The Dark Clue (37 page)

And two years later, in 1804:

19th April.
Sir George called with Perrin, who is full of Turner and all his works, having but yesterday been to the opening of Turner's private gallery. He was as excited as a child who has just seen the king. ‘It is seventy feet long, Haste – and twenty wide – and stands behind his house in Harley Street, and its neighbour in Queen Anne Street' – and more in the same vein, as if a catalogue of architectural facts were the most interesting topic in the world. At length, to my relief, Sir George stopped him by saying: ‘That's all very well, Perrin; but he should not shew so many pictures together. And his skies are too strong, and do not correspond with the other parts.'

‘What, then,' says Perrin, aghast. ‘Do you not think he has merit?'

‘He has merit,' said Sir George, ‘but it is of the wrong sort. There is a perversity about him – he is too rough and unnatural, and neglects the example of the immortal masters, merely for effect. The danger of it is that he may lead others into the same errors, for there's no denying his seducing skill; and that's why all men of taste and sense should oppose him.'

There were red spots on Perrin's cheeks, and I could see he wanted to take issue with him; but he held his tongue – fearful, no doubt, of losing his own commission. But I was emboldened by Sir George's words to screw my courage to the sticking-place and ask him, at last, straight out about my Lear – for here was a work built solidly on those very everlasting principles he had just so warmly praised, and – though he had not yet offered an opinion – yet surely he would not have spoken so if he had not meant to approve it?

He seemed surprised, at first, that I should even mention the matter; but then he stood and gazed at it for a minute or more. At length he said: ‘It is too big, Haste.'

Too big! – I could scarce believe my ears! I should have been as politic as Perrin, and said nothing; but my indignation was roused, and the words fairly forced themselves from my lips: ‘If you will recall, Sir George, it was
you
who considered my original plan too small, and asked me to paint it the size of life!' To which he made no direct response at all, but merely said: ‘I should not have the space for it.' and left.

A moment later Perrin put his head back in at the door and said laughing: ‘You must build a gallery to accommodate it.' And then he was gone again before I could reply.

Was ever an artist more abused? My rage and despair were so terrible I wanted to dash my own brains out, or take a knife to the picture and cut it to ribbons, but my poor Alice heard the commotion, and restrained me.

She is an angel in my distress. God bless her, and reward my exertions in spite of all!

Twenty-three months, and still he had not finished his Lear! However many years must it have taken him? Seldom can a man have laboured so long to so little effect. Or rather, not
little
– for if it is the picture I saw in the attic, no-one could complain it was
too small – but rather
unsatisfying.
The style is too bombastic – the figures disproportioned – the whole somehow less than the sum of its parts. I do not agree with Sir George Beaumont about Turner, but I can fully understand his reluctance to applaud
Lear.

But
why
do I not agree with him about Turner? Is it merely our natural inclination to venerate the past? For Beaumont, the ideal was the style of the Old Masters (who doubtless, in their turn, were reviled for flouting the accepted conventions of
their
time), and anything that diverged from it was seen as ‘error'; while for me, Turner himself is already hallowed by age, and his works seem to glow with a natural beauty entirely lacking in the sickly confections of the present.

It cannot be wholly that (for otherwise, of course, I should equally admire the
Lear);
and yet it is undeniably true that I find an enchantment in Haste's world – a world of Regency bustle and elegance, in which Islington was still a village, and beaux still paraded at Vauxhall – which has not been entirely banished by the knowledge that it was vicious and depraved, and the evidence in Haste's own journal that it was as full of suffering as our own. Why are we so perverse?

Wednesday

Almost ten barren years – barren both for me and for Haste, for there is no reference to Turner, and nothing (save the birth of his son) but debt and failure for him – but at last, in 1813, I find this:

15th February.
Turning into Queen Anne Street met Calcott, who had evidently just emerged from the first house. A plate by the door read: ‘Benjamin Young, dentist', so I rallied him, saying: ‘What! Have you broken your tooth then on Sir George's leg?'

He gave a smile that barely deserved the name and said: ‘That is nearer the mark than you know. No, I am just come from Turner's.' And he pointed to a door next to the first, which I had supposed led to the dentist's mews. ‘That is the entrance to his gallery.'

‘I thought it was by the house in Harley Street.'

‘He has moved round the corner here, and taken the next house along; and had this door made through the dentist's, so that people may reach the gallery more easily. Which is a matter of material concern for him at present; for if he is to find purchasers for his work, it is here he must find them.'

I asked him why; and he replied: ‘Why, because of Sir George
Beaumont. He's so implacably furious with us – with Turner, for leading us all astray, and with me, for being led – that he's trying to stop people buying our work. Result: neither of us has sold anything at the Academy exhibition for some time now. Last year, he cut me dead at the private view, and deterred Lord Brownlow from taking one of my landscapes. And even Turner, for all his reputation, had difficulty securing a good position for his
Hannibal Crossing the Alps.'

‘That', I said, ‘is nothing to do with Sir George. It's to do with the Hanging Committee's being a spiteful little cabal, riven with petty jealousies and intrigues.'

Calcott did not respond – they never do, but merely sulk, for the thought that anything might be the fault of the Academy itself, and not of the patrons and connoisseurs, wounds their pride. He shrugged, and said stiffly: ‘At all events, I am resolved to send nothing in this year, and Turner is minded to do the same.' And off he went, in a pet.

Perhaps I should not have spoken so; but I cannot, even now, see a great injustice and not cry out. For what is the proper object of an institution such as the Royal Academy, if not to seek out talent, wherever it is to be found, and to encourage it for the glory of art, and the renown of the country? And what does it do instead? It acts as a closed club, whose sole purpose is to promote its own members (when they are not too occupied with fighting each other) – by, for example, appointing one of their number to the position of Professor of Perspective, and then not requiring him to carry out his duties. So are men of genius excluded, and compelled to starve, while their inferiors occupy the places that should by right be theirs.

Reading that last paragraph, I was struck by how different in tone it seemed from what had gone before, as if Haste had suddenly decided to stop writing his journal and embark on a tract instead. It was little surprise to find, therefore, when I reached the entry for nth November that year: Today began my satire on the Academy'; and, three months later, Today my satire is published. God help it to find its mark.'

He wrote under an assumed name, a rare piece of discretion for Haste, announcing his aim as ‘the wholesale reform of this corrupt body'. I hope he did not suffer by it; but I know him well enough now to fear that he did.

Thursday

A letter from Mrs. Kingsett. Her mother died three days ago. A great blow for her, and – I confess it – a dreadful disappointment for me. My head is full of names that I found in Haste – Calcott,
Beaumont, Perrin – and as I read I tantalized myself with the prospect of talking to someone who could speak of them from first-hand experience. And that is quite apart, of course, from what she might have told me of Turner himself.

But I must not waste pity on myself, when there are others so much more deserving of it. Mrs. Kingsett herself sets me a fine example, for even in her grief (I am touched to find) she thinks of me, and my far smaller loss, saying that I may call next week, and look at Lady Meesden's letters and papers before they are dispersed or destroyed. I shall go, and be grateful.

All afternoon and evening with Haste. I have now reached 1827. Nothing more of Turner – nothing at all, in fact, save almost unremitting misery, made only worse by the occasional snippet of praise or promise of a commission, which raises him up just enough to ensure that the inevitable disappointment, when it comes, plunges him into yet deeper despair. He is, of course, discovered as the author of the attack on the Academy, and finds that he has contrived to alienate himself, at a stroke, from almost everybody who could help to further his career. More and more, as the years go by, and one grandiose scheme after another comes to nothing, he sees ‘the great Cabal', and his own fearless honesty in denouncing it, as the cause of all his troubles.

But two small points of interest, which perhaps go some way to explaining his son's strange behaviour. On 15th May, 1814, he records:

A young artist named Eastlake called. He is still little more than a boy, but has more sense and judgement than many twice his age. He is but lately back from Paris, and as he stood before my
Caesar,
I could see what thought was passing through his mind: ‘At last! – an
English
history painting worthy to hang next to those of Italy and France!'

And on 1st June, 1828:

Dear God! how corruptible are even the seemingly noblest spirits! Eastlake called to ‘pay his respects' – so he said – before returning to Italy. His true purpose became apparent when I asked him to commit himself to my cause; for while conceding that the Academy ‘is far from perfect', he urged me to desist from publicly attacking it, on the grounds that ‘there is nothing to be gained from needlessly offending people'. ‘What!' I cried. ‘Is the sacred name of Art then nothing! – and the war that must be fought to protect her “needless”!?'

When he saw he would not persuade me, he soon left, without even remarking on my
Pilate.
It would not do to concede the power of
my
work, when you are a newly elected Associate of the Royal Academy, and hope to become a member.

Oh, dear.

Friday

It is just past eight at night, and I have this minute closed Haste's last volume. I knew I should find no more of Turner, for during his last years Haste had time and energy for nothing but the evergrowing inventory of his own sufferings – his imprisonment for debt; his desperate pleas for help; his rejections and increasingly public humiliations. I feel as if I have been sitting by a sick-bed, these last few days, helplessly watching the decline of some dear but troublesome friend, and that death has taken him at last.

He has gone, but the two last entries, in 1837, haunt me yet:

11th January.
Called Arthur to me, and made him promise that, whatever may become of me, he will continue to fight for what is right, and to secure for my name that justice which, after forty years' ceaseless struggle, is its due. He was like a boy again, weeping, and begging me to remember him and his mother, and for their sakes to do nothing rash. At eleven he left, swearing to return in the morning, bringing, if he could, some hope or promise of relief.

God bless me through the troubles of this night.

12th January.
I am resolved at last. My hand has been stayed by thoughts of my poor family – but now I am persuaded that when the initial pang is gone they will live easier without this great burden that has so oppressed them.

God forgive me. Amen.

I do not like to think of what happened next, but cannot put it from my mind.

Saturday

I feared I should have nightmares about poor Haste, but – as so often happens – my sleeping mind took me by surprise; for in the event the only incident from his diary that found its way into my dreams was something I had considered entirely trivial, and already almost forgotten.

I was in a street, and saw two doors before me. One was the entrance to a dentist's; the other, though it was unmarked, I knew led to Turner's gallery. As I hesitated, wondering whether I should enter, the door opened of its own volition, and I went inside. I was not frightened – only mildly irritated that Turner had somehow contrived to admit me while remaining invisible.

The hall was dark, and completely bare. When I reached the end, I expected to find a door into the gallery before me; but instead there were only stairs down into an unlit basement. Again, I felt no fear as I descended; but I was vexed by the growing conviction that Turner was there, but would not let me see him.

At the bottom was a crude stone arch, and beyond it a kind of cave or grotto cut into the bare rock. It was suffused from above with a dim white light, which made the specks of mica in the granite glitter like a constellation in the night sky, and gave it an eerie, seductive beauty. It seemed no bigger than a cellar, but I soon realized that was deceptive; for when I reached what I took to be the end wall I found there was a small opening to the left, through which the cave continued. As I stooped to enter it, the figure of a man started from the shadows, as flittery and imprecise as a bat, and as quickly disappeared again, like a startled animal scuttling for shelter. I had barely seen him, but I somehow knew who it was: not Turner, but Walter. And my annoyance turned to outright anger: he had come here before me, and kept it a secret from me.

At length – after how many twists and turns I cannot say, and with the passage growing narrower and darker with every step – I saw a hazy yellow light before me, and a moment later found myself in an octagonal chamber. On each of the eight sides there hung a picture, but although they blazed with the familiar Turnerish golds and oranges and reds, I recognized none of them. Until, that is, I came to the seventh; for it was
The Bay of Baiae.