The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton Volume II Part 6

LONDON, 1861.

My dinner at Millais' yesterday was very pleasant. I like him extremely, and his wife appears an agreeable person. I met there John Leech, the man who does all those admirable caricatures in _Punch_--he is a very pleasant and gentleman-like person.

I don't feel sure whether I told you that I am about shortly to send my "Paris and Juliet" with the "Samson" to America on spec.

Mrs. Kemble will do all she can to G.o.dmother them; I got a very kind letter from her from Boston the other day--she has asked me to send her a little sketch of Westbury with the pictures--of course I shall.

The following letters from Mrs. f.a.n.n.y Kemble reveal the interest which this friend took in Leighton and his pictures, also the genius of the writer in penning delightful epistles:--

REVERE HOUSE, BOSTON, _Friday, December 9, 1861_.

DEAR MR. LEIGHTON,--It was very kind and amiable of you to write to me of Westbury and my sister; you cannot imagine the forlornness one feels when, to the loss of the sight of those one loves, is added that bitter silence which leaves one almost ignorant, as death does, of all the conditions in which our friends remain. G.o.d knows, written words are a poor subst.i.tute for the sound of a voice and the look of living eyes; still, when they are all that can reach us of those towards whom our hearts yearn, it is miserable not to be able to obtain them. The friends with whom I constantly correspond see and know little or nothing of her, and so no one of them can in any degree supply me with the news that I most desire from across the sea--how it is faring with my sister; so I am very grateful to you for your intelligence, which was just what I would give anything for (though not in itself, perhaps, very satisfactory) out here, where I think you have none of you an idea how _banished_ I feel. Now, my dear Mr. Leighton, to your business, about which I began my inquiries almost immediately after my return to this country, but only received the last of these communications last night, and you perceive the other was incomplete without it. You must command me entirely in any and every thing that I can do to forward your aims, and I will promise to be _severe_ in my obedience to any instructions you may like to give me. New York is undoubtedly a better market for pictures, and therefore a better place to exhibit them than this, but I do not know anybody whom I trust there. Mr. Ordway, however, seems inclined to take charge of your pictures if they are exhibited there.

Good-bye. Do not fail to employ me in this matter to the fullest extent that I can be of the least use to you; it will be a great pleasure to me to help you in any way that I possibly can.--Yours very truly,

f.a.n.n.y KEMBLE.

I wish you would send me out some sketch of Westbury with your pictures, if they come. I wish for one very much. I wish you could see the world here just now--a sky as pure and brilliant as it is possible to conceive, and every bough, branch, blade of gra.s.s and withered leaf coated with clear crystal and _blazing_ with prismatic colours. There are, every now and then, _sentiments_ in this sky that I have seen in none other. There are certain points of view in which Boston, rising beyond broad sheets of water that repeat them still more tenderly, seems to me worthy of a great painter. But do not come out and try unless you are quite sure of going back, or you will break your heart.

REVERE HOUSE, BOSTON, _Friday, February 7_.

I feel terrified, when you speak of my determining what is to be done with your pictures when they arrive in Boston, for a.s.suredly I am utterly incompetent to any such decision, and can only refer myself to the judgment of my friend Mr. Cabot, who will certainly advise for the best in the matter, but who, nevertheless, is not infallible. I should think it rather late in the season for exhibiting them here, but again would not take upon myself to say. I do not know what the percentage on sale here is, but presume it is not higher than in London. But here people exhibit their pictures at a s.h.i.+lling a head, _i.e._ put them in a room hung round with black calico, light up a flare of gas above them, and take a quarter of a dollar from every sinner who sees them. Two of Churche's pictures (he is a great American artist, though you may never have heard of him) have been, or rather are, at this moment so exhibiting--his "Falls of Niagara," and a very beautiful landscape called the "Heart of the Andes." Both these pictures were exhibited in London, I know not with what success; they have both considerable merit, but the latter I admire extremely. Page had a "Venus" here the other day, exhibited by gas-light in a black room; but indeed, dear Mr. Leighton, it sometimes seems to me as if you never could imagine or would consent to the gross charlatanry which is practised--how necessarily I do not know--here about all such matters. Certainly your gold medal should be trumpeted--and your profession of art and your confession of faith, and anything most private and particular that you would not wish known, had better be published in several versions in all the newspapers of the United States. Your pictures must be placarded over all the walls in all the sizes of type conceivable, and all the colours of the rainbow. If you will write me your personal history, and rampant puffs of your own performances, I will copy them and send them to those sources of public instruction, the enlightened public press. Moreover, I will go and sit before them daily and utter exclamations of admiration on every note in my voice, and if anything else remains to be done I will do it; but you must not make me in any way responsible for the result, because it is not in the least likely that you will write yourself up to the mark of puffing as practised here. Basta--I will take the very best advice and do the very best I can about the pictures, and rejoice in my heart to see them myself, that I can a.s.suredly promise you. By-the-bye, I gave your address only a few days ago, to be sent to a person now in Europe negotiating with French and English artists for pictures to exhibit. I wonder if he will find you and enlighten your mind about art in America. Thank you for the account of Westbury and its Christmas festivities, and thank you, thank you for the sketch of the home you are so very kind as to promise me; it will be a blessed treasure to see, for you cannot conceive the dreary heart-sickness that utterly overcomes me here sometimes. To-day I was singing the quartette in "Faust" that we used to sing, and was obliged to stop for crying. I wished extremely to have a photograph of the house, and, if I could only have afforded it, should have asked you to sell me every sketch you took about the place. The skies here are beautiful, wonderful in their transparent purity. They seem to me of a different _texture_ from any other I ever saw, more diaphanous, and there is a colour in them when they are quite free from clouds that surpa.s.ses in delicacy all other skies I have seen. It is like the complexion of the young girls here, a miracle of evanescent brilliant softness. My winter is wearing along pretty tolerably.

My Christmas was pa.s.sed entirely alone, but I am quite used to that. I am beginning to be much occupied about the plans and drawings for a house, which I am thinking of building on some land I own in Ma.s.sachusetts. It is a great undertaking, and really at fifty years old seems hardly worth while, and yet, till I am ready for my coffin, I must have some place in which to rest my head. Perhaps some fine day--who knows?--you will come to see me there. That would be a very pretty plot, and I think I need not say how welcome you would be, dear Mr.

Leighton, to yours very truly,

f.a.n.n.y KEMBLE.

LENOX, _Tuesday_.

A thousand thanks, my dear Mr. Leighton, for the minute account of Westbury--as I cannot know anything about my sister, it is something to know how her house is settled and decorated, and how the place where she lives looks. The red velvet drawing-room sounds gorgeous, and it must be very becoming to the pictures.

Of your pictures that have "wandered west" you may be sure I should have written you, if I had had the good news to give you that either of them was sold, but I am sorry to say this is not the case. The New York Exhibition is now closed, and the pictures have been sent back to Boston, where they are at present hanging in the Athenaeum under the care of Mr. Ordway, who wishes, but does not much hope, to be able to sell them. It seems that one or two people asked the price of the pictures in New York, but considered it, when they received the information, "rather a tall price." I am a little consoled at the ill success of this venture of yours, by Henry Greville's writing me that your hands are full of orders, for which you are to be well paid. Your small acquaintance, f.a.n.n.y, who left me this morning after a visit of a month, propounded to me the expediency of desiring the purchaser of the reconciliation of old Capulet and Montague to buy as its pendant the "Paris and Juliet"; and though she has no personal acquaintance with the lover of art in question, she said, when she got to Philadelphia she should set about intriguing to that effect; and she had my full permission to try and to succeed. I wish I could tell you anything pleasant in return for your description of the rooms at Westbury, but I have nothing very cheerful to impart. I have been quite unwell, and am still very far from flouris.h.i.+ng; my spirits are much depressed, and the life I lead, of incessant worry and discomfort with servants and all one's domestic arrangements, is something quite too tedious to relate--and that indeed it would be impossible to _realise_, as the Yankees say, unless you witnessed it. I saw Hetty Hosmer three days after her arrival in Boston. Her father is a hopeless invalid, and she will certainly not leave him while he lives; but I suspect that he is likely to die before this year ends, and then she will return to live in Italy. The State of Missouri has voted two thousand pounds for a statue of Colonel Benton, one of its "great men," to be erected by her, which, of course, is a whole plume of feathers in her cap.

Good-bye, dear Mr. Leighton; believe me always yours most truly,

f.a.n.n.y KEMBLE.

You must not fail to write to me any directions that you wish observed about your pictures, while they remain here. I am only too glad to try to serve you.

LENOX, BERKs.h.i.+RE, Ma.s.sACHUSETTS, _Monday, March 12_.

Pictures of very high pretensions are exhibited, like the scenes in a theatre, by gas-light, and advertised in coloured _posters_ all over the streets like theatrical exhibitions. However, it is no use vexing your soul with what neither of us can help. I cannot and will not accept the responsibility of disposing of your pictures; but I will get the best advice I can about them and follow it, and spare no personal pains to have them advantageously dealt with; only, I hope it will not be very long before they arrive, because my own stay in Boston is now drawing to a close, and after the end of the present month I shall be at Lenox, a remote village in a lonely hill district one hundred miles from Boston, or rather I should say seven hours distant from the nearest railroad station, which is six miles away again from Lenox. When once I come here--for I write at this moment from this snowy wilderness--it will be to remain for the next nine or ten months, so you see I must make all arrangements about your pictures before taking my leave of civilised communities. I came up to this place from Boston yesterday to look at a house that I think of hiring for a year, and shall return to the city next week. I have left your pictures (should they arrive during my absence) to the charge of a friend of mine who is one of the directors of the Athenaeum, and will see that they are properly received. Thank you a thousand times for the promised likeness of Westbury, which will be a treasure to me.

What a contrast is my recollection of that charming place, to the abomination of desolation of the dreary savage winter landscape of low black hills, bristling with wintry woods and wide, bare, snow-covered valleys, that stretch before me here at this moment. I am well, but much worn out with my last course of public readings, which I had just ended in Boston. My daughters are well, and write to me tolerably frequently; the eldest seems happy and contented in her marriage; your small acquaintance, f.a.n.n.y, writes to me from Savannah of sitting with the doors and windows wide open, and wiping the perspiration from her face in the meantime; and here everything is buried in snow. I shall wait till I return to Boston to finish this, as I shall hope to send you then news of the arrival of your pictures.

_Wednesday, March 14._

Your pictures are arrived, my dear Mr. Leighton; they reached Boston last week while I was absent at Lenox. I only returned yesterday evening, and found a letter from Mr. Cabot announcing that they were at the Athenaeum; thither I went this morning, and spent a most delightful half-hour in looking at them. I like the "Samson" very much indeed; I think it is beautiful, and am charmed with the treatment of the subject, though you have chosen a different moment for ill.u.s.tration from the one I had imagined. This evening I have been having a long conversation with Mr. Ordway about the future destinations of the pictures. I am little sanguine, I regret to say, about their being bought here, for the only rich picture purchaser that I know here has a predilection for French works of art, small _tableaux de genre_, and Troyon's landscapes. However, it must be tried. Mr. Ordway says he will exhibit your pictures in the Athenaeum, which (should they be sold while there) will save you your commission, because, being an artist himself, he will not charge you any. If after due experiment they do not seem likely to sell here, we will send them to New York, and then to Philadelphia; in short, the best that can be done for them shall, as far as my agency is concerned, you may be sure.

BOSTON, _Thursday, March 15_.

I have this moment received your letter of the 25th February, for which I thank you very much. It does not require any further answer with regard to your pictures, of the safe arrival of which I wrote you word last night. I did not tell you, by-the-bye, that they are both slightly _streaked_ across from side to side with what Mr. Ordway thinks must have been small infiltrations of sea-water; he says the pictures are not injured by them, nor do they indeed appear to be so in the least, and that he can wipe off the stains with no damage whatever to them.

Thank you for all you tell me of my sister; it is not much, indeed, nor very cheerful, but it is more than reaches me through any other channel, and far better than the miserable conjectures of absolute ignorance. Dear Mr. Leighton, thank you a thousand times for the _portrait_ of Westbury--it is exactly what I wished for--but, oh, why could there not be the lovely upland beyond, and the sheep slowly rolling up and down the slopes, and the tinkle of the bell, and you and she and they and all of us. Oh dear, if you could conceive what it is to me to be _here_, you would know a thousand times better than I can tell you how precious such a memento of _there_ is to me. Thank you, too, for the good inspiration of telling me about the change of place of the pictures at Westbury; it is wonderful how much one small particular has power to bring the whole of what surrounds it, back to the mind, and what vividness it gives to the picture that, in spite of the distinctness with which it was stamped upon the memory, becomes so soon, and yet so unconsciously, obliterated in the minor parts that give it charm and vitality.

I spent a long hour to-day again looking at your pictures and wis.h.i.+ng most heartily that I could afford to buy them both.

Good-bye, dear Mr. Leighton; I shall leave this open till to-morrow, in case I should hear anything more about them before I go. I enclose the receipts for what I have paid. I suppose it is all right, but it seems a most monstrous price for mere conveyance, and indeed reminds us that our humorous forefathers called _stealing_ _conveying_.

LENOX, BERKs.h.i.+RE, Ma.s.sACHUSETTS, _Friday, April 27_.

Your pictures are at present in the New York Exhibition. Mr.

Ordway tells me that it is extremely rare for pictures to sell without the intervention of dealers. In this country they cry down and undervalue all pictures that are not expressly committed to them, and the ignorance of the rich shopkeepers who purchase works of Art, is so excessive that they do not feel safe in making any acquisition without the advice and permission of some charlatan of a dealer, to whom these wiseacres come saying (verbatim, so Mr. Ordway informed me), "I want some pictures; can't you recommend any to me?" and then, of course, the picture-dealer recommends what brings him the highest percentage; and the man who buys pictures exactly like looking-gla.s.ses, window-curtains, or any other _furniture_ for a new house, departs satisfied that he possesses a work of Art.

The things that are bought and sold here in the shape of pictures, and the things that are said about them, _vous feraient pouffer de rire_, if you did not live in this country.

If you did, they would be like many other proofs of the semi-civilisation of the people, that would be rather doleful than otherwise to you. Thank you for all you tell about my sister and her children. I feel very much both for my sister and Anne in their separation. I have just parted with my maid Marie, who has lived with me fifteen years, and who leaves me now because her health is so much broken down that her physician tells her, she must go to some other climate or she will die.

So she is gone, and here I remain absolutely alone, looking, not for the "wrath to come," but what may be supposed no bad instalment of it--the advent of four new servants with whom I am to begin housekeeping in my small cottage next week. Just before leaving Boston I saw Hetty Hosmer. She has come home to her poor old paralytic father, who, I suppose, is not likely to live very long. Whenever the event of his death happens, Hetty will gather up her substance, and depart hence for the rest of her natural or artistic life. She is very little changed in appearance, and only a little in manner. She seemed very glad to see me, and so was I to see her, for she represented to my memory a whole world of things and places and people that I am fond of. I have not seen Lord Lyon, and do not expect to do so, as I understand he does not mean to stir from Was.h.i.+ngton all the summer, and thither I shall a.s.suredly not go, though I would go a good way to see him. I'm told he lives in dread of being married by some fair American, and it is not always a thing that a man can escape; but he is too good for that, and I trust will not succ.u.mb to these intrepid little flirts. Good-bye, dear Mr.

Leighton; I have a settled nostalgia, which is the saddest thing in the world. Your sketch of Westbury is always before me, and your letters are the most kindly return you could possibly make, for any service that you could require of me. I wish with all my heart I might have the great pleasure of writing you, now that one of your pictures was sold.

Addio.

LENOX, _Friday, June 7_.

Thank you, dear Frederic Leighton, for your letter and the photographs, by means of which, and your description, I have a sort of vision (not quite what the Yankees call a "realising sense") of your pictures. The girl at the fountain is charming,[20] the other beautiful and terrible, as it should be.[21] I can well imagine the beautiful effect the sentiment of the picture must receive from that regretful return, as it were, of the daylight that has set upon the poor people for ever. In the English newspapers that are sent to me I looked eagerly among the notices of the Exhibition for your name, and read the meagre little bit allotted to each picture. I was especially delighted with the critic who thinks your "Paolo and Francesca"

too _earthly_ in the intensity of their pa.s.sions. The gentleman apparently forgets that it was not in Heaven that Dante met these poor things. With regard to your other pictures, dear Mr.

Leighton, I think you are right to withdraw them from America. I wish with all my heart that I could have presented myself with one of those pictures; however, that is one of the vainest of all human desires. My income is already docked of two hundred pounds this year by the disastrous state of public affairs; but, of course, if one is in the midst of a falling house, one can hardly hope to avoid bruises and broken bones. The att.i.tude of England is highly unsatisfactory to the North, who now choose to consider the whole action of the Government a crusade against slavery--which it is not, and was not, and will not be except in the New England state where the Abolitionist party has always been strongest, and where the character of the people is more of the nature to make fighters for abstract principles. The Southerners hate the Yankees, and _vice versa_, for this very reason; and if the crisis comes really to anything like fighting, the New England, especially the Ma.s.sachusetts men, will probably fight very maliciously as against slaveholders, and the slaveholders against them as Abolitionists, which _they_ now are, pretty much to a man. A huge volunteer force is levying and being prepared for action; but in spite of the very unanimous feeling of the North and North-West, and the warlike att.i.tude of the South, I shall not believe in anything deserving the name of war till I see it. The South is without resources that can avail for a six months' struggle. The North has a huge, unarmed, undisciplined force of men at its command; but the Southerners do not want to fight, and neither do the Northerners; _but_ if any combination of circ.u.mstances (and of course matters cannot stand still, especially with the border states all _au pied en l'air_) should occasion any collision accompanied with considerable effusions of blood, I believe the North would pour itself upon the Southern States and annihilate the secessionist party. It is extremely difficult to foresee the probable course of events, but I believe eventually the Southern States will be obliged to return to their allegiance, and _then_ I believe the North will, once for all, legislate for the future limiting of the curse of slavery to those states where it _now_ exists, and where, of course, under such circ.u.mstances, it would very soon cease to exist, as if it cannot extend itself it must die. In one sense slavery is undoubtedly the cause of the present disastrous crisis--and in the profoundest sense, for the character of the Southerners is the immediate result of these infernal "inst.i.tutions"; and but for Southern slavery Southern "Chivalry," that arrogant, insolent, ignorant, ferocious and lawless race of men, would never have existed.

Oh, how thankful I shall be to be at home once more! Farewell, dear Mr. Leighton; pray, if there is anything special to be done about your pictures, write to me and let me have the pleasure of doing something for you. Oh, I am so enraged that I could not get them sold; and yet though you may not think it, I should have thought it a pity for them to have to live the rest of their lives here. Thank you again for the photographs; I look at them constantly. All _such things_ are like being lifted into another atmosphere from that which surrounds and stifles one here. Believe me always your obliged and sincere friend,

f.a.n.n.y KEMBLE.

Emil Devrient's was the best Hamlet I ever saw. It would not have been if my father's had not been too smooth and harmonious.

I hope I shall see Fechter's.

LENOX, _Thursday, October 11_.

How good an inspiration it was that made you send that beautiful photograph to me! It came to me really like a special providence, on the day when I had parted from my children for an indefinite time, and with more than usual sadness and anxiety; for my eldest child's health has failed completely since her confinement, and she came to me for a visit of ten days only, looking like the doomed, wan image of some woman whose enemies were wasting her by witchcraft. My small comfortless home was intolerably lonely to me, and towards sunset I went out to find some fort.i.tude under the open sky. I wandered into a copse of beech trees that clothe the steep sides of a miniature ravine with a brook at the bottom, and here gathered a handful of the beautiful blue fringed gentian (do you know that exquisite flower that grows wild in the woods here?). The little glen with its cl.u.s.ters of mysterious blue blossoms was all but dark, but, emerging from it, I stood where I saw a wide valley flooded with the evening light, and hills beyond rising in waves of amber and smoke colour and dark purple; it was so beautiful that it cannot be imagined. The autumn has turned all the trees into gold and jewels, like the enchanted growth of fairy-land, and the whole world, as I saw it from the entrance of that shadowy dell, looked as if it was made of precious metals and precious stones.

I was very sad, and stood thinking of our Saviour and the widow of Nain, and how pitiful He was to sorrowful human creatures, and with some sparks of comfort in my heart I returned home, where I found your letter waiting for me. I have told you all this of my previous state of mind and feeling, because--without knowing that--you could not conceive how like an express message of consolation your work appeared to me. May it be blessed to many hearts for admonition and for consolation as it was to mine, dear Mr. Leighton. It is no wonder that it seemed to me beautiful, and I do not think I shall ever sufficiently disconnect it with this first impression, to be able to judge of its merit as a work of art; it was, as I said before, a special Providence to me. I long to have it framed and hung where I can see it constantly. I have within the last few days moved into a house which I have hired for the next two years. It is all but in the village of Lenox, and yet so situated that it commands from the windows of every room a most beautiful prospect. The whole landscape is a harmonious confusion of small valleys and hills, rolling and falling within and around and beyond each other, like folds of rich and majestic drapery. Oh, what lights and shadows roam and rest over these hill-sides and in the hollows between them! The country is very thickly wooded, and the woods are literally of every colour in the rainbow, all mixed together under a sky, the peculiar characteristic of which is not so much softness or brightness, as a transparent purity that seems as if there was _no_ atmosphere betwixt oneself and the various objects one sees. I expect this would make it difficult to paint these beautiful aspects of nature here; but, oh, how I _do_ wish you could see it, for, in the matter of American autumnal colouring, seeing alone is believing. The house itself is very tolerably comfortable, but hideous to behold both within and without; and I have begun my residence in it under rather depressing circ.u.mstances, _i.e._ without _being able_ to obtain the necessary servants for the decent comfort of my daily existence. Ever since the beginning of May I have been endeavouring, in vain, to procure and keep together a decent household. Not for one _single week_ have I had my proper complement of people in the house, and I have done every species of house-work myself, from cleaning the cellar and kitchen to was.h.i.+ng the tea-cups; it is a state of things as incredible as the colour of the autumn woods, and as peculiar, thank G.o.d, to America. I am now making my last experiment by trying coloured servants. Their manners and deportment are generally much better than those of either the Irish or American, and they seem capable of personal attachment to their employers, which neither of the other races are. The incessant worry, discomfort, and positive fatigue that I have undergone during the whole summer has completely shaken my nerves, so that I have been in a sort of hysterical condition of constant weeping for some time past.

I trust, however, it will not be so wretched now, for I am at any rate close to the village inn, and if I am left without servants, can go there and get some food; it is a state of existence _qu'on ne s'imagine pas_. You will not wonder, after all this, to hear that I declined a ticket to the Prince's ball at New York, to which the whole population of the United States are struggling to get admittance; but at the best of times "I am not gamesome," and feel as if I had swept my own rooms quite too recently to be fit company for my Queen's son. Thank you, dear Mr. Leighton, for all you tell me about my sister and the children; she never writes, you know, and so I am thirsty all the time for some tidings of her. It is very sad to be so far away and hear so seldom from those one loves. Good-bye, G.o.d bless you; and thank you once more for the "Vision." I am sorry I cannot tell you of the sale of either of your pictures; they are in the Boston Athenaeum, very safe, and highly ornamental to it, but not, I regret to say, sold. If you wish me to do anything more about them, you must write me your directions, which I will fulfil with every attention and accuracy of which I am capable.

LENOX, _Sunday, November 11_.

I trust before long you will receive your children safe and sound. I wish the two hundred pounds I have lost this year had been invested in one of those pictures instead of in St. Louis.

Thank you for your account of Adelaide and her children; it is not much, but it is all that much better than nothing. The state of the country is very sad, and any probable termination of the war quite out of calculable distance. England, no doubt, will maintain her absolute neutrality in spite of secession, cotton, and anti-slavery sympathies; it is her only part. Good-bye, dear Mr. Leighton.

I beg you will not scruple to write me now if there is anything more that I can do, either in the matter of the pictures or any other by which I can be of use to you here.