George Paston

“ I will not live in Europe, even were I, in flying from it, compelled to beg my bread. Once only will I go to France, to see you and James, but only that once. I will not be a martyr for nothing. The granddaughter of Chatham, the niece of the illustrious Pitt, feels herself blush that she was born in England--that England who has made her accursed gold the counterpoise to justice; that England who puts weeping humanity in irons, who has employed the valour of her troops, destined for the defence of her national honour, as the instrument to enslave a freeborn people ”

“ The joy with which Haydon welcomed this first step towards the object which he had been advocating throughout the whole of his working life, was marred by the painful misgiving that he would not be allowed to share the fruits of victory. When he had first begun his crusade, he had felt himself without a rival in his own branch of art, not one of his contemporaries being able to compete with him in a knowledge of anatomy, in strength of imagination, or in the power of working on a grand scale. ”

“ The painting of provincial mayors was so little to Haydon's taste that by the close of this year we find him in deep depression of spirits, unrelieved by even a spark of his old sanguine buoyancy. 'I candidly confess,' he writes, 'I find my glorious art a bore. I cannot with pleasure paint any individual head for the mere purpose of domestic gratification. I must have a great subject to excite public feeling.... Alas! I have no object in life now but my wife and children, and almost wish I had not them, that I might sit still and meditate on human grandeur and human ambition till I died.... ”

“ Browning, who wrote to Miss Mitford on March 19, 1854, 'Oh, I have just been reading poor Haydon's biography. There is tragedy! The pain of it one can hardly shake off. Surely, surely, wrong was done somewhere, when the worst is admitted of Haydon. For himself, looking forward beyond the grave, I seem to understand that all things, when most bitter, worked ultimate good to him, for that sublime arrogance of his would have been fatal perhaps to the moral nature, if further developed by success. ”

“ So Machbuba and the master who, like another Pygmalion, seems to have endowed this dusky Galatea with a mind and soul, remained at Vienna, where the Abyssinian, clad in a picturesque Mameluke's costume, accompanied the prince to all the public spectacles, and became a nine days' wonder to the novelty-loving Viennese. But the severity of a European winter proved fatal to poor Machbuba, consumption laid its grip upon her, and it was as a dying girl that at last she was taken to the Baths of Muskau. ”

“ But it occasionally happens that a human life illustrates some moral lesson with the triteness and crudity of a Sunday-school book, and of such is the career of Lady Hester Stanhope, a Pitt on the mother's side, and more of a Pitt in temper and disposition than her grandfather, the great Commoner himself. Her story contains the useful but conventional lesson that pride goeth before a fall, and that all earthly glory is but vanity, together with a warning against the ambition that o'erleaps itself, and ends in failure and humiliation. ”

“ Haydon the artist,' she wrote to her friend Mrs. Martin, a few days after the event, 'has quite upset me. I thank God that I never saw him--poor gifted Haydon.... No artist is left behind with equal largeness of poetical conception. If the hand had always obeyed the soul, he would have been a genius of the first order. As it is, he lived on the slope of genius, and could not be steadfast and calm. His life was one long agony of self-assertion. Poor, poor Haydon! See how the world treats those who try too openly for its gratitude. ”

“ A despotic prince may, if he chooses, give his court painter carte blanche for the decorations of national buildings, and gain nothing but glory for his liberality, even when it is exercised at the expense of his people. But in a country that possesses a constitutional government, more especially when that country has been impoverished by long and costly wars, the minister who devotes large sums to the encouragement of national art has the indignation of an over-taxed populace to reckon with. It is little short of an insult to offer men historic frescoes when they are clamouring for bread. ”

“ He sees things that are not given to us to see. We see the duchess in her carriage, and gaze with much reverence on the strawberry-leaves on the panels, and her grace within; whereas the odds are that that lovely duchess has had, one time or the other, a desperate flirtation with Willis the Conqueror. Perhaps she is thinking of him at this very moment, as her jewelled hand presses her perfumed handkerchief to her fair and coroneted brow, and she languidly stops to purchase a ruby bracelet at Gunter's, or to sip an ice at Howell and James's. ”

“ For, like you, my lady, I look for our future salvation from the East, where nations still nearer to God and to nature can alone, some day, purify the rotten civilisation of decrepid Europe, in which everything is artificial, and where we are menaced with a new kind of barbarism--not that with which states begin, but with which they end. Like you, madam, I believe that astrology is not an empty science, but a lost one. ”

“ The great event of 1829 for the Howitts was a visit to London, where they were the guests of Alaric and Zillah Watts, with whom they had long maintained a paper friendship. 'What wilt thou say, dear Anna,' writes Mary in December, 'when I tell thee that William and I set out for London the day after to-morrow. I half dread it. I shall wish twenty times for our quiet fireside, where day by day we read and talk by ourselves, and nobody looks in upon us. I keep reasoning with myself that the people we shall see in London are but men and women, and perhaps, after all, no better than ourselves. ”

“ Before entering upon a new field of observation, the prince summed up his general impressions of London society with a candour that cannot have been very agreeable to his English readers. The goddess of Fashion, he observes, reigns in England alone with a despotic and inexorable sway; while the spirit of caste here receives a power, consistency, and completeness of development unexampled in any other country. 'Every class of society in England, as well as every field, is separated from every other by a hedge of thorns. ”

“ I desire to give every girl, no matter her rank, a trade or profession. Cultivate what is necessary to the position she is born to; cultivate all things in moderation, but one thing to perfection, no matter what it is, for which she has a talent: give her a staff to lay hold of; let her feel, "This will carry me through life without dependence."'
With the assistance of Miss Jewsbury Lady Morgan, in the last years of her life, prepared a volume of reminiscences, which she called The Odd Volume. ”

“ During the remainder of the year, Haydon worked steadily, and finished his picture. On December 2 he notes: 'It is now twenty-seven years since I ordered my Solomon canvas. I was young--twenty-six. The whole world was against me. I had not a farthing. Yet I remember the delight with which I mounted my deal table and dashed it in, singing and trusting in God, as I always do. When one is once imbued with that clear heavenly confidence, there is nothing like it. It has carried me through everything. I think my dearest Mary has not got it; I do not think women have in general. ”

“ If a man desires to create a new era in the art of his country, he must be prepared to lead a monastic life in a garret; but if, like Haydon, he allows himself a wife and eight children, and professes to be unable to live on five hundred a year, he must condescend to the painting of portraits and pot-boilers. The public cannot be forced to support what it neither understands nor admires, and, in a democratic state, the Government is bound to consult the taste of its masters. ”

“ William and Mary Howitt, it may be observed in conclusion, though not leaders, were brave soldiers in the army of workers for humanity, and if now they seem likely to share the common lot of the rank and file--oblivion--it must be remembered that they were among those favoured of the gods who are crowned with gratitude, love, and admiration by their contemporaries. To them, asleep in their Roman grave, the neglect of posterity brings no more pain than the homage of modern critics brings triumph to the slighted poet who shares their last resting-place. ”

“ The truth is I am fonder of books than of anything on earth. I consider myself a man of great powers, excited to an art which limits their exercise. In politics, law, or literature they would have had a full and glorious swing, and I should have secured a competence.'
The fact that Haydon was more at home among the literary men of his acquaintance than among his fellow-artists was a natural result of his intense love of books, and his keen interest in contemporary history. ”

“ Marriage has increased my happiness beyond expression. In the intervals of study, a few minutes' conversation with a creature one loves is the greatest of all reliefs. God bless us both! My pecuniary difficulties are great, but my love is intense, my ambition is intense, and my hope in God's protection cheering. Bewick, my pupil, has realised my hopes in his picture of "Jacob and Rachel." But it is cold work talking of pupils when one's soul is full of a beloved woman! ”

“ As soon as his pictures were off his hands, Haydon began his competition cartoons of 'The Curse of Adam and Eve,' and 'The Entry of Edward the Black Prince and King John into London.' He felt that it was beneath his dignity as a painter of recognised standing to compete with young unknown men who had nothing to lose, but in his present necessities the chance of winning one of the money prizes was not to be neglected. In the absence of any lucrative employment he was only able to carry on his work by pawning his lay-figure, and borrowing off his butterman. ”

“ I think I shall put over my painting-room door, "Love, solitude, and painting."' On the last day of the year, according to his wont, Haydon sums up his feelings and impressions of the past twelve months. 'I don't know how it is, but I get less reflective as I get older. I seem to take things as they come without thought. Perhaps being married to my dearest Mary, and having no longer anything to hope in love, I get more content with my lot, which, God knows, is rapturous beyond imagination. ”

“ Haydon's love for his wife waxed rather than waned with the passing of the years, and his children, of whom he too soon had the poor man's quiverful, were an ever-present delight. 'My domestic happiness is doubled,' he writes about this time. 'Daily and hourly my sweet Mary proves the justice of my choice. My boy Frank gives tokens of being gifted at two years old, God bless him! My ambition would be to make him a public man.... I have got into my old delightful habits of study again. The mixture of literature and painting I really think the perfection of human happiness. ”

“ We acquire a lively idea of that wonderful combination, that luxuriant growth--of that insular life which is based in boundless wealth and civil freedom, in universal monotony and manifold diversity; formal and capricious, active and torpid, energetic and dull, comfortable and tedious, the envy and derision of the world. Like other unprejudiced travellers of modern times, our author is not very much enchanted with the English form of existence: his cordial and sincere admiration is often accompanied by unsparing censure. ”

“ During the early and middle decades of the nineteenth century there was no more original and picturesque figure among the minor celebrities of Germany--one might almost say of Europe--than that of his Highness, Hermann Ludwig Heinrich, Prince Pückler-Muskau. Throughout his long career we find this princeling playing many parts--at once an imitation Werter, a sentimental Don Juan, a dandy who out-dressed D'Orsay, a sportsman and traveller of Münchhausen type, a fashionable author who wrote German with a French accent and a warrior who seems to have wandered out of the pages of mediæval romance. ”