Will & Tom (33 page)

Authors: Matthew Plampin

BOOK: Will & Tom

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The Lascelles thrived in the years after Turner’s visit. Having weathered the minor scandal of Mary Ann’s elopement and accepted her merchant husband with apparent good grace, they applied themselves to the defence of the king’s interest in Yorkshire parliamentary elections. In 1807, Henry Lascelles stood against William Wilberforce, with whom he had previously maintained an unlikely alliance, and the Whig Viscount Milton, son of the immensely wealthy Earl Fitzwilliam: three candidates running for two seats in the Commons. A contest of spectacular rancour ensued, drawing the attention of the nation. Lascelles was the loser, but the family’s loyalty – they spent around a hundred thousand pounds, almost the cost of Harewood House itself – was noted; and when the political moment was right, just before the next election in 1812, Baron Harewood was made an Earl.

Beau Lascelles remained on the sidelines throughout all of this, devoting his time to porcelain rather than politics. He died in 1814, still unmarried, predeceasing his father by six years. Henry was left to inherit, and it is his descendents who bear the earldom today. The family would eventually succeed in mingling their line with that of royalty – the present Earl in fact has the distinction of being related to Prince William on both sides of the Prince’s family tree. His grandmother is William’s paternal great aunt, the sixth Earl having married Princess Mary in 1922 (proposing to her, allegedly, as a result of a bet at his club); and his fourth great aunt, none other than Frances Douglas, is William’s maternal sixth great-grandmother.

The narrative of J.M.W. Turner’s career is well established. Having achieved prodigious success in early life, he grew steadily more experimental with age, producing the paintings for which he’s now arguably most famous in the 1830s and 40s – and alienating the same circles, often the same people, who had once lauded him so highly. It was in this mature period that the
Zong
finally made its appearance in Turner’s work.
The Slave Ship
, originally entitled
Slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying: typhon coming on
, included in the RA Summer Exhibition of 1840, shows not the act itself, as the Abolitionist pamphlets had done, but the aftermath – the ship retreating into the distance, the hands of the jettisoned slaves raised imploringly from the waves as ocean creatures swim up to devour them. The picture was lavishly praised by John Ruskin, the great contemporary defender of Turner’s late style, who wrote that it contained ‘the noblest sea that Turner ever painted, and if so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man’; it was dismissed or derided by nearly everyone else. A sunset fills the sky and the colours are positively ferocious, a blaze of raw, expressionistic fury – but the storm itself is almost over. Slavery had been ended in the British Empire in 1833, following the abolition of the trade in 1807. The ‘guilty ship’, as Ruskin termed it, is from a different era, its masts and rigging silhouetted against the fiery horizon.
Slavers
can be understood as a counterpoint to the elegiac spirit of
The Fighting ‘Temeraire’ tugged to her last berth to be broken up
, which Turner had exhibited the previous year. The advent of steam had robbed mankind of a source of grandeur and grace; yet it had also overseen the ultimate cessation of the slave trade’s barbarities. The
Zong
was an atrocity that belonged to the past.

Many books were consulted in the writing of this one, too many to list here; but particular mention must be made of Greg Smith’s
Thomas Girtin: The Art of Watercolour
and David Hill’s
Turner in the North
, both of which proved invaluable. Any errors or distortions are my own.

Sincere thanks are due to my editor, Katie Espiner, for her great expertise and perceptiveness, and unwavering belief in
Will & Tom
; Euan Thorneycroft, indefatigable agent and staunch ally; Louisa Joyner, Cassie Browne, Charlotte Cray and Ann Bissell; the teams at HarperCollins and A. M. Heath; the staff of the British Library and Harewood House; Jackman and Middleton, steadfast fellows both; my mother, who keeps the difficult questions to a minimum; my ever-supportive family; and Sarah, of course, my sounding board, beloved co-parent and dearest friend.

My lowest bow to you all.

About the Author

Matthew Plampin was born in 1975 and lives in London. He completed a PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and has written and lectured on nineteenth-century art and architecture. He is the author of three previous novels,
Illumination
,
The Street Philosopher
and
The Devil’s Acre
.

Also by Matthew Plampin

The Street Philosopher

The Devil’s Acre

Illumination

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