CHAPTER XXVIII

1822: AGED FORTY-SEVEN

HE THROWS OFF ANOTHER 'NORHAM CASTLE' AND PREPARES TO STARTLE THE WORLD WITH 'THE BAY OF BAIÆ'

Turner sent nothing to the Royal Academy of 1821, and in 1822 he exhibited only the unimportant 'What you Will,' a mere nothing, a memory of some other painter. 'What you Will' was probably forgotten except by its owner and students of Turner; but in 1910 it appeared at Christie's and was described by an influential daily paper as a fine early Turner 'depicting a party of ladies and gentlemen in a garden near some groups of statuary.' It realised £1,176, an enormous rise on the price, one hundred and fifty guineas, which Chantrey gave for 'What you Will.' He wrote the price on the back of the picture, so that there might be no mistake. Turner would have been amazed to learn what the twentieth century thought of this experiment of his in 'figured landscape.' Perhaps the price it fetched answers a caustic comment of Hazlitt's: 'Mr. Turner's pictures have not like Claude's become a sentiment in the heart of Europe; his fame has not been stamped and rendered sacred by the hand of time. Perhaps it never will.'

A Sketch-Book of this year is called 'King's Visit to Scotland.' On leaf 58, _à propos_ of the reception of George IV., is this note in Turner's handwriting: 'Custom House Key. The Authorities in Blue and White Gowns. Red Flags and Gold.' According to Ruskin's endorsement on the wrapper Turner went to Edinburgh by sea.

In the 'Medway' Sketch-Book of the previous year on a drawing of 'Scenes on Medway' are these notes on Clouds in his own handwriting:--'Cold,' 'Warm,' 'Yellow Clouds,' 'Rain with ... Colour along its edge,' 'Rain in Shade.'

No labour either with pen or pencil was too arduous to hinder him from noting down his impressions of the effects of nature from hour to hour and day to day. And always every year there is some work that starts out and affects us by its beauty. With this year I associate the imposing 'Norham Castle' in the National Collection engraved for _River Scenery_ in 1824. The tyranny of the foreground still holds him--cows, boats, shed, outbuildings; but this foreground is less insistent than usual. How beautiful is the blue-grey ruin rising up against the pale sunset sky; how limpid is the water, with its reflection of castle and sail rippling on the quiet surface.

This 'Norham Castle' is one of his 'delight pictures,' but the more arduous work of the Wizard in 1822 was meditating upon and painting the 'Bay of Baiæ,' with which he proposed to startle the world at the next Royal Academy exhibition.