CHAPTER LV

1851: AGED SEVENTY-SIX

THE MYSTERY OF THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE REVEALED TO HIS FRIENDS: AND HIS DEATH

I leaned against the parapet of the Embankment in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and gazed at the row of cosy little houses on the other side of the road that face the Thames. The house where Turner died, I had been told, is now 119 Cheyne Walk. My eyes sought 119, but found it not. The numbers passed from 118 to 120. Then I crossed the road to discover that Nos. 118 and 119 have been converted into one house. Peering, I discerned, almost hidden by Virginia creeper, a tablet saying that here Turner died.

So this was the house. Somewhere near here 'Puggy Booth,' as he was known to the street boys, 'Admiral Booth' to the tradesmen, moored his boat. The story was current in Chelsea that he was an Admiral in reduced circumstances, and Turner was not the man to illumine a mystery, or end a joke.

We learn from Thornbury that up to the period of his final illness, he would often rise at daybreak, leave his bed with some blanket or dressing-gown carelessly thrown over him, and ascend to the railed-in roof to watch the sunrise, and see the colour flush the morning sky.

There was the railed-in roof, crowning the 'Cremorne Cottage,' that in Turner's time had green sward to the edge of the river: the house with three windows only, one in the basement, and one each on the first and second floors. In the room on the second floor, where he painted his last four pictures, he died. I remembered what I had read of the talk of the undertaker's men about the shabbiness of the place, and the narrowness of the staircase, so circumscribed, that to carry the coffin up was impossible: they were obliged to convey the body down to the coffin.

Then my thoughts turned to Turner the artist, the poet in paint, and I recalled what his great contemporary, Constable, had said of him: that one of Turner's early pictures, 'a canal with numerous boats making thousands of beautiful shapes,' was 'the most complete work of genius' he had ever seen; that 'Turner's light, whether it emanates from sun or moon, is exquisite'; that 'he seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent and so airy'; and then I repeated the passage about the golden visions glorious and beautiful, only visions, but pictures to live and die with.

So I mused, turning from that sad little house, now so cheerful, to gaze upon the Thames beloved by Turner. He was born near the river; he chose his rural retreats at Hammersmith and Twickenham because they were by the banks; and Wapping was the scene of his later jaunts. Almost his first oil picture, 'Moonlight at Millbank,' was painted by the riverside; one of his earliest drawings was 'The Archbishop's Palace at Lambeth.' I rarely pass the wharves south of the Houses of Parliament without seeing him, as in a vision, squatting on his heels, and gazing for half an hour at a time at the ripples. The magnificent new home of his pictures is by the Thames at Millbank, and his last journey but one was from the Thames: his last journey was to the crypt of St. Paul's on the hill above the river: there he was rendered to the mould:--

'Under the cross of gold That shines over city and river, There he shall rest for ever Among the wise and the bold.'

There, in the crypt, he was buried as he desired, by the side of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and his funeral, as he desired and stipulated in his will, cost one thousand pounds.

When I returned home from musing before the Turner Cottage, I re-read the story of the last years of his life, how his hiding-place was discovered, and so on to the end, and after. The true facts were revealed through the pertinacity of John Pye the engraver, who 'left certain memoranda of events connected with "Admiral Booth's" tenancy of the Cremorne Cottage, and death under its roof, which are of extraordinary interest.' Pye's memoranda were summarised by Sir Walter Armstrong in his volume on Turner, partly from a copy made by the late Sir Frederic Burton, and partly from information supplied to Sir Walter by Mr. J. L. Roget, through whose hands the whole of Pye's manuscripts passed.

But first a few words of connecting events before Turner's hiding-place was discovered. His last appearance in public seems to have been at the private view of the Royal Academy in 1851: 'he was shaky; he was feeble; he was no longer the sturdy, dogged, strange being.' After that appearance, as he had ceased to attend the council meetings, David Roberts wrote saying how sorry his brother painters were not to see him, trusting that if he were ill, they would be allowed to visit him, and promising, that if he desired it, the secret of his dwelling-place should not be disclosed. Turner made no answer to the letter, but two weeks later he visited Roberts's studio in Fitzroy Square looking 'sadly broken and ailing.' Turner was much affected by the letter he had received, and said to Roberts: 'You must not ask me; but whenever I come to town I will always come to see you.' 'I tried to cheer him up,' says Roberts, 'but he laid his hand upon his heart and replied, "No, no! There is something here which is all wrong." Roberts noticed that his small eyes were as brilliant as those of a child, eyes which some called grey and some blue. Probably they were grey-blue.

The discovery of his hiding-place was made by Hannah Danby. Turning over his clothes one day, she found a letter which gave her the clue. In company with another old woman as old as herself, she went to Chelsea, and in a shop obtained information that satisfied her as to the identity of 'Mr. Booth.' She informed Mr. Harpur, one of Turner's executors, who hastened to Chelsea, 'only in time to find Turner sinking.' Dr. Price of Margate, an old acquaintanee, was, besides Mrs. Booth, probably the only other person who shared the secret of his seclusion. When Turner sent for Dr. Price in the last weeks of 1851, he was told that death was near. 'Go downstairs,' he said to the doctor, 'take a glass of sherry and then look at me again.' The doctor did so, but the reply was the same.

Just before his death Mrs. Booth wheeled him to the window to look upon the winter sunset. He died in her arms, old Turner, old woman, his head upon her shoulder, on the 19th of December 1851. So passed the greatest of all landscape painters, weary of men and of orthodox ways, an old man tired of the fret of life, but not tired of nature, an enthusiast to the end in his study of light and its brother colour, and all phenomena, that which is plain to the eyes, and that which hides. Sentiment was in heyday in 1851, and so David Bogue, who made the picture of the 'house where Turner died, sent a ray of sunlight streaming down to the Chelsea room by the river, as if a parent were smiling on a loving and life-loyal child.

The month following Turner's death, pertinacious Pye, as we read in Sir Walter Armstrong's summary of his narrative, had an interview with the owner of the Cremorne Cottage, and was informed that some four or five years before a lady and gentleman proposed to rent the cottage, but as they declined to give names and references, it was arranged that the rent should be paid in advance, and 'the unknown gentleman and lady became installed in the quiet retreat of their choice.' Some time later John Pye paid a second visit to Chelsea, and talked with Mrs. Booth. She appeared, he says, to be about fifty, was 'good-looking, dark, and kindly-mannered, but obviously illiterate.' She told Pye that Turner always called her 'old 'un,' and that she called him 'dear,' and that she first made his acquaintance when he became her lodger near the Custom House at Margate. She had known him for more than twenty years, the last five of which had been spent in the Cremorne Cottage. Did any fires of jealousy break into flame in the bosoms of these two women, his housekeeper mistresses, Mrs. Booth and Hannah Danby, who knew Turner so well, and who met by his deathbed?

The following extracts are from an account of the appearance of Turner's house after his death, given to Thornbury by his 'kind friend Mr. Trimmer':--

'Backwards stretched a large unfurnished room filled with unfinished pictures; then a larger and drearier room yet; lastly, a back room, against the walls of which stood his unfinished productions, large full-length canvases placed carelessly against the wall, the damp of which had taken off the colours altogether, or had damaged them.... Then we went into Turner's sleeping apartment; it is surprising how a person of his means could have lived in such a room; certainly he prized modern luxuries at a very modest rate. I reserved his studio as the finale. Often had I seen him emerge from that hidden recess when shown into his gallery. That august retreat was now thrown open; I entered. On a circular table lay his gloves and neck-handkerchief. In the centre of the table was a raised box with a circle in the centre with side compartments; a good contrivance for an artist, though I had never seen one of the kind before. In the centre were his colours, the great object of my attraction. I remember, on my father's once observing to Turner that nothing was to be done without ultramarine, his saying that cobalt was good enough for him; and cobalt, to be sure, there was, but also several bottles of ultramarine of various depths; and smalts of various intensities, of which I think he made great use.... Grinding colours on a slab was not his practice, and his dry colours were rubbed on the palette with cold-drawn oil. His colours were mixed daily, and he was very particular. If not to his mind, he would say to Mrs. Danby, "Can't you set a palette better than this?" Like Wilson, Turner used gamboge: this was simply pounded and mixed with linseed cold-drawn oil.

'His brushes were of the humblest description, mostly large round hog's tools and some flat.... Mrs. Danby told me that when he had nearly finished a picture, he took it to the end of his long gallery, and put in the last touches.... I next inspected his travelling-box. Had I been asked to guess his travelling library, I should have said Young's _Night Thoughts_ and Izaac Walton; and there they were, together with some inferior translation of Horace....'

'His painting-room had no skylight. It had been originally the drawing-room, and had a good north light, with two windows.... There was a small deal box on a side table; my father raised the lid to show me its contents; it was covered with a glass, and under it was the cast of the great Turner. Dear old Turner, there he lay, his eyes sunk, his lips fallen in. He reminded me strongly of his old father, whom long years before I had seen trudging to Brentford market from Sandycombe Lodge, to lay in his weekly supplies.'

The _Times_ in the account of Turner's funeral said:--

'Even those who could only sneer and smile at the erratic blaze of his colour, shifting and flickering as the light of the Aurora, lingered minute after minute before the last incomprehensible "Turner" that gleamed on the walls of the Academy, and the first name sought for upon the catalogue by the critic, artist, and amateur, as well as by those who could not understand him when they found him, was his also. Many of the most distinguished of our painters, and many private friends, paid the last tribute of respect to his remains, and followed his hearse yesterday, and a long procession of mourning coaches and private carriages, preceded it to the cathedral.... The coffin bore the simple inscription: "Joseph Mallord Turner, Esq., R.A., died December 19th, 1851, aged 79 years."' As the date of Turner's birth was not given by the _Times_, it was probably unknown at the time. The date was 1775, and therefore he was seventy-six when he died, not seventy-nine.

The little, enlarged house in Cheyne Walk is not, like the Carlyle house in Cheyne Row, a place of pilgrimage. His shrine is the new Turner Gallery at Millbank. Ten years ago this 'new Turner Wing' of the National Gallery of British Art was a dream: to-day it is a reality. Perhaps, who knows, in ten years' time, on the site of Turner's cottage by the Thames, extending on either side, there may rise that home for 'the maintenance and support of Poor and Decayed Male Artists being born in England and of English parents only and lawful issue,' which he desired, which was explicit in his will, and which we, his countrymen, the heirs of his achievement, have entirely ignored.