Chapter 16

The picture was without real artistic value, though undoubtedly pretty and graceful. It was a mere acted charade of the 'Finding of Moses,' got up impromptu as it were; the ladies being in ball-room attire, with high powdered heads, strung with pearls and surmounted with feathers; their silken dresses trimmed with laces, and frills, and furbelows; their faces well whitened and rouged, according to the mode of the day. It was more like a plate from a fashion-book than a scene from Scripture history. True, some small attempt at imparting 'local colour' and air of truth to the thing was just discernible. There was an affectation of Orientalism about the background--a line of palm-trees and plenty of pyramids and temples, presumed to be Egyptian, their style of architecture being nondescript otherwise; but these only made the foreground figures appear more utterly preposterous. Still, the picture pleased the town. It was something to see in one group portraits of the prettiest women in the country. There was a great demand for copies of the engraving. And yet it was with difficulty the harebrained artist could be induced to complete the plate, and supply his patrons and subscribers with prints in return for their guineas. The thriftless, flighty fellow seemed to persist in misconceiving his situation, undervaluing his artist abilities; forgetting that but for these he would still have been peg-cutting in the Sussex woods. He _would_ regard himself as a gentleman of independent property, with whom art was simply a pastime--not at all an indispensable means of winning his sustenance. He seemed, indeed, to treat his talent as a sort of obstacle in his path, blamed the world for having made him an artist, and was fond of asserting that, for his own part, he should have preferred the army as a profession!

He was a sort of Twelfth-Night King of Art. For a brief span his success seemed to be without limits. His house was daily besieged by beaux and belles of quality. 'Horses and grooms,' says Miss Hawkins in her Memoirs, 'were cooling before the door; carriages stopped the passage of the street; and the narrow staircase ill sufficed for the number that waited the cautious descent or the laborious ascent of others.' But, of course, this state of things did not last very long. Mr. Sherwin, by his indolence--and indolence in his situation was a sort of insolence--soon put himself out of fashion. Fortune showered her gifts at his feet, but he was too superb a gentleman to stoop and pick them up; so the goddess, wearying of conferring favours that were so ill-appreciated, turned away from him in quest of more reverential votaries. When the footmen of the quality had done with playing fantasias upon his doorknocker, the duns took their turn, and brought less pleasant music out of it.

A troublesome time had the fashionable artist. He had to give all his attention now to the question how his creditors could be evaded. For he preferred evasion to payment. It never seems to have occurred to him that the last was as efficacious a mode of silencing a dun's complaint as keeping out of his way; while it was infinitely preferable to the creditor. But either he had not the money by him at the right moment, or he wanted it for some other purpose--to spend in punch, probably--for he was now devoting himself steadily to the consumption of that deleterious compound. He had become too idle now to work for more than the necessities of the moment--to supply himself with pocket-money sufficient for his immediate requirements. His argument was, that if he could only postpone payment, he was quite justified in postponing work. The main thing was to avoid, put off, and distance his duns. Curious stories are told of his efforts and exploits in this respect. An old engraver, one Roberts, purblind from incessant poring over copper-plates, after repeated calls, finds at last his mercurial debtor at home, and demands the settlement of his little bill for work done. Sherwin is very civil and obliging, promises to settle forthwith the account against him; then, taking base advantage of his creditor's defective vision, he makes good his escape, leaving Roberts confronting the lay-figure of the studio decked for the occasion with its proprietor's coat and wig. Imagine the indignation of the creditor upon the discovery of the imposture! Upon another occasion the artist, splendidly attired--for he is engaged to dine at Sir Brook Boothby's--is prisoned in his room, prevented from stirring forth by the fact that a German tailor, a determined creditor who will take no denial, who will listen to no more excuses, has sat down at the chamber door, to starve the debtor into surrender. Time passes; there is no exit from the house but through the studio, and there is posted the inexorable dun, who has already waited five hours, who will wait five more--fifty more, if need be--but he will see his debtor. And Mr. Sherwin has no money. What is he to do?

Presently the siege is raised. Good-natured Lord Fitzwilliam enters, appreciates the situation, produces his pocket-book, and satisfies the tailor's demand. 'Here, Mr. Sherwin,' says his lordship to the relieved and grateful engraver, 'here is a present for you. Your tailor's receipt for making a fine gentleman!' And Mr. Sherwin is free at last to go to his dinner-party with what appetite he may.

We have another glimpse of the artist--mad with drink, and up all night, alarming the neighbourhood by firing off pistols out of the window to testify his devotion to his patrons of the house of Cavendish, his joy that an heir had been born to the titles and honours of the dukedom of Devonshire--and then he falls, disappears. Invitations no longer come from Sir Brook Boothby and other grand friends; or, if they come, they don't find Mr. Sherwin at home. As long as he can he keeps his creditors at bay; then takes to flight--hides to escape arrest. He binds himself to work for a publisher who harbours and supports him. But it is too late; he cannot work now if he would. He is greatly changed, his constitution has yielded at last to his repeated and reckless attacks upon it. His sight is dim, and his hand is palsied. He has yielded all claim to be accounted an 'exquisite;' the fashions are nothing to him now; he is simply a broken-down, worn-out, prematurely old man. His courage has left him, his gay air of confidence has quite gone; he cannot look his misfortunes in the face; he shrinks from, shivers at, and, in his weakness and despair, exaggerates them wildly; they prey upon him, go near to driving him mad. Pursued and tracked to his publisher's house--or is it merely his fears that mislead him?--he quits his place of refuge, breaks cover, and flies he hardly knows whither. George Steevens, the editor of Shakespeare, wrote on the first October 1790 to a correspondent at Cambridge: 'I am assured that Sherwin the engraver died in extreme poverty at "The Hog in the Pound," an alehouse at the corner of Swallow Street; an example of great talents rendered useless by their possessor.' Miss Hawkins follows this narrative, and the artist's decease is announced in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ of the same year. It is proper to state, however, that Mr. Smith, his pupil, has recorded a less melancholy account of Sherwin's death, which took place, he says, 'at the house of the late Mr. Robert Wilkinson, the printseller in Cornhill, who kindly attended him, afforded him every comfort, and paid respect to his remains, his body having been conveyed to Hampstead and buried in a respectable manner in the churchyard, near the east corner of the front entrance.'

He was barely forty when he died. Prints from his engravings are still highly esteemed by collectors. If his talent was not of the very first class, it was still of too valuable a kind to be flung in the kennel--utterly degraded and wasted.

SIR JOSHUA'S PUPIL.

A young apprentice with very little heart in the study of his craft, after the manner of young apprentices, toiling in a watch and clock-maker's shop in the town of Devonport, heard one day the fame of great Sir Joshua's achievements in London sounding through the county--became conscious that the good folks of the shire took pride in the son of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, Master of Plympton Grammar School. Why should not he, the apprentice, become as great, or nearly so, a credit to Devonport, his birthplace, as was Sir Joshua to Plympton, _his_ birthplace? Could one man only have art abilities and ambitions, and make for himself the opportunity to employ and gratify them? So the apprentice asked himself. And he must have been a clever fellow that apprentice! He soon convinced himself--that was easy: but he convinced his family; he convinced several of his townsmen--a more difficult task,--that the best thing they could do with him was to send him up to town to study under his countryman, Sir Joshua, and to become, like him, a great painter. He had his way at last. In his twenty-fifth year he was painting in the studio of Reynolds, living under his roof.

After all, his dearest wishes gratified, perhaps the pupil was little better off. If cleverness, like fever, were contagious, it had been all very well. But the master was but an indifferent master. He could not, or would not, instruct. He was himself somewhat deficient in education--had few rules--only a marvellous love and perception of the beautiful, and an instinctive talent for its reproduction on his canvas. It was as certain as it was innate, but not to be expressed in words, or communicated or reasoned upon in any way. The deeds of genius are things done, as of course, for no why or wherefore, but simply because there is no help for it but to do them. So the pupils painted in the studio of their pseudo-preceptor for a certain number of years, copying his works; or, when sufficiently advanced, perhaps working at his backgrounds, brushing away at draperies, or such conventional fillings in of pictures, and then went their ways to do what they listed, and for the most part to be heard of no more in art chronicles. They had probably been of more use to the painter than he had been to them. Certainly our friend the clockmaker's apprentice was. For when there arose a cry of 'Who wrote Sir Joshua's discourses, if not Burke?' this pupil could give satisfactory evidence in reply. He had heard the great man, his master, walking up and down in the library, as in the intervals of writing, at one and two o'clock in the morning. A few hours later, and he had the results in his hands. He was employed to make a fair copy of the lecturer's rough manuscript for the reading to the public. He had noted Dr. Johnson's handwriting, for _he_ had revised the draft, sometimes altering to a wrong meaning, from his total ignorance of the subject and of art: but never a stroke of Burke's pen was there to be seen. The pupil, it must be said for him, never lost faith in his master. Vandyke, Reynolds, Titian--he deemed these the great triumvirate of portraiture. Comparing them, he would say, that Vandyke's portraits were like pictures, Sir Joshua's like the reflections in a looking-glass, and Titian's like the real people. And he was useful to the great painter in another way, for he sat for one of the children in the Count Ugolino picture (the one in profile with the hand to the face). While posed for this, he was introduced as a pupil of Sir Joshua's to Mr. Edmund Burke, and turned to look at that statesman. 'He is not only an artist, but has a head that would do for Titian to paint,' said Mr. Burke. He served, too, another celebrated man. With Ralph, Sir Joshua's servant, he went to the gallery of Covent Garden Theatre, to support Dr. Goldsmith's new comedy, _She Stoops to Conquer_, on the first night of its performance. While his friends are trooping to the theatre, the poor author is found sick and shivering with nervousness, wandering up and down the Mall in St. James's Park. He can hardly be induced to witness the production of his own play. Johnson's lusty laugh from the front row of a side box gives the signal to the worthy _claque_, who applaud to an almost dangerous extent, in their zeal for their friend, because there runs a rumour that Cumberland and Ossian Macpherson and Hugh Kelly are getting up a hiss in the pit.

'How did you like the play?' asked Goldsmith of the young painter, who had been clapping his hands until they ached, in the gallery by the side of good Mr. Ralph.

'I wouldn't presume to be a judge in such a matter,' the art-student answered.

'But did it make you laugh?'

'Oh, exceedingly.'

'That's all I require,' said Goldsmith, and sent him box tickets for the author's benefit night, that he might go and laugh again.

Sir Joshua's pupil was James Northcote, a long-lived man, born at Devonport in 1746, and dying at his London house, in Argyll Place, Regent Street, in 1831. If he had a Titianesque look in his youth, he possessed it still more in his age. Brilliant eyes, deeply set; grand projecting nose; thin, compressed lips; a shrewd, cat-like, penetrating look; fine, high, bald forehead, yellow and polished, though he often hid this with a fantastic green velvet painting cap, and straggling bunches of quite white hair behind his ears. A little, meagre man, not more than five feet high, in a shabby, patched dressing-gown, almost as old as himself, leading a quiet, cold, penurious life. He never married. He had never even been in love. He had never had the time, or he had never had the passion necessary for such pursuits, or he was too deeply devoted to his profession. He was always, brush in hand, perched up on a temporary stage, painting earnestly, fiercely, 'with the inveterate diligence of a little devil stuccoing a mud wall!' cried flaming Mr. Fuseli.

Haydon, with a letter of introduction from Prince Hoare, called upon Northcote. He was shown first into a dirty gallery, then up-stairs into a dirtier painting-room, and then, under a high window, with the light falling full on his bald grey head, stood a diminutive wizened figure in an old blue striped dressing-gown, his spectacles pushed up on his forehead. Looking keenly with his little shining eyes at his visitor, he opened the letter, read it, and with the broadest Devon dialect, said--

'Zo you mayne tu bee a peinter, doo 'ee? What zort of peinter?'

'Historical painter, sir.'

'Heestoricaul peinter! Why, ye'll starve with a bundle of straw under yeer head.'

Presently he read the note again.

'Mr. Hoare zays you're studying anatomy; that's no use--Sir Joshua didn't know it. Why should you want to know what he didn't?'

'But Michael Angelo did, sir.'

'Michael Angelo! what's he tu du here? You must peint portraits here!'

Haydon was roused to opposition.

'But I won't!'

'_Won't_,' screamed the little man, 'but you _must_! Your vather isn't a moneyed man, is he?'

'No, sir, but he has a good income, and will maintain me for three years.'

'Will hee? Hee'd better make 'ee mentein yeerzelf.'

'Do you think, sir, that I ought to be a pupil to anybody?'

'No,' said Northcote. 'Who's to teach 'ee here? It'll be throwing your vather's money away.'

'Mr. Opie, sir, says I ought to be.'

'Hee zays zo, does hee? ha, ha, ha, ha! he wants your vather's money.'

He received many visitors in his studio. He was constantly at home, and liked to talk over his work, for he never paused on account of the callers. He never let go his palette even. He went to the door with a 'Gude God!' his favourite exclamation in his west country dialect, 'what, is it _you_? Come in:' and then climbed his way back to his canvas, asking and answering in his cool, self-possessed way, all about the news of the day. Yet he was violent and angry, and outspoken sometimes, was Sir Joshua's loyal pupil.

'Look at the feeling of Raphael!' said some one to him.

'Bah!' cried the little man. 'Look at Reynolds; he was all feeling! The ancients were _baysts_ in feeling, compared to him.' And again: 'I tell 'ee the King and Queen could not bear the presence of _he_. Do you think he was overawed by _they_? Gude God! He was poison to their sight. They felt ill at ease before such a being--they shrunk into themselves, overawed by his intellectual superiority. They inwardly prayed to God that a trap-door might open under the feet of the throne, by which they might escape--his presence was too terrible!'

Certainly he was possessed by no extravagant notions of the divinity of blood-royal.

'What do you know,' he was asked, 'of the Prince of Wales, that he so often speaks of you?'

'Oh, he knows nothing of me, nor I of him--it's only his _bragging_!' the painter grandly replied.

He could comprehend the idea of distinction of ranks little more than old Mr. Nollekens, who would persist in treating the royal princes quite as common acquaintances, taking them by the button-hole, forgetful altogether of the feuds of the king's family, and asking them _how their father did_? with an exclamation to the heir-apparent of, 'Ah! we shall never get such another when he's gone!' Though there was little enough veneration for the king in this, as Nollekens proved, when he measured the old monarch, sitting for his bust, from the lip to the forehead, as though he had been measuring a block of marble, and at last fairly stuck the compasses into his Majesty's nose. Even the king, who was not very quick at a joke, could not fail to see the humour of the situation, and laughed immensely.

Modern taste prefers Northcote's portraits to his more pretentious works. The glories of Mr. Alderman Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery have pretty well passed away. However, Northcote's pictures were among the best of the collection. His 'Arthur and Hubert,' and the 'Murder of the Princes in the Tower,' and 'The Interment of the Bodies by torchlight,' were very forcible and dramatic works of art, and possessed more natural attractions than the pictures of many of his competitors. His pupilage with Sir Joshua prevented his falling into the washed leather and warm drab errors of tone that then distinguished the English school of historical painting. In the picture of the Burial of the Princes, Fuseli criticised--

'You shouldn't have made that fellow holding up his hands to receive the bodies. You should have made him digging a hole for them. How awfully grand; with a pickaxe, digging, dump, dump, dump!'

'Yes,' Northcote answered; 'but how am I to paint the sound of dump, dump, dump?'

The Boydell pictures were for a long time very popular, and the engravings of them enjoyed a large sale.

Of course, Northcote despised Hogarth. Abuse of that painter seemed to be one of the duties of the British historical artist of that day. Yet he paid him homage; he painted a series of pictures, Hogarthian in subject, and proved to the satisfaction of everybody, one would think, the absolute superiority of Hogarth. Mr. Northcote's moral subjects, illustrative of vice and virtue, in the progress of two young women, are not to be mentioned in the same breath with the 'Mariage à la Mode.' Not merely were they deficient in expression--they were not equal in point of art-execution, though of course the more modern painter had planned to excel in both these qualities. But Northcote's portraits are really admirable--broad and vigorous--with much of Sir Joshua's charm of colour, if not his charm of manner exactly.

For fifty years he lived in Argyll Place, passing the greatest part of that time in his studio--a small room not more than nine feet by twelve, crowded with the conventional articles of _vertu_ that were then considered to be the indispensable properties of a painter. His maiden sister--'Northcote in petticoats,' she was often called, she was so like him in face, figure, and manner--superintended his frugal household. Its economy was simple enough. The brother and sister were of one opinion. 'Half the world died of over-feeding,' they said. They went into an opposite extreme, and nearly starved themselves. When there was a cry in the land about scarcity of food, they did not heed the panic; they were accustomed to a minimum of sustenance, they could hardly be deprived of that. Fuseli, who sowed his satire broadcast, exclaimed one day: 'What! does Northcote keep a dog? What does he live upon? Why, he must eat his own fleas!' But the painter did not attempt to force his opinions upon others, so the kennel and the kitchen fared better than the parlour. The servants were indulgently treated, permitted to eat as they pleased, and die in their own fashion--of repletion or apoplexy, if it seemed good to them.

If he was cold and callous and cynical to the rest of the world, he was ever good and kind to the pinched elderly lady his sister. By his will he gave directions that everything in his house should remain undisturbed, that there should be no sale of his property in her lifetime. He was counselled by considerate friends to have all his pictures sold immediately after his funeral while his name was fresh in the memory of the public; it was urged that his estate would benefit very much by the adoption of such a course. 'Gude God, no!' the old man would cry; 'I haven't patience with ye! Puir thing! d'ye think she'll not be sufficiently sad when my coffin be borne away, and she be left desolate! Tearing my pictures from the walls, and ransacking every nook and corner, and packing up and carting away what's dearer to her than household gods, and all for filthy lucre's sake! No; let her enjoy the few years that will be spared to her; when she walks about the house let her feel it all her own, such as it be, and nothing missing but her brother. I'd rather my bones were torn from my grave, and scattered to help repair the roads, than that a single thing should be displaced here to give her pain. Ye'll drive me mad!'