J. M. W. TURNER.*
WE consider that the chapter entitled " Introductory " is a great flaw, if it is not a blot, on an otherwise first-rate memoir of Turner of a popular kind. The two contrasted extracts, front Ruskin and Thorubury, one of them making the great painter a little better than the beasts, and the other putting him a little lower than the angels, are simply a bid, although we are loath
to say so, to popular curiosity. And for so subtle a question as the morality of Turner's life, this introduction is totally inadequate, as well as out of place. Future historians of our time will note with amusement how strong was the " pot- boiling" element iu literature, and what a ridiculous mess it made.
If there is one side of this question that we need mention here, we may add that the whole mind, thought, and being of the old magician was as totally removed from the comprehension of the really vulgar as was his noble art. We may add that the extract from Thornbury, by its frivolous form, con- tains internal evidence of apocryphal elements. The inac- curacies of Thornbury were multitudinous. Most students of Turner remember the mention of the house in Bristol which Turner visited as a youth, and where his first-exhibited
drawings were plagued. Thornbury speaks of Mr. Harraway, a fishmonger in Broadway ; whereas the real name was Mr. Narraway, a fellmouger in Broadmead. Errors of fact, sometimes of the most intricate kind, are thus spread broadcast among our hurrying and much-baited public. Here is a picture of Turner, drawn by his friend Mrs. Wheeler, at whose father's (Mr. AV. F. AVells) house he had spent much of the happiest part of his
life :—
" In early life, my father's house was his second home, a haven of rest from many domestic trials too sacred to touch upon. Turner loved my father with a son's affection ; and to me he was as an elder
brother. Many arc the times I have gone out sketching with him. I remember his scrambling up a tree to obtain a better view ; and there
he made a coloured sketch, I handing him up his colours as he wanted them. Of course, at butt time, I was quite a young girl. He was a firm, affectionate friend to the end of his life; his feelings were seldom seen on the surface, but they were deep and enduring. No one would have imagined, under that rather rough and cold exterior, how very strong were the affections which lay hidden beneath. I have more than once seen him weep bitterly, particularly at the death of my own dear father, which took him by surprise, for lie was blind to the coming event, which lie dreaded. He came immediately to my house in an agony of tears. Sobbing like a child, he said,- ' Oh, Clara, Clara! these are iron tears. 1 have lost the best friend I ever had in my life.' Oh ! what a different man would Turner have been, if all the good and kindly feelings of his groat mind had been called into action ; but they lay dormant, and were known to very few. He was by nature suspicious, and no tender hand had wiped away early prejudices, the inevitable conse- quence of a defective education. Of all the light-hearted, merry creatures I ever knew, Turner was the most so; and the laughter and fun that abounded when he was an inmate of our cottage were inconceivable, particularly with the juvenile members of the family.'
• Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists: Turner. By W COSMO Moukhouse. London : Sampson Low and Co.
For the rest of Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse's memoir we have nothing but praise. We have on recent occasions expressed our opinion as to the inadequate character of Mr. Hamerton's Life, on all questions touching the indications of Turner's highest genius ; but this little book is very much nearer the mark, in this the greatest of ways. So much has been written about the interesting tenour of Turner's art-life, and his solitary rambling (like Beethoven's) about our fair country, when she was fairer still, that Mr. Monkhouse is to be congratulated on having thoroughly known where to strike out for " pastures new."
There is one writer living—we mean Richard Wagner, the musician—who has, guided by his own experience, given us in clear phrasing, the kind of life passed by these solitary men. We must remark, however, that while Beethoven is claimed as a saiat both in his domestic life and his art, Turner
has endured much calumniation ; and indeed Turner was probably not a strictly moral man, though far more so than most men, as is proved by his herculean work, and the nobility of all his sentiments and public deeds. Beethoven, who was a thoroughly educated man, and had passed his youth in the midst of good society and refined, cultured winners, led. pre3isely the same kind of artistic life as Turner. And in the hope that our readers may be interested to follow Wagner's remarks on a subject which ordinary people willingly remain incompetent to judge, we here transcribe a translation of them :—
" The phenomenal world had limited access to him [Beethoven]. His eye, almost uncomfortably piercing, perceived in the external world nothing else than vexations disturbances of his inner world, and warding them off constituted almost his sole rapport with that external world. So the spasm became the expression of his counten- ance ; the spasm of defiance kept his nose, his mouth, in that tension which would never relax into smiles, but only into unnatural laughter. If it is held to be en axiom of physiology, for high intellectual en- dowments that a great brain must be enclosed in a thin, delicate skull, as if to facilitate the immediate cognition of external things, we sew, nevertheless, upon the inspection of his remains a few years ago, in conformity with the entire skeleton, a skull of unusual thickness and firmness. So did nature guard in him a brain of extreme tenderness, in order that it might look towards the interior only, and carry on, in undisturbed repose, the world-contemplation of a great heart. What that exceedingly robust strength enclosed and preserved was an inner world of such conspicuous delicacy that, left definitely to the rough touch of the external world, it would have gently dissolved and evaporated,—as did Mozart's genius of light and love."
The illustrations in the book—apparently 'reductions by pho- tography from the wood-blocks of Turner's original engravings —are of much beauty. A recent contemporary reviewer, we are aware, has condemned them. This, however, in our day
goes for very little, or nothing. Everything that is best and most honest gets its share of blame ; and two critics may each be considered eminent, though one says black is white, and the other considers comment on the sable hue superfluous. The beautiful " Chiiteau d'Amboise," " The Falls of Valombre," the " Ivy Bridge," and " Totnes, on the Dart," are all admirable. There is no hardness nor grittiness, and none of the too frequent style of glitter about them. For, as Mr. Ruskin beautifully said (in a too trenchant passage), Turner's work, though " bright as the jewel-casements of Aladdin's palace," was also " soft as a kingfisher's wings."
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