Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2101 page)

Upon this subject, it was the often-expressed conviction of my father, drawn from his own experience of the good and evil of his pursuit, that “the study of the Art was in itself so delightful, that it balanced almost all the evils of life that could be conceived; and that an artist with tolerable success had no right to complain of anything.”

In the following letter, addressed by Mr. Collins at the beginning of the next year, to a valued and intimate friend, Mr. Joseph, the sculptor, whose merits are well known to the public by his statues of Wilberforce and Wilkie, with many other admirable works, the painter’s own reflections upon the attractions of his profession will be perused in this place with some interest:

To SAMUEL JOSEPH, ESQ.

“London, January 28th, 1822.

“Dear Joseph, — Hoping I should long ere this have seen you in London, I trusted I could have satisfied you that neither neglect nor any abatement of a most sincere regard for you, but an incurable habit of procrastination, has been the sole reason why your letter has remained so long unanswered. My anxiety however to hear from you, since I cannot see you, impels me to send you such London news as my scanty means of information will enable me to collect. In the Arts we are going on much as usual, and much as I fear will always be the case in this country, namely, — cramming the public with that which they have not power to digest. I think, upon the whole, there is more said and less done in the Arts than heretofore, the alarming increase of exhibitions having a tendency to produce derangements of the pictorial system which a little wholesome and legitimate nourishment might have altogether prevented. A lamentable demand for novelty is producing in the Arts, as well as in literature, exactly what might have been expected; and, although the last Exhibition at Somerset-house has been more crowded than upon any former occasion, and readers were never so numerous, the result has been a satiety truly alarming. Every one talks of painting and literature, and what is still worse, all conceive it to be their duty to have opinions; and instead of an ingenuous expression of their
feelings,
— by which painting and poetry might gather considerable improvement — their only aim seems to be, that of persuading those who are not to be deceived, that they understand both Arts.

“But, enough of the dark side. Notwithstanding the many disagreeable circumstances attending the prosecution of our arduous profession, the real charms of the pursuit are so great, that were the difficulties an hundred times greater, we ought to thank Heaven we are permitted to pursue an employment so replete with abstractions, in their nature scarcely belonging to what is earthly.

“Although I have not made inquiries of you, still your brother has been kind enough to give me information, which, together with your own letter, is upon the whole gratifying. I long to see some of your recent productions. Chan trey has just finished a bust of the King, which entirely surpasses any work he has done in this way. He tells me he has written to you; and I
know
he has a personal regard for you, and thinks highly of your works. Are we to expect you in the spring? Is it prudent entirely to leave London? Should you determine to take up your quarters in Edinburgh, why not occasionally pay us a visit? In my humble opinion, however, reversing this would be a better thing. Perhaps you could settle the matter more advantageously in London than by any information your friends at so great a distance could give you. I lament exceedingly that I had not the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Joseph, during her stay in London.

“I shall tell you nothing about the fish
I
am frying, — come and see. Write to me as soon as convenient; I hereby promise to answer any letter you may in future send to me
directly.
Other matters when we meet, and I most sincerely wish it may be soon. With kind regards to Mrs. Joseph, in which I am joined by my mother and Frank, I am, dear Joseph, with great esteem,

“Faithfully yours,

“WILLIAM COLLINS.”

“P.S. — Best regards to our friend Allan, and such others as care whether I am alive or not. Wilkie has nearly completed his picture; I saw it yesterday. It is one of the most stupendous things ever produced.”

The year 1822 was marked by some variety of incidents in the painter’s life; among which may be noticed his entry on a new sphere of domestic duties as a married man, and his excursion to Edinburgh with Sir David Wilkie, on the occasion of the visit of George the Fourth, — the period at which he first became acquainted with Sir Walter Scott.

His pictures contributed to the Exhibition of 1822, occupying however priority of date in the year, claim priority of notice. They were entitled, — ”A Scene near Chichester,” painted for Mr. Isaac Currie; “Clovelly, North Devon,” painted for Mr. Philips, M.P.; “Woodcutters, — Buckland on the Moor, Devon,” painted for Mr. Lamb ton, M.P.; and “Bayham Abbey, during the celebration of a Fˆete given in honour of the coming of age of Lord Brecknock,” painted for the Marquis Camden. “Chichester” and the “Woodcutters” were two of the painter’s most successful landscapes. In the first the atmosphere is cool, gray, and serene; the high-road with trees at the right, and the open common with figures talking near an old white horse, occupy the foreground; while in the distance rises the spire of Chichester Cathedral, surrounded by the level, open scenery, presented in Nature by the view. The second picture, “Woodcutters,” exhibits a background of soft, dusky, woodland foliage, sunk in quiet shadow. In front, a gleam of sunshine falls over a patch of open ground, encumbered with a felled tree, round which the woodcutters are occupied in their tranquil mid-day meal. “Clovelly,” was the sea-piece of the year. The sketch from which it was produced was made after the storm mentioned in the painter’s last letter to his mother, in which forty fishermen were lost. In the picture, the ocean is yet vexed with the subsiding of the tempest, which caused this terrific calamity; the waves dash brightly and briskly in upon the beach and the fishing-boats in the foreground. To the left of the scene rises the rocky and precipitous shore, studded with cottages, built picturesquely one above the other, and relieved against the sky, whose wild fitful clouds, and fresh vivid atmosphere, remind the spectator of the storm that has lately raged. This picture is, in every respect, a remarkable and original work. The view of Bayham Abbey was a smaller production. A river occupies the foreground, the fˆete is proceeding in the middle distance, and the foliage that clusters round the old abbey, is finely varied by the influence of the richest autumnal tints.

The tour to Scotland with Wilkie, which preceded the painter’s marriage, and to which it is now necessary to revert, will, it is presumed, be not inaptly introduced by a more extended notice than has yet been attempted in these Memoirs, of the distinguished man who was my father’s companion in his journey, and whose brotherly connection with him began with their first acquaintance to terminate only with his death.

It is of Sir David Wilkie, in the capacity in which perhaps he is least familiar to the world, as a companion and a friend, that I would here endeavour to speak. In what is called “general society,” there was a certain unconscious formality and restraint about the manner of this gifted and amiable man, which wrongly impressed those who were but slightly acquainted with him with an idea that he was naturally haughty and reserved. He was never one of those who mix freely and carelessly with the world, whose movements, manners, and conversation flow from them as it were impromptu. With Wilkie, an excessive anxiety to contribute his just quota of information and amusement to a new company weakened, as in such cases it almost invariably does, his social efforts. It was only in the society of his intimate friends, of fellow-painters and fellow-countrymen whom he admired and loved, that the great artist’s real kindness and gaiety of disposition appeared. Then his manners became playful and winning, his voice animated and cheerful, his laugh ready and contagious, as if by magic. Then the jests and witticisms with which his friend Collins loved to perplex him awoke his fund of anecdote, his peculiar vein of humour, his relations — exquisitely amusing in their sedate circumstantiality — of good jokes and clever retorts. No egotism or self-assumption ever tinged his thoughts, or deteriorated his conversation. He appeared, in these social hours, to be absolutely unaware of the illustrious position that he occupied. Although not gifted with that peculiar flexibility of mind which, to use the nursery phrase, enables “grown people to talk to children,” his kindness and patience with them was one of the finest ingredients in his simple, affectionate character. The writer of this biography remembers being often taken, when a child, upon his knee, giving him pencil and paper, and watching him, while he drew at his request, cats, dogs, and horses with a readiness and zeal which spoke eloquently for his warmth of heart and gentleness of disposition. Although full of humour of a particular kind, and of a capacity to relish it frequently in others, he was by no means susceptible of all varieties of jests. Scotch stories and “Irish bulls,” he heartily enjoyed; but to a play upon words of any other description, or to a joke by inference, the “portals of his understanding” seemed to be almost invariably closed. Any attempts to make him understand a “pun” were generally abortive. Two amusing instances of this are given, as follows, in a short collection of manuscript anecdotes of his friend, written by Mr. Collins, which have never before been published, and from which several extracts will be presented to the reader in this place:

“Wilkie was not quick in perceiving a joke, although he was always anxious to do so, and to recollect humorous stories, of which he was exceedingly fond. As instances, I recollect, once, when we were staying at Mr. Wells’, at Redleaf, one morning at breakfast a very small puppy was running about under the table. ‘Dear me,’ said a lady, ‘how this creature teases me!’ I took it up, and put it into my breast-pocket. Mr. Wells said, ‘That is a pretty nosegay.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘it is a
dog-rose.’
Wilkie’s attention, sitting opposite, was called to his friend’s pun: but all in vain, — he could not be persuaded to see anything in it. I recollect trying once to explain to him, with the same want of success, Hogarth’s joke in putting the sign of the woman without a head, (‘The Good Woman,’) under the window from whence the quarrelsome wife is throwing the dinner into the street.”

As a balance against the above anecdotes, it should be mentioned that, on another occasion, Wilkie succeeded better in the mysteries of punning. On the day when he was knighted, he called on his friend Collins, and, not finding him at home, left his card thus inscribed: “Mr. David Wilkie, — a
be-knighted
traveller.”

A more amusing instance of the simplicity of his character is thus described in my father’s MS.:

“Chantrey and Wilkie were dining alone with me, when the former, in his great kindness for Wilkie, ventured, as he said, to take him to task for his constant use of the word
‘relly,’
(really,) when listening to any conversation in which he was much interested. ‘Now, for instance,’ said Chantrey, ‘suppose I was giving you an account of any interesting matter, you would constantly say,
“Relly!”‘
‘Relly!’
exclaimed Wilkie immediately, with a look of the most perfect astonishment.”

Another dinner scene of a different description, at Wilkie’s house, is worthy of insertion. Mr. Collins’s brother Francis possessed a remarkably retentive memory, which he was accustomed to use for the amusement of himself and others in the following way. He learnt by heart a whole number of one of Dr. Johnson’s “Ramblers,” and used to cause considerable diversion to those in the secret, by repeating it all through to a new company, in a conversational tone, as if it was the accidental product of his own fancy, — now addressing his flow of moral eloquence to one astonished auditor, and now to another. One day, when the two brothers were dining at Wilkie’s, it was determined to try the experiment upon their host. After dinner, accordingly, Mr. Collins paved the way for the coming speech, by leading the conversation imperceptibly to the subject of the paper in the “Rambler.” At the right moment, Francis Collins began. As the first grand Johnsonian sentences struck upon his ear, (uttered, it should be remembered, in the most elabourately careless and conversational manner,) Wilkie started at the high tone that the conversation had suddenly assumed, and looked vainly for explanation to his friend Collins, who, on
his
part, sat with his eyes respectfully fixed on his brother, all rapt attention to the eloquence that was dropping from his lips. Once or twice, with perfect mimicry of the conversational character he had assumed, Francis Collins hesitated, stammered, and paused, as if collecting his thronging ideas. At one or two of these intervals Wilkie endeavoured to speak, to ask a moment for consideration; but the torrent of his guest’s eloquence was not to be delayed — ”it was too rapid to stay for any man — away it went,” like Mr. Shandy’s oratory before “My Uncle Toby” — until at last it reached its destined close; and then Wilkie, who, as host, thought it his duty to break silence by the first compliment, exclaimed with the most perfect unconsciousness of the trick that had been played him, “Aye, aye, Mr. Francis; verra clever — (though I did not understand it
all
) verra clever!”