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Document Title: Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Author: William Holman Hunt
Date of publication: 1914
Publisher: E. P. Dutton and Company
Printer: Richard Clay and Sons, Limited
Edition: Second

The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.

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PRE-RAPHAELITISM

AND THE

PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD



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W. Holman-Hunt

Sir W. B. Richmond, K.C.]

W. HOLMAN-HUNT





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Pre-Raphaelitism and

the Pre-Raphaelite

Brotherhood



By

W. HOLMAN-HUNT, O.M., D.C.L.

SECOND EDITON

REVISED FROM THE AUTHOR'S NOTES BY M. E. H.-H.



TWO VOLUMES



Vol. II

WITH 208 ILLUSTRATIONS







New York

E. P. Dutton & COMPANY

681 FIFTH AVENUE



1914

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Facsimile of the Initials on Millais “Lorenzo and Isabella,” 1848

Facsimile of the Initials on Millais'

“Lorenzo and Isabella,” 1848



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CONTENTS
Note: The word “Page” appears as a running header over the page numbers.
  • CHAPTER I

    Lord and Lady Napier and Frederick Lockwood—Visit the caverns beneath Jerusalem—

    Letter from D. G. Rossetti—Kaimil Pasha—Sir Moses Montefiore—Duke of Brabant—

    Visit to the mosque—Max and the pistol—Contention with the bishop concerning Arab

    converts—Letter from Millais—Jerusalem ladies come to see my picture—Send “Scape–

    goat” to England—Moonlight over the city. . . . . . . . . 1

  • CHAPTER II

    An honest Jewish convert—Story of the mercer—Visit Levi's house—The retribution—

    “Selection” in Art—Warder Cressen—Water–colour of Gihon—Succumb to fever—

    Visit the mosque—Send pictures to Oxford—Journey to Nazareth, Tiberias, Lake of

    Merom, and Mount Hermon—Syrian landscape—Country between Tabor and Tiberias—

    Guide and Issa converse about my faith—Tents pitched on burial–ground—Cholera

    raging—Moonlight on Tiberias— Mukary refuses to stay—The spring of Capernaum—

    Safid—Graham departs westward. . . . . . . . . . . 16

  • CHAPTER III

    Plain of Merom—Issa is not appreciating the scene, feels his superiority—Cæsarea Philippi—

    Ancient remains—Moslem boy lost—Hasbeya—Dar al Akmar—Damascus—Consul–

    General Sir Henry Wood—Lady Ellenborough—Zebedeen—Baalbec—Temple—A primi–

    tive hotel—Unconscious actor to delighted audience—Ascend Lebanon—Zahle—Reach

    Beyrout and part with Issa—Take ship to Constantinople for the Crimea—Cholera and

    mutiny on board—Arrive at Crimea. . . . . . . . . . 36

  • CHAPTER IV

    Marseilles to Paris—Mike Halliday—February 1856—Halliday and I take house together—

    Disintegration fo the Brotherhood—Rossetti in Oxford—Miss Siddal—Christina

    Rossetti's sonnet on the P.R.B.—Woolner's return from Australia—Several artists

    working on our lines—Madox Brown steadfastly doing so—Annual prizes at Liverpool—

    Arthur Hughes—Millais and Ruskin—Millais' marriage—Visit Oxford—“Pot–boilers”—

    Small “Eve of St. Agnes” sold to Mr. Miller—Gambart treats for copyright of “Light

    of the World”—Copyright in England and France—Ford Madox Brown paints direct

    from Nature—Exhbition in Charlotte Street—Illustrations to Tennyson—Rossetti's

    designs—The volume a commercial failure—Menzel's work—“Scapegoat”—Millais brings

    his picture to London—Ruskin—John Luard's first picture—Millais' “Peace” and

    “Burning Leaves”—Gambart's strictures on the “Scapegoat”—Criticisms on the picture

    in The Times, etc.—Further comments in the Press on P.R.B. picutres. . . 59

  • CHAPTER V

    Leighton—Work at Claredon Press, Oxford—Thackerary stands for Parliament—His visit

    to Mr. Combe—Letters from Millais—Mr. Combe persuades me to become a candidate

    for R.A. Associateship—Enrolled myself for winter election—Watts—Miss Emma

    Brandling—Little Holland House—Woolner—Tennyson at Roehampton—Tennyson

    demurs to my illustrations—Robert and Mrs. Browning—Death of my father—Seddon—

    Take Hook's house on Campden Hill—Lady Goderich's dinner–party—Sir Colin Campbell

    and Carlyle—Woodward and the Oxford Museum—Decoration of the Union, Oxford—

    First meeting with Burne–Jones—Fitting up my house at Kensington—Bachelor parties

    at Henry Vaux's—The Academy rejects me. . . . . . . . 86

    • page: viii
  • CHAPTER VI

    The Hogarth Club—Leighton and a Royal Commission—Mrs. Combe and Mrs. Collins—

    Completion of my “Temple” pictures continually delayed—Arthur Lewis's social

    gatherings—Fred Walker—Mr. and Mrs. George Grove and Mr. and Mrs. Phillips—

    Millais exhibits “Sir Isumbras”—Tom Taylor's imitation of ancient ballad—Ruskin's

    denunciation of the picture—Charles Reade buys it—Frederick Sandy's caricature—

    Mr. and Mrs. Combe visit Brown's studio—Letter from Brown about Carlyle—Oxford

    Museum—O'Shea—Manchester loan exhibition—Conversation with Sir Thomas Fairbairn

    about Woolner—Woolner and his work—Rossetti avoids Millais and myself—Ruskin's

    appreciation of Rossetti's power—Mr. and Mrs. Thoby Princep—Tennyson and

    Thackeray—Remonstrances on my “idleness” from unknown correspondents . . 111

  • CHAPTER VII

    Visit to Tennyson—His page boy—Distress at critics—National support of Art—Millais’

    early genius—George Leslie delivers his father's dying message—G. F. Watts—

    Thornbury's criticism in the Anthenæum on P.R.B.–ism—Mr. and Mrs. Combe at

    Oxford—St. Barnabas Church—University Press—Conference on ways and means—Our

    relations with Dickens—Wilkie Collins—His room—Visit to Charles Dickens in Tavistock

    Square—The Duchess of Argyll—Sir C. Eastlake—Gambart's treatment of my terms for

    the “Temple” picture—It goes to Windsor—Chat with Thackeray at Cosmopolitan

    Club—Introduce Woolner at Oxford. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

  • CHAPTER VIII

    Breakfast with Gladstone—The Rev. Joseph Wolf—I discuss the merit of Dresden china—

    Walking tour in 1860 with Tennyson, Palgrave, Woolner, and Val Prinsep—Gad's Hill—

    Charles Collins marries Kate Dickens, 1861—His views on the merits of a good tailor—

    Morris's business formed—Poynter's picture “Faithful unto Death”—Injury from fire

    to my “Temple” picture—Portrait of Judge Lushington—His stories—1862 Exhibitition—

    Prince Consort's death—Woolner. . . . . . . . . . . 153

  • CHAPTER IX

    Jacob Omnium controversy in the Times—Death of Augustus Egg—Letter from Charles

    Dickens—Visit to Sir Thomas Fairbairn—Wingrove Cook—Conversation about

    Thackeray—Trelawny—George Meredith—Proposal for George Meredith to live with

    D.G. Rosetti—Marriage of the Prince of Wales—Visit to the Prince and Princess of

    Wales to my exhibition—Garibaldi's visit to England—Baron Lys—Breakfast at the

    Duchess of Argyll's—John Tupper as art master—Royal Academy efforts to pacify

    malcontents—G. F. Watts. . . . . . . . . . . . 176

  • CHAPTER X

    W. Beamont and St. Michael's, Cambridge—Delay in returning to the East—My marriage—

    “The Festival of St. Swithin”—Fred Walker—My bank stop payment—Start for the

    East—Cholera prevailing at Marseilles—Quarantine—Go to Florence—“Isabella and

    the Pot of Basil”—Death of my wife—Return to England—The home of Charles

    Dickens—My election to the Athenæum Club—Return to Florence to complete my wife's

    tomb—Meet Ruskin in Venice—Conversation with Ruskin. . . . . . 196

    • page: ix
  • CHAPTER XI

    I visit Rome—Take ship at Naples for Syria—Commence “Shadow of Death”—Dar Berruk

    Dar—Bethlehem—The Crown Prince of Prussia—Nazareth—Cana—Captain Luard—

    Ride to Jerusalem with news of Franco–German War—Fever—Visit Pasha in Armenian

    church—Libeation of Ezaak—Finish my picture—Visitors in vain—Paris after the

    German War—Picture arrives in London—Millais in vain urges me to put down my

    name again for the Academy—Commission from Queen Victoria—Elizabeth Thompson—

    Briton Rivière. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

  • CHAPTER XII

    Tissot—Charles Collin's death—My second marriage—We travel to Jerusalem—Meeting with

    Lieutenant Kitchener—Trouble from non-arrival of cases—“The Ship”—The “Inno–

    cents”—To Ascalon—Go south to paint background—New studio—Visit of the

    Mahomedan ladies—Expedition to Jordan and Dead Sea—Send family to take refuge in

    Greek convent at Jaffa—I remain in Jerusalem—After two and a half years return with

    partly finished painting—The Grosvenor Gallery—R. Browning and Velasquez—Sir R.

    Owen's portrait—“Amaryllis”—“Miss Flamborough”—Robert Browning—His son—

    Browning and D.G. Rossetti—Visit to my old studio in Chelsea—Typhoid fever—

    Sir William Gull—Millais advises me to have the picure relined—I buy a house at

    Fulham—Ruskin's visit there—His Oxford lecture—Abandon Jerusalem “Innocents”—

    Recommence on new canvas—Illness—Finish the picture—Exhibition of my works at

    “Fine Arts” Society. . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

  • CHAPTER XIII

    Lawless—F. Walker—Philip Calderon—Walter Crane—“The Triumph of the Innocents”—

    Acquired by Liverpool—“Christ among the Doctors”—D.G. Rossetti's death—Articles

    in Contemporary—Address at Rossetti's fountain—Madox Brown—Whistler—H.

    Herkomer—F. Shields—Rev. E. Young—Rossetti's work—E. Burne–Jones—Gilbert

    and Sullivan's Patience and those satirised—E. R. Hughes—Cecil Lawson—John Brett—

    “The Bride of Bethlehem”—“Sorrow”—Millais made a baronet—He talks of the early

    P.R.B. days—Millais and I walk to see Charles Keane—The Bishop's moat—Artist's

    materials. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

  • CHAPTER XIV

    Commence “The Lady of Shalott”—“May Morning”—Last meeting with Mrs. Combe—

    Her death—Journey through Italy, Greece, Egypt to the East—Illustrations to Sir Edwin

    Arnold's Light of the World—The Miracle of “Holy Fire”—W. B. Scott's death—

    Banquet at Guildhall—Madox Brown's position—Leigton's death—Millais’ death—

    William Morris' death—Burne–Jones' style—My portrait by W. B. Richmond presented to

    me—Last talk with Watts—The University of Oxford bestows the degree of D.C.L. upon

    me—King Edward VII confers upon me the Order of Merit—Reflections on our course

    —Nationality in art—Foreign art—Millais’ pictures—The sale room no test of merit—

    Educational activity injurious rather than beneficial to the nation's art. . . . 308

  • CHAPTER XV

    Retrospect

    W. Morris and Co.—William de Morgan—Controversy about leadership of the P.R.B.—

    W. Rossetti's sonnets in The Germ —Monsieur Sizeranne's letter—Mr. Cook's hand–

    book—Extracts from William Rossetti—The genesis of D.G. Rossetti's picture “Found”

    —“The Awakened Conscience”—F.M. Brown's diary—The meaning of the word

    Pre-Raphaelite—F. G. Stephens, W. Sharp, W. Bell Scott. . . . 335

    • page: x
  • CHAPTER XVI

    Retrospect ( continued)

    The delusions of our interpreters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353

  • CHAPTER XVII

    Retrospect ( concluded)

    Art and its national quality—Journalism—Lord Leighton's warning—Art the handmaid of

    morality—Art is love—Foreign academies—Impressionism—American students in Paris—

    Effect of civil wars on English art—The rise of portrait painting in England—Constable's

    prophecy—“Bacchus and Ariadne”—Copyright laws—What a people is led to admire,

    that it will become—Leonardo da Vinci speaks—Slavish idolatry not reverence—The

    great days of Italian art—Want of undersanding leads to unrestrained utterances—

    The responsibility of the Press—The purpose of the art. . . . . . . . 358

  • Last Notes by the Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . 380

  • Appendix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385

  • Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
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ERRATA

Vol. II.
  • p. 89, line 18, “Lister” should read “Leslie.”
  • p. 155, lines 5, 10; p. 399. lines 4, 7, 22, 28; p. 400, lines 7, 19, “Sèvre”

    should read “Sèvres.”
  • p. 342, lines 42, 46, 50, “G. F. Stephens” should read “F. G. Stephens.”
  • p. 343, line 2, “M. Madox Brown” should read “F. Madox Brown.”

    line 31, “F. J. Stephens” should read “F. G. Stephens.”
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PRE-RAPHAELITISM

CHAPTER I

1855

But whosoever chooseth the life to come and directeth his endeavour towards the same, being also a true believer, the endeavour of these shall be acceptable unto God. — Al Koran.

The winter came with its succession of storms of some days’ duration, leaving two or three feet of snow on the ground.
My first hope had been to complete my picture of “The Scapegoat” in time to send it to London for the Royal Academy, but owing to the delay in finding the third suitable goat, this had become impossible and the work was still incomplete at Easter when many English visitors arrived.
While the city was more cheerful than usual, Lord Napier and Ettrick, with Lady Napier and her young sons, arrived, and Frederic Lockwood, whom I had known at Cairo, came over to meet his sister.
I delayed showing them the “Azazel” until it should be nearer completion, and when I had that pleasure, their discriminating and cultivated judgment was of the greater service to me, since I had been for so long removed from the opportunity of hearing artistic opinion. 1
Transcribed Footnote (page [1]):

1While preparing a second edition I have come upon a letter of interest at this time from D. G. Rossetti, even more important than it seemed to be when it was received by me. I regret that the closing lines are missing; I give it not only for its contemporary news, but also for its bearing upon Gabriel's picture of “Found” and my picture of “The Awakened Conscience” —W. H. H.

30 th January, 1855.

Dear Hunt,—

I am quite ashamed in setting-to at this letter after so long a promise-breaking silence; but as I should be still more ashamed at seeing you again, and remembering your friendly letters, as the only ones which had passed between us, I bespeak a little very comparative content with myself by writing even thus late. I am beginning this at Albany Street where Christina, seeing the paper lying on the table and hearing of its destined use, has just charged me with a charge to you to bring home an alligator (an allegory on canvas not to be accounted a fair substitute), in which she proposes that a few of your select friends should be allowed to take shares, after which its sudden presentation to the Zoological Society should make the fortunate Joint Stock Company members for life of that dismayed Institution. This, she thinks, is a project of moderate promise and a great additional incentive to defer writing no longer.

One great reason for my not writing long before this has been the wish to have something worth saying to you of my own doings and plans, and this no doubt you have guessed. It is possible that Sisyphus, for the first few rolls of his stone, may have dwelt on the causes

Sig. VOL. II. B
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An ancient quarry which penetrated under the city had been recently discovered. The Mahomedans were very jealous about it, and forbade
Transcribed Footnote (page 2):

of his failure at some length and vowed to do the trick yet; but one inclines to believe that the occupation soon became and continues chiefly a silent one.

Anxieties and infelicities, this sort among the rest—did not seem the best subjects to write about; but they have not prevented my enjoying the tardy justice done to you last year in your works—that is, in all quarters of any consequence, and remembering how we were together while you strove bitterly towards it, deserving it all the time in days that never come again.

I have no doubt that which you are doing now when seen, will bring to more than completeness the result which was more than begun last time, and feel very desirous to see your new works and have a first chance of learning what the East is really like. I can tell you, on my own side, of only one picture fairly begun—indeed, I may say, all things considered, rather advanced; but it is only a small one. The subject had been sometime designed before you left England and will be thought, by any one who sees it when (and if) finished, to follow in the wake of your “Awakened Conscience,” but not by yourself, as you know I had long had in view subjects taking the same direction as my present one. The picture represents a London street at dawn, with the lamps still lighted along a bridge which forms the distant background. A drover has left his cart standing in the middle of the road (in which, i. e. the cart, stands baa-ing a calf tied on its way to market), and has run a little way after a girl who has passed him, wandering in the streets. He has just come up with her and she, recognising him, has sunk under her shame upon her knees, against the wall of a raised churchyard in the foreground, while he stands holding her hands as he seized them, half in bewilderment and half guarding her from doing herself a hurt. These are the chief things in the picture which is to be called “Found,” and for which my sister Maria has found me a most lovely motto from Jeremiah: “I remember Thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals.” Is not this happily applicable? “Espousal,” I feel confident from knowledge of the two words in two or three languages would most probably be rightlier rendered “betrothal,” which is the word I want and shall substitute as soon as I have consulted some one knowing Hebrew. The calf, a white one, will be a beautiful and suggestive part of the thing, though I am far from having painted him as well as I hoped to do—perhaps through my having performed the feat, necessarily an open-air one, in the time just preceding Christmas, and also through the great difficulty of the net drawn over him; the motion constantly throwing one out—me especially, quite new as I was to any animal painting. I wish that if anything suggests itself to you which you think would advantage this subject, or any objection, you would let me know of it, though otherwise than for such a purpose I cannot expect to hear from you before doing this duty at least once again. I have not spoken of the subject at all to any of our circle except Brown, at whose house at Finchley I stayed while painting on it there, and Hughes, who happened to be painting at my rooms when I began it. Since Christmas I have been prevented from working on this picture by illness first, and since by having other things necessary to be done, but I hope soon to be on it again, though even were it ready in time I should have small thoughts, as yet, of sending it to any exhibition unless compelled. It was originally a commission from that fellow X., a subject which he chose himself from two or three I proposed to him; but he either is or professes himself too nearly ruined now to buy more pictures, so I suppose that chance is up. But it is no use writing about bothers of that kind.

The other day I had a visit from Moxon (at Millais’ kind suggestion I believe), asking me to do some of the woodcuts for the new Tennyson, on which I hear you are at work already. I can find few direct subjects left in the marked copy he has left me, and shall probably do “Vision of Sin,” “Palace of Art,” and things of that sort, if I get into the way of liking the task well enough to do them well; but I think illustrated editions of poets, however good (and this will be far from uniformly so), quite hateful things, and do not feel easy as an aider or abettor. I have just done one for Allingham's forthcoming volume, and know that were I a possessor of the book I should tear out the illustrations the first thing.

By the bye I have long had an idea for illustrating the last verse of “Lady of Shalott,” which I see marked to you. Is that a part you mean to do, and if not and you have only one design in prospect to the poem, could I do another? One of my occupations at present is a class on Monday evenings at the “College for Working Men,” got up by Maurice and others in Red Lion Square. Ruskin kindly came forward to teach drawing, but as his class only comprises foliage, etc., I have added a class for drawing the figure and have begun by setting the pupils—mostly real working-men carpenters, etc.—to draw heads from Nature, one of them sitting to the rest. Even already there are one or two of them doing really well. I draw there myself, and find that by far the most valuable part of my teaching—not only to me, but for them. I have (of course) one or two subjects which I hope to get immediately in hand as pictures. I have always feared to attempt a figure of Our Saviour, but if opportunity serves, hope to paint this year one which I have long wished, on the motto “Whose fan is in His hand.”

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entrance, but Cayley, the eccentric traveller, and some young Englishmen were anxious to see it, and Sim and I undertook to conduct them. In the afternoon we left the city by separate gates, and waited at a distance until the last belated wayfarers had re-entered the walls, and the guards had shut the heavy doors upon themselves. The country around was by that time quite abandoned, and we made the necessary circuit to the Damascus gate, cautiously creeping close up to the foundations, beyond sight of the city ramparts, in order to reach the opening to the cave. It was not difficult to remove a stone or two put there to seal up the entrance, and one by one we crept in. After about eight feet of level rock there was a drop of the same extent; inside we lit our candles and waited for the whole party to descend. We proceeded, touching the quarried rock with our hands; following along we came to chambers where the quality of the stone had tempted the ancient masons to extend their operations. In parts water dripped from the roof into pools, where the splashed surface of the rock was glazed and rounded; the blocks lying about had all been worked into measure and form, as the Bible describes the stones of the Temple to have been. Some of these had been discarded and left on the ground, presumably because of a discovered flaw. While most of us were examining a large door nearly finished, which was fresh as if of recent work, we were dismayed by the loud explosion of some firearm in our rear, the noise of which reverberated alarmingly through all the hollows of the cavern. It turned out that a pistol had been fired with extreme thoughtlessness by one of our company, “merely for fun.” How far it could be heard by the inmates of houses above our heads we never knew, but although we could
Transcribed Footnote (page 3):

This letter is unbearably egotistical hitherto. Let me try if I have any news of friends, but I see few, and those seldom. Woolner seems, after all, to be disappointed of that commission, as perhaps you have heard from him. It is a pleasure to have him again here, but I suppose it cannot be for long. He talks of painting with me, so as to be able to portraitise on his return to Australia, both in paint and clay, and so be able to accept a larger number of commissions. This would, I should think, be a wise thing, and I have no doubt he would at once be perfectly successful in painting when he only began rightly. Brown has just added a little boy to his family; but I fear what would and ought to be a cause of congratulation, is only one of anxiety just now.

He is painting again on that picture of “Emigrants,” which is now far advanced, but fortune does not seem to turn yet. You heard perhaps of one result of his discouraged state some time back—his sending two pictures—“King Lear,” and a large landscape just then finished after many months’ work, to a wretched Jew shop-sale, where they fetched nearly the price of their frames. Of course, this injured him in more than one way. You are almost sure to have heard of X's attempt months ago to put up your “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” and a few more of his pictures to sale at Christie's when yours reached in real biddings £300, was run up ostensibly much beyond that by his touters in the room, but finally remained with him, not reaching though apparently approaching if I remember, his reserved price of £500, which was the one he put on it by my advice. I do not know whether he has since sold the picture, but at that time it returned with him to Ireland. Among deaths, you have perhaps heard that of another of our early “patrons,” Cottingham, who was one of the passengers lost in the Arctic last September; and of the end of poor North, at New York, by a quarter of an ounce of prussic-acid, of which there was a long account in the Daily News—you may see it one day, as Woolner has it. It is a subject one cannot talk of, and too hopelessly sad even to dwell much on the mind, however sincerely one regrets and pities him.

Brown talks of obtaining a country mastership in the School of Design, and I believe has lately taken some steps towards it.

D. G. Rosetti

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believe that they would be more afraid than ourselves, we became anxious lest our place of exit should be obstructed. When the quarry had been first entered, on its discovery by a shepherd, the skeleton of some unfortunate explorer had been found, who had evidently sought a means of escape in vain.
The Pashas of Jerusalem appointed from Stamboul were changed very frequently in these days; one came preceded by a reputation for superiority to fanatical prejudices, he arrived not only without a bevy of many wives, but without a single one. He was known as “Kiamil Pasha”; he was, I believe, the same who at the installation of the Young Turkish party became their new Grand Vizier. Stories were told of  

Kiamil Pasha was Re-Appointed Grand Vazier in 1912

KIAMIL PASHA WAS RE-APPOINTED GRAND VIZIER IN 1912



him as of a Turk of rare enlightenment. He conceived a cordial friendship with Dr. Rosen, the Prussian Consul, and visited him as an intimate so habitually that ceremony was dispensed with, and Madam Rosen (daughter of Moschelles, the musical composer) went about her household duties superintending the servants without consideration that her methods were being studied. The Pasha soon avowed to the Consul that the European system of managing a house was distinctly to be preferred to that of the Oriental, in that dishonesty in the servants was effectually checked; this he declared was truly excellent, but still he added there is one point I cannot understand: your wife guards you from dishonest servants, but what check have you to prevent her from defrauding you herself?
Sir Moses Montefiore came early in the spring on a charitable mission.
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While he was encamped outside the Jaffa Gate I wrote to him concerning the misinterpretation of my innocent object as a painter, by the Jews and their rabbis, and I begged that he would explain my purpose, and induce the rabbis to remove the interdict which prevented the more orderly minded Jews from coming to me. Mr. Sebag Montefiore saw me on the subject, and promised attention to the question. Mr. Frederic D. Mocatta arriving rather later, I urged the point with him also; his knowledge of art and artists enabled him to understand my difficulties the better, so now I had improved prospect for “The Temple” picture, when I could be free again to work on it.
It had been a vexation to me during its progress to have no opportunity of seeing, from the platform of Moriah, the distant slope of the northern Olivet which came into the background of the picture. Since the crusading successors of Godfrey de Bouillon were chased from Jerusalem no Christian, but in disguise or by stratagem, at a risk of very probable death, had entered its precincts.
I had been able only to satisfy my interest in the sanctuary by such view as could be had from the roofs of houses on a height.
Early in April, however, the Duke of Brabant, the heir-apparent of Belgium, arrived in Jerusalem, and it was whispered that the very enlightened and francophile Pasha of the day was making great efforts to gratify the Duke's ambitions to enter the enclosure. The Prince had been provided with a firman to enter the Mosque area, yet it was probable, as with many previous travellers coming from Constantinople, that His Highness would be told it would be fatal to the lives of all who attempted to act on the Sultan's favour; but gossip had not much to indulge in, and soon it was said that the Duke would be privileged to enter the Hareem. I called on the Consul, and urged that if it were so, the English residents might also pass the sacred gates. He told me that this was generally felt, and that he was watching to secure the opportunity. On the Saturday of the Greek Easter, he sent me word to hold myself in readiness that afternoon. Earlier in the day I had witnessed the ceremony of the Miracle of the Sacred Fire in the Church of the Sepulchre.
This year no Russian pilgrims were present, yet the building was crowded with strangers, male and female, from Greece, Armenia, Egypt, and Abyssinia; in fact, in this respect the occasion was like the ancient Feast of Pentecost, bringing strangers from all parts, and such resemblance was undoubtedly in mind when the original form of this ceremony was instituted, for it is on record that an artificial dove descended through the opening of the dome, carrying the fire with it into the sepulchral shrine. Curzon in his Monasteries of the Levant describes his experiences in 1834, when three hundred people were killed in the disorderly crush. Kinglake, who was there the next year, treats of it in his most graphic manner, and Dean Stanley was a witness of the scene in 1854, a year before my own visit.
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At 4 P.M. I presented myself at the appointed place of entrance to the Mosque, and found the secretary nearly alone. The company increased by ones and twos, and the Pasha had just counted twenty-one when our Consul arrived with a train of some thirty English subjects, clergy with their wives, and other ladies connected with mission work. Very obvious was the bewilderment of the Pasha, but his politeness was equal to the need. When he left the apartment time after time, and returned with no show of having advanced matters, I was inclined to suspect that he had as poor an estimate as I had of the interest which the majority of the crowd were likely to take in the features of the Mosque, that he would therefore consider that the risk should not be incurred, and that it might be wise to delay action until advancing darkness should render our entrance into the sacred place impossible.
During this time it transpired that the Pasha was intent upon the success of a summons issued to all the dervishes of the Mosque to assemble in a chamber of the Hareem to discuss a point of great moment, which had to be considered by the holiest authorities. Concluding it was the question of admitting the Belgian prince which had to be debated, they thronged into the building to utter their loudest protests. Delays arose in making certain that all the dervishes were assembled, and then the doors were locked, and a company of soldiers posted outside for an hour to turn the council-chamber into a prison.
After this precaution, the Duke of Brabant and his suite advanced, and we were bidden to follow; passing a few courts belonging to the house, we emerged from a dark passage into the great area which includes the site of the ancient Temple.
It was a moment in life to make one's heart stir as the door was turned on its hinges, and the way into this long-dreamed-of, much-longed-for, yet ever-forbidden sanctum was at last open to us.
On my first arrival in Jerusalem, wandering alone, I had entered the gates by mistake, but before I had realised my position I was set upon by one, then by two blacks, and threatened by an approaching crowd of wild and dark Indians and Africans, from whom I escaped by a hasty retreat. Now the place was empty, and I gazed with boundless delight on the beautiful combination of marble architecture, mellowed by the sun of ages, of mossy-like cypresses, and Persian slabs of jewel hues; but at once I was told that no one must linger. At the foot of the steps we were ordered to take off our boots; wearing Turkish shoes, I had no difficulty, but many were unprepared; and it was one of the grim mockeries of fate that at such a moment ladies and gentlemen should intensify the hideousness of modern costume by hobbling about in lacerated stockings, carrying Wellington boots and fashionable shoes in their hands. Unfortunately the Royal Duke gave no sign of caring for the wonders about him; he sometimes glanced to right or left as the guide referred to different objects, but never once did he pause from his swift march around the Mosque As Sakreh or through Al Aksa to
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dwell on any object, nor did he turn aside to examine anything out of the direct line of the prescribed route; an Arab in Westminster Abbey would not have been more supremely superior. When Sim and I ran off to look at the interior of the Beautiful Gate, we were quickly summoned back by a messenger, with a caution that it would be imprudent to go alone, in the face of possible danger from concealed dervishes. We pleaded that we were armed, and would take the chance, but the Pasha still objected, and we had to abandon our hope. I left with my curiosity only increased. On emerging from the gate to Via Dolorosa we saw a body of Moslems in the street, who glared with hatred such as only religious rancour can inspire, but they allowed us to disperse in peace.
Montefiore, before the close of his charitable work, sought and obtained admittance to the Mosque. His entrance was not so shocking to the sons of Ishmael as to his own brethren. The Rabbis pronounced against the part which he had taken in availing himself of such opportunity, as the exact spot of the Holy of Holies not being known, he might have offended in treading on the ground sacred for the High Priest alone.
If all the Christian visitors to the Mosque that day felt the respect for Mahomedans which the sight of their reverent conservation of the sacred spot awakened in me, and if the sons of Hagar assembled at its doors had thus been able to read our feelings, their attitude towards us could scarcely have been other than that of brotherly pride in such hospitality as all followers of the Prophet are enjoined to exercise. From the day that Abraham met Melchisedek, this site has been the theatre of events which have struck deepest roots in the life of humanity. It has been the sanctuary of Jew, Christian, and Moslem. Had the Jews still possessed it, there would have been signs of bloody sacrifice. Had any sect of Christians possessed it, the place would have been desecrated either by tinselled dolls and tawdry pictures, as is the case in the Church of the Sepulchre, or else by the ugliness, emptiness, and class vulgarity of the Anglican and Prussian worship, as found in the city of Jerusalem. In the case of the Moslem there was not an unsightly nor a shocking object in the whole area, it was guarded, fearingly and lovingly, and it seemed a temple so purified from the pollution of perversity that involuntarily the text, “Here will I take my rest for ever,” rang in my ears. The past, so many pasts, stood about, even the very immediate present was a mystery and a wonder; it was an epoch of the world's history, a summons to reflection, the moving of the index finger. The Osmanli sands were running fast, and the hour-glass might soon be turned; but I felt that Hagar's sons had been appointed to the great purpose, keeping the spot sacred until the sons of Sarah should be enough purified by long-suffering, to take it again into their charge.
I had not attained my object, not having been able to make even the slightest scribble of the landscape for my picture. I had, however, gained the distinct knowledge that the only point from which it could be obtained was the roof of the “Mosque of the Rock.” That I should
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ever be able to mount upon this, unless it might be in the guise of a workman, seemed quite out of hope, because only Moslems were employed in the reparation of the roof.
Photographs and exhaustive discussions have now made familiar the variations in the character of the outside and the inside of the Mosque As Sakreh. Remarking upon the evidence pointing to its having once been a Christian church, which its interior suggested to me, my companion said, “I see you are a convert to Fergusson's theory.” I had not then heard of the architectural critic's conclusions, drawn from examination of drawings made under extraordinary circumstances by Catherwood and Bonomi.
In May all the pleasant English company went away together, for the Consul had the opportunity of visiting Gerash, which was not always open to travellers, and the chance was eagerly seized by those who made that place a fresh stage on their journey. The temptation was great for me to join them, but the time for my work was too precious to spare, and a discovery I had made did much to decide the question for me. The gun which I had carried on my saddle, and which had often served me in good stead, had a crack in the stock; it was not yet in danger of causing disruption, but when it was fired the strain dipped the barrel enough to make it hit low. A much more serious and troubling discovery was, that the revolver, on the efficacy of which my life had more than once depended, had reverted to its old fault of getting fixed in the lock; I therefore called my landlord and said: “I want you to go to ‘Frederic’ and deliver my pistol; explain to him yourself that it is loaded and cannot be fired off because of the defect for which I first sent it to him; he returned it repaired, but it is still untrustworthy, he must now put it into proper working condition at any cost, for a pistol that cannot be trusted is worse than useless. Say that I know he is clever, and quite capable of curing the fault.”
My landlord was a philosopher who at all times strove to enforce consideration for the weaknesses of others. “Vell, vell, yas! ve most ’ave patience. Frederic, poor fellaw! he unhappy. I go to Frederic, I say, ‘Vy for you not marry, plenty nice gals ‘ere now, you are von ov us, you av goot busness, vy not take vife?’ Vot—” and here he shrugged his shoulders commiseratingly—“ ’e say, ‘I stay ’ere only to die like my vrent die, an' den wot my vife do?’ He tocht in ’ed, poor fellaw!” “I know, I know, Max, but mind you give him my message, and take care that no one touches the pistol but yourself, till you deliver it into his hands with the caution that it is loaded,” said I.
The next morning Max, who was as conscientious as he was proud of his proficiency in English, assured me he had acquitted himself of his commission scrupulously. He said Frederic had listened attentively, and pleaded that the pistol needed a new spring. He was too busy for a day or two to attend to it, however, and would not take it in hand until he could finish it properly.
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“Ah,” said Max, “he quite mad, poor fellaw! ’e ’ang id op, bak shob”; by which I understood that he had put it safely by for the present.
On a previous Sunday there had been an overflow of water at Beir Yoab, and the people of Jerusalem had gone out to see it, some with keen enthusiasm because it seemed like the return of the promised early rain, which they said had been withheld since the destruction of the Temple. I walked with Dr. Sim in the midst of the throng, and we met Frederic all alone at St. Stephen's Gate; he smiled pleasantly but sadly to our salutation. We knew no German and he knew no English, so we exchanged a few words in Arabic and separated.
The evening after my message to Frederic, I called on Sim to choose the wild goat's skull for my “Scapegoat” picture; he had a large collection of such things. He told me that he had just come back from seeing poor Frederic, who had been shot by his apprentice in his own shop! He had extracted the bullet, and hoped from its small size that it had not pierced the body, but travelled round as bullets partly spent occasionally do. It was desirable to leave the patient undisturbed, he said. Frederic, it seemed, had been working at an anvil in the front of the shop, the apprentice came in, while the master, who was steadily filing, became apprehensive that the fool was at some mischief, and turning quickly, said, “You are not touching that loaded pistol?” The boy in his fright nervously pulled the trigger, and the bullet struck the master in the side. He fell on the floor, the noise attracted a crowd, who came in and surrounded him. He groaned, “Ah, I am paid now. I knew it would come to this.” Waving the people aside, he said, “I am going away to die,” and jumped up to run through the street up a steep lane into the door of the German Hospice, where he threw himself on to a bed, and there the doctor had seen him.
From Sim's favourable opinion I encouraged the idea that the man was not wounded to death; but on the morrow—fourteen months after the death of his friend—the lot had fallen upon him also.
It was my accursed revolver that had brought about this dire tragedy. I tell such stories not in support of any theory, but because they claim record as strange personal experience. There are people in Jerusalem now who remember Frederic with sorrow, and who wonder what became of the loved maiden in Germany who was to have been his wife.
Although the Exhibition date was past, I was working hard to finish “The Scapegoat” and send it away to Mr. Combe. I trusted that possibly among the patrons of art who had expressed a wish to have some picture of mine one might be found to purchase it, and so make me more at ease and free to prolong my stay; in any case, it would relieve the dejection I often felt at having brought none of my works to completion. My time was, however, seriously taxed in consequence of a contention I was drawn into with the bishop about the character of one of the Arab converts. I will say no more on this
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subject, but should any wish to know of the business, they may learn all particulars from a pamphlet which I published after my return to England. Yet, lest the story should be taken as a proof that I look with a feeling of disrespect upon English Missions, let me say that the circumstances were exceptional.
Early in the summer of this year two regiments of soldiers were sent up to quell disturbances caused by the fellahin. It was not alone the outbreak against the government near Hebron, of which, at the request of the Consul, I had made a report, but in the western hills in the neighbourhood of Betir the sheiks were fighting for the mere pleasure of fighting and delight in bloodshed, and one indeed deservedly acquired for his cruelty the name of “butcher.” The newly arrived soldiers were encamped upon the slopes of the Pool of Gihon, and thus it seemed as though indirect pressure alone was to be used against the fellahin; travellers were, under this military influence, enabled to use the roads in greater safety; perhaps it was this that brought the Prussian Quarantine doctor from Hebron to Jerusalem. Seeing him riding with the Prussian Consul as I was going out of the Jaffa Gate to enjoy the evening air after a fatiguing day's painting, it seemed to me that he had not seen me, so I deferred accosting him. It was a mistake which I often regretted later, for on the morrow he had returned home, and in a few weeks he committed suicide.
The soldiers after a month's encampment moved for a few weeks to the Pools of Solomon; and, when the fellahin were quite off their guard one night, they surprised the insurgent villages about Hebron, slaughtering and burning to the content of the Ottoman heart.
I had no contribution at the Academy Exhibition, and I had told my English correspondents that I might suddenly give up further attempts in Syria and return, but I had a great desire to know of the treatment of our School this year, thinking that the election of Millais might be a mark of more favourable feeling. A letter from him enlightened me painfully on this point; a few extracts will explain the disillusion; it also gives some reference to his approaching marriage—
Langham Chambers, Langham Place,

London, May 22, 1855.

My dear old friend,

All the hurry and excitement of the R.A. is over, and yet I find myself delaying until it is absolutely necessary that I should tell you first that next month, please God, I shall be a married man. What think you of this? You must have partly expected this, and will not be knocked down by this sudden announcement. I have let the time slip by me so fast that I am at a loss what to tell you first....I have gone so far as to take a place near her family at Perth for the autumn, and I leave this in a fortnight's time, when to return I don’t know....Lear has been here just this moment telling me of your letter he has received. Collins also received one. When you come back, you must come and see me. I am afraid I shall not be in London to receive you when you arrive.... Apropos of work, my picture (“The Fireman”) this year has been blackguarded more than ever;

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altogether the cabal is stronger than ever against every good thing—such injustice and felonious abomination has never been known before. Fancy A——, B——, and old Satyr C—— as hangers. Collins above the line is the Octagon, Martineau at the top of the Architectural...my picture against the door of the middle room. The very mentioning of these disgraceful facts incenses me so that I begin to tremble. I almost dropped down in a fit from rage in a row I had with the three hangers, in which I forgot all restraint and shook my fist in their faces, calling them every conceivable name of abuse. It is too long a story to relate now, but they wanted to lift my picture up, after I had got permission to have it lowered three inches, and tilted forward so that it might be seen, which was hardly the case as it was first hung. Oh! they are felons—no better than many a tethered convict—so let them pass. The Exhibition you will see, so there is no need of any mention of it. William I never see scarcely, as he lives down at Kingston. I am going to be married so quietly that none of my family come to the wedding. Good gracious, fancy me married, my old boy!...It is quite impossible to foresee the end of anything we undertake. Every day I see greater reason to be tolerant in judging others. We cannot reckon upon ourselves for the safe guidance of a single project. But I must not fill this letter with truisms....If I omit to tell you anything of interest you may afterwards find out, it will be from forgetfulness....Wilkie Collins is here and sends greeting. To-morrow is the Derby Day. Last Epsom I went too, we went together with Mike—you remember....My dear old friend, I feel the want of you more than ever, and art wants you home; it is impossible to fight single-handed, and the R.A. is too great a consideration to lose sight of, with all its position, and the public wealth and ability to help good art. When Lady Chantrey dies, the Academy will have funds at its disposal for the purchase yearly of the best living works, and all this should be in our hands. In my contest with the hangers I said I would give up my associateship if they dared to move my picture, which so frightened them, I suppose, that they didn’t touch it afterwards. I want you back again to talk over this matter of Exhibition. I am almost indifferent about these things now, and yet I think it a duty, for other poor fellows like Brown (whose three pictures were rejected), Anthony, Seddon were turned out also.

Ever affectionately yours,

John Everett Millais.
Miss Mary Rogers had come to Jerusalem with her brother, the future Consul of Damascus, and she gave me the London art news. One most important item was the appearance of a new artist, with a large picture representing the procession of Cimabue's picture through the streets of Florence. The artists’ name was Leighton, and the work was strikingly admirable, independent of the fact that it was his first exhibited original composition; his father had allowed him to paint it on condition that if not successful he should finally relinquish art. This picture was in great favour with artists, and the Queen secured the young painter's future success by buying it for £500.
While I was completing “The Scapegoat,” for the first time in the history of Turkish rule cannons were fired for a Christian monarch, on the 24th of May, Queen Victoria's birthday. The European ladies, hearing that my picture would soon be sent to England, now came in little groups to see it, one of these expressed a strong wish that some
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sound and practical landscape painter could come and help me with wise counsel as to the finishing of it. Afterwards I heard that her commiseration had been stimulated by the perusal of an article in a London paper brought to her by a neighbour, wherein I was held up as a proverb of artistic extravagance. On 15th June the work was finished, and put into its case. I rose early, and Sim, Graham, and I sallied out of the Jaffa Gate at 4.30 A.M. Sim, was leaving and going as army surgeon to the Crimea. He had made himself deeply loved and valued, and many of the grateful people accompanied us a mile or two on the road to take leave of him. I went to Jaffa with paint-box packed up, so that if I saw need, I might put further finishing touches on the picture before shipping it. The ride was delightful. Graham lent me his clever rhowam-paced pony, and Sim had an Arab which he was taking with him by sea, and as the third of our party was well mounted, we careered across the cornfields, many of which were cut, while others were being reaped. The trusty Issa meanwhile could be left with the baggage. It was high time I had such change, for I was far from well. The rest of two hours at the Ramla Convent with the cheery old monks delighted our hearts, and we arrived at Jaffa in the afternoon, when all seemed careless peace with the retiring sun, and as I passed my picture through the customs and took it on board, I felt cut off from the cause of many galling anxieties, and trusted issues to gentle Providence.
I had intended to stay with Graham a few days at the seaport, but the next afternoon Issa, his servant, who was deeply concerned in the proceedings conducted by the bishop to which I have lately referred, came to me with news gained from later arrivals that caused him deep concern, and I offered to ride back to Jerusalem with him in the night, which he eagerly accepted. On my return I sat down before my “Temple” picture to take stock of its condition and of my prospects, improved by the intermediation of my friendly Hebrew advocates, Sir Moses Montefiore and F. D. Mocatta, and at once took steps to recommence work.
Graham soon returned from Jaffa with health restored, and I frequently accepted his invitation in the hot summer to sleep in the refreshing air on Olivet. The window of this tower overlooked the Valley of Jehoshaphat, Gethsemane, and all the slopes of the city, and a good telescope was mounted on the sill. On moonlight nights, while my friend read aloud a king of literature for which I cared little, I could sit at the open window resting my brow against its cool lintel, and turn my eyes upon the traces left by the successive masters of the city since the days of Solomon, and upon the land so little changed since its history was first written upon it.
No scene could offer more for reflection. Many elements were wanting to satisfy the fullest sense of beauty, yet there was a solemn loveliness of expression settled in all the region, with centres of mystic suggestion that enchanted my eye, while my mind was enthralled by the thought
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that this spot had been the place from which in turn the leading nations of the world had been addressed as from heaven itself. Walls, towers, domes, minarets, and vacant spaces in succession made my regard wander across the wide prospect, and in and out of its intricate features. Lying there under full moonlight, the calm picture appeared as formed in mother-of-pearl, with rare points glinting among the opalescent hues. There were no street lamps in any part of the town; all bazaars were closed, most good men were in their homes, open casements revealed inner lights with families sitting at their last meal of the day; and elsewhere through perforated walls could be traced small companies on the roofs enjoying the cool night. Towering above the houses were the crowns of palm trees distributed among the courtyards inside their protecting walls. Afar, high up, nearly screened by buildings, were the Armenian gardens occupying the locality of Herod's Park and of the house of the High Priest, and there still slept a group of huge fir trees, one of which spread its sheltering branches around a delicate arboreal spire of cypress. Groves of olives were on southern Zion, and to the north of the walls was another plantation, amidst which was a massive sycamore near to a tower of necromantic tradition. The sombre trees mapped out the blanched limestone buildings and surfaces into intelligible shapes and helped to frame the ancient ramparts. The cupola of the Church of the Sepulchre with the adjoining tower stood in the heart of the city; wild growths spread over deserted spots, the remains of fallen buildings whose foundations were buried in their own ruins. The south-eastern corner of the square of the city was the Temple enclosure, whose history we know more continuously than that of any place on earth. Marble, alabaster, Persian tiles, and forms of early Byzantine design were beautified by the contrast of vegetation, deep and rich, fed by the hidden waters at their roots. Then the stately cypresses whispered together. The structures known as “The Dome of the Rock” and Al Aska divided the mind as to the site of the Holy of Holies, for the dimensions of the ancient Temple area were not enough to include both buildings; as though patiently sleeping, they rested like palled shapes in a heavy dream, detached by moonlight and moonshade. Although the platform was an open stage from which the actors had departed, yet fancy would people it with their spirits, prophets and martyrs stood arraigned there, delivering direful warnings from heaven. With tardy repentance more pitiful, were those haunting the scene for mourned-over memories of crimes towards the innocent; among them those who bewailed their bitterness towards the Son of Love Himself, for Gabatha lay there.
Beyond this enclosure I was attracted by the moving lantern of a cautious wayfarer; the flame taxed the sight as it hovered along, a very will-o'-the-wisp, through antiquated arches, threading receding streets, being blotted out now for a few seconds, now for a longer term, and anon as suddenly revealed. Occasionally home-seekers emerged from
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Kuteb Mueddin Calling to Prayer

W. H. H.]

KUTEB MUEDDIN CALLING TO PRAYER



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a door and stood still with a cluster of lights before taking leave of one another, and then diverged and crept along different lines like the sparks on unextinguished tinder, reminding me of what I had watched entranced in childhood and called “Quakers going home from meeting”; there was fascination in the tracing of these wandering lanterns. One bewitching jewel of light attracted me as a cherished possession, to be guarded with fear of its loss, as it came nearer and disappeared within the belt of the hareem enclosure; but it was not long before it re-appeared within the sacred square, where in passing it gilded marble pillars and elaborated carvings, and flared upon capitals, architraves, and arches, until it halted at the door of the minaret. In a few minutes appeared the flutter of the same light in the gallery above, and when the lantern was put down, I knew another dear sign of life would soon break out. The caller to prayer, with hands on the parapet, began his chant with a voice like a resonant bell across the homes of hidden men who at the sound bent in prayer and praise. The voice lingered and soared aloft; it was the chant of the “Kuteb Mueddin,” declaring itself emphatically in every fresh outburst, warbling, carolling, and exclaiming with ecstasy, till it expressed the fulness of thanksgiving and joy. It awakened the rapture with which I had heard the nightingale thrilling in his listening copse, and the dreamy hope grew dearer, that the time was coming when there could be no soul on earth not altogether at peace with the Father of Love. The singer turned in his gallery to awaken sleepers in the south, the west, the north, and then again in the full east. From a further tower a second psalmist responded, increasing his voice, and there echoed around a refrain of melody, a strophe, and antistrophe, and as the chant swelled a fuller height of rhapsody was attained; then by intervals the exalted strain slowly descended into a tender chorus, and ceased when the very deadness vibrated, consoling the yet unsatisfied and listening ear. Then all signs of restlessness took flight, the lights in turn became extinct, and the whole mountain of men, women, and children were at hush and rest, with nothing but the sound of barking dogs and screeches of marauding beasts of prey to be heard.
Turning my attention from the window, I heard Graham's enthusiastic droning as before, and when it ended my good friend asked if I had ever heard such an eloquent sermon, and I felt able to say “Never!”
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CHAPTER II

1855

Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition.

Falsehood is so vile that if it spoke of God it would take something from the grace of His divinity, while truth is so excellent that when applied to the smallest things it makes them noble.—Richter.

Returning to my “Temple,” the suppression of the interdict of the Rabbis facilitated my appeals to the better class of Jews, and though some of the men whom I now approached were of very humble means, they bore themselves with unaffected dignity. One old fellow was heaven's own nobleman, he supported himself by the profits of a little chandlery business; all day he squatted cross-legged on his board in front of a cupboard with his wares: spices, coffee, sugar, arranged around him within easy reach, he had numerous customers who purchased small supplies at a time. On the Sabbath I always saw him at the Synagogue, and I learned that he was a Rabbi, who by his independent industry the better represented the celebrated doctors of Hillel's days. When I applied to him to sit, he explained that, having no relative or friend to carry on the business if he were away the shop would have to be shut up, and that the loss would be continued after he had reopened it, from the habit of his customers would contract of dealing elsewhere; but my terms tempted him, the bargain was that he should have four francs paid to him in the evening of each day, and that three more should be written up to his account, to be paid when I had completed the work, and if he had been punctual. He was always attentive and regular, keeping his part of the bargain, and never doubted my good faith in keeping mine.
I am glad to record this case as one of many I have met with to the credit of the Israelites. To prove the sincerity of some Jewish conversion to Christianity, and its fitness for such men, a story known to me of actors still living in 1854 is sufficient. In the year 1836 two Jews of unstable character had entered into partnership in a grocery business. They purchased a small stock of coffee and stored it in their dark shop. They indulged in stronger drink than that which their customers brewed, and in their cups they quarrelled. The division of the joint property was a difficulty which no one of their friends could
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arrange, until they remembered a poor fellow-descendant of Judah who had been converted to Christianity and yet had the esteem of all the Jews. He was the same Calman who kindly assisted to me later, and never did I know man who was more thoroughly without guile. He possessed an annuity of £50, and with this he had found a post on the Mission in Jerusalem for which he refused payment, and was appointed, while still young, keeper of the hospital where the invalid Jews were nursed. The hostile partners induced him to take charge of the key of their shop until their quarrel should be settled. When he was thus satisfying each that the other was not robbing him, a violent storm occurred; the wranglers knew that the shop roof was defective, and went to Calman, the custodian, to come with them and see that the coffee was not injured.
It proved to have been thoroughly soaked. They both declared themselves to be outraged, and contended that, being the guardian of their property, Calman was responsible, and that he should pay the value to them. After some vain appeals to their reason, and their assumed sense of justice, he paid the demand, principally perhaps because he believed in their poverty, and that the coffee was worthless. At this time Ibrahim Pasha was invading the country, and soon he invested Jerusalem. During the siege Calman heard that coffee was well-nigh exhausted in the city, and any variety of it was selling at famine prices. He brought out his bags and spread the contents in the sun, and the coffee proving to be but little hurt by the wetting, he sold it at a high price, which he took to pains to keep secret; indeed, with lingering Jewish belief in immediate recompense, he instanced it as an example of how he had gained by returning good for evil.
At this point, to his astonishment, the two grocers again appeared in mutual accord, stating that they knew that he had made a very great profit on their coffee, which Calman at once admitted. Then said they, “You must pay us the additional money for our coffee, for which you yourself admit you have yet only given us a quarter price.” He urged that this fresh demand to him seemed very unjust. “Oh no” they screamed, “you would be robbing us if you did not give us the extra money.” “If you declare this seriously I will not keep it,” he said. “We do; we do!” they shouted, and they went off with their booty, glorying in their superior cunning.
“What a fool that Calman is! And what stupidity his religion is!” said one to the other when on their way to the nearest drinking house. “Yes,” said the other, “he is a fool, and it is his religion that makes him so, but what a religion it must be to make a man cast away all selfish interest as he does.” Drunkards and schemers though they were by long habit, they embraced Christianity and came under influences which one may hope rendered them less unpromising men.
There was an honest and intelligent convert who helped me in securing as a sitter a Jew of middle age who kept a mercer's shop.
Sig. VOL. II. C
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Observing the latter for some time, I regarded him as a desirable model, but as he spoke only Polish, I was helpless. My friend therefore came with me to the shop, which was a comparatively prosperous one, and after getting into general conversation he adroitly introduced me as the Englishman who was painting a picture of Jewish “Rabbis,” and who would pay well if he would come and sit to me. The mercer urged, like the rest, that it would not be to his interest to shut up shop except for large remuneration, but when it was explained that I should want him for seven or eight days, that each evening he should receive four francs, and that three francs additional should be written up to his account towards a sum to be paid at the end, he finally promised to come to me the next day.
I waited, at the hour appointed, with all prepared for my new  

Study of Jew

STUDY OF JEW



figure, till, patience exhausted, I went straight to the shop, then to the Synagogue. Failing to find the mercer in either place, I enlisted my friend in the search. Most of the day was spent before we found him, and then he urged that although the pay for the time was liberal, it was not enough to cover the loss of custom that would occur afterwards, and I agreed to add £2 to the final payment if he would make no more delay and assent to come next morning. To this he agreed, apparently with great contentment.
On the morrow again I waited with palette in hand for an hour or so, but in vain. This time I determined to have a satisfactory explanation, or to give up the model finally if he failed me further, and I went to his house with my friendly interpreter.
The mercer, on being asked to account for his failure, was somewhat reticent, until we urged him to tell us plainly if he thought it a sin to aid in the making of a picture. Finding him still shy, I pointed out that in the Tabernacle and in the Israelitish camp and in Solomon's Temple also there were animal figures represented as symbols of the various tribes, and I argued further that the second Commandment did not mean more than that the images should not be made for worship. “Oh yes!” he said in a tone that meant we had been arguing quite needlessly, “I am a Rabbi myself, and have considered the question, and I know it is no sin; but it might be very imprudent, very rash indeed, and I might suffer for that,” and, turning with a confiding air, he went into a long explanation with my friend, who carried an amused expression on his face. Now I observed an extra play of
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suppressed mirth, and this fact, with the understanding of a few words common to all languages made me anxious to hear the interpretation, which my friend gave with great solemnity. “Well, you know the merchant's name is Daoud Levi. On the Day of Judgment the Archangel Michael will be standing at the gate of heaven, and the names of all faithful children of Abraham will be called out; there will be a great throng, and as each name is uttered the owner of it will press forward, and the Archangel on seeing him will give orders for him to pass, while the name will be checked from the book. When Daoud's name is called, if there were a picture of him, it might be that the likeness would arrive first, and this might be passed in, and the name on the roll struck off; and when he arrived to demand admittance he might  

Examples of Jewish Type

W. H. H.]

EXAMPLES OF JEWISH TYPE



be told that Daoud Levi had already entered in, and that he must be a pretender, and although he might beg and pray and ask for investigation of the truth, it would not be surprising if he were told that he had brought the hardship upon himself, and that on such a busy occasion there was no opportunity to go into disputed questions.”
Daoud Levi zealously watched my face to see if the irresistible logic of his argument were duly appreciated. I did my best to betray due concern for the eternal peril he might unguardedly have provoked. “Neither of us had thought of that, had we?” I reflected aloud to my friend; “but perhaps the difficulty can be met. Ask whether if we take effectual steps to give the figure in the picture the name of a Christian, the danger will be obviated?” “Yes, if the means were satisfactory,” said Daoud. “Would baptising it do?” I asked. After a little reflection he decided that this would be an effectual means of separating the picture from himself, so I arranged that after I had made the first few strokes I would sprinkle some water on the likeness,
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and give it a distinct franghi name before his friends as witnesses, and with this understanding the obstacle to his attendance at my studio was removed.
The next morning, he appeared ready to sit to me, but not without searching glances into the corners of the room, and making many impatient inquiries about the details of my picture. It was a work of perseverance to get him to go far enough away from the canvas to allow me to see him. Faint lines he would not accept as the image, so I had to use charcoal, and when I could point out to him the features of a face, and show him that I was prepared for the ceremony of christening, he went as far away as possible. I then declared the figure's name to be Jack Robinson. Daoud was satisfied, but when the superabundant blackness was dusted away, scepticism on his part returned whether I had not expunged the baptised likeness, and I had to rechristen the painted preparation before a fair start in his posing could be made. It proved that when he was driven to it he could talk Arabic very well, and as I was then practising it grammatically, we got on without difficulty; in fact, he talked more than enough, with an eager and stumbling manner of speech, which was amusing but bewildering to my preoccupied mind. The visits of his friends, who diverted his mercurial mind and body from the pose, made the task no easier, so that at the end of the day I felt as though I had been working for a week, and my walk outside the city at sundown was very welcome.
A few days of this intercourse with the child-like man had impressed me in his favour, so that when he declared himself in great trouble, I invited him to reveal its nature to me. He said that the fast of the Atonement and the feast of the Tabernacle were coming on, and that from having neglected his business he had not been able to collect outstanding accounts, and that what money he had received from me was not enough for his preparations; he would be unable to come to me some days before the date of the feast, which would last a fortnight. It would be unjust for him to be kept out of his final payments so long, particularly as he heard I was going away soon and might defraud him altogether; he said that if I would let him have the retained money, with the £2 extra that had been promised on condition of his punctuality, he would have all that he wanted; he would not be obliged to search elsewhere for means for the feast and would come the preceding days. Suspecting my mistrust, he called heaven to witness that he would show his gratitude by coming the first moment after his religious duties released him.
I told him that I was ready to trust him, and paid the coveted money into his hands. His success was evidently more than he had expected, and he was profuse in his promises to come early in the morning.
When he did not appear, I would not at first allow myself to believe that he belonged to the legion of liars and overreachers; there was the
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possibility that some unavoidable business was detaining him, so I went to his shop. It was shut. I looked for him in other haunts in vain, and at last I went to his house. An old woman keeping her hold on the handle of the door, said he was not at home. While she spoke, I heard a screeching laugh within, and an inquiry in a female voice whether it was the “English fool” and the portress standing aside, I entered. At the top of a flight of steps I saw a handsome Jewess with clasped hands rocking herself, in convulsions of laughter, her closed palms alternately between her knees and above her head.
“You are, you are, you are a pretty fool! My husband told me that he should try to cheat you, but we scarcely thought you would be so taken in. You need not look for him any further, for he’ll never come to you any more, now he has the money, never!” My reply was, “I will call again soon.” “Do” she said, “I like to laugh at you.” I went to the Consulate. The Consul was not in, but his deputy heard my story and put a kawas at my service. Soon I was again knocking at Daoud Levi's house, with my follower left a little way out of sight. The old woman with a merry expression opened the door wide for me to enter the courtyard. “Can I see the master?” I asked, and hurriedly from an upper room out burst the wife, clapping her hands and salaaming, ending with, “Yes, you shall see the master. Come out, O husband!” and on the landing he also appeared with modified bravado, running on into a stammer, and apologising with bad grace, saying that the approaching feast made it impossible for him to come to me, and that the money received was not too much, for he had been for several days to my studio, and that it hindered his business. When I said that he had signed his name on my wall against the account, and had promised to come again, “Yes” he said, “that was to get the money. You wouldn’t have given it without.” “That was to get the money” repeated the antic of a woman, and she danced and crowed with an intoxication of triumph. “I have brought a friend who wants particularly to see you, O Daoud,” I said. “Ah, it is no use,” he urged, but he was cut short by his wife with, “Pray let the visitor favour us; pray come in, O friend,” raising her voice each moment to a higher pitch. I turned and made the sign, and down, with stately paces and a silver-knobbed mace, the kawas descended the stone stairs into the yard and stood majestic.
Groaning sighs from two apparently Medusa-stricken beings told how such a possibility as the actual consequences of the deceit had never entered into their imaginations. The woman pushed her husband to one of the doors, but I said, “You must not leave us alone, O Daoud. My friend here particularly wants your company, for he is going to the Pasha's court, and he must have you with him,” at which their faces became blank, their eyes started, and the colour fled from their lips. The woman fell on her knees, and the husband appealed to me to believe that he had intended to come, and that they had only declared
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the contrary in play. “No! No! You lie now as you lied before,” said I, unconcerned, and kept this tone until it seemed they had been enough punished for the nonce, then I charged them to listen to me. “If you wish me to save you from prison, you must give me back the two sovereigns and the extra money. You must give this ‘friend’ of mine two bishlick, and you will have to come with me to be painted now, for the whole day, and if you fail any day till the feast comes, you will have no mercy shown you.” The money was quickly forthcoming, and the kawas went back to the Consulate.
In five minutes more Daoud was in my room. Previously to setting to work I took the opportunity of trying to prove to him the iniquity of his conduct. “Your error is in thinking that because you are a son of Abraham, no truthfulness and no honesty is necessary in your dealings with the rest of the world to secure God's favour; but the whole teaching of the history of your nation proves that you were intended to be better than other people, and that when you disregard this, your sin is greater than that of people to whom the law was not given.” To my surprise I was at once challenged on this postulate in the meekest tone. “But it is not wicked to tell lies when it is for an object.” “Why” I returned, “is it not written, ‘a false weight and a lying tongue are an abomination to the Lord’?” “Yes, but that is when there is no purpose in it. Look,” he added eagerly, “all the patriarchs and David told lies at times.” I had to say, “Every one knows they did, and it is an example of the candour of the Bible that such blemishes are recorded in the character of men who otherwise were faithful servants of God.” But his next rejoinder surprised me. “No, these lies were merits in them, and to prove that falsehoods are not wrong we have the example of God Almighty uttering one when He reported to Abraham Sarah's want of faith in the promise that she should have a son, declaring that ‘she laughed,’ whereas she is reported only to have laughed ‘within herself’; thus the Almighty spoke, that her want of faith might appear the more heinous.” In vain I strove to convince him that the disputed point in Sarah's course was whether she had faith in God's promise of a child, but his rabbinical sophistry made him strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. However I had defeated his cunning and he made a valuable sitter.
It must not be supposed that an artist in honestly using his model does not obey the principles of selection, he has to eschew all marks of degradation unsuitable to the character he is depicting, exercising the same fastidiousness in this selection as in the theme itself.
Some painters who have since worked in the East on Scriptural subjects do not appear to have considered the gulf between the common men and women to be found in a degraded society and the great leaders of thought, whose lives were passed in an atmosphere of heavenly communion. The fact that Abraham was a nomad, that David was a shepherd, that Jesus was a carpenter, and that His first disciples
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were fishermen, makes it valuable for artists and authors to examine people following such occupations under the same sun, but seeing that it was not because the founders of the religion of the most advanced races were peasants that we want to know about them, the representation of uninspired peasants of this day will not satisfy a just thinker as the presentment of the leaders of men, who are worshipped and loved. To take a homely example from the case of Bunyan; to represent him, it would not be enough, because he was a tinker, to ascertain the exact costume of such a mechanic in the time of Charles II, and to copy a modern tinker in a made-to-pattern dress. If this were done, be it ever so correctly, the copy could not stand for the inspired dreamer, the patient enemy of worldly compromise, the martyr prisoner, and the steadfast truster in God. When historic painting is conceived in such servile spirit, it were better that the artist used his ingenuity in making boots, coats, or tables.
Warder Cressen was a Canadian who had left wife and family to preach Christianity to the Jews. Not sufficiently fortified in his enthusiasm to triumph in his task, in a few months he became a proselyte to Judaism, and after invitation to his family to follow his example, renounced them and took a wife of the daughters of Judah. From him I obtained the opportunity of painting from his roof the cypresses in my picture. When I was at his house I found that the husband knew not one word of the language of his wife, and she none of his, so they talked in dumb show; this disability was perhaps a safeguard against contention. He served me greatly by obtaining from the master of the Synagogue the loan of the silver crown of the law for my picture.
I had now begun a water-colour drawing of the pool of Gihon, from outside the walls, and in view of my forthcoming departure I applied myself diligently to this landscape, arriving at my place of work an hour or two before sunset. One day, when the wind was brisk enough to threaten, my things around me being scattered, the Armenian Patriarch came by on his mule, attended by a runner. I could only give him a bowing salute, but when he had passed, he pulled up, sending his man to ask me to speak with him; as my materials could not be left to the mercy of the winds, I was obliged to excuse myself with the request to be allowed to call at the Patriarchate the next day. Accompanied by a friendly interpreter, we were received in grand state in a large saloon, relays of sweetmeats, coffee, and long pipes were served; these ceremonies being over, the Patriarch explained that having seen me painting about the city, he had thought that I might execute for his church a fresh picture of Sit Miriam and another of Issa Messiah, and also add to the number and restore some of the existing life-sized pictures of saints decorating the building.
This was a tempting offer after my tedious work on a small scale; to have painted from grand-looking Armenian models on large work
page: 24
 

The Plain of Repham From Mount Zion

W. H. H.]

THE PLAIN OF REPHAM FROM MOUNT ZION



page: 25
in archaic and bold spirit and to have introduced the stately Patriarch himself, with handsome aureole, would have been refreshing, but now long-continued worries were telling on my health, and it was growing late in the autumn for my journey to the Lebanon, so I replied that I had been away from England nearly two years, that my father and mother were counting upon my return, and that his Excellency would see that I could not now commit myself to a fresh task, but that it was my intention to return very shortly, and I would then offer myself for his service. The good old nonagenarian was very pressing that I should stay, and even offered to write to my father, but I was obliged to persist in my refusal.
For near two years since landing in the East I had escaped fever. I had lived in unhealthy parts of the city, and spared my strength but little. My constitution had resisted all evils, and till the last few weeks acquaintances had wondered at my immunity, but now they assured me that I looked poorly, and it was not easy to affect indifference. My friend Graham often went to Artass on Sunday mornings to perform service there, and one day I agreed to start with him. I rode moodily and slowly in his company, and arrived in such a chilly condition that while the service proceeded I lay outside in the heat of the sun. As it shone on me, the iciness changed to violent burning, with a burdensome oppression in the head, and I wondered whether I could sit my horse to return. I had become late, and desperation urged me to mount, then to hurry up the rugged slope, and gallop on all the flatter roads, until I arrived home and thankfully threw myself into bed. Next morning I found myself attacked by tertiary fever. On my convalescence the doctor advised that I should start on my journey as soon as possible.
A few days later, Graham, who knew everybody in the city, told me that the Pasha’s secretary, hearing of my strong desire to go alone into the Mosque, promised that if I went that afternoon to his office he would secure me the opportunity. The formalities of coffee and pipes gone through, I was passed on to the custodian of the Mosque, a tall, handsome man of about forty-five years of age. He was the descendant of the official appointed by the Caliph Omar; lately a placeman from Constantinople had arrived to supplant him, but the man in possession proved that not even the present Head of the faithful could ever oust him or his sons, and the usurper went away discomfited.
The official led the way into the sacred enclosure, which looked more beautiful than before. It was a singular example of the Moslem’s submission to the inevitable that so soon after the faithful had been eager to die to defend the Mosque from intrusion, this later visit of mine could be made without guards to protect me, although I wore English costume. Having made a general round of the building, I revealed that my further wish was to ascend to the roof of As Sakreh and make a drawing; the guide looked uneasy, and
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declared that the key to the stairs was at a distance, and if I were seen alone I should be attacked. However, he gave way and came with me; and, shaded from the afternoon sun by the dome, I sat for an hour or so, making my map-like sketch of the walls and Scopas, and thus what had so lately seemed an insuperable obstacle was overcome.
I had deferred a visit of thanks to the secretary, but the next day, when in the midst of the confusion of packing, an urgent message was brought by the Pasha’s kawas that I should attend the Deewan at once. I took my sketch-book, and was received by the Pasha’s factotum, who declared that he had expected me to give him a drawing of the Mosque, and now requested it. I explained that it was then impossible for me to do this, as I was on the point of departure from the  

From Mosque As Sakreh

FROM MOSQUE AS SAKREH



city, whereupon he said that he had supposed I would make him a present of his own portrait. He was a funny little short-necked Assyrian in bastard Frank costume, and I at once undertook a drawing of him. As I progressed, the mute servants about vainly endeavoured to hide their curiosity. In an hour the portrait was done, and he turned it about to see its resemblance and show some subtle beauties in it, only regretting that he could not be done a second time without his tarboosh.
It was on the 17th of October that I sent away my boxes to Oxford, with pictures and materials. In the afternoon I mounted my horse and left Jerusalem; Graham and Mr. Poole, a geologist who was visiting the country for the sultan’s information as to mining possibilities, rode with me.
We passed through to Beera to pitch our tent, and thence we went
page: 27
 

Nazareth

W. H. H.]

NAZARETH



page: 28
on to Nablous and Nazareth, by way of Samaria and Jenin. On the stage from Jenin we were threatened by Bedouin, who, however, wheeled off when we drew up with the sign of “ready.” At the Galilean village, which is one of the few spots in Palestine to which English travellers accord the merit of beauty—which in my eyes in one way or the other every part of the country possesses—I was delayed long enough to undertake a coloured landscape. 1
Mr. Poole left us here, but Graham had fallen ill, and I became anxious; in the meantime tidings arrived that Tiberias, which was to be my next station, was so scourged by cholera that all its inhabitants had left it. I told my friend that the news settled with me in the  

Jenin

W.H.H.]

Jenin



negative the question of his coming, but he threw off his malady, and against my urgent remonstrance persisted in accompanying me.
We struck the tent early, and sent on the muleteer with the baggage direct, with orders to set the tent ready for our arrival. In the descending plain as we went up the ridge to Tabor; rich vegetation, rare on the tops of hills, surged up around old walls and towers, and between gaps were distances of beauty. So evident is it that the whole summit had been occupied by a city at the time of the Saviour, that the legend connecting the Transfiguration with this mount only increases the number of doubtful sites in which authority, unsupported by internal evidence, claims faith.
Clambering among rich tree growths, I reached a height where the
Transcribed Footnote (page 28):

1 In Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

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old wall joined a fortification still undemolished enough to form, with the trunks and branches of trees, a frame to the distance. Below the furthest horizon, amid amethystine variation of gradating tints like those of a prism spectrum, lay a mirror, oval and unbroken in border, which reflected the turquoise sky so perfectly that it looked like a portion of the heavens seen through the earth. It was the Sea of Galilee, the next haven of which I was in search.
I have read many books that speak of Palestine as in itself devoid of attraction, without beauty, and wearisome in its sterility. Several writers are undoubtedly moved by the desire to demonstrate the entire fulfilment of the curse with which it was threatened. As far as I could see, the actual curse dates only from the time that the Turks entered into possession. From the landlord’s point of view undoubtedly there is now much to deplore, for miles of the mountain tablelands are unproductive; but this is owing to the destruction of the cisterns, aqueducts, and the terraces on the slopes that kept up the soil. The trees are also rooted up and become fewer each year, owing to the imposition of a tax upon every one of them that grows, even before the three years needful to bring it to fruitfulness have expired, so that any unforeseen drain on the farmer’s purse at once condemns the trees to be cut down and taken to the nearest market for firewood. But there is a beauty independent of fruitfulness, which perhaps it is too much to expect all to see, just as it is unreasonable to require the ordinary observer to appreciate the beauty of the proportions and lines of a human skeleton; and yet if the latter were placed in juxtaposition with the complete bones of an ourang-outang its grace could scarcely fail to be convincing. It is in this sense, with a hundredfold less strain upon natural prejudice, that Syria is intrinsically beautiful. The formation of the country, the spread of the plains, the rise of the hills, the lute-like lines of the mounts, all are exquisite; and with these fundamental merits there is at times enough of vegetation to add the charm of life to the whole. It may be that pictures of Oriental landscape do not always satisfy high expectations of beauty; certainly faithful transcripts are nearly always disappointing. This is accounted for by the fact that in a country of great range there is a variety and equipoise as the charmed spectator turns to left or right which does not exist in the limited picture.
I could have stood long looking at the scene which had burst upon me in such unexpected beauty, but the soldier reminded me of the length of the journey we had to make. Our guide led me to a spot where preparations were advanced for the foundations of three churches which were to be built: one to Moses, one to Elias, and one to Christ. We found Greek monks and a humble priest in charge, and after a little delay were supplied with a draught of clear water, whereupon with my friend I descended into the eastern plain.
The country between Tabor and Tiberias is full of enthralling
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associations. The loss of the sun was never more regretted than when it sank and the darkness grew; there was no moon, our way was rugged with rocks; our horses groped down and up deep waddies. The earth was so dim, and the sky was of such deep hue, that only the stars showed the whereabouts of the horizon. I was riding in advance when we came to extended flat, and I was admiring Cassiopeia and the Great Bear, when my attention was caught by an animated talk going on between the guard and my friend’s excellent servant, Issa Nicola. The guide was a soldier whom the Metsellim of Nazareth had urged us to take, and he was of course a Moslem.
“I did not know the franghis were Mahomedans,” said the guide.
“Neither are they,” said Issa.
“But your masters are,” the soldier argued.
“What are you talking about?” shouted Issa, all of his feeling of possessorship in us being outraged.
“Well,” added the other, “I don’t know for certain about the elder one, but that younger is a Moslem I am sure.”
“He’s no such thing,” said Issa; “he has lived in Jerusalem for a year and a half, and he is a Christian, I tell you.”
But the guide was not to be silenced thus. “He’s not a Christian, that’s very clear, and I’ll tell you why I know. On the top of Tabor, when we were going about, he became thirsty and asked me if I could find some water. I took him to where the builders are; a priest received us, and while waiting he produced a small crucifix carved out of the stone found there. The Khowagha took it, turned it over, peering at it closely all round, and then handed it back, thanking the priest. The latter urged him to keep it; but the Englishman refused, saying he did not want it. Now had he been a Christian you know very well that he would have kissed it first, and then muttered some prayers and put it in his bosom.”
“You are quite wrong,” said Issa. “He is a Protestant; Protestants don’t have idols or crosses in their churches, and do not carry crucifixes on their breasts. Their churches are empty of images, and they kneel only towards the east, and in their houses they pray only to the unseen God.”
“Well, that’s just what I say,” summed up the soldier; “he is a Moslem. ‘Protestant’ is, I see, another name for the same religion.”
The discussion did not end at this point, but it went off into tiresome details which I ceased to follow. The act from which the trooper had drawn conclusions as to my creed had been performed from dread of overloading myself with trifles.
The only variation in the scene before us was in the gradual uprising of the stars, except when the level plain had some break in it, which our horses could understand better than ourselves, and then we left them more than ever to their own guidance, until it was possible to distinguish changes of form in the objects in the near foreground.
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We were soon on the brink of a deep precipice; and there below the horizon in the gloom floated what might have been taken for a cloud, but that a solitary fire far away on the mountain land beyond and a nearer flame were reflected deep into its surface. This was the Sea of Galilee.
Dismounting we trod down the steep and rugged road, relaxing the bridles so that the horses should have an easy and deliberate choice of foothold. The descent was exceedingly irksome, the more so as I had scarcely slept the night before; but my fear was that my companion would be overtaxed in the incessant manœuvring to wind down the headlong path in such manner that the beast should not fall over upon him.
It must have been more than the depth of Shakespeare’s Cliff ere we found a midway tableland fit for our horses. When we had remounted and advanced a few yards, we felt ourselves suddenly confronted and surrounded. To our challenge, a speaker in disarming voice told us that Tiberias was so afflicted with cholera that it was deserted. Most of the residents had gone to Safid; but the very poor came up and slept arond the well each night. They added that our muleteers had passed soon after sunset, and had gone forward to prepare our tents for us. We gave them a few coins in return for water, and went on wishing more than ceremonious peace to them.
A further descent brought us to the slope on which Antipas built his imperial city. When within sight of the towers we called out for our muleteer, and found that he had chosen to pitch the tents in the burial-ground close to the walls of the pestilence-stricken city. We made him move them to a place above the town, where we settled for the night. While I watched the slowly increasing glow above the mountain horizon and the brightening waters below, suddenly a spot of flame-like brightness arose beyond the far mountain line, steadily growing into the burnished circle of the moon. As it ascended a path was spread across the lake below, and what had been erewhile blank and dead became a pulsating and breathing world.
I bless my soul now that I beheld that lovely scene. I shut my eyelids, and can see the creeping waters with the ladder of molten fire. I can count again its miles by the mark of currents and wisps of wind that fretted its surface. The waters labour, they travail, from the gloom they crawl and creep into the ray of glory, and then pass again into obscure repose.
I went out to see the lake from other points. The town sloped down steeply into the waves. Even by the moon’s light the walls and towers could be seen to have great fissures in them, caused, as I learnt, by the earthquake of 1837, and no light of any kind was seen within the city.
Seeing how important it was not to disturb my worn-out comrade, I decided against the attempt then to represent that moon enthroned
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among the stars and all they shone upon, but quietly lay down on my trestle-bed, having so arranged the tent door that I could watch the lake. As I looked the sweet composure of rocked babyhood came back to me, and so I fell asleep.
The sun was nearly on the horizon before we were willing to stir, and then special considerations induced us to give up the swim in the lake which we had promised ourselves. The situation was favourable in that there was a complete absence of Bedouin, they had all fled, and we were free to go anywhere. In my saunter before breakfast I climbed up the broken masonry of a tower to overlook the city. All was stillness there, but turning my gaze around to the burial field, I observed two men rise up from a finished task and make for a southern gate. They were traceable through the rectangular streets till they entered the door of a house. After a short while they reappeared in some way encumbered with a burden. They had converted a bed into a bier, and this they carried back to the graveyard, two others the while crossing them on a similar errand. I asked a man who passed us how many people remained in the town.
“None alive,” he replied; “the yellow wind has eaten them all,” and there was the look on him of helpless submission which Defoe describes so well.
“The yellow wind?” I repeated. “Can you smell it?”
“Can you not?” he inquired, and I could realise that since the sun had risen there had been a peculiar musty scent.
From where I stood the whole of the shores of the lake could be traced. I wished to see the country of the Gadarenes, but I could not make out any violently steep place. On the right there were the heights of Migdol; turning north, I saw the entrance of the Jordan, with all the spread of the land to west and east, where the sacred life was spent and the patient training of the disciples conducted. Miracles could only have convincing value to onlookers, but the words of love and peace uttered by the great Alleviator of sorrows still perform miracles before our eyes, slowly though this may be.
I descended from my post to find that breakfast was scanty, and the prospects for dinner very bad. We wanted to make the most of the day, and told Issa that we should be satisfied with whatever he could get; and then abandoning for the nonce an outline drawing which I had begun, we rode to the south, past the burial-ground and the thermal baths of Herod, and gained the very outlet of the Jordan, where we prowled about, my friend photographing while I sketched. As I was sketching, we discovered that we had attracted the attention of Arabs on the eastern side, and that a party was moving down towards us. We had no motive for prolonging our stay, so we remounted and rode back to camp.
Here we were received with more apologies than food for dinner, and with flat rebellion from the muleteers. The mukary said if we
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Lake of Tiberias

A. Hughes, from a sketch by W.H.H.]

LAKE OF TIBERIAS



Sig. VOL. II. D
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liked to be eaten up by the yellow wind we could, but that for his part he must and would leave the place that night. We urged that a true Mahomedan ought to be more resigned, but the utmost we could get from him was the concession of an hour for eating and consultation. Graham again was compelled to prolong his journey, for not an animal of any kind could be got to carry back his camera, so we were unexpectedly travelling together for a further stage.
When remounted I never felt less disposed to be lively. We had still an hour’s sunshine and the whole scene was one of sweet repose. I tried to divert thought from the chilly quiver that shook my frame. “Let us have a good scamper,” I said to my friend.
“Agreed,” he replied merrily. Every one who had seen him on horseback knew what to ride like a centaur meant, and he had a good white steed. Away my horse went too; never did I less enjoy a ride when starting; it was difficult to avoid toppling over, but as action warmed my blood the evil vein lessened, and we reined in at the distance of two miles with all my chilliness gone.
A novel scene made me slacken pace. Between us and the lake was a large field of Indian corn, and at intervals of about two hundred yards stages were erected. On each platform was a man nearly or entirely nude, standing on the alert with a sling, and with this he aimed at all birds which attempted to alight within reach. I reserved it as a subject for a statue in the future, but ere I could get the opportunity, Leighton had seen the same incident in Nubia, and made it the theme of one of his admirable pictures.
Happily it was still quite light when we reached the spring of Capernaum. There was no room for disappointment in looking into its bubbling waters, which were clear as crystal, engemming the pebbles which flickered below, and harbouring shoals of sheeny fish, while around great beautiful flowers and luscious fruit. It was a worthy emblem of the spiritual spring of life, which had its source in this region. Generations had been refreshed by it as they rested in going on their journey; the fountain, in truth, was indeed a paragon of purity. Josephus in his legend of its underground communication with Egypt, and of Egypt’s fish swimming in its waters, testifies to the marvellous feeling which it inspires.
Capernaum was nigh this spot, and the ground was covered with dried-up growths, but we had no time to search for ruins. Turning our faces from the plain, we were soon overtaken by sundown and gloom, not, however, before we had seen some remarkable caves with Gothic-like openings in the chasm below. I could not, during the long dark climb up to Safid, forget my discomfort, nor the conviction that had I stayed another hour at Tiberias I should have been plague-stricken. I did not recover altogether for six weeks, not indeed till I had landed at Marseilles.
On going forth from the tent the next morning, I was surprised to
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see how the altitude of the level we had reached dominated all the land we had passed through. It was indeed the “city built on a hill.” Tabor was far beneath the horizon, all was below us as it might have been from a balloon, and nearly every tract seemed as sterile as the face of the moon. Graham and I exchanged parting words, while a crowd stood by watching us with wondering interest. We had travelled much together in the last year and a half, and I grasped hands with him in silence ere we each went our several ways.
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CHAPTER III

1855

The eye sees what it brings with it the power to see.

Without eyesight indeed the task might be hard. The blind or purblind man travels from Dan to Beersheeba and finds it all barren.—Carlyle.

Pursuing my solitary way, there seemed at first nothing to distract moodiness, and I rode on, taking stock of the thoughts I had gathered in Syria, of the friends I had made there, and of the work I had done, and this led me into a reverie about my many much-loved friends at home. I was awakened from this at the edge of a precipitous cliff, which divides the whole tablelands of Syria and Moab.
The full use of a pack animal’s tail had hitherto been unrevealed to me. The heavily laden mule had to drop its fore-feet over so deep a step that its centre of gravity was in peril; a counterpoise was therefore urgently needed. The muleteer then removed from the load his choice hubble-bubble, and with his disengaged hand took a firm grip on the mule’s tail. The animal, appreciating this attention, then felt its way to the very verge of the cliff, while the muleteer sloped back to the most oblique line possible, and the well-trained brute cautiously advanced his hoofs, then slipped both over the edge at the same moment: he had dropped about a foot. Great skill was needed on the part of the mule and the master to enable the former to turn aside in the direction of the escalier track and leave space for the descent of the hind-legs; all the time the man held on until he was convinced that the animal had recovered his equilibrium without further ballasting.
Notwithstanding all the art used, it seemed a marvel when the leading beast manœuvred successfully to turn himself and advance out of the way of the others; and when these had all managed to escape overbalancing, and disappeared from further service, we alighted from the risky descent onto a safe slope where we had no longer to watch our footsteps. I looked forward and saw the whole height of Hermon from its base to its snow-mantled apex. At its feet lay the lake of Merom and the Jordan-divided plain, the water everywhere reflecting the varying hues of the mountain from snowy height to verdured base, lit by the enriching sun. To the north, was the targe of Anti-Lebanon, amethystine and cerulean. It extended its chord-like rhythmic accompaniment,
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Jordan from Lake Tiberias

W.H.H.]

JORDAN FROM LAKE TIBERIAS



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making itself a background whenever there was an opening in the nearer hills. Turning again towards the east, each moment new perfections revealed themselves. The freshness of the borders of the hidden Jordan and of the meadows about the eastern coasts of the lake were all rendered ethereal by the clear eventide air. I hung behind to revel in the intense delectability of the scene, and when my company of dark mules and men in rich brown costumes with deep crimson tarbooshes passed in procession against the enchanting distance, I longed to have a friend at hand whom I could make a participant in my enjoyment. Seeing Issa, and thinking that he deserved to have his attention awakened to the intoxicating fascinations of the view which he was passing in a perfectly impassive mood, I beckoned to him. “O Issa,” I exclaimed, “men often fail to observe how beautiful God’s works are, but I will not let you pass the heavenly vision in front of us without charging you to look upon it! It will not last long, the sun will soon pass away, and perhaps we shall never be here again. Look! Does it not seem as though at last all the wondrous powers of creation have met together in this spot of earth, to show at one moment how transcendent is the loveliness of the world? How worthy the view might be of some region of heaven! Think how all the angels may have brought each his most precious contribution in order to make this noble picture! See how the firmament above us is sapphire, and how it melts into topaz and to amber behind the mountain line; and then the mountain itself is clear lapis lazuli, infused by the sun into ruby and fire, except where the milky snow, whiter than any fuller could whiten it, glows in the sun and intensifies every other gem. See how in the plain the water borders appear enamelled with emeralds, how the water is very jasper, and all the preciousness above is dropped molten into it, and the diamond stream of the Jordan carries its burden of colour along. Regard too the glory of these golden fields in front. Turn now and see the Tyrian purple in that broad tiara of Lebanon; and then, in front of all, how rich and grand are the deep colours of the muleteers, and see how much more celestial the hues beyond appear from the harmonious contrast.” I dropped my hands in their idolatrous worship, adding, “Bless your stars, O Issa, as I do mine, that you have been permitted thus to see the effulgence of the gods!”
As he turned his eyes from scrutiny of my face he looked angered, he blinked at the landscape far and near with his short sight. When he turned to me again it was to say, “Ya, Khowagha, if you went close up to the different things, you would find they were only rock, and dirt, and water, with common maize and trees.”
I did not take so long as he had done to realise the situation, and I said resignedly, “Yes! yes! I am a madman.” And he was proud that he had converted me.
He went on, and henceforth I hugged my enjoyment to my own bosom. Every turn in the road was a fresh bar in the melody, and it
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subsided only when an ashen twilight invaded the scene. Issa’s triumph over me had made him markedly reserved and haughty in temper for the remainder of the day. How difficult it is for a trespasser to reingratiate himself with an offended critic! The journey which we had contemplated to Banias was too long for our half-day. As we came near the waters of Melhaha, we described a party of horsemen in the distance coming towards us. We waited therefore before settling ourselves, but all apprehension was at rest when we could make out that they wore European dress, and proved to be two Americans on their way to Jerusalem. When the tents were pitched, before mine received its furniture and bedding, I took the precaution to turn over the stones, and discovered eight scorpions, which I had to turn out, with what was unpardonable tyranny, according to the benevolent theory that foreigners should never dispossess natives.
Waking betimes, I heard enough overhead to make me certain that the pond near us must be the resort of wild-fowl, and I sallied forth while it was still dark to secure some for our often monotonous cuisine. It needed but little skill to shoot them as they flew up, but some fell into the water and I had to take trouble to get them. I came back rejoicing in the acquisition, and thinking somewhat that this evidence of practical sense would negative the unfavourable impression I had made upon Issa yesterday. I told him we would take some ducks to a man upon whom I had promised to call at Hasbeya. It was easy to see that Issa was not in good humour, but for what reason I thought it needless to inquire. After breakfast I ventured to refer to the subject, but he made it evident that he had more pressing matters to attend to. When all was packed I asked what he had done with the birds.
”I have thrown them away,” he said.
”Why?” I inquired.
”Why?” he returned. “Of what use are they?”
“They are simply for use of eating,” was my response.
”We are not heathen; no Christian could eat animals whose blood has not been allowed to pour into the ground, for the blood is the life, and it is forbidden to eat the blood. You should have cut the heads off, and allowed the life to escape.”
Wishing to discover whether in the Oriental mind the phrase “the blood is the life” was an allowance that all animals have souls, I objected, “You are treating a Mosaic ordinance as though Christianity had never displaced it. We in England pay no regard whatever to the law you quote.”
It was an unfortunate admission. His temper mounted to his face; he could scarcely find words, but at last he spoke like a passionate child: “Then I deny that you are Christians, and we Christians repudiate such sectarians.”
I pleaded that he must not take me as an authority on the Western creed, and suggested that he should find the birds and bring them with
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us to a Syrian convert, who was a clergyman of the English Church, and who should decide whether such food was forbidden. Accordingly Issa was prevailed upon, sulkily enough certainly, to recover the birds, and accompany me in a gallop after the mules, which had meanwhile been getting forward on the road to Cæsarea-Philippi.
Our stage that day was a short one, and before mid-day we came to the approaches of the city which has such enchantment of Pagan and Christian history connected with it. First lay in our steps the outside arms of the Jordan, the deep shores fringed with shrubs and luxuriant plants, so much so that in many parts from a distance there were no other traces of the stream than indicated by this thick border. My horse led the way through this outer belt, and plunged down, standing thrilled throughout his whole frame—as horses will when first in a journey they dash into a bracing stream—settled thus adeep, he played with tossing head and curled lip, splashing about the water many times ere he thrust his nose in to drink his fill. With arms free, I gathered a long blossoming bough of oleander and saved some ripe seed for Millais’ mother, who had now left Gower Street for a cottage and garden at Kingston. The rivulets were many, and always delightful to ford. Soon we reached an ancient bridge over deeper runnings. The old pavement and parapet still remained, and farther on we came upon portions of an aqueduct of sculptured marble; we were entering Cæsarea-Philippi. The sparkling water was flowing through this marble channel, and at every opening welling over and tumbling about among carved ornaments, and varnishing them into exquisite finish and richness that gave such delight as no one could conceive who had not lived for seasons in arid regions. Having chosen a camping-place, I wandered about on foot, the better to trace the nature of the remains. Ascending a steep mound of earth decked with rich growth, my feet came abruptly to a cliff. Looking down, there was a wall of perfect architectural finish descending fifty feet into the stream below. Seeing how much lay buried, I thought of the statue of Christ curing the poor woman, which Eusebius said the Pagans had erected in this city to celebrate the miracle performed in the neighbourhood, as the act of a God come down from heaven, and which he declared still stood there in his day; although there is reason for concluding that whatever the group represented, it was destroyed by Moslems, I thought what a splendid field there was for some one to explore, when the Turk could be made to withhold his hindrance to intelligent research. It has still to be done, and it is more needful than ever that such remains as may exist here and there should be exhumed and compared, for with portions only of the puzzle we are liable to form wrong conclusions as to the whole pattern.
The cave of Pan was a worthy cradle even for the Jordan, and the old name Panius recommended itself to my ears as that of the city rather than that given by Herod in honour of Augustus Cæsar.
Our peace at Banias was soon disturbed by anxiety about a stranger
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whom we had taken under our care, a poor boy of about thirteen, whom I had first observed as an addition to our train on leaving Nablous. I agreed to his continuance with us, seeing no reason to distrust his story that he was returning from Jerusalem to his widowed mother at Damascus, from which city he had been tempted to accompany the soldiers by the story that the streets of Jerusalem were paved with gold, and the holy edifices built of priceless jewels. Having found the report a delusion, and having fared very badly, like the prodigal son, he had determined to return home. On the journey to Nablous his hardships had been so unbearable that the chance of our protection on the road, which Issa, subject to my approval, had promised, had been eagerly accepted.
While Issa and I had been discussing the question of the ducks, we had concluded that the boy had gone on with the muleteers, while they surmised that he was with us, but when all was in order at our encampment at Banias, we learned that he had been last seen by the baggage party loitering as if for our company. Thus he had been missed by both. We sent out scouts for him, and late in the day he was brought in. He had not seen us till we were galloping far out of reach, and then he had lost his way; he climbed up the mountain-side to see the road, and there, hungry and disheartened, he had sat and wept. He came down in so timid a mood that, seeing our searchers about, he had at first hidden himself, but from his lair had fortunately been able to distinguish the mukary, and so he was brought in on a donkey.
During this journey I had as usual relied for protection only upon the gun and revolver I carried myself; to have supplied weapons to any other of the party would have been doubly foolish, as at all times Arab servants handle them so clumsily that no fellow-traveller is safe, and in case of attack the first idea they act upon is for their own safety to deliver up their arms to the enemy. At the slow pace necessary for the protection of the baggage I had found it a relief to get off and walk, and then I wandered about after fowls of the air and any small deer for our larder. Seeing the boy footsore, I allowed him to take my place in the empty saddle, but the ignoble creation which bars brotherly love in the East between franghis and natives soon provoked exclusiveness, and forced me for the last day or two to leave the boy to walk.
A truly extraordinary contrast it was to mark the notions ruling the modern dwellers in the place as compared with those of their historic predecessors. In the centre of the remains of the palatial city the swamp produced stalwart reeds, and the descendants of the dwellers in marble palaces chose these as supports for their habitations. About fifteen feet from above the surface of the water was constructed a stage secured on four brakes with cane-woven sides to it, and a covering attached likewise above; into this nest the family climbed up the poles. At such an elevation they were saved from the attack of wild beasts or noxious reptiles, the children needed no rocking night or day, for the wind was a
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constant nurse, and yet the population did not seem numerous, for I saw evidence of only three or four families. These few people are certainly not the only descendants of the once populous place, and the question arises where the children of the ancient dwellers in this city, as also of others once thickly crowded, shall be looked for.
It was now the latter part of November, the days closed early and the nights became chilly. After supper I set myself to scribbling in my tent; on concluding I noticed that the company outside had ceased in their often long-continued chatter and hubble-bubbling; I then, as quietly as possible, disrobed myself, and as usual, in getting under my blankets, I arranged my gun with the stock between my legs, and the barrels under my head on the pillow. When the light was out I was thinking over the marvels of the place, and, with the snoring of the men around their fire, I fancied there was some altogether distinct noise of a shuffling movement. I then raised myself noiselessly to peer between the top of the skirt and the frill of the roof of my tent. Within two feet of me was a great hyena, astride of a slumbering man, with nozzle bent down touching the sleeper’s open lips, and at the moment the beast drew in his breath, eager as a hungry babe and loud as a behemoth; the man only turned. Dashing out of the tent with less stealthiness than impatience I disturbed the foul animal, which trundled along out of the fire-glow, fast as he could move, to where other denizens of the wilds were ramping scared by our fire from nearer approach. The report of my gun changed all into wakefulness for five minutes, for after the echoes came the questionings of birds, beasts, and men. The hyena escaped, and we returned to sleep with renewed confidence against molestation.
The next day we went along by the upper branch of the Jordan to Hasbeya. We had on our left the mount “Al Ferdous”—that is to say, “Paradise”; why so named, could not be guessed, unless it be that it seemed forbidden to the hungry or thirsty sons of Adam, and that in its perfectly barren way it was beautiful, being unjagged in form, and spotless and pure in tint of its virgin rock.
Issa had ingeniously escaped further argument over the continuity of the Mosaic prohibition respecting ducks, by losing them from his saddle on our scrambling ride from Melhaha.
While taking my walks in Hasbeya, I was surprised at finding sculptured relief representing animals—camels and, I think, elephants—above the door of the principal palace in the great piazza. While I stood speculating as to its origin, the muezzin priest came down from the minaret and joined me. I asked him as to its builders, and he said at once that the founders of the Moslem family then living in the palace had erected it, and placed the sculptured decoration there. I objected that in Syria there was no known instance of Moslems representing animals in ornamentation, and that it was only in Persia and Morocco that earlier artistic instincts had made Mahomed’s caution against the representations of living beings not an absolute interdiction; but he
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evidently did not know enough of Mahomedan dogma to understand the point, and I found that he never suspected there could be any doubt that a building which was the pride of the place, could have been raised by other than people of his own religion. His warmth convinced me that it was not well to push inquiry further. Beyond question the building was of crusading origin.
In the north about Damascus I knew that Moslem intolerance was then even less checked than in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, but I little suspected that I had now entered upon ground where three years hence any who would not abjure Christ would be treated as their predecessors had been in the days of the first Conquest.
On the mountains beyond when encamped on the height at Dahr al  

Hasbeya

W.H.H.]

HASBEYA



Akmar the cold was so wintry that the chance of getting over Lebanon to the cedars seemed precarious. From this point our descent was made in the face of a gritty and frozen wind which was very discomforting. On the plain the ground about was cultivated gardens, the trees were full and even massive, and the water flowed with royal largess over the road; a landlord might have been satisfied with the nature of the plain, as an artist I was disappointed. No mass of buildings showed above the line of the walls, and having the designs for Tennyson’s poems already in consideration, I had counted upon finding appropriate some delightful views of the city. I came to the entrance of the “Street called Straight,” where all was rich with unexpected surprises. Economy and further experience in nomadic life were matters of importance, so I had determined to go to the khan, but when I saw the apartments available, I turned to the hotel, which after three weeks of wild tent life was truly luxurious. My bedroom was beautifully embellished with
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arabesque design; every rafter was artistically decorated and harmoniously coloured. I loitered some time admiring all, lingered on the roof and in the courtyard, and then I had to get money for Issa and the muleteers.
Soon I came into pleasant contact with the Consul-General—afterwards Sir Henry Wood—who was full of information and anecdote; he was at the time engaged in enrolling recruits for the Bashi-Bazouk service in the Crimea; each man on being passed at Constantinople received a handsome number of English sovereigns, and was then consigned to General Pearson. That all Orientals look alike is only true, as it is with sheep, to the unpractised eye. Mr. Wood was not easily deceived, and had recognised among new recruits, notwithstanding a fuller skin, several whom he had sent on only two months before. On writing to apprise the authorities at Stamboul of this, it transpired that the Consul’s letter first awakened attention to the fact of a desertion which on further examination proved to be general. Our interview being ended, Consul Wood went off to measure six hundred mules destined for the Crimea.
I was too much pressed for time to take any but mental impressions of this ancient and most picturesque city: lying away from any line of road frequented by Europeans in that day, it had escaped the rage for improvements and remained richer in Orientalisms than any other town I had seen; but I heard that two French silk mills had recently been opened in the neighbourhood, and already, as was seen in the market, the superb traditional patterns, exquisite in design and gorgeously harmonious in colour, were stricken and doomed: for, either from the idea that superiority in mechanics is supposed to be accompanied by greater excellence in taste, or from the greater attractiveness of meretricious design, as seen in the barbarous gimcracks of Europe, the new produce was and is preferred to the old. The lowness of my purse would not allow me to make many purchases of rare things, and I did but roam about, indulging my staring propensities for four days, denying myself all time-taxing work.
Of the Moslem boy and his mother we never heard after he left us at the gates to find his home. Two years later, I trust he expostulated with his fellows engaged in the massacre, and that at least he did not forget that in the hour of distress he had been helped by the infidel.
Lady Ellenborough had been talked of in Jerusalem as an Englishwoman who after a divorce, for which her husband was not thought blameless, had, as Lady Hester Stanhope a generation earlier, come to Syria. While making a tour under Bedouin escort, her fancy was enslaved by the charms of the young Sheik Mijwell, already the possessor of four wives. He lived with her as his fifth consort, in her palace at Damascus for short periods of separation from his desert hareem. While there I refrained from indulging in the common curiosity to visit
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the lady, but in my strolls I met her in the streets. She was tall and slim and must have been attractive in early years, she evidently wondered at the presence of an English stranger in the city of her adoption at so late a season, but so our mutual glances ended. Later in her history she went to Jerusalem under the name of Mrs. Digby and there in confidences to her landlady repined at her fate. She died soon after in Damascus, and Sheik Mijwell sold her house and properties and returned to his four desert wives.
After I had paid my bill, the landlord’s brother and others pestered me so effectively for additional backshish that I found when I had left that I had been fleeced even beyond measure. Winding up the western mountains and looking back at the town, I was surprised to find that pictorially the prospect appeared less an earnest of the perfect heaven than the prophet Mahomed had found it.
Afar were whirlwinds stirring the still air, and eagles circling about the heights. Gradually we were led into a winding valley thick with trees, whose tremulous leaves the winter’s breath had tinted amber pale and deep, and these against the cerulean sky formed a design which for arrangement was reminiscent of Persian decoration. Below were busy brooks winding among groups of grateful bushes. Our steps were then for a time on the banks of a stream which lent its own bed for our feet when from steepness or overgrowth the sides were impracticable. Towards the afternoon we came to rugged passes of rock and mountain torrent, grand as ideal gorge in childhood’s fancy. One cliff was breast high in its fallen fragments, and the stream beneath tossed about unbridled like a masterful horse; it had evidently not forgotten a wild leap it had recently made, the place of which we soon reached, where all the tumbling tan-coloured waters fell and swirled, marbled in dancing foam; it was spanned by a fragile bridge, and going over this narrow road we had to study our steps to avoid the hole where the key stones had dropped into the watery bed below.
It was a delight as we came to a partial opening in the hills to see more closely the tiara of high cliffs which we had gazed on from the slope of Merom. Here the highest crest of Anti-Lebanon was ranged along a continuous wall, jagged into sharp facets, now looking as though the primeval violence which had riven the eastern mountains from Lebanon had only occurred yesterday. Time’s softening hand had no power over it. Under shadow of dark clouds we descended round a mountain to our left into the broad plain of Baalbec.
Ours was the road taken by the fugitive Christians who refused to the Arab conqueror Khalid abu al Walid either apostasy or submission. Abu Obeidah had given them with their young and invalids three days’ grace to get out of reach of the malice of Walid, the superseded commander of the Moslem army. When they were reposing on the way to Emessa and rejoicing in the assurance of safety, Walid, guided by an apostate on a shepherd’s path across the mountains, came upon them,
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and slaughtered all, the betrothed of the apostate refusing his final offer of protection.
At night we camped at Zebedeen, in the front garden of a small stone cottage, such as might have been found in Wales or Scotland. I was still unwell, and slept but little in the rainy night, starting often out of bed from fear that we should be too late for an early departure. In the dawn a final fall of rain drenched my tent, and while it was being packed I went inside the cottage, where I found all the inmates shivering round a hearth fire. Winter was coming apace from the north to take possession of Lebanon, and to bar its road ere I could ascend. With increased means, better health, and corresponding leisure, I promised myself to take advantage of my present investigation by returning to work in this neighbourhood. We passed through Anti-Lebanon, and climbed up over broken rocks to a narrow shelf of road made round the slope of a mountain which stood up on high like a mother above her clinging children.
The wind blew strongly, telling of the ascending height. I was alone, but with no feeling of desolation, not even when the sun declined in the sky, and the sunset had come. I had, indeed, good cause to be satisfied, for the golden rays lighted up honey-toned Baalbec. There were other Hadrianic buildings nigh to the main temple, and cypresses were studded about, making obeisance to Baalbec like royal servitors to their masters; the pure verdure in the plain below received the lengthening shadows of the evening, as time stretched down his long and weary limbs to sleep through his restful night.
We were greeted by the man at the khan, who undertook to give us a clean and comfortable chamber. Having seen this, and given orders for its preparation, there being still good twilight, I walked through the principal temple. The carving of all the ornament was indeed wonderfully gorgeous and artful. In Palestine I had seen no classical pagan work so finished and rich as this. It was full of decorative character not known in Herod’s time, indeed where Greek or Roman ornamentation was attempted at any period in Palestine the result is too often undeserving of close attention, a defect arising from lack of artistic training in the sculptors. A small temple we had passed on the ridge, “Dahr al Akmar,” was a miserable example of such slovenly workmanship. In the temple of Baalbec the god was indeed honoured, but while I looked, the Moslem call to prayer rang out from the village minaret, and proclaimed that the once glorious worship had been overthrown, as had the columns strewing the ground, like the slain warriors of a defeated army.
When I returned to my khan I was visited by a native Christian who brought a handful of curiosities to turn over; one was the man’s own double teeth, which he was ready to sell for a consideration.
After my supper, to escape further visitors, I went out and prowled about in the dark; but the ground was treacherous and uneven, and
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the temple was hidden in the blackness. Staring aside over the chilly plain I peered into the emptiness, my eyes were drawn to right and left from the fancy that cloudy shapes moved about. Gradually the nebulosity was beyond doubt, although it disappeared immediately that it could be made out. On the phosphorescence becoming defined, it exploded into sparks, and then I recognised that for the first time I was looking upon an ignis fatuus. This interested me, and made me peer the more intently, that I might better scan the waste of darkness. Two globes of fire on my left were singularly steady; I fixed my regard upon them, but ever they glared unchanged, except that they advanced nearer, and proved to be the eyes of an approaching beast. The muzzle  

Riuns of Baalbec

W.H.H.]

RUINS OF BAALBEC



of my gun was steadily held towards the animal as I retreated step by step, till I reached the door of the khan, where I lay down to sleep. The creatures of darkness, however, which come out from nooks and corners of ungarnished chambers allowed me but little rest. My compensation was, that I had the earliest morning for examining the ruins. I was told that Ibrahim Pasha had had the fallen stones built up into a mosque and castle, and the bewilderment caused me by this arrangement was more confusing than the disorder occasioned by successive earthquakes. I stole time for drawing by sending the muleteer cross the plain, with a promise to overtake him by fast riding. As I went on with my work, I heard the village forge beaten, the cocks crow, and the calling of the hours of prayer. Soon after mid-day I concluded that I must depart. In my final visit I observed that the keystone of the
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arch painted by Roberts had dropped lower, and was tremulous in the wind. The fallen stones which formed the ceilings of the side porches had as centres some admirably carved heads of Apollo and Diana, and in one central circle there was a portrait head of Hadrian, the donor.
We had counted too surely upon finding our road over the plain by a mark pointed out on the distant hills, but we lost our way, and had to retrace our steps considerably.
The horses, by dint of greater repose, and liberal green food, had become quite lively, and were fretful at the loss of their companions  

Temple at Baalbec

TEMPLE AT BAALBEC



of the long journey. After some hours, when I was far ahead of Issa, our mules suddenly appeared in view, and my steed grew all on fire to join them. I had no objection to the straight line he preferred, until we were stopped at the brink of a stream twenty feet wide. Jerusalem horses are not trained to amphibious habits, so mine stuck at this unfamiliar obstacle; but he did not learn patience enough to go quietly along the banks to a crossing. Cumbered with a large sketch-book on my back, and a gun on my saddle, I was not disposed to humour him, so I turned him to the stream, using my spurs. We reached the middle of the rather deep and very cold water; there I found my animal had no more mettle left than was sufficient to get him clear of the weeds, and to plod through the mud on the further bank. When we landed, he made the rest of the road to his friends in more sober mood; the sun was hidden, and the wind raked us as with cold fingers; about sunset the veil was lifted off Lebanon, but it had left a mantle of snow on all parts not exposed to the wind. In the west the sun encrimsoned the heavy pall of cloud, and deepened the slopes below into a dark indigo, upon which lingered a roseate bloom.
We hurried our fagged beasts forward, for it was already late when the ascent from the plain was reached; few people were about, but we found Deir al Akmar before it was quite dark. It appeared an abandoned labyrinth of cattle yards, and the “clean inn” which had been strongly recommended to us defied our search. No lights were visible anywhere, but when we raised a shout a man appeared out of the ground and said, “Yes,” he knew the master we inquired for by name; thereupon he became our guide through many turnings between stone walls, and had not the rain been proof that nothing was between us and the sky,
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we might have thought ourselves in the Catacombs. He stopped at the door of a yard. I looked over the walls; and it was difficult to understand where all the “comforts” I had been assured of could be found. No house at all could we discern, but after frequent knocking a man emerged from the distant corner, while the voice of another published the fact that the Khowaghat had arrived. We were evidently expected, the gate was unbolted and we were invited in. I said, “I was told you kept a hotel.”
“It is so,” he replied, and he beckoned me forward to the other end of the yard where a corner was thatched in a rough way; we alighted and went to the shelter. The low door to the inner house wall was open, and inside glowed a warm fire, lighting up what was evidently a large underground chamber. It thawed my chilled spirit to see the flickering flame, and I asked the man whether I could have a similar room for myself alone, and whether my men and animals could also be accommodated indoors.
“Perfectly,” he said, and I went back expressing my content, and bringing my horse into the yard. As I returned to the protecting alcove there was a great stir inside, and I waited near the door for the announcement that all was ready. There could be no complaint of want of life-sounds now, for the noise was that of a market town; and presently were hustled out of the low door numerous broods of cackling fowls; followed by two lowing oxen, an ass or two, some mules and a horse; and at the tail of these, rushing like a wether newly belled, came a leader followed by a small flock of sheep.
“Stop,” I shouted, “I saw only men and women in the firelight.”
“Yes,” said the host, “we are all coming out.” And behind him appeared a family of some twelve or more people aged and young, all leaving their glowing hearth. It was needful to assume an angry tone to arrest the exodus.
“I will not allow it. Let them go back, and you come and talk to me.”
The landlord approached, still pleading for his plan, but I turned towards the sheltering lean-to, where was a truck on wheels, and an old ram mangered by a halter. “Can you put that ram elsewhere, move the cart and clean the place?” I said, and in spite of remonstrance, I took the vacated nook for my lodging. The tent suspended on the two outer angles with a lantern hanging on the wall, and Issa’s cooking-fire kindled outside; I was obliged to be satisfied with the exchange.
To employ the time profitably now, while the dinner was being cooked was my next object. I was wet through and muddy; and as I had to change my clothes, it seemed desirable to enjoy the abundance of water, which I could not always procure for a good bath. Two large buckets were therefore brought, and soon I was busy, making up for the cold of the water by rubbing and scrubbing and breathing the faster. While
Sig. VOL. II. E
page: 50
thus occupied for a while, in addition to the cheerful sounds of frying, and of the ordinary talking of my company, I heard a boisterous altercation going on between Issa and certain rollicking strange voices. Abating my stampings, and brisk towelling, I called out to him to explain the cause of the quarrel.
“Why, these people are so unreasonable, ya effendi, hearing that you were having a bath all the men, women, and children came out to look through a hole in the tent. But they can’t all see at once, and I want those who were here at the beginning to go away, and make place for others, but they won’t; and those behind are laughing and quarrelling with those in the front, and I threaten that I will turn them all away if they can’t agree.”
Mauvaise honte, I think, quite spoilt my talents as a performer when I knew that I was acting in public; but, in any case, perhaps the remainder of the entertainments could not have been so diverting as the earlier part of the play. I enjoyed my supper, unconscious if strange eyes criticised my manner of eating; and after an hour or two reading tucked myself up in my trestle bed, not the less confiding in the permanence of comfort in my quarters, because the rain made increasing music in many pools close at hand.
On waking, my first inquiry was whether the storm of the night had shut up the road to the cedars. The opinion grew, as daylight came, that it would be found just practicable; and accordingly we hurried our departure, and got well on the road before full daylight came. There was no sun, but every object behind us showed out in the greatest clearness; and with a colour, the fuller and richer, for having no glare to blanch its surface. It is an equivalent of which, in England, we have more than enough, for the enchantment of sunlight, but in a climate so perseveringly dazzling as in Syria the cloud-screened light, when it occurs, is a great delight and refreshment. Anti-Lebanon during the night had passed from summer to winter. Lebanon could be seen only below the clouds, and the muleteer pointed out that the increased snow was decisive against the attempt to ascend, that it was the beginning of the winter snow, which would stop travellers from crossing until May, but I would not heed these croakings. We left all luggage behind in the head muleteer’s care, and took with us only enough for a day. We found, throughout the climb, a thick covering of rich earth on the rock which made bad weather a great obstacle to the firm footing of animals; and at first we met with many stalwart fair-haired men loading their asses with wood for winter fuel. We had to grip hard to prevent the saddle from slipping backwards, and as the road grew steeper, showers of rain and sleet warned us to lose no time in our climbing. When we reached the region of snow, the cold was to me only pleasant, but the Arabs covered their eyes and mouths with handkerchiefs and burnooses. The plain below lay all squared out to the farther slopes like patchwork; by about ten o’clock we came to the level of a canopy of
page: 51
cloud resting as a ceiling on the verdant bosoms of the range, and reaching across to the eastern slopes. Higher still in our climb we looked down on the upper surface of this drooping covering, and through several gaps could again be seen with perfect clearness the villages, streams, and temples as separate pictures. Now we got on faster afoot, I dismounted and left my horse to keep the track by himself. About noon we reached the utmost height, and a mile or two in front of us we saw an opening, forming a gulfy ravine which descended to the Mediterranean plain seven thousand feet below. To the right lay a group of what looked like small mountain firs, these we were assured were the cedars. I shouted to my men to catch my horse, which had wandered in their direction, but he enjoyed his liberty, and on my taking up the chase led me many devious tracks ere he was secured. A short ride then brought us under the trees, some twelve of them were indeed mightily trunked and limbed. I had lately read that a French savant had calculated, from examination of a transverse section of one of them, that its age was five thousand years. The majestic beauty of the landscape before us, made me regret that I had not brought our animals with us, as we might have gone on the Beyrout coast from the point we had reached. All the people were Greek Christians, and singularly polite and honest looking. They replied to my questions, that they never broke off any of the living trees, because the cedars were “the Lord’s.”
As we led our horses with toilsome care down the steep descent, we were assailed by snow and drizzle. When we got into the saddle again there was a three hours’ ride to our cheerless shelter, which we regained at dusk. For consolation, I had the satisfaction of having fulfilled a long-cherished desire. I felt it the true education of an artist to see such things, convinced, as I have ever been, that it is too much the tendency to take Nature at second-hand, to look only for that poetry which men have already interpreted to perfection, and to cater alone for that appreciation which can understand only accredited views of beauty. The object of this journey had not been the transferring of any special scene to canvas, but rather to gain a larger idea of the principles of design in creation which should affect all art. I was but pursuing in my chosen region the principles which my fellows and I had agreed upon, and which they were to follow in their own ways at home. I finished the evening with reading some pocket volumes of cherished authors, whose pages were illumined by a lantern hung up in the corner of my bivouac.
My way northward by land had now ended. I turned to the south, and in the evening we encamped at Zahle with a running stream at our side. Resting the next day, I took the opportunity to walk about and observe the folk. They all looked well and comely, and some of the girls were beautiful; they were merry, and amused themselves good-naturedly at the solitary Englishman walking through their village and making his salutations.
page: 52
This happy home of peace and innocent mirth was soon after to be the centre of carnage, a place of revelry for incarnate demons!
During all the first half of the century there had been a full recognition of the might of England, and of her ability to punish outrage on Christians in Turkey, which had kept the worst spirits of evil afraid to show their heads. Britain’s power had been exhibited so strikingly under the eyes of Egypt and Syria, that in the Arab’s proverbial talk they held it to be more than merely of this world. At Aboukir Bay under Nelson, at Alexandria under Sir Ralph Abercrombie, at Acre under Sir Sydney Smith, the Moslems had followed the course of British victories, and they noted the further course of the Napoleonic War with wonder, and epitomised their conclusions by saying that Apollyon—the name they gave Napoleon—had overcome every nation, but England had destroyed him. The traditions of the previous generation had prepared young and old in 1837 to see Ibrahim Pasha defeated at a stroke, and when Sir Robert Napier arrived at Acre, exploded the powder magazine in an hour, and then with his marines drove out the Egyptian army, all was looked upon as a matter of course. This confirmed the earlier estimate of England’s masterfulness, so that when she with her allies took up the cause of Turkey and declared war against Russia in 1854, the expectation of the Mahomedan world was that every defence of our enemy would at once vanish before army and navy. Now, our long-retarded and still incomplete triumph had marred our prestige, and it was easy to see that we should have to fight for it all again in the East. The French had escaped commissariat disasters in the Crimea, and their regiments had figured in telling manner at the end of the long-continued Inkerman battle, so such respect as was still entertained by the bulk of Mahomedans for Christian forces was transferred to our rivals, whose prowess had not before been so fully recognised by them. The massacre in the Lebanon was the earliest outcome of the diminished fear of Europe in the minds of Druse and Moslem. The Persian War, the Chinese War, and the Indian Mutiny came as the price of our loss of prestige, but when it was seen that the issue proved the God of Battles had not forsaken us, and that we finally vanquished our too hasty assailants, Orientals again realised that savage instincts could not be indulged without count of a severe reckoning with Christendom.
Going along the road that led to Beyrout, which was to be my place of embarkation for the seat of war, I speculated on the future prospects of our arms; this national question occupied my attention in alternation with the thought of what the members of our fraternity had done and were doing, and how my best friends would care for the small store of work I should be able to show them. My curiosity was the greater, as, having assured them by post that I was on the point of starting for home, I had received but few letters for the last months.
While I was still proceeding south, the snowy peak of Hermon ever seemed to accompany me, and for a day it was my marching companion,
page: 53
 

Halt for the Night, Zahle

W.H.H.]

HALT FOR THE NIGHT, ZAHLE



page: 54
but when I reached the road from Damascus I had to leave it behind, and the sea was then my attraction, entertaining my eyes and drawing me on to Beyrout.  

Constantinople

W.H.H.]

CONSTANTINOPLE



We passed companies going to Damascus, and we came upon a small tribe of Bedouin pitching their simple tents; farther on we encountered a woman of their party, who was wailing bitterly over her prostrate  

Smyrna Roadstead

W.H.H.]

SMYRNA ROADSTEAD 1



husband. She turned, begging us to come to her help. I dismounted, and, procuring the brandy flask from Issa, I poured some down the fainting man’s throat. When he revived he was suspicious that it
Transcribed Footnote (page 54):

1 When I put the last touch to this sketch on board the Tancred, I put down my pencil to take up a sword to help quell a mutiny of furious Bashi-Bazouks, November 1855.

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was forbidden drink, and pushed it from him, saying it was “fire.” Assuring him that it was but medicine, I gave him more, after which he arose and walked to his friends.
When I reached Beyrout I had to settle accounts with honest Issa, the most truthful and trustworthy Arab I had met. In fulfilment of my promise to Graham, I sent him by Jaffa back to Jerusalem with the tents and animals. Long before I again trod the soil of Palestine the good fellow died.
I took my berth in the Messagerie boat Le Tancred, which had come  

Captain Pigeon

CAPTAIN PIGEON



to Beyrout on its way to Constantinople. The vessel was crammed with Mahomedan passengers. Five hundred returned pilgrims from Mecca were enough to cumber the deck, but in addition there were over one hundred Bashi-Bazouks on their way—not perhaps for the first time—to join General Pearson’s contingent, and also about fifteen Syrians going to the Crimea for the land transport service, amongst whom—as his mocking fate would have it—was my unvaliant Oosdoom servant Issa Nicola. Unbidden and unknown to me was another fellow-traveller, the cholera.
Ours was a memorable journey, and its annals are doubtless written in the records of the society to which the vessel belonged. There was much adventure on the yellow-flagged way; the main event can scarcely be classed as belonging to artistic story, so I will not retard the resumption of the Pre-Raphaelite history by entering here into a sea yarn. Yet, to give honour to whom honour is due, had it not been for the sagacious valour of Captain Pigeon of the ship’s company, the Bashi-Bazouks in an attempted mutiny would have prevented the good vessel and every European passenger upon it, from ever arriving in the sweet waters of the Bosphorus. I finally parted with the brave man in Kasatcha Bay. When I arrive in the regions beyond the final harbour of this life’s journey, he will not be the last comrade of its voyage that I should care to greet. I made a drawing of him for his good wife in Marseilles. Constantimople delighted my soul by its excessive beauty
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Peace

PEACE



 

War

W.H.H.]

WAR



Youthful Designs—Leigh Hunt's “Captain Sword and Captain Pen”

  • “Two loving women, lingering yet
  • Ere the fire is out, are met,
  • Talking sweetly, time-beguil’d,
  • One of her bridegroom, one her child,
  • The bridegroom he. They have receiv’d
  • Happy letters, more believ’d
  • For public news, and feel the bliss
  • The heavenlier on a night like this,
  • They think him hous’d, they think him blest,
  • 10 Curtain’d in the core of rest,
  • Danger distant, all good near;
  • Why hath their ‘Good-night’ a tear?
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Peace

PEACE



 

War

WAR



  • “Behold him! By a ditch he lies
  • Clutching the wet earth, his eyes
  • Beginning to be mad. In vain
  • His tongue still thirsts to lick the rain,
  • They mock’d but now his homeward tears;
  • And ever and anon he rears
  • His legs and knees with all their strength,
  • And then as strongly thrusts at length.
  • Rais’d, or stretch’d, he cannot bear
  • 10The wound that girds him, weltering there;
  • And ‘Water!’—he cries, with moonward stare.”
Leigh Hunt: Captain Sword and Captain Pen.
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and picturesqueness. Why, unless staleness be the inducement, exhibitions should be full of pictures of Venice, already divinely represented by Turner, and why there should never be any illustrations of the Byzantine city, it is difficult to understand.  

Rough Sketch for Nativity

ROUGH SKETCH FOR NATIVITY



The spectacle of Christian nations contending in blood together in the Crimea was of humiliating sadness, and filled me with greater desire to develop the war subjects from Leigh Hunt’s Captain Sword and Captain Pen, which I had designed for the Cyclographic Club at the age of nineteen.
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CHAPTER IV

1856

It is said that Jealousy is Love, but I deny it; for though Jealousy be procured by Love, as Ashes are by Fire, yet Jealousy extinguishes Love as Ashes smother the Flame.— La Reine de Navarre.

The character of perfection as Culture conceives it, is in growing and becoming, not in having and resting; here, too, it coincides with Religion.— Matthew Arnold: Culture and Anarchy.

In January I returned from the Crimea to Constantinople, and thence by way of Malta to Marseilles. I had not quitted the City on the Bosphorus before news of the armistice had arrived. This being regarded as a prelude to peace, a large proportion of the officers had leave to return to England, so all the ships were crowded. I travelled from Marseilles to Paris with many English officers and officials. It was invigorating to see them looking forward to the honours they had so justly won; I had been away the full time of the campaign, and I was led to consider the difference of regard for their work and mine. I also had been trying to do the State some service, but alone. The soldiers’ struggle was of immediate result, while of mine the value, if any, would be discovered only in the future. I heartily concurred in the immediate reward offered for active service, and that such work as mine should find any honours it might possibly deserve in the far future.
I had met my friend Mike Halliday at Pera coming back from the Crimea, and we travelled together to Paris.
In the Crimea, Halliday had seen much of John Luard, who a few years before had left the army to become an artist, and was now staying behind with a former mess-mate in his hut, to complete a picture of its interior. This erstwhile son of Mars had been placed with John Phillip, to be initiated into the service of Art; Phillip soon recommended him to the care of Millais, who took him into his close friendship and guidance. Luard had lately been painting in Millais’ discarded studio in Langham Place, and Halliday advised me to go and knock up the servant there for the spare bed. We arrived in London about 3 A.M., and I left my companion to go to his lodgings, while I went to Langham Chambers. To my surprise my excellent friend Lowes Dickinson opened the door, welcoming me with as great cordiality as any long-lost wanderer ever received.
I had been away over two years. It was now the beginning of February 1856. Halliday and I took a house together in Pimlico, in
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which we each found a studio, and arranged another in an upper room for Martineau, who from diffidence, had not got on well with his work without an adviser. Halliday, who had been originally nothing but an earnest amateur, had been taken in hand by Millais, and under his guidance the picture “Measuring for the Wedding Ring” had been finished at Winchelsea.
This history is not one of personal or family affairs foreign to the progress of the reform of art by the members of our Brotherhood and its  

Cemetery, Pera

W. H. H]

CEMETERY, PERA



Circle; I would avoid as much as possible to speak of the many other interests which come into the life of every man. But an artist, however devoted to his pursuit, cannot but have his right hand arrested or accelerated by the private circumstances of the family to which he belongs, so that I must say that the legal troubles suffered by my good father had now seriously undermined his health, a fact which involved me in duties demanding close attention.
One of my sisters had been attending a School of Art, and had determined to adopt the profession; I had therefore to give her personal superintendence of a continuous kind.
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No tangible combination now showed itself among the working and the sleeping members of our Brotherhood; neither was there any professed tie between us and the outside adherents of our Reform. For two years there had been no night excursions, no boating, and no corporate life of any kind. In earlier days it seemed as though we could always rely upon one another, if not for collaboration, at least for good-fellowship and cordiality; it proved, however, that these, too, were things of the past never to be revived. When I called upon Brown and asked him about Gabriel Rossetti, he told me that he was in Oxford, where the University “had thrown themselves at his feet” in recognition of his poetic and artistic accomplishments; he added that he was not, as some people said, engaged to Miss Siddal, but that she stood in the position of pupil to him, and that she had done some designs of the most poetic character; and that she had recently been entertained by Dr. and Mrs. Acland at Oxford. Brown's feeling of mistrust of the Academy and that of the Rossettis, as he reported it, was now more deep-seated than ever, and he dwelt on the idea that we should not longer try to propitiate the Body.
The continuous contribution of works by Millais and myself to Trafalgar Square 1 had not been enough to negative the suspicion on the part of our elders which the frequent diatribes of our anti-Academy members excited; for the satirical tone adopted by the literary entourage of our Brotherhood was constantly bruited about, provoking severe penalty upon us who were still relying upon Academy toleration.
Gentle Christina Rossetti's satirical verse is record of the tone of irreconcilable hostility to the Academy prevalent in her immediate circle. This not only conveyed the idea that the Institution was one to which much needed reform would be wholesome, but that it was a power altogether destructive of the true spirit of art, and one which it had been our main object to overthrow, that any connection with it must be fatal to our original ambition, and a signal of falling from our first estate.
The lines had been written upon the election of Millais as an Associate two years previously—
  • The P.R.B. is in its decadence:
  • For Woolner in Australia cooks his chops,
  • And Hunt is yearning for the land of Cheops.
  • D. G. Rossetti shuns the vulgar optic:
  • While William M. Rossetti merely lops
  • His B's in English disesteemed as Coptic.
  • Calm Stephens in the twilight smokes his pipe,
  • But long the dawning of his public day:
  • And he at last, the champion, Great Millais,
  • 10Attaining Academic opulence,
  • Winds up his signature with A.R.A.
  • So rivers merge in the perpetual sea;
  • So luscious fruit must fall when over-ripe:
  • And so the consummated P.R.B.
Transcribed Footnote (page 61):

1 The original building of the Royal Academy.

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Brown was full of projects for the bringing together of the original Brotherhood and its subsequent followers to act as a power in the profession, which in his view it had now failed to do.
I had desired to see the members of the Brotherhood and those immediately connected with them, in order to learn the position of our affairs. It had already become apparent that the result of our impetuous combination would fall far short of our original expectation.
Deverell had been so hindered by family troubles that he had not been able to do any important work after his probationary election, and at his death no proposal had been made to fill the vacancy. William Rossetti had now entirely given up the practice of drawing, and on account of the malignity of the critics Gabriel Rossetti had not resumed  

Death of Chatterton

Henry Wallis]

DEATH OF CHATTERTON



public exhibition. Millais and I, therefore, were left with a following of new converts to represent our cause. Woolner had come back from his Tom Tiddler's Ground without much heavier pockets than he started with, having, indeed, nothing more than a chance in a public competition, in London for a statue of Wentworth to be erected in Melbourne, and some small patronage for medallions and busts, gained mainly by the introductions of Carlyle, Tennyson, and Patmore. It was impossible, therefore, to resume the dream that a tangible Brotherhood still existed. One effort was made to repeat the system of the Cyclographic Society, in which certain accomplished amateurs—Lady Waterford, the Hon. Mary Boyle, and others—were to take part. A handsome folio was provided, and in due course sent to Gabriel for his contribution, but there its known history ended.
Several men outside our Body were openly working on our lines.
page: 63
 

April Love

Arthur Hughes]

APRIL LOVE



page: 64
Ford Madox Brown with his picture, “The Last of England,” was now altogether adopting our principle; his picture of “Work” was being  

The Sailor Boy's Return

Arthur Hughes]

THE SAILOR BOY's RETURN



conducted on our plan, but it still was some years from completion. Wallis was painting his never-to-be-forgotten “Death of Chatterton”;  

Arthur Hughes

ARTHUR HUGHES



Arthur Hughes was moving forward in remarkable poetic power, as shown by his “April Love”; Windus of Liverpool was also an independent convert, exhibiting some ingeniously dramatic pictures, after his “Burd Helen”; and Burton, with his “Wounded Cavalier,” in the next Exhibition gained deserved repute.
Certain followers were admired mainly for their mechanical skill, which in some cases was of a very complete kind, although wanting in imaginative strain. An increasing number of the public approved our methods, perhaps the more readily when no poetic fancy complicated the claim made by the works. Time can be trusted to do justice to the relative values of poetic and prosaic work, though, as Hogarth said, “posterity is a bad paymaster.”
One sure mark of the increasing estimation of our movement was
page: 65
shown in the continued apportioning of the £50 annual prize at Liverpool to artists working on our principles. It had been awarded to me in 1851 for my “Valentine rescuing Sylvia.” Millais had gained it in 1852 for “The Huguenot,” in the following year it was awarded to me for “Claudio and Isabella,” and it was again obtained by Millais in a subsequent year. Mark Antony was also favoured for a landscape which bore strong traits of our manner, and Madox Brown in 1856 for his “Christ washing Peter's Feet,” and again in 1857-8 when his “Chaucer in the Court of Edward III” gained the prize. Further, the Royal Society of Fine Arts in Birmingham had accorded the prize of £60 to me in the year 1853 1 for “Strayed Sheep.”
In addition to these influences upon our Body a circumstance of great portent must now be treated unreservedly.
So many persons were, and some still are, under an unworthy impression concerning the separation of Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin and the remarriage of the lady to John Everett Millais, that it has been, to all friends of either who know the truth, painful to leave the circumstances ever open to misinterpretation. Mr. Ruskin in his Præterita naturally avoided the subject, and so the story remained untold, but it was only a question how long it could remain so. In the meantime, those who knew the facts were becoming fewer, and the danger of a permanent misunderstanding was increasing until Mr. Frederic Harrison, 2 in his monograph on Ruskin, so far broke silence that henceforth further reserve would involve injustice. Happily, the fuller truth exculpates every one involved from all but error of judgment. To understand the situation it must be realised that John Ruskin, as has been already publicly stated, while still young in manhood had been deeply wounded by the disappointment of his affections, and it was only after a visit to Switzerland and some stay there that a serious weakness of his lungs which had supervened was overcome. On his return his parents watched his condition with devoted care, and were glad the while to exercise hospitality toward the daughter of Mr. Grey of Perth, a friend of their youth; she in her youthful beauty and liveliness seemed to distract their son's brooding sadness. It was for her that he had written the story “The King of the Golden River.” The juvenile guest showed an untiring interest in the art questions which Ruskin was pursuing, and with his life-long delight in young people, he took her about with him to exhibitions and galleries, bestowing constant attention on her pleasure and instruction. The good mother and father rejoiced at these signs of distraction from memory of their son's former grief; and the mother, fondly, feeling herself justified, told him that she had the authority of his father to say that they had regarded with continual delight the gentleness shown to Euphemia, and she assured him that they hoped he would himself realise that his attachment to her was of a
Transcribed Footnote (page 65):

1Birmingham Journal, October 15, 1853. “But above all their School is Nature, and their genius enables them to expound its mysteries, apply its teachings, and make manifest to the less gifted of their fellows its manifold beauties."

Transcribed Footnote (page 65):

2Mr. Collingwood in 1893 had written to somewhat the same effect.

Sig. VOL. II. F
page: 66
tender nature, and no longer delay to make them all happy by declaring his affection for the lady. The son avowed surprise that this construction should be put upon his attentions to Miss Grey, and said that, since it was impossible his feelings towards her could ever be of warmer character, he felt forced by his mother's action to discontinue the interest which had proceeded only from a desire to entertain her and aid her improving taste. The mother thereupon begged him to forget that he had been misunderstood, and asked that as Effie knew nothing of this appeal to him, he should not make any difference whatever in his behaviour to her. The threatened interruption to Ruskin's attention to Miss Grey did not therefore occur, and his gentleness towards her was so unremitting that, as time went on, the parents again began to entertain hopes that their son could be induced to marry. Once more the mother spoke to him, this time much more pressingly, and assured him that, although he did not recognise the fact himself, she and his father were convinced that he was deeply enamoured of Effie, and that, if once he gave up his reserve, she would accept him, and as his wife be a centre of delight to them all. She besought her son not to delay acting on their wishes. Ruskin still held that his parents mistook his feelings, but agreed that if in spite of this candid confession they still desired him to act on their conviction, he would be obedient to their wish; accordingly he made his proposal, which the lady was guilelessly persuaded to accept. It can cause but little wonder that this marriage, which was celebrated at Perth, did not prove a happy one.
It was on distant terms that the two passed six years of their lives. Mr. Ruskin was ever ceremoniously polite to Mrs. Ruskin, and, doubtless, many regarded them as the most enviable of couples. She was always elegantly attired and adorned with exquisite jewels, and was admired for her beauty and bon esprit wherever she appeared in company with her genius-endowed partner, but observant visitors not infrequently remarked upon the absence of signs of deep affection and intimacy between them. After my first acquaintance with Ruskin, he invited Millais and me to stay with them for some months at the Bridge of Allan, but I was forced to relinquish the engagement; Millais, with some other guests, was, however, detained in this neighbourhood till late in the autumn, painting. Mike Halliday, returning from Scotland, reported that Millais on occasions had openly remarked to Ruskin upon his want of display of interest in the occupations and entertainments of Mrs. Ruskin. 1 Remonstrances grew into complaint, and gradually the guest found himself championing the lady against her legal lord and master. It was in the mood thus engendered that Millais had parted with the pair in December 1853, when he had returned to town to see me off on my Eastern journey. Ruskin still gave sittings to Millais in his own studio for the completion of his portrait. In the following April Mrs. Ruskin left her home one morning without notice and went
Transcribed Footnote (page 66):

It is needless to enter into further details of the words spoken at the time.

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direct by train to her father's house at Perth. Mr. Grey, a Writer to the Signet, immediately took steps to have the marriage declared null and void. Ruskin did not appear to contest the evidence, and accordingly the lady was liberated, and both released from their false position. Millais, to protect the lady from any possible misconception, determined that he would not see her until a twelvemonth had passed from the date of her flight from Ruskin's house, and on its anniversary in 1855 he was married to her, in her maiden name, in her father's drawing-room at Perth. The new state of things was not really in opposition to Ruskin's desires, as he himself assured me later in life, but now that it was attained, many friends would insist that he was an injured man, and certainly he had to suffer constant annoyance from the intermeddling of the vulgar officious.
The breach thus occasioned was very unfortunate for our Body. It became obvious at once that no one could, for some years at least, be cordially intimate with both Millais and Ruskin. Millais was my first and far closer friend, he had in the course he took towards the lady he married behaved in a thoroughly honourable and straightforward manner, and I could have no choice but to follow my inclination and temporarily lose the gratification of my sincere desire for further friendship with Ruskin. A bitter controversy arose in society about the case; I always did battle for my early friend, and certainly the misconstructions and falsehoods that had to be confronted were many.
Soon after my return to England I went up to Oxford, and found all my Syrian boxes there. Mr. Combe, after the arrival of the painting of “The Scapegoat,” had indefatigably written in turn to all those who had given me commissions; but each had replied that the subject differed too widely from my previous works fitly to represent me. One art lover in the North, after expressing this opinion, wrote that he should like to have the work sent to him for a few days, but my friend had not felt authorised to accede, and thus I was still the proud owner of the picture and also of a fast-dwindling exchequer. I was glad of the opportunity of unpacking my pictures and drawings to obtain the judgment of my friends. Two or three months’ separation from the works to a great degree dissipated the prejudice nurtured by familiarity with them, and my fresh judgment was a benefit to me. It comforted me to believe that the amount of painting achieved was not altogether so disappointing as I had feared, and I found that the parts finished in “The Temple” subject interested my friends greatly.
My little reserve of money in Mr. Combe's hands was almost expended in setting up my new home. I indulged optimistic dreams of bringing “The Temple” picture to completion before giving time to aught else. I obtained from influential directors introductions to the masters of Jewish schools, who allowed me to select boys from whom I painted, and I found a valuable model in a young Hungarian Jew, but
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Morning Prayer

W. H. H.]

MORNING PRAYER



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I was soon stopped in my desperate attempt to advance by finding that I had already outrun my balance.
“Pot-boilers” are so-called because they keep the kitchen range alight. I had to raise money as quickly as possible, the water-colour drawings I had made in the East did not at first command purchasers, for the prejudice ruling that an artist should paint only one kind of subject was always standing in my way. At that time picture-dealers told me there was a great demand for replicas of my works exhibited years ago, which when they first appeared had been roughly abused; I therefore took up the original studies of these, and elaborated them into finished pictures. These works escaped those critics’ diatribes which always met works incorporating a perfectly new idea, and thus timid purchasers were not frightened. Amongst those I now took up was the original sketch for “The Eve of St. Agnes.”
When in Syria I had received an offer from two engravers of £300 for the copyright of “The Light of the World,” but I had not felt sure that they would do the work satisfactorily, and refused to close with the proposal. Gambart now asked me to make a price with him for the design. I asked him the sum hitherto mentioned; but he objected on the ground that there was the chance of the public not liking the print, and then no one would divide his loss, while if it became popular, photographers throughout England would pirate the work, and the prosecution of each would cost him £70; while the only penalty to them would be the loss of a camera. In France, where the law treated piracy as a penal offence, the publisher was safe from such a violation of his rights, and so could pay the artist better. With this conclusion to the debate the business ended for the time; but in a few months the monetary pressure upon me became more stringent, and I was induced to accept £200 as my reward. One of the strongest marks of all exhibited Pre-Raphaelite painting, from the time of my “Rienzi,” was that the background was not done either from conventional fancy or memory, but from Nature, and if it could be avoided, not indirectly from sketches, but direct from the scene itself on to the canvas of the final picture. Madox Brown's first effort of this kind in “Pretty Baa Lambs” has been already referred to, he still continued to work on this sweet and innocent subject for some years, making the background more delightful; he painted the background of his “Work” from a picturesque part of Hampstead Road, high up towards the Heath.
To follow our method more religiously he had taken a lodging near his chosen background. For an easel he constructed a rack on the tray of a costermonger's barrow, above the canvas were rods with curtains suspended, which could be turned on a hinge, so that they shrouded the artist while painting. When all was prepared, the barrow was wheeled to the desired post; and forthwith Brown worked the whole day, surrounded of course by a little mob of idlers and patient children, who wondered when the real performance was going to begin. Once a
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passing ruffian hurled a stone across the road, so that it should splash into a puddle close to him. Brown was naturally indignant; but ere he could act in any way the companions of the offender turned upon him, and covered him with contempt, asking why he should hinder another from getting his living. In 1856, when the background was completed, and he was painting on the figures, he told me that Ruskin was patronising Rossetti and was using his influence with his friends to buy drawings of him. It was evident that Ruskin was not disposed to hold out the  

Experimental Design for “Cophetua”

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN FOR “COPHETUA”



same helping hand to Brown himself, or to express sympathy for his work. There was a great difference between our refusal of Brown in early years as a nominal “Brother,” and our welcoming him as an outside convert like other men whose art we admired, so that when he joined with Rossetti to get up a collection of small pictures for a private exhibition, I willingly contributed some Eastern landscapes. Rooms were secured in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square; and when all was arranged I went to a private view. Rossetti was there, and immediately on my arrival called me to come and see “the stunning drawings” that the Sid (the name by which Miss Siddal went) had sent. I complimented them fully, and said that had I come upon them without
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Sketch for “Cophetua

SKETCH FOR “COPHETUA”



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explanation I should have assumed they were happy designs by Walter Deverell.
“Deverell!” he exclaimed; “they are a thousand times better than anything he ever did.”
As I did not probably realise any special interest Gabriel felt in Miss Siddal at the time, I had thought that to compare the attempts of the lady,—who had exercised herself in design for only two years, and had had no fundamental training,—with those of Gabriel's dear deceased  

Trial Sketch for “The Lady of Shalott”

W. H. H.]

TRIAL SKETCH FOR “THE LADY OF SHALOTT”



friend, who had satisfactorily gone through the drilling of the Academy schools, would be taken as a compliment. But Rossetti received it as an affront, and his attitude confirmed me in the awakened painful suspicion that he was seeking ground of complaint against his former colleagues.
In non-painting hours I was now preparing designs for the illustrated edition of Tennyson. Millais had in Scotland already done the greater part of his set for the volume, and was still increasing his store. The publisher, Moxon, called upon me with many repinings that the book was so long delayed. I was steadily fulfilling my undertaking to do six illustrations and no other work, until they were completed. He revealed
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that his heart was sore about Rossetti, who had not sent any drawing, and now, when Moxon called, was “not at home,” and would not reply to letters.
As the price to be paid for each drawing was £25, and Rossetti was in pecuniary straits notwithstanding continual aid from his brother, his aunts, and Ruskin, it was difficult to account for his apparently determined neglect, so I took the first opportunity to see him. He avowed at once that he did not care to do any because all the best subjects had  

Trial Sketch for “The Lady of Shalott”

W. H. H.]

TRIAL SKETCH FOR “THE LADY OF SHALOTT”



been taken by others. “You, for instance, have appropriated ‘The Lady of Shalott,’ which was the one I care for most of all,” he pleaded.
“You should have chosen at the beginning; I only had a list sent me of unengaged subjects,” I said. “You know I made a drawing from this poem of the ‘Breaking of the Web’ at least four years ago. It was only put aside when the paper was so worn that it would not bear a single new correction. A friend and his wife came to my studio, I showed them this embryo design, with other drawings in my portfolio,
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Experimental Sketch for “The Lady of Shalott”

EXPERIMENTAL SKETCH, “THE LADY OF SHALOTT”



 

Design for “The Lady of Shalott,” from Wood Block

W. H. H.]

DESIGN FOR “THE LADY OF SHALOTT,” FROM WOOD BLOCK



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and the lady expressing a great liking for it, begged it of me, reminding me that I had never given her any design for her album. My protestations that I was dissatisfied with the drawing, except as a preparation for future work, were of no avail, and I yielded on condition that it should not be shown publicly, and that it should be mine when needed for future use. I have ever since been nervous lest this immature invention should be regarded as my finished idea, so I was glad on reading the list of poems chosen for the Tennyson book to find this one at my disposal. The drawing, as you may see, is now far advanced. I had determined also to illustrate the later part of the poem, but I will give that up to you  

Design for Haroun Al Raschid

W. H. H.]

DESIGN FOR HAROUN AL RASCHID



if you like and any of the other subjects that I have booked, so you have no cause now for driving old Moxon to desperation.”
Gabriel then saw the publisher, and the matter was arranged, he stipulating that the price should be five pounds more than the other designers were receiving. So often however did the poor expectant publisher get disappointed in the delivery of each block, that it was said when, soon after, Moxon quitted this world of worry and vexation, that the book had been the death of him!
The illustrated volume was in the end a commercial failure. Those who liked the work of artists long established in favour felt that the pages on which our designs appeared destroyed the attractiveness of the volume, and the few who approved of our inventions would not give the price for the publication, because there was so large a proportion of the contributions of a kind which they did not value.
Messrs. Freemantle in 1901 brought out an edition of the poems
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with our illustrations alone. Mr. J. Pennell, an American popular writer on art as well as an accomplished black-and-white draftsman, has stated in his introduction to this volume that our drawings were based in style upon examples of those executed for books by Menzel in Germany.
It is, I know, a loss not to have seen all that this renowned book illustrator has done, but in fact I know him only by two drawings  

Design for Haroun Al Raschid

W. H. H.]

DESIGN FOR HAROUN AL RASCHID



exhibited by him about the year 1885 at the old Water-Colour Gallery, and thus any resemblance between my woodcuts and his could have been only accidental.
Millais I am sure did not even see the water-colours. The examples of modern German drawings, besides those by Fürich, that could have influenced us, were those published in about the ’forties, and many of these were much admired by all our Circle. These were nearly always in outline as were Retzch's designs to Shakespeare, traceable from the example of Flaxman. We also looked with deep interest upon Rethel's
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“Death as a Friend” and “Death as an Enemy;” but while we admired these, his pencilling we found too subservient to that of Albert Dürer. I highly reverenced the drawings of the Nuremburg master, his fluency in the method he had settled upon for expressing himself, but the regularity of his shading gave a sameness in texture to all objects which was foreign to my ideals.
Millais, it may be assumed, had the same judgment, and, wisely or not, we followed our own instincts in our methods of expression. Whether Millais or Rossetti had seen Menzel's illustrations, I am unable to say, but Millais and I had not the time to go about to stray exhibitions, to  

Lady Godiva

LADY GODIVA



booksellers’ shops, or elsewhere, to find examples of unknown continental work. Rossetti certainly had more disposition to rout out new publications, but he never spoke to me of Menzel's achievements.
The Exhibition season drew nigh. Millais came up to town with a great store of work. It was indeed a delight to me to see him happy after bitter troubles, and now talking joyfully of his home. 1 He, more
Transcribed Footnote (page 77):

Later letters of ’56 and ’57 illustrate Millais' delight in his little children—1856.

The baby is growing a dear little fellow, and I find myself approaching the confines of doting imbecility. Whether it is the natural result of having a baby or not I cannot say, but certainly I find the greatest pleasure in watching my boy in his little shoutings and comical ways. When I was occasionally called upon as a bachelor to enter into the feelings of fond parents who in like manner delightedly watched the movements of their children, I used to think how far gone they were in obliviousness of the outer world in supposing for

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than any of those who had seen “The Scapegoat” understood it, and was touched by the desolation of the scene and pathos of the subject; he was encouraging too about my unfinished work; and as I was until a day or two before the sending-in day foolishly counting upon completing “The Lantern Maker's Courtship” for the Exhibition, he good-naturedly volunteered to sit for a figure in the background. As Millais  

Oriana

ORIANA



was leaving my studio, we heard Ruskin being ushered up; but a meeting was avoided.
Transcribed Footnote (page 78):

one instant that I could sympathise with them in their admiration. Now I understand all this and pay visits on tip-toe to the nursery to kiss my boy before I go to bed, but I shall be very careful in my selection of victims who shall visit the precincts of the nursery. I wish the nation would give me a few of Turner's wildest productions, “in his third more extravagant manner,” as The Times has it, to decorate a screen for my boy who is so fond of watching the fire and scarlet colour that I am sure he would appreciate William Mallard's latest efforts. I wish you could come and see me now and then, and let my boy pull your beard.

My boy is growing so delightful that I am sure you would love him if you saw him now he is growing wise and so prettily playful. He plays Bo Peep of his own accord in a great bed pulling the sheets over his little round face and suddenly discovering himself. He sits up without aid now and keeps me company for considerable time, absorbed in mystical evolutions with a large hog's hair brush which is like a wand in his hand.

Ever yours affectionately,

Jack.

Annat Lodge, Perth,

Sunday evening, 1857.

I find my baby robs me of a great deal of my time, as I am continually in the nursery watching its progress and its ever-changing expression.

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Experimental Designs for “Oriana”

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS FOR “ORIANA”



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John Luard had earned the love of our Circle, and had now come back with his first picture from the Crimea. It represented an officer opening a newly arrived box from home, and taking out from it a folded miniature of some one, sacred for his eyes alone. Concealing his interest from his companions, he is painted as furtively putting the portrait into his breast. It was in the studio in Langham Place that Luard's picture was seen, and here Millais showed his new works.
During the war it had become a scandal that several officers with family influence had managed to get leave to return on “urgent private affairs.” Millais had felt with others the shame of this practice, and he undertook a picture to illustrate the luxurious nature of these “private affairs.” A young officer was being caressed by his wife, and surrounded by his children, the substitutes for those laurels which he ought by rules of War to be gathering. When the painting was nearly finished the announcement of Peace arrived. What was to be done? The call for satire on carpet heroes was out of date; the painter adroitly adapted his work to the changing circumstances, and put The Times in the hands of the officer, who has read the news which they were all patriotically rejoicing over; he with a sling supporting a wounded arm to represent that he had nobly done his part towards securing the peace.
The second picture was of “Burning Leaves.” It may be said to be the first of a series of inventions of his, in which great consideration was given to the posing of the figures, while not unapt for the task engaging them, a certain poetic dignity breathes through them. In our walk to Long Ditton in 1851 he had anticipated the sweet reminiscences awakened by odour of burning leaves. His third picture was of a Highland soldier in the trenches at Sebastopol reading a letter from home. While I was realising the difficulty of re-establishing myself in the favour of the public, the amount of work that he had completed for exhibition acted as a new reproach to me. Visitors who came to see what I had brought from the East, had naturally expected to find some large figure picture, and when I showed “The Scapegoat” many expressed incredulity that this was the only finished canvas I had, and decided, as others had done, that the subject was not in my line. Some approved my water-colours, but for a similar reason no one then offered to buy any. Augustus Egg's prophecy that I should have to re-make my reputation from the beginning was fulfilled.
Gambart, the picture-dealer, was ever shrewd and entertaining. He came in his turn to my studio, and I led him to “The Scapegoat.”
“What do you call that?”
“‘The Scapegoat.’”
“Yes; but what is it doing?”
“You will understand by the title, Le bouc expiatoire. ”
“But why ‘expiatoire’?” he asked.
“Well, there is a book called the Bible, which gives an account of the animal. You will remember.”
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“No,” he replied, “I never heard of it.”
“Ah, I forgot, the book is not known in France, but English people read it more or less,” I said, “and they would all understand the story of the beast being driven into the wilderness.”
“You are mistaken. No one would know anything about it, and if I bought the picture it would be left on my hands. Now, we will see,” replied the dealer. “My wife is an English lady, there is a friend of hers, an English girl, in the carriage with her, we will ask them up, you shall tell them the title; we will see. Do not say more.”
The ladies were conducted into the room.
“Oh how pretty! what is it?” they asked.
“It is ‘The Scapegoat,’” I said.
There was a pause. “Oh yes,” they commented to one another, “it is a peculiar goat, you can see by the ears, they droop so.”
The dealer then, nodding with a smile towards me, said to them, “It is in the wilderness.”
The ladies: “Is that the wilderness now? Are you intending to introduce any others of the flock?” And so the dealer was proved to be right, and I had over-counted on the picture's intelligibility. To console Gambart for his disappointment at the unpopularity of my picture, I introduced him to Halliday and his picture of “Measuring for the Wedding Ring,” which he at once purchased. It was destined to achieve a great popularity; indeed, an English engraving and a German piracy gave it a transient European reputation.
Some of the clergy avowed interest in my picture. I wished with all my heart their stipends had been large enough to enable them to become patrons.
While the picture of the Goat devoted to “Azazel” 1 was being exhibited, the public accepted without demur the traditional interpretation put upon it of its being the unhappy bearer of the sins of others, and foredoomed to suffer. However, there was a school of theologians, who denounced the work as heretical in its signification; to them the goat should be the bearer of heaven's blessings and represent the risen and glorified Saviour. Thoughtful readings of the particulars connected with this sacrifice had led me to conclude that the common interpretation of the intention was more in accordance with the understanding of it at the time of Christ than that of such modern theologians, and that the Apostles regarded it as a symbol of the Christian Church, teaching both them and their followers submission and patience under affliction. Jesus Christ had borne the sins of the Jewish people and had put an end to blood sacrifices for ever. He taught His disciples that the persecution He suffered would also follow them. His spirit had ascended to God, but His Church remained on earth subject to all the hatred of the unconverted world.
Transcribed Footnote (page 81): 1

1 Azazel is the spirit to which the Scapegoat is devoted. The goat sacrificed in the Temple was devoted to the Lord.

Sig. VOL. II. G
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One important part of the ceremony was the binding a scarlet fillet around the head of this second goat when he was conducted away from the Temple, hooted at with execration, and stoned until he was lost to sight in the wilderness. The High Priest kept a portion of this scarlet fillet in the Temple, with the belief that it would become white if the corresponding fillet on the fugitive goat had done so, as a signal that the Almighty had forgiven their iniquities. The quotations from the Talmud which I gave in the catalogue preserve particulars of the manner in which this Israelitish rite was conducted at the date of Christ's ministry; that it was so conducted at a much earlier date is suggested by the passage in Isaiah: “Though your sins be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” The general tenor of the Epistles accords with the reading that the new Church was to endure evil when Christ had departed, just as the innocent goat did after the sacrifice of the first goat. This is more exactly conveyed in the symbol of St. John in the Book of Revelation, in which the Christian Church is represented by the woman bearing a child, confronted by the “Great Red Dragon” who strives to devour it; but the child being caught up into heaven, the woman takes flight into the wilderness, into which the dragon pursues her with a flood cast out of his mouth. The whole image is a perfect one of the persecution and trials borne by the Apostolic Church, and perhaps by the Church as subtly understood, to this day; and it can scarcely be doubted that the driving away of the Scapegoat into the wilderness, pursued by a flood of execrations, was a type in the evangelist's mind when he wrote the Apocalypse. Of necessity there must ever be a limit in such comparisons.
The following quotations show in what temper the Press was disposed to encourage the art patrons of the day to welcome our pictures—

Mr. Holman-Hunt's picture of “The Scapegoat” is disappointing, although there is no doubt much power in it. The distance is given well, the colour is very good, the mountains are lovingly painted; in the eye of the Scapegoat, too, as it comes to drink of the waters of the Dead Sea, there is a profound feeling, but altogether the scene is not impressive, and were it not for the title annexed it would be rather difficult to divine the nature of the subject. A much more successful work of Pre-Raphaelite art is one near it by a young artist named Burton, etc. etc.— Times, May 3, 1856.

At the R.A. Banquet the picture which perhaps arrested the most general attention was Mr. Hunt's “Scapegoat,” the scene of which is taken from Oosdoom, on the margin of the salt-incrusted shallows of the Dead Sea, and has the massive mountain range of Edom as a background. The power with which the artist has succeeded in conveying in his canvas the awful sense of desolation consonant with this fine Scripture subject was the theme of eloquent eulogy on the part of more than one member of the Episcopal bench. The impression produced on other beholders by this striking work, however complimentary to the skill of the painter, did not repress the lively wit of a very distinguished legislator who excited some merriment by his good-humoured bon mot suggested by the recollections of a recent Parliamentary debate, that Mr. Hunt's picture was an excellent portrait of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.— Times, May 5, 1856.

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“The Scapegoat” (398), by Mr. Hunt, is a picture from which much has been expected, not merely from the original feeling of the painter, but from its being a Scripture subject, and one the scene of which is laid in a spot of prophetic and awful desolation, where it was actually painted. It was one of Wilkie's theories that Scripture scenes should be painted in the Holy Land, a theory which Raphael and some others are quite sufficient to disprove. We do not, however, find fault with the desires of realisation which at the present day, either from a wish for novelty or from a tendency to idealised materialism is grown almost a passion with our young artists and poets. The question is simply this, here is a dying goat which as a mere goat has no more interest for us than the sheep that furnished our yesterday's dinner; but it is a type of the Saviour, says Mr. Hunt, and quotes the Talmud. Here we join issue, for it is impossible to paint a goat, though its eyes were upturned with human passion, that could explain any allegory or hidden type. The picture, allowing this then, may be called a solemn, sternly painted representation of a grand historical scene (predominant colours purple and yellow), with an appropriate animal in the foreground. We shudder, however, in anticipation at the dreamy fantasies and the deep allegories which will be deduced from this figure of a goat in difficulties....Though not swept in very boldly, brute grief was never more powerfully expressed. We need no bishops to tell us that the scene is eminently solemn....Still the goat is but a goat, and we have no right to consider it an allegorical animal of which it can bear no external marks. Of course the salt may be sin and the sea sorrow, and the clouds eternal rebukings of pride, and so on, but we might spin these fancies from anything, from an old wall, a centaur's beard, or a green duck pool. For delicacy of detail we should mention the love of painting displayed in the clefts of the mountains which are photographically studied. Though the effects are strong, with the green water and yellow sky, we do not quarrel with them because they are probably strictly true to the scene, however strange and apparently unnatural.— Athenæum, 1856, p. 589.

No. 398, “The Scapegoat,” by W. H. Hunt. This work has been placed prominently before the public on the line, and the painter, as one of the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, has attracted some share of public interest. It will be necessary to inquire into the merits of the work. The scene, we are told, was painted at Oosdoom on the margin of the salt-incrusted shallows of the Dead Sea, and the mountains closing the horizon are those of Edom. The subject of the picture is simply a white goat wandering exhausted and thirsty amid the salt deposit on the shore....The animal is an extremely forbidding specimen of the capriformous races, and does not seem formed to save its life by a flight of a hundred yards. If narrative and perspicuity be of any value in art, these qualities are entirely ignored here. There is nothing allusive to the ceremony of the Atonement, save the fillet of wool on the goat's horns, and this is not sufficiently important to reveal the story of the scapegoat. There is nothing to connect the picture with sacred history. There is no statement, no version of any given fact; a goat is here, and that is all. The ceremonies to which it is intended to refer, but does not, must be read in the Talmud. Had the picture been exhibited as affording a specimen of a certain kind of goat from the hair of which the Edomites manufactured a very superb shawl fabric, there is nothing in the work to gainsay this. It might be hung in the Museum of the Zoological Gardens as a portrait of an animal that lived happily and died lamented. There is nothing in the work to contradict it. The artist went to the Dead Sea to paint the scene, but there is nothing there so red and blue as the mountains of Edom. The only point in the picture that has any interest at all is the deposit of salt. This is interesting if the representation is true; for ourselves we have often heard of this, but we have never seen anything like a truthful picture of it. The picture demands no more elaborate criticism than this, notwithstanding it attracts scores of gazers.

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It is useless for any good purpose, meaning nothing, and therefore teaching nothing, although it exhibits large capabilities idly or perniciously wasted.— Art Journal, 1856, p. 170.

Mr. Millais must have been staying at the village which Goldsmith immortalises as “Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,” for plain people with red hair seem this year his idiosyncrasy. About all his pictures there is a red-haired inflammatory atmosphere very eccentric and unpleasing. Though true to texture, his drawing is now frequently coarse and careless, his colour treacly and harsh, and his shadows are heavy and disturbed. As usual he displays powers of original and poetical thought, but does not resort to violent contrasts or forced situations. He paints as if in defiance of his opponents much broader, and attempts to hit the popular tastes by selecting subjects of the day, one picture being a war scene, and another referring to the peace.

His best and most original personation, his smallest and least cared for, is entitled “The Child of the Regiment” (553)....Very exquisite is this little gem of a thought. Would that we could say as much of that disagreeable pretentious “Peace Concluded” (200). The thought in this is commonplace ....“The Blind Girl” (586) is another study of red hair, and really rather excites our gall....We must protest, however, against sweetmeat rainbows of lollipop colours, raw green fields, and lace-up boots ostentatiously large....“The Cavalier and Puritan” (413) by Mr. Burton is the most remarkable Pre-Raphaelite picture in this year's Exhibition....This is distinctly a step forward with Pre-Raphaelitism, because it is a combination of Dutch detail and Italian breadth in a modern poetical subject of the painter's own invention, and one of universal passion and interest.— Athenæum, 1856, p. 590.

The Pre-Raphaelites deserve to be noticed by themselves. Millais contributes several works of very various merit. The best is “Autumn Leaves”—girls burning these leaves—and here may at once be seen the advance made in his style. Compare the leaves with the straw in the ark of several years ago. There every straw was painted with a minuteness which it was painful to follow. Here the leaves are given with great truth and force, but the treatment is much more general and the work more vapid. Throughout all his works the same increasing insipidity of touch may be seen; but in all of them will not be seen colour as good as in this work or expression so true. All his subjects this year are children, and he has caught their little ways and looks with wonderful ease. The “ Portrait of a Gentleman” is capital, “The Blind Girl” is painful, “The Child of the Regiment” is sweet, the “Peace” is very bad and very good. The textures here are rendered with great skill, the children, too, are very life-like—the right arm of the girl in black, the dog too is good, with one eye turning to look at the spectator, but the principal figures are very bad, and the whole meaning poor. The symbols of the lion and the bear, and so forth, are very puerile. The lady is holding on we know not how, and the gentleman is shaking her hand we know not why.— Times, May 3, 1856.

Such were the comments of our critics!
Millais’ pictures all attracted great attention, and Ruskin in his Notes praised “Peace” beyond limit.
My “Scapegoat” began its new career in a gratifying place on the line. It was whispered at the Royal Academy that there had been great opposition to this favourable treatment, but Mr. Cope, who was on the Council, generously championed the picture, and would not yield to any proposal on the part of its detractors that it should be put up high.
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This being a secret, I was never able to thank my good protector. The price of the picture was 450 guineas, with copyright reserved. From the first, as may be gathered from other stories in the Press, it won great attention; on the opening day many members of the Academy and amateurs manifested their interest in the picture, but no one offered to buy it. After a month Sir Robert Peel wrote to me saying that he would give me £250 for it, and that it should be hung in his gallery pendant to a picture by Landseer; but the reader will understand how impossible it would have been for me to go on living on such a system as that on which my acceptance of the terms must have been based.
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CHAPTER V

Accepting all that happens and all that is allowed as coming from thence, wherever it is from whence he himself came.—Marcus Aurelius.

This is the everlasting duty of all men, black or white, who are born into this world. To do competent work, to labour honestly according to the ability given them; for that and for no other purpose was each one of us sent into this world; and woe is to every man who, by friend or by foe, is prevented from fulfilling this the end of his being.—Carlyle.

  • Cock, cock, cock, cock, cock, cockchafer,
  • If you won’t come, I won’t have you.— Child's Rhyme.
Leighton, it will be remembered, had appeared—from study in various continental cities—as a comet, but at once took up his course here as a fixed star. I gathered from my friends that on his arrival in 1855 the Academicians had hailed his “Cimabue” with loud appreciation, the more, perhaps, because its continentalism separated it from Pre-Raphaelite Arts. Influenced by the glowing accounts of his last work, I looked with the greater attention at his painting of “Orpheus and Eurydice” in 1856, and I found much to admire in it as an indication of the author's power, but I was in a minority in most society circles, where it was declared to be a decline from the promise of the previous year.
On Leighton's arrival in London from Rome, Berlin, and Paris, the young architect Cockerell invited me to meet him at a bachelor dinner. I was charmed with the new painter's graceful and easy air; it was that of a happy youth who had been ever surrounded by idolising friends, a youth who had never suffered the rubs of life, and so had absolute calm confidence in himself. This spirit offended many who had approached him with the strongest disposition in his favour. Had he had nothing behind his happy self-assurance I too should have perhaps felt disenchanted enough to smile, but I had seen that which made me recognise full warrant for his handsome estimate of his powers, and this, with his acquirements and good looks, of a kind that grew ever more dignified with age, inspired me with an affection for him which I never lost, notwithstanding occasional frank differences between us. His genius, seen in his work, gave me continual delight, the freehandedness with which he was able to keep up the campaign against public prejudice, stubborn even to innovators of his suavity, made life seem the easier.
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Frederick Leighton, Aged 21, By Himself

FREDERICK LEIGHTON, AGED 21, BY HIMSELF



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With fast-increasing pressure I had to take counsel with myself as to my course.
The small original sketch of “The Light of the World” was still but half advanced. I could complete it from the finished picture without cost of time spent on a fresh design, and now that the picture had won its reputation I was certain of not having to wait for a purchaser. My friends at Oxford were ever hospitable and helpful, so I went to them, and worked from the picture day by day.
While I was thus engaged in 1857 Mr. Neale, the Member of Parliament for Oxford, was unseated, and surprised us all by bringing down Thackeray as ambitious to stand in his place. They addressed a public meeting and issued the usual placards, which advertised Thackeray's Liberal principles. Mr. Combe was a determined Conservative, but his wife, while echoing his political sentiments, mollified her spouse towards the author, by her ardent appreciation of Colonel Newcome, and I dwelt upon the greatness of Thackeray's teaching and influence, which was taken approvingly; I accordingly wrote to tell him that my friends, although not of his party, were personally inclined towards him, and that it might be prudent for him to call with a view to gaining their support. The next morning the cards of the retiring and the proposed member were brought up to me in the absence of both my hosts. I reported Mr. Combe as a lover of painting and a patron of Millais, Collins, and myself, and at their request I showed them the pictures of the house. Thackeray then asked, “What are you doing here? ” I returned, “I am working at the first study of an original picture of mine.” “Where is it?” said he, and on their expressing interest, I led them to my painting-room. When in front of the easel there was silence, which awakened in me bashful regret at my invitation. “Ah me! ” he pondered aloud, “I assume that we must regard this painting to be your magnum opus. ” The words were not unkindly intended; had I been in better spirits and not afraid of want of eloquence, I might have asked him to explain his sentiments on the picture unreservedly. I winced under the suspicion that he regarded the work as prompted by narrow sectarianism or insincerity, and I shrank from the idea that he who had taught me, and delighted me so much, should think me capable of either feeling. Mr. Combe firmly refused his vote to the Liberal side, and the majority of electors being too slow to appreciate the great teacher, Mr. Cardwell was elected by their preference.
After a full month's strenuous labour my task was done. Before the end, my good mentor, Mr. Combe, in our evening walks on Port Meadow, talked much about the difficulty of my monetary position, and urged that I was wrong in not soliciting election by the Royal Academy. Three years before, as a refutation to the prevailing suspicion that our Movement was intentionally inimical to that Institution, Millais and I had put down our names. In the election of 1852 both
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of us were passed over; 1 I had not expected election, but my compeer was at first very indignant, and wrote to me at Fairlight to declare
Transcribed Footnote (page 89):

183 Gower Street.

My dear Hunt—

You will be staggered to hear that——has been elected an associate. It has determined me in taking off my name from the list and in leaving entirely the R.A. None of my friends may follow, but for ever I am against that disgraceful place. I don’t believe any of the supposed friends I had, they must have behaved dishonourably. ——was quoted to me as the only man I had to fear, he being a connection of ——; and I was told by —— that the Kensington lot intended voting for him. I think we might get up an Exhibition of our own, but more of that when we meet. This election is certainly the most insulting affair to us that has been heard of. . . . To tell you the truth I am so much disgusted with this insult that I am not in a fit state to do anything. Let me hear from you soon to say what you think of the matter. . . .

Yours affectionately,

John E. Millais.

W. H. Hunt, Esq.

Tuesday evening,1852.

My dear Hunt,—

I have just received a letter from Lister in which he says that when my name was mentioned (upon looking into their books) that I was under age, which is right enough. This accounts for my not getting in and in some way softens the matter. . . . I was going to take off my name and not going to send there. Again I was so furious, but now I must go on sending as if nothing had happened. What humbug to be so particular about age. What does Lear think of the Election?

Yours brotherly,

John E. Millais.

W. H. Hunt, Esq.

83 Gower Street,

November 7, 1852.

My dear Hunt,—

Yesterday I sat to Leslie for my portrait and had more talk with him about the election. I allowed him to commence upon the subject, which he did, after speaking about the weather and other commonplaces. He began by saying that he was not aware that the rule was so strict as to age, and went on to explain how everything happened; it appears that every Academician is given a printed list of the candidates; each makes a scratch against the man he considers most worthy. Out of the number four were chosen, ——, —— and —— and X, who got the same number of scratches as I did. —— obtained four whilst we (X and self) had five, —— seven. All this was before balloting. When it was found that I and X were equal, they were about to have a separate ballot between us two to see which should be ——'s antagonist, when Mr. Knight's secretary rose and said that I was not eligible, being under age, which he could prove by the books. My name was then put aside and —— and X were opposed to each other. As all the votes had to be withdrawn from me more might fall to ——'s share than X, when he would be put against ——. This was the case, and it concluded greatly in favour of ——. I heard of X, who very nearly got in once before, from young Stanfield, who I met at dinner Saturday, and asked Mr. Leslie if it was true; he admitted it, and I openly expressed my disgust. Mr. L. only smiled, saying he could assure me that my election was only postponed for the few months between this November and next. When he said this, I, of course, said no more about the affair, but I intend calling upon Sir Edwin Landseer, who appears to have been very indignant about my not getting in, when I will make him promise that we are no more trifled with, as it is impossible to stand it longer. I really think he is a trump, otherwise he would never have troubled himself with calling here. Perhaps you are so disgusted with the election business that you are pained with reading any more about it, if so write to that effect and I won’t bother you further.

Yours,

Jack Millais.

October 25, 1853

Next Monday the election of the Associates takes place, one painter and one, engraver, —— thinks I have the best chance of getting in, but seems to think it possible that —— may manage to wedge himself in, as he has a strong lot of the Kensington friends, ——, ——, —— and others, who would vote for anybody rather than one of us. I will let you know the decision if you feel at all interested in the matter. I confess I don’t care a rushlight about it, as it will not put a penny in my pocket, and the honour is literally nothing. All this afternoon I have been designing but cannot get on in the least. I do long for you to be back, and see each other in the evenings as we used to do in other years; I am tremendously dull here, William is never at home, and I have positively no person except —— (who is frightfully chilling to associate with). I really don’t know what to do sometimes, I run off to Hanover Terrace merely because it is an object, jest with the old lady, and tumble out

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that he would never have anything more to do with the Body. I knew he was likely to go about declaring this intention, so I wrote immediately, saying that while after the “Ophelia” and the “Huguenot” it was monstrous that his claim should be overlooked, it was still desirable he should not hastily declare that so serious a resolve; he knew I would always support him in an independent course if after deliberation it seemed to him wise, but I felt strongly we ought to take full time to consider the matter before we declared any such intention. A second letter from him crossed mine on the way, saying that Mr. Leslie had called, explaining that it was the rule against admitting any candidate under twenty-four that had prevented Millais from being elected, and that he was sure to be chosen the next year, whereupon he said he was appeased. In 1853 he was made a member, and our combined School loyalty having been thus expressed, I withdrew my name as candidate.
The unjust treatment of Millais by the hanging committee in the first year after his Associateship, and the determined bitterness of the Academy against our disciples, had convinced me that the Institution, conferring as it did life-memberships, enabled those of the Body whose first reputation was never justified by later productions, to strengthen a scheming minority whose interest it was to keep the prestige of the Institution for their own advantage, and to delay for years, and sometimes for ever, the acceptance of artists of independent power, so that it became a solid hindrance to the best interests of art.
When the Academy had been first founded, although it was intended for the encouragement of native genius, the full number of sixty members could not be made up from British artists, and the list was supplemented by many foreigners. At that date, therefore, there remained no able outsiders aggrieved. The numbers of the profession since then had increased so much that the institution now contained only a section of competent English artists. In every respect a revision of the original laws was needed, especially as to lifelong membership. When a single large-minded artist was elected, his attempts at reform were resolutely ignored. It was proved that a healthy renovation, to suit altered circumstances, could not come from within, for the hinderers of progress
Transcribed Footnote (page 90):

into the freezing night miserable. Wilkie Collins has finished his book (a modern novel), for which Bentley by report has given £300, and will be brought out directly after Thackeray's work, which is daily forthcoming and in immense demand. Bigotry is certainly one of the prevailing evils, every paper you take up contains a letter from one priest to another contradicting entirely the other's word or principles; it quite disgusts me with the clergy.

Gabriel is looking about for a house at Highgate, he has seen one which he likes, I understand, very much and is likely to take it. I was at Arlington Street after Patmore's evening and sat up till three in the morning. Rossetti appeared to me to be just the same as ever, flinging his legs up on to any object within reach and humming in a moody way, he attends Wells Street I think pretty regularly.

I am now going to bed to think upon my past life and what is probably coming, building castles in the air until I fall asleep all very gloomy. Good-night, old boy; cheer up, and don’t go to Egypt.

Yours,

J. Millais.

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were too numerous. Maclise and E. M. Ward had taken the first opportunity at a Council to lay down their views as to the necessary alterations to be made, but their motions had been received in blank astonishment and the question was immediately put whether there was “any further business to discuss, ” so that all would-be reformers ceased to bestir themselves. Linnell's example, with that of others, had been of good service to us, for these artists had gained public regard despite the enmity of the Institution, and had quietly gone on exhibiting at the Academy, leading courageous patrons to feel that election to the Body was not the only stamp of superiority. For these reasons I wished to remain an outsider, hoping that in some way I might thus, with the help of others, do a wholesome service to the profession. Further talk on the question with Mr. Combe proceeded thus—
“You remember how they treated  

W. Holman Hunt

W. HOLMAN HUNT



Millais with his ‘Fireman’ last year; their behaviour proved how little his election was a mark of their repentance or of any change in them, beyond a conviction of the need of separating you, the active Pre-Raphaelites, from each other. I would not imply that any of the members are intentionally insincere; on the contrary, many are men of high honour, but an Institution so entirely unchecked in the exercise of power was not framed for ordinary humanity, least of all for men who find constant difficulty in obtaining support for themselves and their families by their profession. Yet it is impossible to ignore the enormous advantage of membership in a pecuniary sense to either competent or incompetent artists.”
Mr. Combe, knowing how slow the world of patrons was in getting reconciled to my new work, strongly argued with me against my resolution of holding aloof from the Academy. The matter was not settled until the eve of the last day of July, and as the morrow was the final day for applicants to the Institution to subscribe their names, my good friend pressed me not to let the opportunity pass. It was undeniable that I could not afford to court the perpetuation of my difficulties, so I undertook to go to town in the morning to enrol myself for the winter election.
There were many other affairs I had to attend to; when I arrived at the clerk's office of the Royal Academy it was nearly striking four, and the official, whom I knew to be a masterful underling, was shutting up his door, and declared that it was too late to take my name. I would not bandy arguments with him, but at once set off to Mr. Knight,
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the secretary, who was fortunately at home. I acquainted him with the clerk's refusal, and told him that the man had objected that it was too near four o’clock for further business. Mr. Knight, glancing at his watch, exclaimed: “Why, it is now only a few minutes past four, the clerk's excuse is unjustifiable,” and he at once promised that my name should be inscribed, adding pleasantly that he could say sincerely that he hoped I should be elected.
Independently of the contentment felt at having acted on the advice of a good friend with sound practical judgment, I was glad to  

G. F. Watts, R.A.

G. F. WATTS, R.A.



have put to the test the estimate which the Academy now set upon my claim to recognition, and I had nothing further to do in this matter but to wait for the result of the election several months later. When the Exhibition was just closing, I received a message from Mr. Windus that he would buy “The Scapegoat” for 450 guineas, if I would forego my claim to the copyright, and this I agreed to do.
I had been continually hearing from friends of Watts’ personality, but so far I had not seen him. A common acquaintance brought me a cordial invitation from him to come to his studio. It was a wonderful home in which he lived, both for its surroundings and its inmates.
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Lord Holland, after his return from Italy, set apart a room in Holland House as a studio for Watts; there and at Dorchester House, between 1847 and 1849, he painted many pictures, after which he took a studio in 30 Charles Street. At this time he made the acquaintance of the Princep family and took them to see “Little Holland House, ” under the impression that if they mutually found it suitable they would share it. The Princep family wished for a home then out of London and yet near enough to the India Office for Mr. Princep's work there. Eventually they settled their home in “Little Holland House,” where Watts soon joined them.
 

MISS EMMA BRANDLING

MISS EMMA BRANDLING (LADY LILFORD), “QUEEN OF BEAUTY” AT EGLINGTON

TOURNAMENT. STUDY FOR KING ALFRED FRESCO IN LINCOLN'S INN HALL



It had, in Addison's days, been a farmhouse, but as London had come near to it the farmer had gone further afield, and its closeness to town had made it a delectable family home. A still-remembered duel, in which one combatant had been killed, occurred in the beginning of the century in the handsomely elmed grounds. At the time of my visit to Watts he had two painting-rooms, and a third in course of building. It was indeed a delight to see a painter of the day with such dream-like opportunities and powers of exercising his genius. It was more than a happy combination, for one may safely assert that nowhere
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else in England would it have been possible to enter a house with such a singular variety of beautiful persons inhabiting it. The sisters were seen in all their dignified beauty in Watts’ fine portraits, and other beautiful sitters had been attracted to his studio, as was witnessed by their delightful portraits upon his walls.
At the date of my visit the beautiful Miss Emma Brandling, afterwards Lady Lilford, was a cherished guest. I had known her brother, Henry Brandling, as a student at the Academy, and I had heard Charley Collins speak of her with worship. The father of this lady had made a noble sacrifice of his wealth by supporting George Stephenson in the expenses of his sturdy struggle to be allowed to endow the world with his beneficent invention. The portrait by Watts of the lady at that time will prove how much admiration of her grace was justified. Watts’ likenesses were not flattered, a phrase which always means that the real  

TENNYSON

T. Woolner]

TENNYSON



strength and character are taken out, no peculiarity was softened down, the very fulness of personality was given; but it was the incarnation of the soul rather than the accidental aspect. The drawing of heads, such as that of Mr. Wright of Manchester, of Layard, and others, now in the National Collection, which were then on his walls, are not second to those of the greatest painters, Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Rubens, or Vandyck, or the great English portraitist. In respect to his fulness of rendering of the human form, I was fain to regard Watts as an ideal Pre-Raphaelite.
On leaving Little Holland House I was cordially urged by Mrs. Prinsep to repeat my visit, and on doing so I became acquainted with her sisters. Mrs. Cameron was perhaps the most perseveringly demonstrative in the disposition to cultivate the society of men of letters and of art; her husband, like Mr. Prinsep, was an East India Director.
One day when Woolner and I happened to be going to dine at Combehurst on Wimbledon Common, Mrs. Cameron asked us to stay on our way at her house at Roehampton, as “the great Tennyson” was there; there could be no stronger attraction, as I had repeatedly been prevented from meeting him. Woolner's admirably executed medallion sketch had led me to expect a man of somewhat haughty bearing, but the man I met was markedly unostentatious and modest in his mien, as though from the first courting trustfulness; his head was nobly poised on his grand columnar neck, rarely held erect, but inclined towards whomever he addressed with unaffected attention; he was swarthy of complexion, his black hair hanging in curls over
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his domed head; he had a great girth of shoulder, resembling certain Syrian Arabs I have met. As I entered he turned and said, with a ring of simple cordiality, slowly, in sonorous voice, “I have been wanting to know you for some while. I am told that you never received my letter thanking you for the Latakia tobacco which you bought at Baalbec from the farmer who had grown and dried it. I felt I wanted to recognise your kindness of thinking of me and to say what good flavour the tobacco had. The letter had my name outside and should not have miscarried. I was always interested in your paintings, and lately your illustrations to my poems have strongly engaged my attention.” After some general talk he said abruptly, “Why did you make the Lady of Shalott, in the illustration, with her hair wildly tossed  

TENNYSON

TENNYSON



about as if by a tornado?”
Rather perplexed, I replied that I had purposed to indicate the extra natural character of the curse that had fallen upon her disobedience by reversing the ordinary peace of the room and of the lady herself; that while she recognised that the moment of the catastrophe had come, the spectator might also understand it.
“But I didn’t say that her hair was blown about like that. Then there is another question I want to ask you. Why did you make the web wind round and round her like the threads of a cocoon?”
“Now,” I exclaimed, “surely that may be justified, for you say—
  • Out flew the web and floated wide!”
Tennyson insisted, “But I did not say it floated round and round her.” My defence was, “May I not urge that I had only half a page on which to convey the impression of weird fate, whereas you use about fifteen pages to give expression to the complete idea?” But Tennyson laid it down that “an illustrator ought never to add anything to what he finds in the text.” Then leaving the question of the fated lady, he persisted, “Why did you make Cophetua leading the beggar maid up a flight of steps? I never spoke of a flight of steps.”
“But,” rejoined I, “don’t you say—
  • In robe and crown
  • The King stepped down,
  • To meet and greet her
  • On her way?
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Does not the old ballad originally giving the story say something clearly to this effect? If so, I claim double warrant for my interpretation. I think that you do not enough allow for the difference of requirements in our two arts. In mine it is needful to trace the end from the beginning in one representation, you can dispense with such imitation, in both arts it is essential that the meaning should appear clear. Am I not right?”
“It may be so, but I should maintain the illustrator should always adhere to the words of the poet!” he persisted.
 

COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR MAID

COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR MAID



“Ah, if so, I am afraid I was not a suitable designer for the book. ” This I said playfully, when he returned, “You don’t mind my having spoken my conviction so frankly?” I replied that I was only too honoured by his having treated me candidly.
Watts soon came to see my oft-retarded picture, I felt abashed at its small size, but he had that catholicity of interest for other works than his own that all true artists reveal.
When I returned to town from Oxford, I found the Brownings had come to London, and soon Gabriel and I were invited to spend the evening with them. When the appointed hour approached I had a return of Syrian ague upon me, but this was not enough to prevent me from greeting the two poets; both were extremely unaffected and genial.
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Browning was taller than he had been described to me, perhaps about five feet six, robust and hearty in his tone of interest in all questions discussed, but I felt some self-reproach in so faintly recognising in him the stamp of a man as elevated above his fellows as his noblest poems had proved him to be.
Mrs. Browning was small and very fragile; she betrayed nervous anxiety in her eager manner, so that the supersensitive tenour of her poems seemed fitly embodied in her. Her hair was brought forward and fell in ringlets on her face in a manner quite out of fashion, and thus helped to make one feel that she disregarded all changes of mode since her youth. The special interest of the evening was the production of a poem by their son, aged about six, the subject Leighton's picture  

ROBERT BROWNING

ROBERT BROWNING



 

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING



of “Orpheus and Eurydice.” It was, even taking the child's parentage into consideration, a wonderful example of precocity.
Gabriel seemed throughout the evening over apt to break in with jocular interruption to the conversation, as though claiming proprietorship in the company present; it was easy to yield to him in this whim, since it happened that we were all his debtors for the first knowledge of the works of our new friends.
Soon after my concession to the prejudices of fortune in becoming a candidate for Royal Academy membership, my dear father, who had become enfeebled of late by the worry caused by legal but inequitable claims connected with some property he had bought, suddenly determined to go to the seaside for his belated holiday. The resolution was so immediately acted upon, that it was decided he should go alone, and that my mother should follow the next day; it happened that a thunderstorm, the which had ever had a fascination for him, was at its full force when he arrived at Folkestone; he learnt that a ship was
Sig. VOL. II. H
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in the agonies of wreck on the rocks, and deciding on a lodging only to deposit his luggage, he hastened to the cliffs, where he stood in the pelting rain for hours, entranced by the tragic spectacle; returning to shelter he felt cold, and, refusing food, went to bed. On my mother's arrival the next morning he was feverish, and the doctor's verdict was that he had contracted inflammation of the lungs; he returned to town seriously ill, and despite the constant and kind attention of Sir Richard Quain, we soon had to recognise that he was past all human aid.
While in attendance upon my father, I was gratified by a declaration from him that he was at last thoroughly satisfied that my independent course in adopting my profession was justified. “I had hoped to see you with a substantial fortune before you in the City,” he said, “but you have proved your passion for art to be so strong, that you work even against unforeseen difficulties; this shows it is your natural occupation. Your profession provides fortunes but for few. I had hoped to see some indication by now that you would be one of these, but your pictures evidently do not meet the taste that is in vogue with picture-buyers, and you spend so much thought, time, and money upon them, that what would be a good price for the works of most others is but poor payment for you.” All I could do was to assure him that I was certain of my course, and that his confidence made me accept the penalty with patience and without fear, and I thanked him for the admission, that the anxiety I had caused him had not been wantonly or idly given, and conjured him not to fret about the prospects of the family. I watched him while his life ebbed away, and he sank in peaceful spirit into his last sleep.
About the end of the season, Seddon called upon me to ask advice about a new idea of his that he should return to the East, to make use of the knowledge he had acquired there for the painting of landscape, as the most likely means of enabling him to secure reputation. I had no doubt that the plan was the best that offered for him. He left soon after, and we heard of his arrival at Alexandria and his advance to Cairo, whence he wrote to me of plans he had made, but soon news came of an attack of dysentery, then came an interval of no letters, and then news of his death. Great sympathy was expressed for the widow and child, and Rossetti proposed that each of his painter friends should take up one of the unfinished works of the deceased, and bring it to completion. Brown, with generous enthusiasm, put this proposal into execution on a very embryonic painting of Penelope, but the other pictures were left without additional work, partly, perhaps, because most of them could be finished only in the East. As I was hard pressed by my own work and had given time to complete a water-colour of his when he left Syria so suddenly in 1854, I did not take part in this work. A meeting was held, at which Lord Goderich presided, and Ruskin made an address at the Society of Arts, in which, misled as to the real workman, he said that while beforehand he had only regarded
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Seddon as a landscape painter of great promise, he now saw by the “Penelope” that he was also an excellent figure painter; this was the prelude to much generous laudation of Seddon's landscapes; it was resolved to appeal to the public for subscriptions as a testimonial to Thomas Seddon. A sum of £600 was collected, and out of this £400 was voted for the purchase of a topographical picture of Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives.
It was impossible for me to attain the object, according to my father's wish, of teaching my sister to paint in my bachelor home at  

LADY GODERICH

J. E. Millais]

LADY GODERICH



Pimlico. I had, therefore, to find a fresh house. J. C. Hook was giving up the class of Venetian subjects which he had hitherto executed with grace of form and sweetness of colour; he now devoted himself to landscape and seascape, and for these he proposed to live in the country. His house on Campden Hill was now to let, and I determined to take it, in pursuance of Sir William Gull's advice, after curing me of Syrian fever, that I should always live on high ground.
I finished the small replica of “The Light of the World” and sent it to an Exhibition at Boston, undertaken by Captain Ruxton—an admirer of Turner drawings, and much spoken of by Ruskin; and it was sold for three hundred guineas.
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At a dinner at Lady Goderich's, Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle were amongst the guests, accompanied by Henry Bruce, afterwards Lord Aberdare, who had undertaken to draw out the Chelsea sage. There was a large company, some of whom I did not know. Mrs. Carlyle was the lady allotted to me. She sat on my left, and Carlyle was exactly opposite. Mrs. Carlyle assailed me for my opinion anent the marriage of Millais with Mrs. Ruskin; I defended him strenuously, saying that the lady had ceased to be Mrs. Ruskin by the nullification of her marriage as declared by the Scotch Court. Millais had not run away with her, I said, but had waited to claim her in her father's house, a full year after the day she left Ruskin. “If because husband and wife are not in  

SIR COLIN CAMPBELL

SIR COLIN CAMPBELL



accord they should separate, many marriages would be annulled,” she remarked drily.
I had not been able to listen to the torrent of talk on the opposite side of the table, which proceeded almost exclusively from the modern seer.
When the ladies rose from table, and we were again seated, I found that the man on my right was rather short, with thick black hair growing up, in what, from French Revolutionary times, was called the Brutus fashion; he sidled up to me, and in an undertone inquired if I knew the name of “the gentleman who talked so much. ” “Yes,” I whispered, “he is Thomas Carlyle”; then after a short pause he inquired, “What does he do? ” “He is the celebrated writer.” At this my new friend muttered, “Ah, yes. He's the atheist!” “No, ” I corrected him, with voice directed low, “you are thinking of another man of the same name who has been dead some years. He was a professed atheist. Thomas Carlyle says it is better to worship Mumbo-Jumbo than no God at all.” My interrogator then asked me to tell him what works Carlyle had written. I spoke of his translations from the German, of The French Revolution, of The Life and Letters of Cromwell, of The Latter-day Pamphlets. To satisfy his curiosity still further he drew himself up to scrutinise the object of his inquiry. At the moment Henry Bruce spoke across the table to my neighbour: “Sir Colin Campbell, my friend Mr. Carlyle is at the present time engaged upon a history in which acquaintance with military life is much called for. I am quite sure that if you would be good enough to tell us some of your own adventures in the field, it would be valued by Mr. Carlyle,
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and of not less interest to the rest of us.” This appeal helped me to identify my quiet neighbour, and I looked at him with suspense; his reply was curtly conclusive: “But I’ve nothing to tell. ”
“Sir Colin,” returned Mr. Bruce, “it is reported in the history of your campaign in the Peshawur district, that when in command of 700 men you had marched through a defile and had debouched into the plain, you were suddenly informed that a force of 30,000 native troops were only a couple of hours behind you, and that they were hastening to destroy your company. You then, it is said, immediately turned your troops about and made them scale the heights and march unseen until you were in the rear of your enemy, and then to their great dismay, you appeared on the heights and surprised them by a bold descent upon their rear. The enemy, concluding  

THOMAS CARLYLE

THOMAS CARLYLE



that there must be a large army in front, were seized by sudden panic, became confused and disordered, and were then quickly defeated by your small contingent. Now, may I ask whether this account of your action is correct?”
Sir Colin Campbell had no choice but to reply in some form; while all were intent on listening he simply said: “Well, there was nothing else to do.” 1
The persevering Mr. Bruce could make nothing more out of the taciturn hero. He then appealed to Carlyle to say what he thought of Froude's defence of Henry VIII in his History of England.
“For that matter,” replied the Chelsea philosopher, “I cannot say much, for I have not yet read it, but I’ve always esteemed Henry to be a much-maligned man. When I look into that broad yeoman-built face and see those brave blue eyes of his, as they are seen in the Holbein portrait, I must conclude that an honest soul resided within his sturdy body.” Raising his voice then to a treble, he continued, “He certainly had much trouble with his wives. I won’t pretend to decide anything for or against his divorce from Katherine, or the execution of the others; whether or not they deserved it depends upon evidence that I have not seen: this is a personal matter; but the great charge against the man is, that he had seventy thousand men hung for no ostensible crime whatever, merely because they were rogues and vagabonds. Now that seems like a serious incrimination, but then we have to consider the
Transcribed Footnote (page 101):

1“28th June.—Dined at Lord Goderich's with Sir Colin Campbell. . . . He is not much of a hero. . . . In fact, heroes are very scarce. ” — Letters of Jane Welch Carlyle.

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state of the country at the time. Until thirty years before, the whole country had but a waste population ready to be engaged to cut one another's throats on one side or the other of the York and Lancaster Wars. Such a national fury it is difficult to quench. Stalwart rascals were roving about, ready to do any unholy thing, and a good ruler was bound to eradicate marauders of all kinds. Henry would not tolerate them. He ordained that any man brought up who could not prove that he gained his living by useful work should be branded with a hot iron, and for a second offence ordered straight off to the gallows.”
Carlyle's emphasis had gradually subsided, but again he raised his  

HENRY VIII

Holbein]

HENRY VIII



voice, saying, “If any one here would like to come to me at Chelsea to-morrow morning I would undertake to lead him to a spot, a hundred yards from my door, where we should find thirty vagabonds leaning against the rail which divides the river from the road, and although these men have never been, as far as I know, convicted of any particular crime whatever, I will not hesitate to affirm that they would be all the better for hanging, both for their own sakes and for every one concerned. Now, if you’ll consider with me that I am only pointing out the case of one particular parish in London, or a part of it, and if you will calculate the number of parishes there are in the metropolis alone, and then extend your view over the whole country, you will agree that seventy thousand men was not by any means an extravagant number
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of irredeemable ne’er-do-wells whose suppression was put down to poor Henry's evil account.” The silent guest, the slayer of hundreds in open warfare, who had interrogated me, stared with wide eyes at the  

SPENCER STANHOPE

SPENCER STANHOPE



 

BENJAMIN WOODWARD

BENJAMIN WOODWARD



eloquent talker as he condemned this number of hapless men to death, while in fact he would never have killed a fly. Underlying all his idea of justice was the law that if a man will not work neither shall  

William Morris

WILLIAM MORRIS



 

A. C. Swinburne

A. C. SWINBURNE



he live. The judgment upon the negro question in the rebellion was actuated by this feeling, and he seemed more impelled to enforce the principle, because there were many doctrinaires prating that men should be encouraged to regard labour as a degrading affliction rather
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Than an ennobling blessing. It was the more interesting to me to  

EDWARD BURNE-JONES

EDWARD BURNE-JONES 1



remember the above colloquy, when a few months later Sir Colin Campbell was called upon by the Government to go out and “do,” when “there was nothing else to do,” what he did in quelling the Indian Mutiny.
Every time I visited Oxford I heard more of the sensation Rossetti was making there. Ruskin was taking the responsibily of directing the architect Woodward, who, with his partner Deane, was engaged in building the new Museum, and it was still said that Rossetti would return to Oxford to paint some of the walls. But as the building was not yet ready, and the rooms of  

W. HOLMAN-HUNT

W. HOLMAN-HUNT



the Union built by the same architects were advanced to the stage at which the bare walls showed temptingly smooth and white, Rossetti had volunteered to paint upon them the story of King Arthur with no other charge but for the materials. It was in character with Rossetti's sanguine enthusiasm that he induced many undergraduates, with little or no previous training, to undertake to cover certain spaces. Hungerford Pollen, Spencer Stanhope, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, were persuaded to take part in the work, Stanhope alone having had any preliminary training. I saw my name inscribed on a fine blank panel, and nothing would have delighted me more than to have contributed my share to the decorations, but I had too many stonger
Transcribed Footnote (page 104):

1 It is to be regretted there is no portrait of the period.

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claims to allow me to undertake this mural work. Some of those connected with the Council of the Union, it was reported, saw little to be grateful for in the generosity of the young decorators, and expressed themselves discourteously; perhaps it was this, coming to Rossetti's ears, that disenchanted him with his design, for he left it abruptly half-finished and returned to town, refusing all allurements of Ruskin and others to carry it further. Arthur Hughes, Val Prinsep, and some years later William Rivière, assisted by his son, took part in the work. Without previous experience of wall-painting, and disregarding the character of the pigments, the work of the group was doomed to change and perish speedily, and little of it now remains visible. Rossetti had lighted upon remarkable undergraduates of artistic though undeveloped genius, to which choice band was added Swinburne.
 

WILLIAM RIVIÈRE

W. H. H] WILLIAM RIVIÈRE



 

BRITON RIVIEÈRE

BRITON RIVIÈRE



Calling one day on Gabriel at his rooms in Blackfriars, I saw, sitting at a second easel, an ingenuous and particularly gentle young man whose modest bearing and enthusiasm at once charmed. He was introduced to me as Jones, and was called “Ned.”
Although what Rossetti had painted at Oxford had not pleased the person most immediately concerned, his reputation grew there with those reputed to be connoisseurs in taste. The fame that his poetry had won for him enlarged the faith in his art powers. His five or six years of seniority over his disciples gave him a voice of authority, and Ruskin's ever-increasing praise perhaps did more than all in spreading the idea of what his brother calls his “leadership.” Retirement, therefore, from the outward struggle was no longer a disadvantage, but a distinct gain to him, for when any uninitiated commentator on the works of Millais, which appeared year by year, expressed his opinion
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about the progress of our reform movement, he was at once told that what Millais or any other had done towards it was only a reflection of Rossetti's purpose, that Rossetti disapproved of public exhibition, and that his studio could be visited only by a favoured few.
From this time he avoided Millais, Woolner, and myself to a degree that proved to be more than unstudied. Woolner did not accept this new attitude passively. He told me that on the occasion of a walk with Gabriel in the fields at Hampstead the latter spoke of his position so much as that of originator or head of the Brotherhood that Woolner—although, in allusion to his mediævalism, he had habitually addressed him as the “Arch Pre-Raphaelite” —said, “I wasn’t going to humour  

CHAIRS DESIGNED BY W. H. H.

CHAIRS DESIGNED BY W. H. H.



his seriously making such a preposterous claim, so I told him that it was against all the known facts of the case. At which he became moody and displeased, and so went home alone.” This is a painful page of my record, but in friendly combinations for a particular object such revulsions from harmony, which could not have been foreseen, are in accordance with the experience of all ages.
In furnishing my new house I was determined, as far as possible, to eschew the vulgar furniture of the day. Articles for constant practical use were somewhat regulated by necessity; but in the living rooms I could exercise control. For ordinary seats Windsor chairs satisfied me, but I kept these in countenance by a handsome arm-chair of old English form, and devised an ornamental scroll and shield, with my monogram to give it individuality. A more independent effort was the designing
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of a chair, based on the character of an Egyptian stool in the British Museum, to serve as a permanent piece of beautiful furniture. All were excellently made by Messrs. Crace; to these was added the sideboard from Kensington Palace, given by my generous friend, Augustus Egg,  

KING OF HEARTS

KING OF HEARTS



in recognition of my love of pure form in furniture. In course of time I added to these an ivory cabinet and an old English one for my studio. I had here to restrain further expenditure, still, I had done as much as I could to prove my theory that the designing of furniture is the legitimate work of the artist. When I showed my small group of household joys to my P.R.B. friends the contagion spread, and Brown, who
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idolised the Egyptian chairs, set a carpenter to work to make some of similar proportions. In showing them he proposed to introduce his newly found carpenter to me as a much more economical manufacturer than my own, able to make me a sadly needed table. He offered his own excellent design for one, which, with a few substantial modifications, I gratefully accepted. After this the rage for designing furniture was taken up by others of our Circle until the fashion grew to importance.
It was now evident that progress with “ The Finding in the Temple ” was to be in slow steps, for with my increased responsibilities I had to busy myself with any small replica work that dealers were waiting to take. One welcome boon was the sale of the copyright of “Claudio and Isabella” for £200, which gave me breathing space for a short time.
The bachelor parties organised by Henry Vaux, the Assyriologist, were of value, not alone for their entertainment, but also in the opportunity they afforded to meet so many of the men who were marked out as the peaceful soldiers of the coming era, and who in one way or the other were emulous to engage in the campaign of the world to bring in fuller knowledge, wisdom, and refinement. We were all self-appointed, with little care how long deferred official recognition might be, or if it came at all; but we each had an earnest desire to be accepted by one another, and to decide who were the competitors bearing the credentials of mutual recognition. Above all selfish considerations music intoxicated us; as the celestial rhythms of Purcell, Handel, Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin floated through the room, the notes breathed inspiration to pursuers of the higher ideals.
A life school had been started at Kensington, to meet three evenings a week; the early list of members included Barlow, Augustus Egg, Frith, Leighton, Val Prinsep, John Phillip, to which the septuagenarian student, Mulready, was eventually added. Often at the beginning and end of each evening there was a good deal of “banter” between a member of the Academy who openly ridiculed the aims of our Reform and myself; one evening Frith reminded me that the Council of the Academy had met the previous night to elect the new associates, and my playful railer undertook to supply news of the result. He spoke to me across the room thus: “I was very nigh last night doing you an injustice; in the list of candidates was the name of one Hunt, and the question was started whether you were the painter named. I declared that I was sure it could not be so, as you had told me you regarded the elections as actuated by a good deal of prejudice and narrowness of spirit and that you had instanced some artists who ought to have been elected, mentioning specially Ford Madox Brown, and that when I had asked whether you intended to compete you stated distinctly that you would not stand while he was left outside; after I had said this the voting proceeded and the choice fell upon others. The ballot was announced, and when all was supposed to be settled, Mr. Knight rose saying he had just learned that the voting had taken place with
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the understanding that the name of Hunt was not that of the Pre-Raphaelite, and that this was a mistake, because you had yourself left your name with him; on this it was decided the votes should be re-taken; it was done, but as you only gained one vote the result was all the same.”
“It was four or five years ago,” I replied, “when I spoke to you of Brown's claim, he then exhibited frequently at the Academy, he had been known since 1844 as an important artist; since 1852, when his picture of ‘Christ washing Peter's Feet’ was hung up near the ceiling, he has only appeared once at the Academy with a picture called ‘Waiting,’ three pictures that he sent in 1854 were rejected, and he has determined never to send again, or to desire the honours of the Academy. I have gone on steadily sending there, so the case in relation to Brown and myself is changed; however, the decision is in accord with the present policy of the members of the Institution, who elected Millais to break up our combination. They would now keep me paying court to the Academy until I had been induced to give up all originality. I shall not stand for election any more, unless the Academy be fundamentally reformed, ceasing to be intro-elective, with membership for life. Instead of this there should be proportionate control by the general profession, and a quinquennial curtailment of membership. Only with such differences could safety be obtained from the manœuvres of those members who know that their fortunes would be doomed by the admission of artists with original ideas. I do not underrate the Academy's power against outsiders, but at this time it is not quite what it used to be. With men like Linnell, Watts, Brown, Rossetti, and Leighton outside, I hope we shall be able to stand. I am grateful to the Academy for the benefits I received from it as a student, and I have great admiration for several of your members, but their word has little weight against the intriguers within its walls, who pervert the honourable objects of the Institution. An Academy to justify its existence should lead public taste, not follow it.”
My assailant here said, smiling, that he knew many who on being disappointed had declared that they would never again be candidates, but on the next opportunity had stood for election.
The result of my experiment as a candidate only made me more resolved patiently to go my own way, and trust for some good to come in the future, far or near, from my independence. What it might be I could not tell, but I still intended to follow the example of those outsiders who still exhibited at the Academy.
Were I to be silent about my rejection by the Academy it might be thought that I was anxious to have the world forget. In publishing it I disavow all sort of resentment against the Body for their treatment of me. I had dared to think for myself and to make no promise of amendment; in punishing me they acted according to their light. Undoubtedly it made a great increase of trouble in the struggle to
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overcome the prejudice of patrons, but I had the consolation through all of feeling that the value of the recognition which my words did or might gain from the public without the Academy's cachet was more likely to last and to increase in future days than it might do, did it come with encouragement from the powers in authority. I must run the risk of egotism in saying that I thought my claim a strong one. If I am wrong, later generations will justly silence my pretensions with forgetfulness. The unerring future not seldom reverses the verdict of the once-reigning world.
My application of 1856 was made after I had exhibited annually, with two exceptions, since 1845, and in some of these years I had contributed three and four pictures, most of which had attracted as much attention as any works exhibited. I had patiently taken severe treatment so long, that the rancour the Academy had indulged in early days might well have died out. It was not the majority of its members who entertained bitter hostility; it was the crafty activity of about a dozen men, whose names would now not be recognised as those of artists at all, who directed the oppression. Privately I was on friendly terms with many members. It was then necessary for candidates to offer their names annually. I continued to exhibit at the Academy for many years pictures not already secured by dealers for special exhibition, and I did so until I found that the unwritten law was, “Love me all in all or not at all.” It is true that plants which grow afield are scourged with frost and bleak winds and do not early captivate the eye, but when acclimatised, they may blossom and bear full-flavoured fruit, while the exotic plants may be cold-stricken and die, if the temperature of the conservatory is withdrawn. Yet, as the art world was constituted, with all its prejudices, there could be no blinding one's eyes to the increased difficulties of my present position. A new associate of the Academy immediately received an accession of demand for his works, and had I been distinguished by the badge of Academy favour, I could have counted upon the prejudice against my work by rich collectors being turned into approval and patronage. My position now was like that of a man pursued by wolves, having to throw away his belongings one by one to enable him to keep ahead of destruction.
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CHAPTER VI
  • One half of the world does not know how the other half lives.
  • Write me as one who loved his fellow men.
—Leigh Hunt.
Brown's suggestion, before I moved from, Pimlico, that we should found a colony of artists where all our Body should reside and have a common room and a general dining-room, never got beyond the initial stage of good intention. It was a scheme which I think only Brown entertained seriously. He was fully persuaded of its practicability and of the advantages to be gained by it, declaring that the distance from London which would be an evil to one man alone would be no disadvantage to a company of painters. Brown argued that the colony would quickly acquire such a reputation in the world that all people in society would compete to procure invitations to its dinner and fête days. I asked with levity whether the lady members might not exercise themselves in getting up quarrels. After indulging himself in a good-natured laugh, he admitted that with ordinary women such would undoubtedly be the case, but that our sisters and wives would be so truly superior in comparison with others that no such calamity need be feared; but that, on the contrary, they would set so high an example of gentleness as could not fail to spread emulation abroad. Having discouraged Brown in his Utopian plan, I felt the more obliged to agree to become a member of the Hogarth Club. We fixed upon this name to do homage to the stalwart founder of Modern English art.
Probably it was to check a tendency to disruption in our ranks that this Club was founded. The idea was to have a meeting-place for artists and amateurs in sympathy with us, and to use the walls for exhibiting our sketches and pictures to members and friendly visitors. It was further claimed by its founders that the Club would promote harmony among the younger members of the profession at large; but the most that I expected of it was that it would show the degree of combination that was possible among the non-members of the Academy, and this, when established, it did but negatively.
When the first collection was brought together, Gabriel sent two excellent examples of his last oil work. He had now completely changed his philosophy, which he showed in his art, leaving monastic sentiment tor Epicureanism, and after a pause, which was devoted to design in
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Note: The spelling of “bestirrred” in the transcription reflects the spelling with three r's in the text.
water-colour, he had again taken to oil-painting. He executed heads of women of voluptuous nature with such richness of ornamental trapping and decoration that they were a surprise, coming from the hand which had hitherto indulged itself in austerities. Mr. Combe, at my instigation, possessed himself of one of his fine water-colours, “Dante drawing the Angel.” Sir Walter Trevelyan, Ruskin, and Colonel Gillum also bought many of his early designs, and to the kindness of the latter I am indebted for permission to reproduce some examples; at the time when the Hogarth Club came to life, his whole spirit as to his early friendships was changing. The Committee applied to me to use my interest with the possessor of “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” to contribute it. To prove myself a good clubman I took pains to persuade Mr. Fairbairn to lend the picture; but on seeing it on the walls, Rossetti immediately had his works removed. The Club was conducted from the beginning in this poor spirit. Brown, on one occasion, not being satisfied with the placing of his pictures, arrived at breakfast-time, took down all his contributions, and drove off with them in a cab. In balloting for new members the decisions were directed by prejudice—not against the candidate, but his nominator and supporters. Notwithstanding this dissension, the little exhibition was a very notable one. Burne-Jones—for perhaps the first time in public—there displayed his wonderful faculty of accomplished design in drawing and colour. Leighton exhibited a pathetic and exquisite outline of a simple group composed of a deformed likeness of the Godhead mournfully looking up, as he passes by, at the statue of a beautiful Antinous, and oh, the pity of it!
He had been placed originally under the German painter, Edward von Steinle. He told me that he considered this pupilage, although a happy one under a beloved Master, had been in some respects a misfortune to his style, which limitation he had made great effort to counteract in his subsequent practice. What was the source of his later manner he did not explain. His first exhibited painting was distinctly continental, but it reflected the best type of the fashion abroad; and it would be difficult to point to his definite teacher, though, when Carbanel's works were seen, it was impossible not to feel that the same influence had affected both. The work of each may be classed as of courtly classical character. The party in the Academy which had been most hostile to our movement at first greeted his work with loud acclamation of praise, but noting that the continuance of this generosity would involve them in danger of another innovation on their humdrum domains, they bestirrred themselves to oppose him also, and when these circumventing members were in power they treated Leighton's contributions in a manner that would best prevent them from attracting attention. His pictures for a few years were unequal, and occasionally he fell below the level of his first work. Yet while feeling for new possibilities he never lost his way. His power might be compared to
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that of an elegant yacht of dainty and finished capacity for pleasure service, without pretensions to serve as a transport carrying men bent on tragic purpose, but one to sail among summer islands and bring back dainty cargoes of beautiful flowers and fruits; he deserves comparison with the accomplished of any age, perhaps even more for his sculpture than for his painting. In his early days he had the advantage, seized most wisely, of his father's support; in the final years of his life it could not but be regretted that the weight of official duties interfered with the full exercise of his genius. Loyalty to innate classicalism was his religion, and in the end of the ’fifties it was still difficult to decide how far he would develop. Once, when I went round to him at Orme Square, where he had six paintings ready for Exhibition, after I had made my sincere congratulations and was hurrying away to my own work, he caught me at the door saying, “Now I want you to return and tell me which of my set you most approve.” I pointed out three or four that were distinctly decorative as exciting my great admiration. “And have you no words to say for these others?” he asked. “Very many, of envious admiration for the charming ability with which they are done,” I replied. “Now,” he returned with unconcealed pain, “I call this mortifying. You pick out for praise those which have cost me no serious effort whatever, and those which I have really expended my deepest feelings upon, you only praise as being done with facility.” I declared with warmth that I perhaps was wrong, but that I was sure he would find many as fully appreciative of the one set of pictures as I was of the other.
Every season his treatment at the hands of the Academy became more severe, and this continued till, in 1863, when giving evidence before the Royal Commission as to the condition of the Academy, 1 I instanced the way in which his paintings in the last Exhibition were disadvantageously hung, as convincing illustration of the manner in which certain artists were pursued with injurious prejudice.
Soon after this, he began to surmount Academic displeasure, and was elected a member of the Body. But in anticipating the story of Leighton's first decade, we have gone some years beyond the last days
Transcribed Footnote (page 113):

1 W. Holman-Hunt.—Without referring at all to the case of a person with the same views of art as myself, I may mention Mr. Leighton, a man who paints in a totally different way from myself, and to whom I certainly think injustice is done in the Academy. It seems to me that frequently his pictures have been put in places where they have not attracted the attention which their merits would have attracted for them if they had been at all fairly treated.

Viscount Hardinge.—Latterly his pictures have been well hung, have they not ? (W. H. H.) I remember two years ago, if not last year, his pictures were certainly put in places which prevented the public who had not come to look for them from seeing them; I think that that was unjust, and in talking to some Academicians about it, I found that they had what was really a conscientious prejudice against his work; and I think that if Mr. Leighton goes on exhibiting for three or four years they will find that, although he paints in a different way from them, he is a man of the utmost importance, and they will be glad to have him as a member; but it would be no advantage to him then to be made a member, he would already have established himself in the minds of the public. I have noticed many examples of the same kind. I only mention Mr. Leighton lest it should seem I were making a vague remark.

Blue Book, 1863.
Sig. VOL. II. I
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of the Hogarth Club, at which period, meeting me one day, Leighton spoke excitedly, saying that on finding out, as he did at some meeting at which I was absent, that the real object of the Club was to attack and upset the Academy, he had at once sent in his resignation. He concluded by saying: “I would not believe this was your intention until one of the members asserted it in so many words. I will have nothing to do with any such programme, and utterly disapprove of it.”
I told him that he never heard me say anything of the sort. I wanted no one to shape his course by mine, that I would go the way that seemed to me right and proper for myself, innocent of plots. “As to the Club,” I said, “my connection with it is eminently passive.”
When the Hogarth broke up, Brown came and rated me severely for being the cause of its ruin. “In what way?” I asked. “I’ve tried to avoid all the quarrels; and in fact the little I did in exhibiting and attending was really only in compliance with your expressed desire.”
“That is exactly what I complain of. You made it too evident you had no interest in the Club,” he said.
The next Academy season came round, and I had no contribution ready; so precious life sped, making my dream of returning to the East an ever-increasing mockery to me.
Mr. and Mrs. Combe now agreed that I had been right in my judgment of the course that I should take towards the Academy, and they then told me what had induced them the more to wish me to court the protection of the powerful Institution. Mrs. Combe in the previous year had been in London on the artists’ show day, and Mrs. Collins, the widow of the Academician, undertook to take her to the leading studios: as they entered the room of one of the favourite members, crowded with amateurs and picture buyers, the artist received the lady he knew with: “Ah, Mrs. Collins, now you are the very person to tell us whether it is true that Holman-Hunt has found some fool to give him four hundred guineas for that absurd picture which he calls ‘The Light of the World’?”
“It is quite true,” was the reply of the lady, who had a spirit of humour now not unmixed with asperity. “And you will perhaps permit me to introduce you to the wife of ‘the fool’ who will confirm the statement.”
As a further illustration of the spirit of the art-world that day, the following story will serve—
A picture dealer with a large business was entertaining a bachelor party, and a posse of painters in one corner were inveighing against the errors of Pre-Raphaelitism, when one of the company, the more remarkable that he was a member of the Academy, took up our cause, and declared that he approved our greater exactness in the rendering of Nature, and that so far was he converted by our example that he intended in the picture that now occupied him to paint the vegetation
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out of doors direct from Nature. The room was evidently an effective whispering gallery, it carried the words to the opposite side, and almost as quickly the host strode across, saying, “Well, Mr. P——, you were painting your present picture for me; after what I’ve heard I decline it.”
Nevertheless, established artists who had been adverse were converted to the principles which we had advocated and practised; more than one of the best men had painted with truth from Nature, with acknowledgments to us, and there were but few members who had not attempted to mend their ways in respect to thoroughness, and franker attention to the great Masters.
Too often I had to be reconciled to the sight of my “Temple ” picture turned to the wall while I was giving my time to work which  

WILL-O’-THE-WISP

WILL-O’-THE-WISP



would pay next quarter's bills, for when the fact of my non-election was bruited abroad, the verdict of adverse critics became more unqualified. I had no choice, therefore, but to persevere with replicas and with illustrations for poorly paid periodicals and books.
It will be seen that the election of Millais had not brought him a full measure of justice, but it had the advantage of persuading picture-buyers to believe that the judgment which had condemned him at first was now appeased by some imaginary submission to the arch authority of the recognised institution on matters of art, and the early hesitation in purchasing his original works was greatly put aside. I had still to suffer the disadvantage of my more than two years’ absence from England, and change of subject still hampered me.
When Henry Vaux’ evening gatherings came to an end, Arthur
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Lewis started more sumptuous smoking parties at his chambers in Jermyn Street. He was a widely accomplished man and an ardent lover of music. In his boyhood he had desired to be a painter, but his father urged upon him the lucrative nature of the business he would be rejecting, and this decided him to forego his artistic enthusiasm; but he indulged his taste as an amateur, and in time produced excellent etchings and studies from Nature. He sat the saddle like a master, and his accomplished driving of his four-in-hand made passers-by pause and turn.
In 1860 Lewis took possession of Moray Lodge on Campden Hill, a house with spacious gardens and lawn in the lane leading to Holland Park; on the left-hand side of this lane stood the house which had  

Parting

PARTING



belonged to the Marquis of Bute, and which was now tenanted by the amateur painter, Sir John Leslie, and Lady Constance his wife. The second house belonged to Lord Airlie, the third to Lord Macaulay, and the last was that of the Duke of Argyll. The gates leading to these gardened abodes were lighted by tall lamps which at night spread a stately but sombre gleam over the road. The lane narrowed, and was barred to all but pedestrians beyond this point. In summer, garden parties were given, and on “Moray Minstrel” nights, it was a merry crew that greeted one another as they drove up to the Lewis domain. The host always welcomed his guests with cheery greetings, but, however late his hospitality kept him at night, he was always seen arriving by 8.30 at his place of business. The good character of his taste at Moray Lodge was seen in a fine bronze group of “The Wrestling Duellists,” by a Swedish sculptor, which Lewis had selected from a great Exhibition, also by paintings, among which were Arthur Hughes’ “April Love,” the first picture seen in England by Joseph Israel of
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“A Drowned Fisherman carried over the Beach by his Companions,” and a small picture by Millais of a Highlander reading in the trenches his letter from home.
One signal, even national, service which Lewis rendered, was the counsel he gave to the widowed mother of Frederic Walker who appealed to him to exercise his influence to introduce her son to some business  

THE LENT JEWEL (ILLUSTRATING DEAN TRENCH's POEM)

W. H. H.]

THE LENT JEWEL (ILLUSTRATING DEAN TRENCH'S POEM)



career, the more desired because of his love of drawing, and the consequent danger that he might become an artist. Lewis, on seeing the designs of the boy, told Mrs. Walker that it would be unjustifiable to prevent her son from following his bent. This was the beginning of the artistic career of Fred Walker, one of the most poetic painters of the nineteenth century.
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Canon Harford told me that he once found F. Walker waiting with two finished pictures for an expected dealer, and he lamented how  

FREDERICK WALKER'S DESIGN

FREDERICK WALKER'S DESIGN



inadequate the sum he had resolved to ask would be to pay for pressing household needs. The Canon then took upon himself the responsibility  

FREDERICK WALKER

FREDERICK WALKER



of demanding more, but the dealer proved obdurate and refused to buy, which caused the artist to be overwhelmed with despair. The Canon, however, soon found another dealer who gladly took the pictures at higher prices, and gave fresh commissions to the painter.
Walker was a small and fragile man, not more than five feet four, and truly delicate in the double sense of the word. His face was beautifully modelled, of a classical build, not apparent to the casual observer, owing to an occasional marring of his complexion, resulting probably from incessant smoking and late hours. Observing the feebleness of his frame, one was naturally tempted to remonstrate with him about the overtaxing of his delicate constitution. Once or twice when I met him in the street in the small hours of darkness, he seemed to suspect possible admonitions, and hurried by as though to evade them. He was constant as a guest at Lewis’ parties,
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and was ever conspicuous in a knot composed of Calderon, Storey, Wallis, Du Maurier, and Stacey Marks; the two latter often delivered humorous recitals. Burne-Jones, who was then steadily growing in  

FREDERICK WALKER's DESIGN FOR INVITATION CARD

FREDERICK WALKER'S DESIGN FOR INVITATION CARD



reputation at the old Water Colour Society, was an occasional visitor; and, later, the youthful W. B. Richmond.
It was a strange mixture of company and the entertainments became  

W. B. RICHMOND, BY HIMSELF

W. B. RICHMOND, BY HIMSELF



famous, for men of all classes were pleased to go into Bohemia for the night. There might be seen Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Lord Houghton, Edmund Yates, Millais, Leighton, Arthur Sullivan, Canon Harford, John Leech, Dicky Doyle, Tom Taylor, Jopling, the first winner of the Wimbledon prize, the Severns, Mike Halliday, Sandys, Val Prinsep, Poole 1 the tailor—who helped to found the renewed French Empire by lending £10,000 to Louis Napoleon—and Tattersall the horse-dealer.
On Sunday afternoons I not infrequently went to Sydenham to visit my friends, Mr. and Mrs. George Grove and Mr. and Mrs. Henry Phillips, and we would pass the afternoon lounging in the courts and grounds of the Crystal Palace, with which Fergusson and Grove had been connected from the beginning, and had helped to make it the wonder it was when newly established. At my hosts’ table many
Transcribed Footnote (page 119):

1 See Appendix.

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friends met who adjourned by a ten o’clock train to the Cosmopolitan Club, where free and friendly converse often continued till morning's small hours.
Although I refused myself autumn holidays or visit to the country not necessary for painting accessories in small pictures, “The Finding in the Temple ” remained sometimes for months without a single day's work added to it. Season after season thus went by, while my companions were steadily adding to their fame. Millais appeared in town with three pictures, the most important of which was “The Knight crossing the Ford”; this was notable for poetic conception and realisation direct from Nature herself. That portion of the world of men who never recognise poetry unless it presents itself with a strong likeness to something already sanctified by usage were slow to see in this picture how sterling a poet the painter was. I was sure, however, that one oversight in the work would be a stumbling-block to undiscriminating appreciation. When first I saw the picture at the studio it struck me that the horse was glaringly too large; the room was full of visitors and I did not argue then, but in the evening I would not give up my candour, and I assured Millais that the exquisite beauty and the idea of the painting would be seriously marred to the impatient world if the work were exhibited without correction. He fought every inch of the ground, not liking that the exhibition of the work should be postponed for the proposed alteration, and the success promised for the picture delayed till next year, but eventually relented so far that he promised to go down and see the Guards exercising the next morning, thus to check the relative size of horse and rider, and if he found the proportion so much out as I said, he would keep the picture back. The next evening I inquired what he had decided. “Oh,” said he, “as to those Guards, I never saw anything so ridiculous in my life, and with a Society pretending to exist for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals! Every soldier ought to be prosecuted, for all had their feet nearly reaching the ground like dandy-horse riders; they ought to be compelled to get off and walk, and not torment the poor little creatures they bestride. No—I will tell you I have been talking to Tom Taylor about it, and he has written a verse in imitation of an old ballad. The size of the horse will now be a merit.”
With this resolution the picture was exhibited with the following verse—
  • The goode hors that the knyghte bestrode,
  • I trow his backe it was full brode,
  • And wighte and warie still he yode,
  • Noght reckinge of rivere:
  • He was so mickle and so stronge,
  • And thereto so wonderlich longe
  • In londe was none his peer,
  • N’as hors but by him seemed smalle,
  • The knyghte him cleped Launcival;
  • 10 But lords at horde and groomes in stalle
  • Cleped him Graund Destrere.
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On its appearance a storm of ridicule arose, and Ruskin in his Academy Notes was unboundedly denunciatory. There were but few independent enough to disregard the voice of the majority, and one who did so was Charles Reade the novelist, who bought the picture at the end of the Exhibition for £400, the painter for his own satisfaction erasing the horse and painting it again of smaller proportions. Late in that season a caricature of the picture appeared in print-sellers’ windows with some verses underneath, indicating that the ass which took the place of the horse in the picture was Ruskin bearing on his back Millais as the knight, with Rossetti and myself as the two children being carried over the stream. I saw a crowd in Fleet Street trying to settle that Sir Robert Peel was the knight, the child in front Disraeli, and the hindermost Lord John Russell; but as the street spectators had not seen the original picture, they could not discern the satire. This drawing was done by Frederick Sandys on a new system of etching which soon entailed the destruction of the plate, so that the impressions are now, I believe, rare. Another print, satirical of our School, had appeared some time before, in which the wicked artists were represented as porcelain poodles, but the point was so difficult to make out, that the public gave it up, and so did the print-sellers; still these pasquinades all tended to keep up the rancour against us.
Ford Madox Brown, acute with certain angularities, as has been already seen, was esteemed most by those who knew him best. He had often had differences with others, which sometimes ended in quarrels, but he was one of those dear and highly endowed fellows from whom, early in intimacy, it was easy to determine never to take offence, though I could not shut my eyes to his curious crochets. About this date Mr. and Mrs. Combe, with whom I had spoken warmly of him as one they ought to know, and who, I felt sure, were disposed to appreciate him, came to town quite suddenly, as was their wont, and asked me to go out with them for the day. I took them to his house, and was sorry to find he was not at home. As I was speaking with the servant, his daughter Lucy came to us, and on introducing my friends, I said I was hoping they might see her father's works.
At which Miss Madox Brown assured me we might all venture upstairs, and that she would show the paintings. The principal picture was “Work.” They greatly admired its execution, but it was not, I knew, of a kind they would wish to possess. The other paintings helped to increase their interest in the painter; shortly after this I received the following letter from Brown—
As I have never derived anything but disgust (except in the case of personal friends) from artistic meetings, I mean to keep at home and never talk of art or show my pictures except to those who I know come to buy. I am obliged to tell you this, because I have now made a strict rule in the house, that no one is ever allowed in my studio while I am out—which were it not explained to you as part of a general plan, might on some future occasion take you by surprise or appear unfriendly.
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The soreness that he thus revealed was a great bar to the possibility of making friends of service to him. We have already seen his great generosity in the recognition of fellow-artists. It was under stress of continued rebuff that he allowed himself to express mistrust and suspicion at acts which could only have been directed by admiration on the part of his friends. I had proposed that he should allow me to offer him as a candidate for the Cosmopolitan Club, but this also failed. The gentlest and kindest of men can be soured by continued ill-treatment, neglect, and misunderstanding. One evening I met him at Patmore's, and in walking home from Finchley, I made inquiries about the progress of his protracted picture “Work.”
He said that he had conceived the idea of representing F. D. Maurice and Carlyle as intellectual workers contemplating their brothers labouring physically, but that he found difficulty in obtaining Carlyle as a sitter. Whereupon I said that perhaps I might help him, because Carlyle had promised that he would allow me the opportunity to paint his portrait, and the sittings were to be given when first I was free, and that under this obliging bond I might ask the Philosopher to sit to Brown in the interim. A few days afterwards I received the following letter—
My Dear Hunt,

The evening at Patmore's when you mentioned the fact of your having obtained a promise from Carlyle not to sit for his portrait to any one else than you, and at the same time offered to speak to him on my behalf, I was taken so completely by surprise that I made an immediate resolve not to say a word on the subject till I had time to revolve the matter in my mind and make sure of the circumstances. I must now beg as a favour that you will not mention my name on the subject to him. I should have doubts of the success of your mediation; and indeed, from the step you have taken, you must be aware that the chances of my ever getting him to sit for the portrait of him in my large picture are now smaller than ever (if only from the mere disgust of being so frequently requested as a subject for an art he despises), and such as they can only be bettered by their being worked against yours and not possibly in unison with. Remains, of course, to you the right of pushing your interests in the matter how and when you like. However, I must pay you the compliment to tell you frankly (and only in the case of such an old friend as you could I take direct notice of such a thing), that your practice has been a leetle too sharp in this case considering the stake I had in the matter.

Believe me ever, yours most sincerely,

Ford Madox Brown.
The building of the Oxford Museum was progressing without gaining much admiration from any one. Ruskin had already in his writings upon architecture pointed out in unanswerable manner that the old carvings in porches, on cathedral columns, and choir stalls had been executed by the Gothic ornamentalists from their own invention, uncontrolled by the architect. It was determined, in pursuance of this idea, to employ stone-masons to work independently on the Museum.
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Alas! it has not been well considered that the ancient carvers were, in taste and training, contemporaneous with the builders. In the nineteenth-century Museum at Oxford the architect had endeavoured to make himself a fourteenth-century man; the carver chosen was an amusing Irishman named O'Shea, an unmitigated nineteenth-century stone-chiseller of great clevernesss, who had previously perhaps only carved tombstones to suit village taste, and cornucopias of flowers for summer-houses. O'Shea became the admired of the enthusiasts who  

John Ruskin and Dr. Acland

JOHN RUSKIN AND DR. ACLAND



watched the decorating of the spaces destined to be enriched, yet a few unconverted ones would not be charmed with the work in any degree.
When I next went to Oxford it was to get brief repose by painting landscape from the Godstow meadows. I had but few collegiate friends remaining, as most of them were promoted and continually moving on, but I generally visited my valued friend Dr. Acland, and with him I went to the new buildings, which I watched with the greater interest as Woolner had accepted a commission to carve a figure of Lord Bacon there; Tupper also had in hand one of Linnæus; and Munro had a
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third—all possibly working in hope of future patronage, for the pay was less than meagre. Mr. Woodward, the architect, could not be very energetic in his supervision owing to weakness from an advanced stage of consumption. While Ruskin was absent Dr. Acland was left to supervise the decorative work. One morning O'Shea was busily engrossed chipping to his heart's content at an ambitiously composed but not very well prepared design, when the President of Trinity—one of the unconverted trustees of the building, which in his eyes every day displayed some new eccentricity—paused as he passed below. “What are you doing there now?” he demanded in a loud, querulous voice. “Eh, your honour? in faith it's some cats.” “How dare you destroy the University property in such shameful manner! Come down this instant. I will have no cats there; you shall not do another stroke to them. Come down, sir.” Such a tone disconcerted the much-appreciated mason; but now there was no question of remonstrances or justification, and soon he was on the ground, incredulously contemplating his despised chef-d’oeuvre. In his chagrin he bethought him of Dr. Acland, his possible defender, and hurried to the house in the Corn Market, where he explained his grievance. The young doctor was thoroughly perplexed; this he avowed after careful consideration, and dropped into a brown study. O'Shea, driven back on his own resources, suddenly had a brilliant inspiration; he jumped up, exclaiming as he rushed out, “I’ve got it, your honour.” In the evening the President of Trinity was again walking round the building for further supervision, and to his astonishment found O'shea at the same frieze hammering away as determinedly as before. The President was out of all patience: “You impudent fellow there, did not I tell you this morning that I would not permit you to disgrace the University Museum with your detestable cats?” “Yer did, yer honour, but, an’ if you plase, they are not cats any longer, they’re monkeys.” And so as monkeys they remain to this day.
My good friend Mr. Thomas Fairbairn was one of the Council of the Manchester Loan Exhibition, and a guarantor. The collection was partly hung by my true defender, Augustus L. Egg, who had placed all my pictures well. Mr. Fairbairn had taken great interest in my Eastern work as well as in my earlier pictures, and invited me to stay with him and to visit the collection. I walked with him into Manchester every morning, and we talked frequently about art and artists. Before starting one day he showed me some marble busts of members of his family, and inquired whether they were not very good. I admitted their claim to ordinary recognition, but I said: “You are now in a position to take a leading course in art matters, and you ought not to be satisfied with any but the best works of art.” I then referred to the bust of Tennyson just completed by Woolner, and dwelt upon its great superiority. I added that my friend was slowly but surely winning just appreciation, and that he was one of our seven P.R.B. and had
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had the hardest fate from the beginning, and I urged him to let me take him to see Woolner's studio when next in London. Fairbairn was interested, and revived the subject frequently. On an early evening after this talk, when we had retired to the smoking-room, my host began thus: “I have thought over the case of your friend the sculptor, and have spoken of it to Mrs. Fairbairn, and she is much interested. You know we have two children who are deaf and dumb; it was a great affliction to us at first, but as they grew up, and the singular difference of themselves from the rest of the world struck them, a confiding affection for one another showed itself in the children, which brought us great consolation, and my wife and I often confessed that we should like to have some memento of the sweet sympathy in their isolation. We have now agreed that we will have a marble group done of them by your friend, and when you go home you may prepare him for our visit to give him the commission.”
I could only say that this would be a splendid opportunity for Woolner to prove his powers, and that I hoped he would make a great success.
I had already suggested to Woolner that the weakness of his claim for just recognition consisted in his having nothing of an imaginative kind to show on full scale, and I had urged him to undertake some simple group that would prove he had the power to express beauty in dramatic interest, but he had pointed out that he had no patron. When I urged that I made pictures and trusted to find the patron afterwards, he would not allow that he could do the same, pointing out that between Painting and Sculpture there was a difference because no one took notice of a mere plaster cast of a design, and he could not afford to risk the cost of marble and assistants’ work.
So important a commission from Mr. Fairbairn was more than I had expected to obtain for Woolner, but my friends—when the large group was advanced—exceeded their original proposal by commissioning the sculptor also to make busts and medallions of Rajah Brooke, of Sir William Fairbairn, the great engineer, and other important friends.
Woolner was yet in some respects a mystery to me. I had been championing him in many quarters, and had often cited him as an example of the injustice done to English sculpture, by the rage, then as ever rampant among the dilettanti, for adoring foreign sculptors. Marochetti really had the support of all the aristocracy for public commissions, and once I heard in a club a talker of great influence declare, that since our climate or our nature made it hopeless to produce a native genius, we should aim at gaining honour—as our predecessors had done in the cases of Torrigiano and the painters Holbein, Antonio More, Rubens, Vandyck, and others—by giving our fullest appreciation and support to so great a sculptor as the Italian who had come to live amongst us. I argued that it was by such prejudice that our countrymen were prevented from proving their power in sculpture, giving
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temporary ground for saying that the country which had produced Flaxman was incapable of genius. Such folly clearly existed in Canova's time, but it was not shared by him, since he expressed surprise that in all the London circles to which he was invited the great English designer—renowned all over the Continent for his excellence—was never met. Marochetti had executed effective statues abroad, and had done some striking works in England, where perhaps a certain strain of theatricality did not lower the estimate formed of him. Assuming for the nonce that the unqualified admiration which the English extended to him was justified, it cannot be denied that had the baron commenced his career in a country where all the commissions for statuary were given to foreigners, he would have had no opportunity of attaining the position he had now won.
I often instanced Woolner's bust of Tennyson as distinctly better than any male head Marochetti had ever done, and no one venture