In the midst of all his hara.s.sing anxieties, Haydon was untiring in his efforts to obtain employment of the heroic kind that his soul craved. He had begun to realise that he had small chance of disposing of huge historical pictures to private patrons, and that his only hope rested with the Government. Even while confined in prison he had persuaded Brougham to present a pet.i.tion to the House of Commons setting forth the desirability of appointing a Committee to inquire into the state of national art, and by a regular distribution of a small portion of the public funds, to give public encouragement to the professors of historical painting. No sooner did he regain his freedom than Haydon attacked Sir Charles Long with a plan for the decoration of the great room of the Admiralty, to be followed by the decoration of the House of Lords and St. Paul"s Cathedral. This was but the beginning of a long series of impa.s.sioned pleadings with public men in favour of national employment for historical painters. Silence, snubs, formal acknowledgments, curt refusals, all were lost upon Haydon, who kept pouring in page after page of agonised pet.i.tion on Sir Charles Long, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Grey, Lord Melbourne, and Sir Robert Peel, and seemed to be making no way with any of them.
Haydon thought himself ill-used, throughout his life, by statesmen and patrons, and many of his friends were of the same opinion. But both he and they ignored the fact that it is impossible to create an artificial market for works of art for which there is no spontaneous popular demand. A despotic prince may, if he chooses, give his court painter _carte blanche_ for the decorations of national buildings, and gain nothing but glory for his liberality, even when it is exercised at the expense of his people. But in a country that possesses a const.i.tutional government, more especially when that country has been impoverished by long and costly wars, the minister who devotes large sums to the encouragement of national art has the indignation of an over-taxed populace to reckon with. It is little short of an insult to offer men historic frescoes when they are clamouring for bread. Haydon was unfortunate in his period, which was not favourable for a crusade on behalf of high art. The recent pacification of the Continent, and the opening up of its treasures, tempted English n.o.blemen and plutocrats to invest their money in old masters to the neglect of native artists, who were only thought worthy to paint portraits of their patrons" wives and children. We who have inherited the Peel, the Angerstein, and the Hertford collections, can scarcely bring ourselves to regret the sums that were lavished on Flemish and Italian masterpieces, sums that might have kept our Barrys and Haydons from bankruptcy.
In January 1824 Haydon left his lodgings, and took the lease of a house in Connaught Terrace, for which he paid, or promised to pay, a hundred and twenty pounds a year, a heavy rent for a recently insolvent artist. Fortunately, he acquired with the house a landlord of amazing benevolence, who took pot-boilers in lieu of rent, and meekly submitted to abuse when nothing else was forthcoming. As soon as he was fairly settled, Haydon arranged the composition of a large picture of "Pharaoh dismissing Moses," upon which he worked in the intervals of portrait-painting. A curious and obviously impartial sketch of him, as he appeared at this time, is drawn by Borrow in his _Lavengro_. The hero"s elder brother comes up to town, it may be remembered, to commission a certain heroic artist to paint an heroic picture of a very unheroic mayor of Norwich. The two brothers go together to the painter of Lazarus, and have some difficulty in obtaining admission to his studio, being mistaken by the servant for duns. They found a man of about thirty-five, with a clever, intelligent countenance, sharp grey eyes, and hair cut _a la_ Raphael. He possessed, moreover, a broad chest, and would have been a very fine figure if his legs had not been too short. He was then engaged upon his Moses, whose legs, in Lavengro"s opinion, were also too short. His eyes glistened at the mention of a hundred pounds for the mayor"s portrait, and he admitted that he was confoundedly short of money. The painter was anxious that Lavengro should sit to him for his Plutarch, which honour that gentleman firmly declined. Years afterwards he saw the portrait of the mayor, a "mighty portly man, with a bull"s head, black hair, a body like a dray horse, and legs and thighs corresponding; a man six foot high at the least. To his bull"s head, black hair and body, the painter had done justice; there was one point, however, in which the portrait did not correspond with the original--the legs were disproportionately short, the painter having subst.i.tuted his own legs for those of the mayor, which, when I perceived, I rejoiced that I had not consented to be painted as Pharaoh, for if I had, the chances are that he would have served me in exactly the same way as he had served Moses and the mayor."
The painting of provincial mayors was so little to Haydon"s taste that by the close of this year we find him in deep depression of spirits, unrelieved by even a spark of his old sanguine buoyancy. "I candidly confess," he writes, "I find my glorious art a bore. I cannot with pleasure paint any individual head for the mere purpose of domestic gratification. I must have a great subject to excite public feeling.... Alas! I have no object in life now but my wife and children, and almost wish I had not them, that I might sit still and meditate on human grandeur and human ambition till I died.... I am not yet forty, and can tell of a destiny melancholy and rapturous, bitter beyond all bitterness, cursed, heart-breaking, maddening. But I dare not write now. The melancholy demon has grappled my heart, and crushed its turbulent beatings in his black, bony, clammy, clenching fingers."
It was just when things seemed at their darkest, when the waters threatened to overwhelm the unfortunate artist, that a rope was thrown to him. His legal adviser, Mr. Kearsley, a practical and prosperous man, came forward with an offer of help. He agreed to provide 300 for one year on certain conditions, in order that Haydon might be freed from pressure for that period, and be in a position to ask a fair price for his work. When not engaged on portraits, he was to paint historical pictures of a saleable size. The advance was to be secured on a life insurance, and to be repaid out of the sale of the pictures, with interest at four per cent. This offer was accepted with some reluctance, and the following year was one of comparative peace and quiet. The Journal gives evidence of greater ease of mind, and renewed pleasure in work. Haydon"s love for his wife waxed rather than waned with the pa.s.sing of the years, and his children, of whom he too soon had the poor man"s quiverful, were an ever-present delight. "My domestic happiness is doubled," he writes about this time. "Daily and hourly my sweet Mary proves the justice of my choice. My boy Frank gives tokens of being gifted at two years old, G.o.d bless him! My ambition would be to make him a public man.... I have got into my old delightful habits of study again. The mixture of literature and painting I really think the perfection of human happiness. I paint a head, revel in colour, hit an expression, sit down fatigued, take up a poet or historian, write my own thoughts, muse on the thoughts of others, and hours, troubles, and the tortures of disappointed ambition pa.s.s and are forgotten."
Portraits, and one or two commissions for small pictures, kept Haydon afloat throughout this year, but a widespread commercial distress in the early part of 1826 affected his gains, and in February he records that for the last five weeks he has been suffering the tortures of the Inferno. He was persuaded, much against his will, to send his pictures to the Academy, and he was proportionately annoyed at the adverse criticism that greeted his attempts at portraiture. This attack he regarded as the result of a deep-laid plot to injure him in a lucrative branch of his art. He consoled himself by beginning a large picture of "Alexander taming Bucephalus," the "finest subject on earth." Through his friend and opposite neighbour, Carew the sculptor, Haydon made an appeal to Lord Egremont, that generous patron of the arts, for help or employment, in response to which Lord Egremont promised to call and see the Alexander. There is a pathetic touch in the account of this visit, on which so much depended. Lord Egremont called at Carew"s house on his way, and Haydon, who saw him go in, relates that "Dear Mary and I were walking on the leads, and agreed that it would not be quite right to look too happy, being without a sixpence; so we came in, I to the parlour to look through the blinds, and she to the nursery." Happily, the patron was favourably impressed by the picture, and promised to give 600 for it when it was finished.
In order to pay his models Haydon was obliged to p.a.w.n one of his two lay-figures, since he could not bring himself to part with any more books. "I may do without a lay-figure for a time," he writes, "but not without old Homer. The truth is I am fonder of books than of anything on earth. I consider myself a man of great powers, excited to an art which limits their exercise. In politics, law, or literature they would have had a full and glorious swing, and I should have secured a competence."
The fact that Haydon was more at home among the literary men of his acquaintance than among his fellow-artists was a natural result of his intense love of books, and his keen interest in contemporary history.
And it is evident that his own character and work impressed his poetical friends, for we find that not only Wordsworth and Keats, but Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, Miss Mitford, and Miss Barrett addressed to him admiring verses. For Byron, whom he never knew, Haydon cherished an ardent admiration, and the following interesting pa.s.sage, comparing that poet with Wordsworth, occurs in one of his letters to Miss Mitford, who had criticised Byron"s taste:--
"You are unjust, depend upon it," he writes, "in your estimate of Byron"s poetry, and wrong in ranking Wordsworth beyond him. There are things in Byron"s poetry so exquisite that fifty or five hundred years hence they will be read, felt, and adored throughout the world. I grant that Wordsworth is very pure, very holy, very orthodox, and occasionally very elevated, highly poetical, and oftener insufferably obscure, starched, dowdy, anti-human, and anti-sympathetic, but he never will be ranked above Byron, nor cla.s.sed with Milton.... I dislike his selfish Quakerism, his affectation of superior virtue, his utter insensibility to the frailties, the beautiful frailties of pa.s.sion. I was walking with him once in Pall Mall; we darted into Christie"s. In the corner of the room was a beautiful copy of the "Cupid and Psyche" (statues) kissing. Cupid is taking her lovely chin, and turning her pouting mouth to meet his, while he archly bends down, as if saying, "Pretty dear!"... Catching sight of the Cupid as he and I were coming out, Wordsworth"s face reddened, he showed his teeth, and then said in a loud voice, "_The Dev-v-vils!_" There"s a mind! Ought not this exquisite group to have softened his heart as much as his old, grey-mossed rocks, his withered thorn, and his dribbling mountain streams? I am altered very much about Wordsworth from finding him too hard, too elevated, to attend to the voice of humanity. No, give me Byron with all his spite, hatred, depravity, dandyism, vanity, frankness, pa.s.sion, and idleness, rather than Wordsworth with all his heartless communion with woods and gra.s.s."
An attempt on Haydon"s part to reconcile himself with his old enemies, the Academicians, ended in failure. He heads his account of the transaction, "The disgrace of my life." He was received with cold civility by the majority of the artists to whom he paid conciliatory visits, and when he put his name down for election, he received not a single vote. A more agreeable memory of this year was a visit to Petworth, where, as he records, with Pepysian _naivete_, "Lord Egremont has placed me in one of the most magnificent bedrooms I ever saw. It speaks more of what he thinks of my talents than anything that ever happened to me.... What a destiny is mine! One year in the King"s Bench, the companion of gamblers and scoundrels--sleeping in wretchedness and dirt on a flock-bed--another reposing in down and velvet in a splendid apartment in a splendid house, the guest of rank, fashion, and beauty." Haydon"s painting-room was now, as he loved to see it, crowded with distinguished visitors, who were anxious to inspect the picture of Alexander before it was sent to the Exhibition.
Among them came Charles Lamb, who afterwards set down some impressions and suggestions in the following characteristic fashion:--
"DEAR RAFFAELE HAYDON,
"Did the maid tell you I came to see your picture? I think the face and bearing of the Bucephalus-tamer very n.o.ble, his flesh too effeminate or painty.... I had small time to pick out praise or blame, for two lord-like Bucks came in, upon whose strictures my presence seemed to impose restraint; I plebeian"d off therefore.
"I think I have hit on a subject for you, but can"t swear it was never executed--I never heard of its being--"Chaucer beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street." Think of the old dresses, houses, etc. "It seemeth that both these learned men (Gower and Chaucer) were of the Inner Temple; for not many years since Master Buckley did see a record in the same house where Geoffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street."--_Chaucer"s Life, by T.
Speght_.--Yours in haste (salt fish waiting).
"C. LAMB."
In June Haydon was again arrested, and imprisoned in the King"s Bench.
Once more he appealed to Parliament by a pet.i.tion presented by Brougham, and to the public through letters to the newspapers.
Parliament and the larger public turned a deaf ear, but private friends rallied to his support. Scott, himself a ruined man, sent a cheque and a charming letter of sympathy, while Lockhart suggested that a subscription should be raised to buy one or more pictures. A public meeting of sympathisers was convened, at which it was stated that Haydon"s debts amounted to 1767, while his only available a.s.set was an unfinished picture of the "Death of Eucles." Over a hundred pounds was subscribed in the room, and it was decided that the Eucles should be raffled in ten-pound shares. The result of these efforts was the release of the prisoner at the end of July.
During this last term of imprisonment Haydon witnessed the masquerade, or mock election by his fellow-prisoners, and instantly decided that he would paint the scene, which offered unique opportunities for both humour and pathos. This picture, Hogarthian in type, was finished and exhibited before the close of the year. The exhibition was moderately successful, but the picture did not sell, and Haydon was once more sinking into despair, when the king expressed a desire to have the work sent down to Windsor for his inspection. Hopes were raised high once more, and this time were not disappointed. George IV. bought the "Mock Election," and promptly paid the price of five hundred guineas.
Thus encouraged, Haydon set to work with renewed spirit on a companion picture, "Chairing the Member," which was finished and exhibited, with some earlier works, in the course of the summer. The king refused to buy the new work, but it found a purchaser at 300, and the net receipts from the two pictures and their exhibition amounted to close upon 1400, a sum which, observes Haydon, in better circ.u.mstances and with less expense, would have afforded a comfortable independence for the year!
The Eucles occupied the artist during the remainder of 1828, and early in 1829 he began a new Hogarthian subject, a Punch and Judy show. He was still painting portraits when he could get sitters, and on April 15, he notes: "Finished one cursed portrait--have only one more to touch, and then I shall be free. I have an exquisite gratification in painting portraits wretchedly. I love to see the sitters look as if they thought, "Can this be Haydon"s--the great Haydon"s painting?" I chuckle. I am rascal enough to take their money, and chuckle more." It must be owned that Haydon thoroughly deserved his ill-success in this branch of his art. When "Punch" was finished the king sent for it to Windsor, but though he admired, he did not buy, and the picture eventually pa.s.sed into the possession of Haydon"s old friend, Dr.
Darling, who had helped him out of more than one difficulty. A large representation of "Xenophon and the Retreat of the Ten Thousand" was now begun, but before it was finished the painter was once more in desperate straits. In vain he sent up urgent pet.i.tions to his Maker that he might be enabled to go through with this great work, explaining in a parenthesis, "It will be my greatest," and concluding, "Bless its commencement, its progress, its conclusion, and its effect, for the sake of the intellectual elevation of my great and glorious country."
In May 1830, Haydon was back again in the King"s Bench, where he had begun to feel quite at home. He presented yet another of his innumerable pet.i.tions to Parliament in favour of Government encouragement of historical painting, through Mr. Agar Ellis, but as the ministry showed no desire to encourage this particular historical painter, he pa.s.sed through the Bankruptcy Court, and returned to his family on the 20th of July. During his period of detention, George IV.
had died, and Haydon has the following comment on the event:--"Thus died as thoroughbred an Englishman as ever existed in this country. He admired her sports, gloried in her prejudices, had confidence in her bottom and spirit, and to him alone is the destruction of Napoleon owing. I have lost in him my sincere admirer; and had not his wishes been continually thwarted, he would have given me ample and adequate employment."
Although Haydon had regained his freedom, his chance of maintaining himself and his rapidly increasing family by his art seemed as far away as ever. By October 15th he is at his wits" end again, and writes in his Journal: "The hara.s.sings of a family are really dreadful. Two of my children are ill, and Mary is nursing. All night she was attending to the sick and hushing the suckling, with a consciousness that our last shilling was going. I got up in the morning bewildered--Xenophon hardly touched--no money--butcher impudent--all tradesmen insulting. I took up my private sketch-book and two prints of Napoleon (from a small picture of "Napoleon musing at St. Helena") and walked into the city. Hughes advanced me five guineas on the sketch-book; I sold my prints, and returned home happy with 8, 4s. in my pocket.... (25th) Out selling my prints. Sold enough for maintenance for the week. Several people looked hard at me with my roll of prints, but I feel more ashamed in borrowing money than in honestly selling my labours. It is a pity the n.o.bility drive me to this by their neglect."
In December came another stroke of good-luck. Sir Robert Peel called at the studio, and gave the artist a commission to paint, on a larger scale, a replica of his small sketch of "Napoleon at St. Helena."
Unluckily, there was a misunderstanding about the price. Peel asked how much Haydon charged for a whole length figure, and was told a hundred pounds, which was the price of an ordinary portrait. Taking this to be the charge for the Napoleon, he paid no more. Haydon, who considered the picture well worth 500, was bitterly disappointed, and took no pains to conceal his feelings. Peel afterwards sent him an extra thirty pounds, but the subject remained a grievance to Haydon for the rest of his life, and Peel, who had intended to do the artist a good turn, was so annoyed by his complaints, that he never gave him another commission. The Napoleon, though its exhibition was not a success, was one of Haydon"s most popular pictures, and the engraving is well known. Wordsworth admired it exceedingly, and on June 12, sent the artist the "Sonnet to B. R. Haydon, composed on seeing his picture of Napoleon in the island of St. Helena," beginning:
"Haydon! let worthier judges praise the skill."
The close of this year was a melancholy period to poor Haydon. He lost his little daughter, f.a.n.n.y, and his third son, Alfred, was gradually fading away. Out of eight children born to this most affectionate of fathers, no fewer than five died in infancy from suffusion of the brain, due, it was supposed, to the terrible mental distresses of their mother. "I can remember," writes Frederick Haydon, one of the three survivors, "the roses of her sunken cheeks fading away daily with anxiety and grief. My father, who was pa.s.sionately attached to both wife and children, suffered the tortures of the d.a.m.ned at the sight before him. His sorrow over the deaths of his children was something more than human. I remember watching him as he hung over his daughter Georgiana, and over his dying boy Harry, the pride and delight of his life. Poor fellow, how he cried! and he went into the next room, and beating his head pa.s.sionately on the bed, called upon G.o.d to take him and all of us from this dreadful world. The earliest and most painful death was to be preferred to our life at that time."
By dint of borrowing in every possible quarter, generally at forty per cent. interest, and inducing his patrons to take shares in his Xenophon, Haydon managed to get through the winter, though his children were often without stockings. William IV. consented to place his name at the head of the subscribers" list, and Goethe wrote a flattering letter, expressing his desire to take a ticket for the "very valuable painting," and a.s.suring the artist that "my soul has been elevated for many years by the contemplation of the important pictures (the cartoons from the Elgin Marbles) formerly sent to me, which occupy an honourable station in my house." Xenophon was exhibited in the spring of 1832 without attracting much attention, the whole nation being engrossed with the subject of Reform. Haydon, though a high Tory by birth and inclination, was an ardent champion of the Bill, as he had been for that of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation. His brush was once more exchanged for the pen, and he not only poured out his thoughts upon Reform in his Journal, but wrote several letters on the subject to the _Times_, which he considered the most wonderful compositions of the kind that had ever been penned. After the pa.s.sing of the Bill he congratulates himself upon having contributed to the grand result, and adds: "When my colours have faded, my canvas decayed, and my body has mingled with the earth, these glorious letters, the best things I ever wrote, will awaken the enthusiasm of my countrymen. I thanked G.o.d I lived in such a time, and that he gifted me with talent to serve the great cause."
On reading the account of the monster meeting of the Trades Unions at Newhall Hill, Birmingham, it occurred to Haydon that the moment when the vast concourse joined in the sudden prayer offered up by Hugh Hutton, would make a fine subject for a picture. Accordingly, he wrote to Hutton, and laid the suggestion before him. The Birmingham leaders were attracted by the idea, and the picture was begun, but support of a material kind was not forthcoming, and the scheme had to be abandoned. Lord Grey then suggested that Haydon should paint a picture of the great Reform Banquet, which was to be held in the Guildhall on July 11. The proposal was exactly to the taste of the public-spirited artist, who saw fame and fortune beckoning to him once more, and fancied that his future was a.s.sured. He was allowed every facility on the great day, breakfasted and dined with the Committee at the Guildhall, was treated with distinction by the n.o.ble guests, many of whom sent to take wine with him as he sat at work, and in short, to quote his own words, "I was an object of great distinction without five shillings in my pocket--and this is life!"
Lord Grey, on seeing Haydon"s sketches of the Banquet, gave him a commission for the picture at a price of 500, half of which he paid down at once, and thus saved the painter from the ruin that was again impending. Then followed a period of triumphant happiness. The leading men of the Liberal party sat for their heads, and Haydon had the longed-for opportunity of pressing upon them his views about the public encouragement of art by means of grants for the decoration of national buildings. Although it does not appear that he made a single convert, he was quite contented for the time being with the ready access to ministers and n.o.blemen that the occasion afforded him, and his Journal is filled with expressions of his satisfaction. We hear of Lord Palmerston"s good-humoured elegance, Lord Lansdowne"s amiability, Lord Jeffrey"s brilliant conversation, and, most delightful of all, Lord Melbourne"s frank, unaffected cordiality. Melbourne, it appears, enjoyed his sittings, for he asked many questions about Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Keats, and Sh.e.l.ley, and highly appreciated Haydon"s anecdotes.
Needless to add, he did not allow himself to be bored by the artist"s theories.
The sittings for the Reform picture continued through 1833, and the early part of 1834. Haydon was kept in full employment, but domestic sorrows marred his satisfaction in his interesting work. In less than twelve months, he lost two sons, Alfred and Harry, the latter a child of extraordinary promise. "The death of this beautiful boy," he writes, "has given my mind a blow I shall never effectually recover. I saw him buried to-day, after pa.s.sing four days sketching his dear head in his coffin--his beautiful head. What a creature! With a brow like an ancient G.o.d!" In August Haydon was arrested again, and hurried away for a day and night of torture, during which, he confesses, he was very near putting an end to himself; but advances from the Duke of Cleveland and Mr. Ellice brought him release, and in a few hours he was at home again, "as happy and as hard at work as ever."
In April 1834, the Reform picture was exhibited, but the public was not interested, and Haydon lost a considerable sum over the exhibition. The price of the commission had long since gone to quiet the clamours of his creditors. On May 12 he writes: "It is really lamentable to see the effect of success and failure on people of fashion. Last year, all was hope, exultation, and promise with me. My door was beset, my house besieged, my room inundated. It was an absolute fight to get in to see me paint. Well, out came the work--the public felt no curiosity--it failed, and my door is deserted, no horses, no carriages. Now for executions, insults, misery, and wretchedness." Then follows the old story. "June 7.--Mary and I in agony of mind. All my Italian books, and some of my best historical designs, are gone to a p.a.w.nbroker"s. She packed up her best gowns and the children"s, and I drove away with what cost me 40, and got 4.
The state of degradation, humiliation, and pain of mind in which I sat in that dingy back-room is not to be described."
Haydon now began a picture of "Ca.s.sandra and Agamemnon," and in July he received a commission to finish it for the Duke of Sutherland, who had more than once saved him from ruin. On this occasion the Duke"s advances barely sufficed to stave off disaster. Studies, prints, clothes, and lay-figures were p.a.w.ned to pay for the expenses of the work, and on October comes the entry: "Directly after the Duke"s letter came with its enclosed cheque, an execution was put in for the taxes. I made the man sit for Ca.s.sandra"s hand, 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 att.i.tude of Ca.s.sandra--up right and steady as if on guard. Lazarus" head was painted just after an arrest; Eucles was finished from a man in possession; the beautiful face in Xenophon, after a morning spent in begging mercy of lawyers; and now Ca.s.sandra"s head was finished in an agony not to be described, and her hand completed from a broker"s man."
PART III
On October 16, 1884, the Houses of Parliament were burned down. "Good G.o.d!" writes Haydon, "I am just returned from the terrific burning of the Houses of Parliament. Mary and I went in a cab, and drove over the bridge. From the bridge it was sublime. We alighted, and went into a public-house, which was full. The feeling among the people was extraordinary--jokes and radicalism universal.... The comfort is that there is now a better prospect of painting the House of Lords. Lord Grey said there was no intention of taking the tapestry down; little did he think how soon it would go." Haydon"s hopes now rose high. For many years, as we have seen, he had been advocating, in season and out of season, the desirability of decorating national buildings with heroic paintings by native artists, and, with the need for new Houses of Parliament, it seemed as if at last his cause might triumph. Once more he attacked the good-humoured but unimpressionable Lord Melbourne, and presented another pet.i.tion to Parliament through Lord Morpeth. But in any case it would be years before the new buildings were ready for decoration, and in the meantime he would have been entirely out of employment if his long-suffering landlord had not allowed him to paint off a debt with a picture of "Achilles at the Court of Lycomedes."
In the summer of this year Mr. Ewart obtained his Select Committee to inquire into the best means of extending a knowledge of the arts and the principles of design among the people; and further, to inquire into the const.i.tution of the Royal Academy, and the effects produced thereby. Haydon, overjoyed at such a sign of progress, determined to aid the inquiry by giving a lecture on the subject at the London Mechanics" Inst.i.tute, under the auspices of Dr. Birkbeck. The lecture was a success, for Haydon"s natural earnestness and enthusiasm enabled him to interest and impress an audience, and Dr. Birkbeck a.s.sured him that he had made a "hit." This was the beginning of his career as a lecturer, by which for several years he earned a small but regular income. But meanwhile ruin was again staring him in the face. On September 26 he writes: "The agony of my necessities is really dreadful. For this year I have princ.i.p.ally supported myself by the help of my landlord, and by p.a.w.ning everything of value I have left.... Lay awake in misery. Threatened on all sides. Doubtful whether to apply to the Insolvent Court to protect me, or let ruin come. Improved the picture, and not having a shilling, sent out a pair of my spectacles, and got five shillings for the day. (29th) Sent the tea-urn off the table, and got ten shillings for the day. Shall call my creditors together. In G.o.d I trust."
The meeting of the creditors took place, and Haydon persuaded them to grant him an extension of time until June, 1836. Thus relieved from immediate anxiety he set to work on his picture with renewed zest. The most remarkable trait about him, observes his son Frederick, was his sanguine buoyancy of spirits. "Nothing ever depressed him long. He was the most persevering, indomitable man I ever met. With us at home he was always confident of doing better next year. But that next year never came.... Blest as he was with that peculiar faculty of genius for overcoming difficulties, he might have found life tame without them. I remember his saying once, he was not sure he did not relish ruin as a source of increased activity of mind." But the struggle had begun to tell upon his powers, if not upon his spirits, and he was now painting pictures for bread; repeating himself; despatching a work in a few days that in better times he would have spent months over; ready to paint small things, since great ones would not sell; fighting misery at the point of his brush, and obliged to eke out a livelihood by begging and borrowing, in default of worse expedients such as bills and cognovits. A less elastic temperament and a less vigorous const.i.tution would have broken down in one year of such a fight.
Haydon kept it up for ten."
The first half of 1836 went by in the usual struggle, and in September Haydon was thrown into prison for the fourth time. On November 17 he pa.s.sed through the Insolvency Court, and on the following Sunday he records: "Went to church, and returned thanks with all my heart and soul for the great mercies of G.o.d to me and my family during my imprisonment.... (29th) Set my palette to-day, the first time these eleven weeks and three days. I relished the oil; could have tasted the colour; rubbed my cheeks with the brushes, and kissed the palette. Ah, could I be let loose in the House of Lords!" In the absence of commissions, he now turned to lecturing as a means of support. He lectured in Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham, as well as in London, and did good service by agitating for the establishment of local schools of design, and by arousing in the minds of the wealthy middle cla.s.ses some faint appreciation of the claims of art.
A valuable result of these lectures was the extension of Haydon"s acquaintance among the shrewd merchant princes of the north, who recognised his artistic sincerity, and were inclined to hold out to him a helping hand. Through the influence of Mr. Lowndes, a Liverpool art-patron, Haydon received a commission to paint a picture of "Christ blessing Little Children," for the Blind Asylum at Liverpool, at a price of 400. So elated was he at this unexpected piece of good fortune that, with characteristic sanguineness, he seems to have thought that all his troubles were at an end for ever. Even his pious dependence on heavenly support diminished with his freedom from care, and he notes in a Sunday entry: "Went to church, but prosperity, though it makes me grateful, does not cause me such perpetual religious musings as adversity. When on a precipice, where nothing but G.o.d"s protection can save me, I delight in religious hope, but I am sorry to say my religion ever dwindles unless kept alive by risk of ruin. My piety is never so intense as when in a prison, and my grat.i.tude never so much alive as when I have just escaped from one."
The year 1838 pa.s.sed in comparative peace and comfort. The picture for the asylum was finished about the end of August, when Haydon congratulated his Maker on the fact that he (Haydon) had paid his rent and taxes, laid in his coals for the winter, and enjoyed health, happiness, and freedom from debt--fresh debt, be it understood--ever since this commission. Going down to Liverpool to hang his work, it was proposed to him by Mr. Lowndes that he should paint a picture of the Duke of Wellington on the field of Waterloo, twenty years after the battle. This was a subject after Haydon"s own heart, for the Duke had always been his ideal hero, his king among men. Overflowing with pride and delight, he prays that Providence will so bless this new commission that "the glorious city of Liverpool may possess the best historical picture, and the grandest effort of my pencil in portraiture. Inspired by history, I fear not making it the grandest thing."
The Liverpool committee wrote to the Duke, to ask if he would consent to give sittings to Haydon, and received a promise that he would sit for his head as soon as time could be found. Meanwhile, Haydon set to work upon the horse, which was copied from portraits of Copenhagen.
While he was thus engaged, D"Orsay called at the studio, and bestowed advice and criticism upon the artist, which, for once, was thankfully received. Haydon relates how D"Orsay "took my brush in his dandy glove, which made my heart ache, and lowered the hind-quarters by bringing over a bit of the sky. Such a dress! white greatcoat, blue satin cravat, hair oiled and curling, hat of the primest curve, gloves scented with eau-de-Cologne, primrose in tint, skin in tightness. In this prime of dandyism, he took up a nasty, oily, dirty hog-tool, and immortalised Copenhagen by touching the sky. I thought after he was gone, "This won"t do--a Frenchman touch Copenhagen!" So out I rubbed all he had touched, and modified his hints myself."
As there was no chance of the Duke"s being able to sit at this time, owing to the pressure of public business, Haydon made a flying visit to Brussels, in order to get local colour for the field of Waterloo. A few weeks later he was overjoyed at receiving an invitation to spend a few days at Walmer, when the Duke promised to give the desired sittings. On October 11, 1839, he went down "by steam" to Walmer, where he was heartily welcomed by his host. His Journal contains a long and minute account of his visit, from which one or two anecdotes may be quoted. Haydon"s fellow-guests were Sir Astley Cooper, Mr.
Arbuthnot, and Mr. Booth. The first evening the conversation turned, among other topics, upon the Peninsular War. "The Duke talked of the want of fuel in Spain-of what the troops suffered, and how whole houses, so many to a division, were pulled down, and paid for, to serve as fuel. He said every Englishman who has a house goes to bed at night. He found bivouacking was not suitable to the character of the English soldier. He got drunk, and lay down under any hedge, and discipline was destroyed. But when he introduced tents, every soldier belonged to his tent, and, drunk or sober, he got to it before he went to sleep. I said, "Your grace, the French always bivouac." "Yes," he replied, "because French, Spanish, and all other nations lie anywhere.
It is their habit. They have no homes.""
The next morning, after his return from hunting, the Duke gave a first sitting of an hour and a half. "I hit his grand, manly, upright expression," writes Haydon. "He looked like an eagle of the G.o.ds who had put on human shape, and got silvery with age and service.... I found that to imagine he could not go through any duty raised the lion. "Does the light hurt your grace"s eyes?" "Not at all," and he stared at the light as much as to say, "I"ll see if you shall make me give in, Signor Light." "Twas a n.o.ble head. I saw nothing of that peculiar expression of mouth the sculptors give him, bordering on simpering. His colour was beautiful and fleshy, his lips compressed and energetic." The next day, being Sunday, there was no sitting, but Haydon was charmed at sharing a pew with his hero, and deeply moved by the simplicity and humility with which he followed the service.
"Arthur Wellesley in the village church of Walmer," he writes, "was more interesting to me than at the last charge of the Guards at Waterloo, or in all the glory and paraphernalia of his entry into Paris."
It is probable that the Duke was afraid of being attacked by Haydon on the burning question of a State grant for the encouragement of historical painting, a subject about which he had received and answered many lengthy letters, for on each evening, when there was no party, he steadily read a newspaper, the _Standard_ on Sat.u.r.day, and the _Spectator_ on Sunday, while his guest watched him in silent admiration. On the Monday morning, the hero came in for another sitting, looking extremely worn, his skin drawn tight over his face, his eyes watery and aged, his head slightly nodding. "How altered from the fresh old man after Sat.u.r.day"s hunting," says Haydon. "It affected me. He looked like an aged eagle beginning to totter from its perch."
A second sitting in the afternoon concluded the business, and early next morning Haydon left for town. "It is curious," he comments, "to have known thus the two great heads of the two great parties, the Duke and Lord Grey. I prefer the Duke infinitely. He is more manly, has no vanity, is not deluded by any flattery or humbug, and is in every way a grander character, though Lord Grey is a fine, amiable, venerable, vain man."