CHAPTER V

1775

BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTS

Few of the wayfarers who hurry along Maiden Lane from Covent Garden to Bedford Street remember that in this busy, refurbished street Turner was born. London has changed much since his time, and Maiden Lane has changed also. Hand Court, opposite the Cider Cellar, in which was the entrance to the barber's shop kept by Turner's father, has long disappeared, and so has the modest dwelling.

The house in which Turner was born, and where father, mother, and son lived, is thus described by Ruskin:--

'Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit or well is formed by a close-set block of houses, to the back windows of which it admits a few rays of light. Access to the bottom of it is obtained out of Maiden Lane, through a low archway and an iron gate; and if you stand long enough under the archway to accustom your eyes to the darkness, you may see, on the left hand, a narrow door, which formerly gave access to a respectable barber's shop.'

Thornbury has the following:--

'I remember the house well--I have been up and down and all over it. The old barber's shop was on the ground floor, entered by a little dark door on the left side of Hand Court. The window was a long, low one; the stairs were narrow, steep and winding; the rooms low, dark, and small, but square and cosy, however dirty and confined they may have been. Turner's bedroom, where he generally painted, looked into the lane, and was commanded by the opposite windows. The house where I suppose he afterwards went to for more quiet and room, is at the end of Hand Court, and is on a larger scale, with two windows in front; but it must have been rather dark, though less noisy than his father's house.'

It is said that the very early drawing by Turner, called 'Interior of a Kitchen,' in the possession of the nation, represents the kitchen of the house in Maiden Lane, and that the old woman crooning over the fire is Turner's mother; but this has been doubted by that arch-doubter, Mr. A. J. Finberg. Mrs. Turner's aspect is reported to have been masculine, not to say fierce; she is said to have been a person of ungovernable temper, to have 'led her husband a sad life,' to have been odd to the point of insanity. Indeed she was quite insane at times, and maybe Turner derived something of his genius from this ill-starred mother with the unbalanced wits.

It is probable that the Mary Turner who was removed from St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and admitted into Bethlehem Hospital on December 27th, 1800, was Turner's mother. She was discharged uncured in the following year.

'Dad' was sane and cheerful, a friend and companion to his son, proud of his genius, and helpful to him. His name will often appear in these pages. He is described by Henry Trimmer, vicar of Heston, one of Turner's few intimate friends, as a chatty old fellow who talked fast. We are also told that his cheerfulness was greater than his son's, and that a smile was always on his face. To this strangely assorted couple, a chirpy father and a crazy mother, a son was born on the 23rd of April 1775, about one year and eight months after their marriage. So Nature works, and the good folk who would 'select' parents for their wholesomeness and sanity may not be as successful in producing a genius as Nature in her unpremeditated way. Joseph Mallord William Turner was baptized at St. Paul's, Covent Garden, in the following month.

Ruskin has devoted a brilliant chapter to contrasting the boyhoods of Turner and Giorgione. But is Turner to be pitied? Art occurs, and perhaps there could not have been a more suitable place for a great landscape painter to be born than in a dark court off Maiden Lane by the Strand. For, being born in a dark court, he had to seek the world of beauty, the wonder of undefiled sunrises and sunsets, green fields and purple hills, pale streams and opalescent lakes. He had to make an effort to find them.

At home there was at least mental excitement. His father's customers were continually coming and going, curious men from the outside world, who talked wittily and wore pretty clothes, and gave to the watchful boy glimpses of the vivid world in which they lived. And near by was the river, with its shipping, and the ever-changing aspect of the tides, the old Thames, which he loved all his life, and from which he derived inspiration and consolation.