Lady Turnour

“ I do not think that Turner ever thought seriously about matrimony. His art was his mistress, and to his art to his dying day he was loyal, to the sacrifice of everything else. And he was loyal in his way—or shall I say faithful in his way—to Hannah Danby, who entered his service in 1800 or 1801, a girl of sixteen; who was housekeeper in Queen Anne Street through his long life; and who, in the end, when he had done all his great work, found him dying in hiding as Mr. Booth, 'husband' of Mrs. Booth, in the little house at Chelsea overlooking the river. ”

“ By his first wife he left issue, with a daughter, two sons, of whom the younger, Arthur Turnor, resided at Shillinglee Park, married Elizabeth, daughter of John Urling of Eton, Stoke-Pogis, Buckinghamshire, and had issue a son Edward, who died without issue in 1736.
The chief baron's elder son, Sir Edward Turnor (1643–1721) , was appointed gentleman of the privy chamber in 1680, and represented Orford, Suffolk, in parliament throughout the reign of Queen Anne. He married, in May 1667, Lady Isabella, daughter of William Keith, seventh earl marischal [q. v.] , and, dying on 3 Dec. ”

“ Turner, in a soothing tone,--"you need not distress yourself about it. You do not know how frequently such things happen."
"Ay? Is it often done?" exclaimed the Countess.
"Daily, madam," said Mrs. Turner. "Many a rich old miser finds the way to heaven by the tender love his heir bears to his money bags; many a jealous husband troubles his lady's peace no more, after she has learnt the secret of deliverance; many a wise man's secrets find a quiet deposit in the churchyard, which otherwise might have been noised abroad ”

“ I am Miss Turner’s mother, and I was to call for her so that we might drive out together."
"Then p'r'aps Miss Turner is still in her room," suggested the maid. "Shall I go and see?"
"Don't trouble," replied the woman; "I know my way. I'll go myself."
Whereupon the old dame walked past the servant, crossed the hall, and went upstairs. No one saw her come down again, but one of the lodgers seems to have heard a knock at Jane Turner’s door, and the female voice saying, “It’s me, Jane—may I come in?" ”

“ In 1843 Turner suffered a great blow from the loss of his wife, a lady whom John Murray met in 1807 with the reputation of being ‘one of the Godwin school.’ ‘If,’ he says, ‘they all be as beautiful, accomplished, and agreeable as this lady, they must be a deuced dangerous set indeed.’ Early in 1847 he returned to London, and he died under his son's roof in Red Lion Square on 13 Feb. ”

“ Turner, who was a remarkably fine woman, had been an early companion of the countess of Exeter. That, whilst a maid in her father's house, this beautiful but bad woman had initiated the young lady Howard into much of the profligacy so rife amongst the courtiers, male and female, of queen Elizabeth. But after being separated for some years, by the marriage of Mrs, Turner to a physician in London, they then again met there, Mrs. Turner now being a widow, and Frances Howard the reluctant wife of Essex. ”

“ You have a compromising photograph—is it not?—of my daughter-in-law ze Countess of Hohengebirg. I am ze Grand Duchess of Starkburg-Nauheim—zis is my daughter, ze Princess Amalie. We are here incognito. You understand? Not?”
And, with inimitable elegance of gesture, my dear lady raised a pair of “starers” to her eyes and fixed them on Jane Turner’s quaking figure.
Never had I seen suspicion, nay terror, depicted so plainly on a young face, but I will do the girl the justice to state that she pulled herself together with marvellous strength of will. ”

“ Turner came to her house immediately after her husband’s death, and did demand certain pictures which were in her husband’s study, namely, one picture in wax, very mysteriously apparelled in silk and satin; as also another made in the form of a naked woman, spreading and laying forth her hair in a glass, which Mrs. Turner did confidently affirm to be in a box, and she knew in what part of the room in the study they were.’ We also learn that Forman, in reply to the Countess’s reproaches, averred that the devil, as he was informed, had no power over the person of the Earl of Essex. ”

“ The whole thing—the whole whisper—had to be completed on that next evening. Finally, after the thousandth time, he got her on the wire.
“Where were you? I thought you were coming around tonight,” he said.
“I can't. I ain't able to. I ain't been up all day. I give you my word, I ain't been able to lift my head from my pillow,” said the weak, almost pitiful voice of the young actress.
“But you said——” began Mr. Melody.
But she went on, interrupting him.
“I'm done! I'm done!” called the young actress across the wire, talking now ever faster and faster. “I'm through! I'm through!” ”

“ Her husband had been a well-known medical man, one George Turner, a graduate of St John's College, Cambridge. He had been a protege of Queen Elizabeth. Dying, this elderly husband of Mistress Turner had left her but little in the way of worldly goods, but that little the fair young widow had all the wit to turn to good account. There was a house in Paternoster Row and a series of notebooks. Like many another physician of his time, George Turner had been a dabbler in more arts than that of medicine, an investigator in sciences other than pathology. ”

“ Besides, we are not now in 1904, and——"
"Oh, for 1904!" cried the Princess, her eyes ablaze with the light of enthusiasm. "Oh, for the sweets of popularity, the ecstasy of rousing brave men and turning their blood to wine and their brains to fire! I want to live, to rule, to be obeyed and loved as a queen!"
In an instant Trafford felt a responsive glow; he started to speak but Saunders already was speaking.
"Princess," the Englishman was saying coldly, "popularity is champagne with a dash of brandy in it. ”

“ The girl saw in Mary Turner the possibilities of a ladylike personality that might mean much financial profit in the devious ways of which she was a mistress. With the frankness characteristic of her, she proceeded to paint glowing pictures of a future shared to the undoing of ardent and fatuous swains. Mary Turner listened with curiosity, but she was in no wise moved to follow such a life, even though it did not necessitate anything worse than a fraudulent playing at love, without physical degradation. ”

“ Turner was also employed to sketch from nature in all directions about London. In these tasks he had for a constant companion “Honest Tom Girtin,” a young fellow of Turner’s own age, who afterward married a wealthy lady, had rich patrons, and died before he was thirty. Had he lived to mature years, Girtin would have been a powerful rival to Turner. They were most excellent friends, and when Girtin died in Rome, Turner was one of his most sincere mourners. Toward the close of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ life, Turner frequented his studio, copied pictures, and acquired some art secrets. ”

“ But I was called into the parlor. Turner and Maria were in sight quietly crossing the fields together without the least pretention. Maria looked nice and matronly in her dress of soft grey silk and cap of snowy lace; Turner wore his ordinary suit of black, for he had long since flung off livery, and bore his usual business-like appearance. It was impossible to find anything to condemn in persons so free from affectation of any kind. ”

“ Melody was already so familiar:
Are you blind? How can you let him go out around, talking about justice for all women? Have a heart! Look out your own window and see the poor young woman in black—from eight to nine.
Justitia.
His voice was suave and smooth; his round and china-blue eyes never wavered looking into hers.
“Justitia!” he said again, thoughtfully, but much surprised.
“You see?” said Dorna Dare, now pointing with her white-gloved finger to the opening sentence, “They got it right exactly—the thing you are going to have him talk about tomorrow night—the motto of the Umja!” ”

“ Dismissing the sleigh the Princess led the way into the building through a low, malodorous room—where a number of men were swilling beery smoking, and playing dominoes—and penetrated to inner chamber.
"And is this your home?" inquired Trafford.
"One of them," was the reply. "An outlaw must sleep where she can—it's wise to vary one's abode."
An old man in shirt-sleeves and apron entered the room and demanded their pleasure.
"We want nothing except solitude," said the Princess. "May we have that, Herr Krantz?" ”

“ Why should Turner dread this marriage so much—was it not right? It seemed to me a very easy thing when so much depended on it. I had never thought seriously of marriage in my whole life, and its very mysteriousness made me look upon Turner as the victim of some hidden evil. I was resolved that he should not be sacrificed. What was my bonne, friends, Jupiter, to the comfort of an old friend like him?
I went forth into the wilderness, and found him sitting at the root of a huge chestnut, with his clasped hands drooping idly down between his knees, and gazing steadfastly on the earth. ”

“ Others in ink, rotted into holes; others (some splendid coloured drawings among them) long eaten away by damp and mildew, and falling into dust at the edges, in capes and bays of fragile decay; others worm-eaten, some mouse-eaten, many torn half-way through; numbers doubled (quadrupled, I should say) up into four, being Turner's favourite mode of packing for travelling; nearly all rudely flattened out from the bundles in which Turner had finally rolled them up, and squeezed them into his drawers in Queen Anne Street. ”

“ Naturally, he would know it, having got up and made the programs for Mayor True's baby carnival from the beginning; ever since he and Dorna Dare had worked up the thing, staging Mayor and Mother True for the mothers' vote the last two years—waving the baby.
Mr. Melody sat silent, thinking, a new light coming into his eyes gradually.
“The Umja,” he repeated, in a deep study.
“Look,” said Dorna Dare, going on, seeing she had him with her. “Why isn't there something in this?”
Mr. Melody observed her closely.
“They're live wires in there,” she repeated; “always working out into new territory. ”

“ A. J. Finberg. Mrs. Turner's aspect is reported to have been masculine, not to say fierce; she is said to have been a person of ungovernable temper, to have 'led her husband a sad life,' to have been odd to the point of insanity. Indeed she was quite insane at times, and maybe Turner derived something of his genius from this ill-starred mother with the unbalanced wits. ”

“ Turner lived outside the world—in his dreamland. When the buoyancy of youth had passed; when 'dad' was dead, he grew more morose, more untidy and more exclusive, but his dream did not change. No! it became more mystical, more subtle, more unrealisable to his ageing eyes. Was he not in dreamland on that Varnishing Day of the Royal Academy of 1846 when George Parrott made a humorous sketch of him. There were four varnishing days in those halcyon times, and it was Turner's habit to send in his pictures merely laid in with white and grey, and to finish them on the walls. ”

“ The daughter, Sarah Turnor, married Francis Gee, and left issue a daughter Sarah, who succeeded as sole heiress to the Turnor estates, which, by her marriage with Joseph Garth, passed on her death, 22 Sept. 1744, to her son, Edward Turnour Garth, who assumed the additional name of Turnour, and was created Baron Winterton of Gort, Galway, on 10 April 1761, and Viscount Turnour and Earl of Winterton on 12 Feb. ”

“ I have said nothing specific thus far as to the outer being of Mary Turner—except as to filmed eyes and a huddled form. But, in a happier situation, the girl were winning enough. Indeed, more! She was one of those that possess an harmonious beauty, with, too, the penetrant charm that springs from the mind, with the added graces born of the spirit. Just now, as she sat, a figure of desolation, there on the bed in the Tombs cell, it would have required a most analytical observer to determine the actualities of her loveliness. ”

“ It is probable that the Mary Turner who was removed from St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and admitted into Bethlehem Hospital on December 27th, 1800, was Turner's mother. She was discharged uncured in the following year.
'Dad' was sane and cheerful, a friend and companion to his son, proud of his genius, and helpful to him. His name will often appear in these pages. He is described by Henry Trimmer, vicar of Heston, one of Turner's few intimate friends, as a chatty old fellow who talked fast. ”

“ The red and gold sailors and their sweethearts are little more than suggestions of colour. The eye sees what it wants to see and he saw this vivid scene on the mess deck in the mass. There is more detail in 'Rembrandt's Daughter,' which was lent from Farnley Hall to the 'Fair Women Exhibition' of 1910. How Turner would have chuckled if he could have known that this work would be chosen to adorn a gallery devoted to types of Fair Women. ”

“ Kind? Yes. Did he not in the Academy of 1826 cover his glowing picture of "Cologne—The Arrival of a Packet Boat—Evening" with a wash of lamp-black, because it "killed" two portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence hanging alongside. "Poor Lawrence was so unhappy," said Turner. "The lamp-black will all wash off after the Exhibition." But Turner's moods were capricious. Like all blessed or cursed with the artistic temperament, [Pg 28] the mood of the moment usually governed his actions. ”