CHAPTER LI

1845: AGED SEVENTY

PICTURES OF WHALERS, AND AN ENTRY ON THE LAST PAGE OF HIS LAST SKETCH-BOOK

Now, when he is nearing his decline, Turner is described as stooping very much, and looking down. Thinking of Turner 'looking down,' I recall the story that came to Sir Walter Armstrong from Mr. Stopford Brooke: how some one who knew Turner, at least by sight, was one day passing along the wharves beyond the Palace of Westminster, when he noticed the figure of a sturdy man in black squatting on his heels at the river's edge, and looking down intently into the water. Passing on, he thought for the moment no more about it. But on his return, half an hour later, the figure was still there, and still intent in the same way. That watcher was Turner, and the object of his interest was the pattern made by the ripples at the edge of the tide.

Ruskin says that this year his health, and with it in great degree, his mind, failed suddenly. And to Ruskin we owe this pathetic passage:--

'The last drawing in which there remained a reflection of his expiring power, he made in striving to realise, for me, one of these faint and fair visions of the morning mist fading from the Lake of Lucerne.

'"There ariseth a little cloud out of the sea like a man's hand ... For what is your life?"'

And Turner was going his own way, making his little jokes. On June 31st, 1845, he wrote to Mr. E. Bicknell of Heme Hill:--

'My Dear, SIR,--I will thank you to call in Queen Anne Street at your earliest convenience, for I have a whale or two on the canvas.'

This letter, of course, referred to the 'Whalers' pictures, exhibited in 1845 and 1846.

The 'Whalers' Sketch-Book contains drawings of 'Steamer Leaving Harbour,' 'Burning Blubber,' 'Whalers at Sea,' 'Study of Fish,' etc. Perhaps he made a voyage; perhaps he talked with sailors in one of his haunts at Wapping, and learnt from them of the wonders of the deep waters related by Arctic voyagers. However the idea or the vision came he now makes sketches of whaling subjects and paints pictures of 'Whalers,' one of which is in the Turner Gallery, four boats' crews attacking their prey with harpoons, and in the background are the white sails of their vessels, dimly seen through mists and snow wreaths. The imaginative 'Sunrise with a Sea Monster' probably belongs to the 'Whalers' period. On the misty waters of the ocean, reflecting a yellow sunrise, a sea monster, with a head like a magnified red gurnet, advances, the huge head towering out of the water. In the distance are forms suggesting icebergs. _Punch_ had a genial sneer at a 'Whalers' picture:--

'It embodies one of those singular effects which are only met with in lobster salads and in this artist's pictures. Whether he calls his picture "Whalers" or "Venice," or "Morning," or "Noon," or "Night," it is all the same; for it is quite as easy to fancy it one thing as another.'

Thornbury is responsible for the following:--

'I am afraid the tradition is too true, that that great and bitter satirist of poor humanity's weaknesses, Mr. Thackeray, had more than a finger in thus lashing the dotage of a great man's genius. Long after, I have heard that Mr. Thackeray was shown some of Turner's finest water-colour drawings, upon which he exclaimed: "I will never run down Turner again." But the blows had already gone to the old man's heart, and it did no good to lament them then.'

In the Sketch-Books of 1845 and 1846, we find him at 'Folkestone,' 'Hythe and Walmer,' 'Ambleteuse and Wimereux,' 'Boulogne,' 'Eu and Treport,' 'Dieppe,' and back again at 'Folkestone.' In the last of all the Sketch-Books, 'Kent,' 1845-46, when Turner was over seventy, is this against a drawing of 'Houses and Church':

'May 30. Margate, a small opening along the horizon marked the approach of the sun by its getting yellow,' etc.

A little later in this valedictory Sketch-Book is the following in his own handwriting:--

'May. Blossoms. Apple, Cherry, Lilac, Small white flowers in the Hedges, in Clusters, D. Blue Bells, Buttercups and daisies in the fields, Oak, Warm, Elm G., Ash, yellow,' etc.

With that utterance of joy in nature we may take our leave of the Sketch-Books, and of the close of the great period of Turner, thinking of small white flowers in the hedges, buttercups and daisies in the fields, seen by his old eyes, and recorded tremblingly in his last Sketch-Book. There is no sign of trembling in the exquisite vision of 'Tell's Chapel--Fluelen,' his adieu to Switzerland, perhaps the last water-colour from his hand.