-proof spirits being ordered and
disposed of in the most astonishing manner. When the bill was produced
Morland frankly confessed they were a couple of poor itinerant artists in
search of employment, and without a penny in the world. "But," said he,
"your sign is in a most shameful condition for so respectable a house; let
me repaint it in settlement of the bill"--which amounted to twelve
shillings and sixpence. The landlord had long wanted a new sign; he agreed
to the proposition. Morland began the work, and as it could not be
finished on that day, the host supplied him and his friend with lodging
for the night. On the following day the new sign was so much to the
satisfaction of the innkeeper that he furnished the friends with gin to
the amount of two guineas, together with some food, and when it was
finished added a few shillings to help them on their way. Many similar
stories are extant of this celebrated painter. "The Goat and Boots" in the
Fulham Road received a new sign from him in the same way; and to pay
another tavern score he did a like service for "The Cricketers" near
Chelsea.
Mr. E. V. Rippingale, the painter, used to tell with what despondency,
when he was a tall, thin, pale, self-taught youth eagerly studying art, he
was taken one bright morning to see Sir David Wilkie, then residing in
Kensington. He had just previously been introduced to a Scotch landscape
painter of some eminence, who, when he asked him what materials were used
in landscape painting, had eyed him with grim suspicion, and grunted--
"Sur, there are sacreets in the art, whuch whun a mon hae foound oot, he
mun keep to himsel."
Consequently Sir David's kindly reception made a deep impression upon him.
After inquiring what subject the youth was painting, and what branch of
art his inclinations led him to adopt? if he had studied from the antique
and from life? whether he was instructed or self-taught? &c., the
talented Scotchman, then a tall, bony young man, with reddish hair, grey
eyes, high cheek bones, and a broad Scotch accent, said,--
"I shall be very happy to tell you anything I know. You need not fear to
ask me; the art of a painter is unlike that of a juggler, it does not
depend upon a trick. In art we have no secrets, and all painters are
always glad to tell what they know to young fellow-students."
The rest of the interview was devoted to the giving of sound practical
advice, the inspection of Wilkie's paintings and studies, and in the end
the lanky lad from the country was pressed to come again and bring his
drawings with him.
Rippingale's first visit to Wilkie was paid in 1815, and Haydon has told
how, after the closing of the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1805, he went to
breakfast with Wilkie, and reaching his apartment--he then had but one--a
little before the appointed time, found him stark naked on that chilly
autumnal morning, making a study from himself by the aid of a
looking-glass. On another occasion the enthusiastic young Scotchman was
found in a fireless room, shivering with cold, drawing from his own naked
leg. Wilkie's employment was of a very humble and precarious kind at that
time, and he was then copying the pictures of Barry, in the great room of
the Society of Arts, for an engraver.
When the painter of those world-famous productions was no more, and his
body lay in state in the very room which contained them, Wilkie was
anxious to be present at the funeral, but alas! he had not a black coat,
and could not afford to buy one. However Haydon had two, and was quite
willing to lend one, and did so; but unfortunately he was short and
slight, and Wilkie was tall and big-boned. The effect of the former's coat
upon the latter's figure was consequently intensely ludicrous; the sleeves
terminated far above his wrists, his broad shoulders stretched the seams
to the very verge of cracking, and the waist buttons had "gone aloft"
half-way up his back. When Haydon met him thus oddly attired, not even the
solemnity of the occasion could quite suppress his merriment, and the
piteous entreaty of the young Scotchman's looks, and significantly upheld
finger, increased rather than decreased the tendency, so that the English
painter afterwards said he once thought the desperate effort he made to
suppress his laughter would have killed him.
When Wilkie was hawking his pictures from one shop to another, and
returning home heart-sick, weary, and hungry, evening after evening, he
received in nearly every case but one reply, "We don't purchase modern
pictures." Happily this is altered now to some extent, though the
reception awarded a novice in the present day is not very encouraging if
all aspirants are treated in a like manner to an extremely clever young
friend of mine, who, I doubt not, will be heard of some day. When he
presented his canvas, or sketch, he was told, "We don't buy the paintings
of unknown men." One of Wilkie's pictures thus rejected was a little one
of a subject afterwards re-painted on a larger scale, "The Blind Fiddler."
Haydon tells how he first saw a notice of Wilkie in a newspaper, and
hurried to him with huge delight. "Wilkie," he says, "was breakfasting.
'Wilkie,' said I, 'here's your name in the paper.' 'Where, where?' said
Wilkie, ceasing to drink his tea. I then read it aloud to him. Wilkie
stood up and huzzaed, in which we joined. We then took hands, and danced
round the table, and sallying forth, spent the day in wandering about in a
sort of ecstasy in the fields. We supped with Wilkie on red herrings, and
he took down his little kit, and played us Scotch airs till the dreary
hour of separation--these were delightful feelings! The novelty of a thing
first felt, the freshness of youth, all contributed to render them intense
and exciting."
It was said by some one that Wilkie never painted better than when he used
to take his penny roll and moisten it at the pump. But this statement was
indignantly contradicted by his friend Haydon in his lectures, and he
certainly was an authority on the difficulty of painting under
difficulties.
Another illustration of success preceded by disappointment is to be found
in the case of Sontagg, who, according to Mr. Robert Kemp, before he found
his true vocation in landscape painting, aspired to the glory of
historical and high art. Environed by the bitter poverty of an art
student, he painted his ideal. It was a Madonna, and as he afterwards
said, "one of the worst ever painted." When it was finished, he pawned his
only decent coat to raise $7.50 for a frame in which it was sent to an art
mart. "Then he spent the day walking around, and calculating what he would
do with the thousand the great work would bring him in. Then he called at
the auction room to collect. 'Had the picture been sold?' 'It had,' said
the clerk. 'How much?' 'Five dollars and a half.'" Sontagg dined on a
"free lunch," and went to bed in the dark. I may remark for the benefit of
those uninitiated in Colonial and American drinking customs, the "free
lunch" here spoken of means a meal which is provided gratis by many
tavern-keepers in America, Australia, and elsewhere. It consists of bread
and meat, or bread and cheese, placed on the counter, and to which all
patronising the establishment are welcome. It is said that years after
this occurrence, when Sontagg became famous, he found this painting over
the chimney-piece of a little wayside inn in the Wabash County where it
was a standing jest, and valued as a source of the laughter which kept a
quarrelsome man and wife from desperate extremes. When their violence was
at its worst a glance at Sontagg's Madonna was sure to provoke such
merriment that after it they invariably became friendly.
The early life of John Philip, whose glorious pictures of Spanish life won
him such wide-spread fame, presents an instance of greatness won despite
extreme poverty, with its attendant drawbacks, and the friendlessness of
utter obscurity. He began his career as a painter when a mere boy; though
not upon canvas, millboard nor panel, but upon watering-cans. When
seventeen years of age he worked his passage from Scotland to London on
board a coasting-vessel, for the purpose of seeing the exhibition of the
Royal Academy, and on his return, with a mind richly stored by close
investigation of the pictures he saw there and in the National
Galleries--of which those by Wilkie were the most fascinating and
instructive--he painted a picture which attracted the attention of Lord
Panmure, who generously sent him to study in London, and supplied him with
the means of support while so engaged. Philip died, as so many sadly
remember, on Feb. 27th, 1867. One of his earliest attempts was long
visible outside an old tavern, in the village of Dyce, near his native
town Aberdeen, where he was born in 1817. At Dyce he was employed as
herd-boy, and a story is told of his having at that time but two shirts,
and when one of these was stolen, Johnny said cheerfully to his relative,
Mrs. Allardyce, "Never min, ye can mak a shift, wash the ane I hae on, and
I'll gang to my bed till it's dry. My puir mither hae often to do that."
Inconvenient as such circumstances must have been, John Philip in the days
of his prosperity often spoke of the happy days he knew when he was a
poor little herd-laddie in the pretty little village of Dyce.
Somewhat similar in its start was the life of Henry Dawson, who died in
1878. Born at Hull in 1811, he commenced the world as a factory-lad at
Nottingham, in which position he began to paint pictures, which he sold at
prices ranging from two to twenty shillings; but it was long before he
achieved the grand success the latter price implied, not indeed before
1835, and the munificent patron to whose liberality he owed the advance
was a hairdresser, who for many years remained his best customer. So
slowly came the fame and prosperity he sought so laboriously and
patiently, and at last so honourably won, that when he was in his fortieth
year he actually contemplated opening a small-ware shop to aid him in
bringing up and educating his family. Indeed had it not been for John
Ruskin, to whom he applied for advice as to whether he should reluctantly
abandon his beloved art or persevere in its practice, the profession would
have lost one of the most powerful of our modern masters in landscape.
He was for many years known only to dealers, who made a glorious harvest
by reaping where he sowed amidst the cares, anxieties, and inconveniences
of impecuniosity.
A further proof of what genius and industry can accomplish, be the
difficulties never so great, is shown by the ultimate success of G. M.
Kemp, the architect who designed the Scott monument at Edinburgh. He was
originally a journeyman millwright, and while working at his trade
contrived, not only to teach himself to draw, but to visit and make
studies from all the principal ecclesiastical edifices in Scotland, and
afterwards in England. His plan was to find work in the different places
he desired to visit; and by this means he acquired such a knowledge of
architecture that when a prize was offered in open competition for the
Scott monument, his design was the one unanimously selected,
notwithstanding the fact that amongst his rivals were many of the leading
professional architects.
Success unfortunately does not always attend those who work hard and
deserve substantial recognition; for when some one congratulated William
Behnes, the sculptor, on his triumphs, and the prosperity that was
presumed to have followed in their wake, he replied, "When I die, be that
event when it may, there will not be two penny pieces left to close my
eyes." He died in the Middlesex Hospital, in January, 1864, realising his
prediction to the very letter, so few were his sitters, so small the sums
they paid.
While Behnes began life as a pianoforte-maker, the great sculptor Chantrey
commenced his career as a journeyman carpenter, in connection with which
fact there is an odd story told. One day while inspecting a costly vase in
the house of the wealthy poet Rogers, he asked with a smile who made the
table on which the curio stood. "Curiously enough," said Rogers, "it was
not made by a cabinet-maker, but by a common carpenter." Chantrey asked,
"Did you see it made?" and Rogers, supposing the query to be one of
incredulity, replied positively, "Certainly! I was in the room while the
man finished it with the chisel, and I gave him instructions in placing
it." Chantrey laughed, and said, "You did. I remember that, and all the
circumstances perfectly well." "You!" exclaimed the poet. "Yes," said
Chantrey quietly. "I was the carpenter."
When speaking of signs I omitted to mention George Henry Harlow, an artist
of considerable eminence, who, like Morland and others, was glad on
occasions to paint signs to liquidate liquor scores. Harlow, who was born
in 1787, and died in 1819, quarrelled in the plenitude of his conceit with
his master, Sir Thomas Lawrence, left his house, and went to live at "The
Queen's Head," in Epsom, where, living extravagantly, his expenses outran
his means, and he was glad to escape the penalty of his folly by
repainting the landlord's sign. In doing so, with a view to the annoyance
of Sir Thomas, who had found in Queen Caroline a kind friend and patron,
he very cleverly caricatured at once Her Majesty, and his late master's
style of portraiture, even putting underneath it his initials and
address--T. L., Greek St., Soho. One of the funny ideas of this sign was
that of painting on one side the face of the Queen, and on the other Her
Majesty's royal back.
There was a sign long displayed at Mole, in North Wales, which was painted
in the same way by Richard Wilson, "The English Claude." It belonged to a
tavern called "The Three Loggerheads;" only two appeared on the sign, the
third was to be he who read the sign, as many did, aloud.
This same Richard Wilson, R.A., was a Welshman, the son of the Rector of
Pineges, where he was born in 1714; and after unsuccessfully working for a
long time as a painter of portraits, landscapes, and historical subjects,
he at last achieved eminence, and forthwith enjoyed, with so many of his
talented _confreres_, glory and--poverty. The incident of his first
commission from the King will illustrate the kind of remuneration even
royalty gave for the works of men who had attained the highest rank in
their arduous profession.
Dalton, the artist, having been appointed keeper of the King's pictures,
suggested that a landscape by Richard Wilson should be included in His
Majesty's collection; and the monarch reposing great faith in his
judgment, sent poor Dick a commission for a landscape of a given size to
fit a vacant space in the gallery. In due time the work was finished and
placed before the King, who exclaimed indignantly,--
"Hey! what! Do _you_ call this painting, Dalton? Take it away! I call it
daubing, hey! What! It's a mere daub."
Poor Dalton, who was one of Wilson's friends and admirers, bowed, looked
sheepish, and was silent.
Presently his, on this occasion, not over gracious Majesty peevishly
inquired, "What does he ask for this daub?" And when Dalton replied "One
hundred guineas," the King's astonishment was immense.
"One hundred guineas! Hey! What, Dalton! Then you may tell Mr. Wilson it's
the dearest picture I ever saw. Too much--too much--tell him I say so."
A few days after, the artist, being as usual in need of cash, called upon
Dalton, and in his bluff manner said,--
"Well, Dicky Dalton, what says his Majesty?"
Dalton replied hesitatingly, and with confusion, "Why--a--with--a--regard
to the picture--a--As for my--a--own opinion--why--a--you know, Mr.
Wilson, that--a--indeed----"
Wilson interrupted him with an oath. He saw his friend's perplexity, and
said at once, "His Majesty don't approve--but I know your friendly
zeal--go on."
"Why in truth, my dear friend, I venture to think the a--the finishing
is--not altogether answerable to His Majesty's anticipations."
"Humph! Not every leaf made out, hey?--not every blade of grass? What
else? Out with it, man."
"Why then--a--His--His Majesty thinks--a--that the price is--is--is a
great deal of money."
Wilson took him by the button-hole, looked cautiously round, and in a
comical whisper said,--
"Tell His Majesty I do not wish to distress him, I will take it by
instalments--say a guinea a week."
Neglect and disappointment soured Wilson's temper, and made him a very
surly, irritable man, sometimes quite misanthropical; as well they might,
considering his great talents and his extreme poverty. It is said that one
of his most famous historical paintings, on which he had expended many
months of thought and labour, was sold under the influence of absolute
necessity for a pot of beer, and the remains of a Stilton cheese!
Mortimer, an artist who used to sometimes occupy an armchair by Wilson's
fireside, and there hear him in splenetic humour moralise like another
melancholy Jaques, making cynical strictures upon that scoundrel man,
would say, "Come, come, my old Trojan--come, old boy--I wish I could set
you purring like old puss there."
Angelo tells how a friend of Dr. Johnson's, hearing of Wilson's distress,
said to Mr. Taylor, the artist, "I wish I knew how to send him ten pounds
in some delicate way which could not give him offence. Do you think he has
some very trifling sketch I could buy for that sum? I have no taste for
pictures, but I would give him a commission if my income were not too
slender. I am so distressed that so great a genius should be entirely
without means." Taylor told this story delicately to Wilson, who was much
touched by it, and said, "I have no scrap such as your friend desires to
have, but if the thing were not bruited about I would be happy to send him
one of my easel pictures, which you know I never sell for less than
sixteen guineas." The result was that Wilson received the ten pounds, Dr.
Johnson's friend the sixteen-guinea picture, which it is said he gave away
the same evening to one of the waiters at Vauxhall.
At the close of his life, when worn out by indifference and neglect, he
was reduced to solicit the office of librarian to the Royal Academy, of
which he was acknowledged to be one of the brightest ornaments. He died in
May 1782, his death accelerated, if not produced, by want; and, sad to
state, just previous to his decease, help came to him, when it was, alas,
too late!
As is well known, William Hazlitt, the critic, began life as an artist,
and was indeed an artist in taste, judgment, and knowledge, all his life.
He speaks of his painter's experience with enthusiasm in one of his
papers, saying, "One of the most delightful parts of my life was one fine
summer, when I used to walk out of an evening to catch the last light of
the sun, gemming the green slopes of the russet lawns, and gilding tower
or tree, while the blue sky, gradually turning to purple and gold, or
skirted with dusky grey, flung its broad mantle over all, as we see it in
the great master of Italian landscape." Hazlitt abandoned the brush for
the pen when he found that he could not realize his own conceptions, nor
satisfy his own critical judgment; but it is evident from the following
extract that his early art-life was not free from the imputation of being
impecunious. He says, after receiving the money for a portrait he had
finished in great haste for the sake of getting the cash, "I went to
market myself and dined on sausages and mashed potatoes; and, while they
were getting ready, and I could hear them frying in the pan, read a volume
of 'Gil Blas' containing the account of the fair Aurora. This was in the
days of my youth. Do not smile, gentle reader. Neither M. de Verry nor
Louis XVIII. over an oyster _pate_, nor Apicius himself, ever understood
the meaning of the word luxury better than I did at that moment."
Daniel Maclise--the son of a Scotch cobbler, who had been a soldier and
had settled in Ireland--was sent adrift in the world at a very early age,
and became a bank clerk. In 1828 he came to London, where he succeeded in
getting a studentship in the Royal Academy. The money which enabled him to
do this was earned by a portrait-sketch he made stealthily from Sir Walter
Scott, while the great Wizard of the North was in the shop of a
bookseller, named Bolster. Bolster afterwards saw the sketch, and showed
it to Sir Walter, who, pleased with the lad's talent, attached his
autograph to it. The drawing was lithographed, sold in Bolster's shop, and
with his share of the profit Maclise started himself in his art career.
Poor Benjamin Haydon--odd compound of greatness and littleness, bravery
and cowardice, genius and folly, now patient, now despairing, now bitterly
envious and jealous, and anon sympathetically gleeful over a brother's
triumph--sipped many a cup of bitterness through his constant state of
impecuniosity; which chronic condition, he sorrowfully admits in his
diary, was the result of borrowing, as shown by this extract. "Here began
debt and obligation, out of which I have never been, and never shall be,
extricated as long as I live." Haydon, as I said, was a strange mixture,
and though possessed of a nature truly poetical, he was in some things
wondrously practical; for the bailiffs put into his house he utilized as
models. One sat, he tells us in his diary, "for Cassandra's head, and put
on a Persian bracelet. When the broker came for his money, he burst out
laughing. There was the fellow, an old soldier, pointing in the attitude
of Cassandra, upright, and steady as if on guard. Lazarus's head was
painted just after an arrest: Eucles finished from a man in possession:
the beautiful face in Xenophon in the afternoon after a morning spent in
begging mercy of lawyers: and Cassandra's head was finished in agony not
to be described, and her hand completed from a broker's man."
Sculptors, like artists, have frequently found art a very hard school; and
amongst others of whom this is true may be mentioned Peter Scheemakers,
the master Nollekens studied under. When a youth, so fervent was his
desire to study in Rome, that he actually endured the fatigue of
travelling from Antwerp into Italy on foot. Unfortunately in Denmark he
fell sick, and when again fit for the road, he was compelled to sell his
shirts from his knapsack to procure food; but he was none the less joyous
when, footsore, haggard, and hungry, he at last entered the Eternal City.
This was in 1700. The fine figure of King Edward VI., which used to stand
in the courtyard of St. Thomas's Hospital, was the production of
Scheemakers.
Another sculptor whose history furnishes something curious in connection
with impecuniosity is John Bacon, who, born in 1740, commenced life as an
ordinary workman in a Lambeth pottery, where he taught himself to paint on
china. Afterwards he went as modeller to Mrs. Coade's artificial stone
manufactory, and when he began to display remarkable talent as a sculptor,
Johnson, who built Berners Street, was very kind to him. He took premises
for him in Newman Street, and told him to start at once in business for
himself. Young Bacon was astonished, and frightened. "How could you do
so?" he exclaimed. "I am not fit for anything of the kind. How can I ever
hope to pay you the money back?" Johnson, however, insisted upon the trial
being made, and said he was quite willing to lose the money if Bacon were
never able to repay him. The result was that Bacon flourished so well
that when his first great benefactor had become a banker in Bond Street,
and feared a serious run upon his house, the sculptor came forward eagerly
to his aid with a loan of forty thousand pounds!
This was truly a freak of fortune, and as a companion picture may be
mentioned a freak of misfortune, which is attributed to Capitsoldi, a
talented sculptor, who came from Italy to this country in the last
century. It is asserted that when he was living in a garret in Warwick
Street, Golden Square, he had no furniture beyond a table and two chairs;
but he painted on the walls a suite of furniture with window curtains,
pictures, and statuary in such excellent perspective, and with such an
aspect of relief and solidity, that the mean apartment actually appeared
to be most handsomely and completely furnished.
To return to our subject--the impecuniosity of artists. The experience of
John Zoffany, R.A., may be cited. He came to England from Frankfort in
1735, and about that time there was a celebrated maker of musical clocks,
named Rimbault, living in Great St. Andrew's Street, who was asked one day
by some one he employed if he could find work for a poor starving artist
who occupied a garret in the same house. Rimbault desired the man to send
him, and Zoffany was ultimately engaged to paint clock faces. A portrait
he painted of Rimbault won him a better engagement of L40 a year as
assistant to a portrait painter named Benjamin Wilson, who was employed by
Garrick, the actor. Garrick, being struck by the sudden and remarkable
improvement which immediately ensued, suspected the truth, and, causing
enquiries to be made, discovered Zoffany, employed him direct, introduced
him to his wealthy friends, and gave him that new start in life which
brought him fame and honour, and made Sir Joshua Reynolds his friend.
Zoffany is now chiefly known in connection with his excellent
character-portraits of famous old actors and actresses.
The last, but by no means the least celebrated of the artists I shall
mention, whose fortunes, or the reverse, have been curiously associated
with lack of means, is James Barry--at whose state funeral in St. Paul's
Churchyard poor Wilkie cut such a queer figure in Haydon's coat. Barry was
as eccentric as he was poor. Unlike Richard Wilson, to display his poverty
was a matter of pride rather than pain; open reproach to those who
neglected his talent, and embittered his life, rather than shame to him.
His house at 36, Castle Street, Oxford Market, was a standing disgrace to
the thoroughfare, every window in it was either cracked or broken, and
part of the roof had fallen in. The iron railing before it was rusty for
want of paint, broken, and sloping partly inward and partly outward; the
doorsteps were cracked and broken, the door thickly coated with mud and
dirt. The room in which he painted had been a carpenter's shop, and the
dust-covered shavings were still in it, while cobwebs hung like thick
dust-coloured drapery from beams and rafter, and were suspended in
festoons from every corner, while here and there the daylight shot long
rays into its dingy, dust-laden atmosphere, through holes where the tiles
had been broken, or had slipped aside. It had a small fireplace just large
enough for the glue-pot it was constructed for, and boasted one
three-legged old deal table, hardly large enough to eat a meal from. Here
he painted, and etched, and printed his own proofs from a little old
printing press; and here he received the Right Honourable Edmund Burke on
that memorable occasion when he was, at his own particular request,
invited to dine with the painter, and take "pot luck."
Barry owed much to the generosity of Burke, who had been one of his
earliest friends and patrons. It is said that he once quarrelled with the
great statesman for attacking the then anonymous work 'An Essay on the
Sublime and Beautiful,' every line of which the young Irish painter, being
unable to buy the book, had copied, and he would entirely have lost
control of his temper if Burke had not with a laugh transformed his rage
into a whirlwind of delight and passionate admiration, by confessing
himself its author.
When Burke arrived, on the evening appointed, at the ruinous, dirty,
shabby house in Castle Street, Barry had altogether forgotten the
appointment. However he ushered him into his studio-wilderness of dust and
cobwebs, gave him a seat, made up the fire, which was smoking, and while
it burnt up, went out to purchase some steak, and brought it in wrapped in
a cabbage leaf. Placing the meat on a gridiron, he spread a towel over the
little round table, and on it placed a couple of plates, a salt-cellar, a
little roll of bread, and a dish, which nearly filled it; then, putting
the tongs into his visitor's hands, bade him turn the steak while he went
out to fetch the beer. He came back quickly, swearing and grumbling at
the wind because it had blown off the frothy head of the stout as he was
crossing Titchfield Street, and produced from his pocket a couple of
bottles of port. The meal was enjoyed, the evening passed merrily; and
Burke afterwards confessed that he had never enjoyed himself more, nor
eaten more heartily, even at the most sumptuous feast.
Owing to his impecunious circumstances, Barry had been accustomed to take
his meals in cookshops and coffee-houses of the cheaper kind; and Angelo
notes as one of his eccentricities his always insisting upon paying for
his meal at coffee or cookshop rate wherever he might chance to feed. On
one occasion he was invited to dine with Sir William Beechy and some noble
guests, and rose at nine o'clock to depart, having as usual placed two
shillings upon the table where he had been sitting. The lively knight, who
knew "his customer," followed him from the dining-room into the hall,
leaving the door of the former open that his friends might hear.
"What are these for?" asked Sir William, presenting the coins.
"How can you put so preposterous a question? For my dinner to be sure,
man."
"But two shillings is not fair compensation, Barry. Surely it was worth a
crown."
"Baw-baw, man! You know I never pay more."
"But you have not paid for your wine."
"Shu-shu! If you can't afford it, why do you give it? Painters have no
business with wine."
"Barry," says Angelo, "who boasted of making his dinner on a biscuit and
an apple, had no mercy for those who lessened their means by
self-indulgence. He was once highly indignant with a lord, who when dining
at 'Old Slaughter's' in St. Martin's Lane--a famous resort of artists and
their patrons--had straw laid down before the house to deaden the noise of
passing vehicles."
He used to say, as he may have said on the memorable evening with Burke,
"Half the common dishes would supersede turtle and venison, if your old,
pampered peers and mighty patricians were to peep and peer into their own
cook's pot."