Mr. Morland

“ Portraits seem singularly beautiful by lamp-light—the softness gives them an air of so much reality. Landscapes are better by day—they require sunshine to bring out their own sunny greens.
Mr. Morland now took them across the room, to look at some works of a favourite artist.
"If there be any thing," said Mr. Morland, "In the doctrine of sympathies, Mr. Webster must have been the very worst child that ever figured in those stories of wilful urchins, whose bad ways are held up as a warning in the story-books that de lighted our youth. ”

“ Morland, commanding him to deliver up to Jansen all oil, casks, boats, and other property in his possession belonging to Captain Hayston, and threatening him with deportation from the island if he refused. To this he sent a written reply to the effect, that unless the king and Mr. Morland could back up their demand by a boat's crew [Pg 220] from the man-of-war, he would shoot the first man who stepped inside his fence.
They then appealed to Commander Dupont, who told them that as young Harry was an American citizen, he could not force him to give up the property, but advised the king and Mr. ”

“ Rawlinson could detect Turner’s hand upon a Morland print, therefore we must be content to distinguish the finest and rarest of the mezzotints actually printed in colours. To those already named we may add The Angling Party by Keating, and The Angler’s Repast by William Ward, to whom we are also indebted for The Coquette at her Toilet, The Pledge of Love (“Contemplating the Miniature”) ; Contemplation (“Caroline of Lichfield”) , very rare, and exquisitely suggestive of the original in Mr. Thomas Barratt’s wonderful Morland collection ”

“ He looked quite handsome. "We must all keep step with the times. I will look to you to arrange it," he added again to the lawyer, and seemed to wait for my dismissal. The solicitor bowed me sharply from the room, for was not his millionaire client in waiting? And I went down the stairs.
It was now past four, and as I came out into the Square I saw before me the little lawyer's clerk who had entered the room and had been called Pye. He was talking amiably to another man, and as I passed smiled at me through his pince-nez.
"You saw Mr. Morland?" he asked in a friendly way. ”

“ There was more fever, and far more of excitement than on the day before, and she talked incessantly to herself, occasionally giving way to bursts of laughter.
“How grave you both look this morning,” said she, with a derisive smile, as they arose to leave her bedside. “I think I can guess what’s passing in your mind.” Morland shook his head in dissent, and she went on: “Of course you would be reluctant to say it, but the simple truth is, Doctor, you think me very, very ill.”
“So far, you are right,” said he, gently.
“Yes, but you suspect more. You believe that I am dying.” ”

“ I'm your man, or rather your merman!" grinned Morland. "Any good recipe for growing a fish's tail, please? A diet of whelks and winkles not welcome, for my digestion's delicate."
"It's a chubby idea!" beamed Claudia. "I'd love it, only I do bargain we keep it to ourselves. I don't want the whole tribe trailing after us every time we come. The little ones mustn't know anything about it."
"I shan't tell them, you bet!" declared Morland.
"It isn't a suitable place to bring children," agreed Lorraine. "I won't say anything to Monica, or even to Mervyn, because he'd be sure to blurt it out to her. ”

“ Morland was saved—saved from the shadow of a terrible disgrace. She must let him know at once, for by this time he must have reached the cave and ransacked it in vain. Suppose in his despair he were to carry out his threat and never return! The horror of the thought sent Lorraine tearing down the gallery steps and out into the sunshine. She must follow Morland and find him and tell him. She was rested now, and the walk would seem nothing. Besides, it was cooler, and a breeze had sprung up from the sea. When the heart is light our feet seem literally to dance along. ”

“ So Morland, who, like many young fellows of artistic calibre, had a general affection for the muses but no very marked vocation for anything, had been pitchforked into engineering, and was making quite tolerable progress, and would possibly support himself later on, but always with the feeling that life was commonplace and unromantic, and that a splendid vision had been somewhere just round the corner, only unfortunately missed. ”

“ He was an artist of some merit but of no conspicuous ability, and after an unsettled life, marked by frequent changes of residence, died in Stephen Street, Rathbone Place, 30 Nov. 1797. His age, at his death, has been stated as eighty-five, but this must be an exaggeration if his father was born in the eighteenth century. He was the father of George Morland [q. v.] Maria Morland, his wife, was also an artist, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1785 and 1786, one work in each year. ”

“ It seemed that Morland could do everything the public appeared to want, so, before he developed into the Morland exclusively of the stable and the farmyard and picturesque vagabondage, he challenged the popular genre painters on their own ground, and beat them with the magic simplicity of nature. Could the domestic Bigg do anything in his own line as charmingly life-like as A Visit to the Child at Nurse and A Visit to the Boarding School? ”

“ From ten years of age, young Morland appears to have led the life of a prisoner and a slave under the roof of his father, hearing in his seclusion the merry din of the schoolboys in the street, without hope of partaking in their sports. ”

“ It is always most amazing, when we like a person exceedingly ourselves, to find that somebody else has formed a different opinion. With all his shortcomings, Lorraine appreciated Morland. He often missed his appointments, and was generally late for everything, but when he turned up he played her accompaniments as no one else ever played them. Moreover, he was a very pleasant companion, and full of fun in a mild artistic sort of fashion of his own. He was certainly one of the central figures in the beautiful, shiftless, Bohemian household on the hill. ”

“ The life of this extraordinary genius is full of interest, and his melancholy fall full of warning and instruction. He was the son of an indifferent painter, whose principal business was in cleaning and repairing, and dealing in ancient pictures. Morland showed an extraordinary talent for painting almost in his infancy, and before he was sixteen years old, his name was known far and wide by engravings from his pictures. ”

“ Landry sat with parted lips and far-away blue eyes.
"He's always quiet when Morland is playing," whispered Claudia. "He loves music. I wish we could teach him. I've tried, but it's absolutely hopeless. He'd sit there all the afternoon, and I verily believe Morland would too, once he's started on that organ. We shall have to stop him if we want to go on with our walk. Morland! We're keeping Lorraine waiting!" ”

“ I'll go and investigate," agreed Morland, rather pleased to show his courage before the girls.
So they all three went back to the museum, and here Morland placed desks and boxes together, [188] and mounted on them so as to reach the trap-door, through which he wriggled. The girls held the pile steady, and watched his long legs disappear through the opening.
"It leads on to the roof!" he shouted. "I'll climb up and explore. I'm in a sort of garret with a ladder in the corner."
To the waiting girls it seemed a very long time before Morland returned. ”

“ Bigg, Hamilton, Wheatley, Singleton, Westall, they were all doing pleasing, pretty things enough, and the public were buying the prints, and hanging them on the walls of their homes, without even suspecting that Nature as the true inspiration of art had but little to do with all this picture-making. Then came Morland, with his natural instinct for the true, the simple picture, his free and facile art, his charming wizardry of the palette, his happy, unaffected realism. ”

“ Elsewhere Morland states he raised twelve barrels of water 140 feet high in one hour by the force of one man. An interesting schedule of his prices, with other papers concerning his inventions, is among the 'British Museum Tracts' (816, m. 10) . For a brass force-pump suitable for raising water from a deep well he charged 60l., and for an 'engine to quench fire or wet the sails of a ship' from 23l. upwards.
Another very interesting and important evidence of Morland's inventive genius is supplied by a manuscript in the Harleian collection at the British Museum (No. 5771) . ”

“ MORLAND'S EARLY FAME.
The danger of overtasking either the mind or body in childhood, is well known; and there is every reason to believe that young Morland suffered both of these evils. His father stimulated him by praise and by indulgence at the table, and to ensure his continuance at his allotted tasks, shut him up in a garret, and excluded him from free air, which strengthens the body, and from education—that free air which nourishes the mind. His stated work for a time was making drawings from pictures and from plaster casts, which his father carried out and sold ”

“ Plain George Morland will always sell my pictures, and there is more honor in being a fine painter than in being a fine gentleman."
MORLAND'S ARTISTIC MERIT.
As an artist, Morland's claims are high and undisputed. He is original and alone; his style and conceptions are his own; his thoughts are ever at home, and always natural; he extracts pleasing subjects out of the most coarse and trivial scenes, and finds enough to charm the eye in the commonest occurrences. ”

“ They did not feel capable of tackling a possible burglar unaided, yet it seemed rather weak to run away.
"Let's fetch Morland!" said Claudia.
The suggestion seemed a good one. Lorraine was only too content to throw herself upon masculine aid. They walked at double speed to Windy Howe, and hauled Morland from the piano. He stopped in the middle of a Brahms sonata, and offered at once to go back with them to the school.
"You see, Miss Kingsley and everybody's away, and there's only the charwoman about," explained Lorraine. "I know she'd be worse scared than ourselves if we told her." ”

“ His father, always with an eye to artistic effects, wished to sketch him for a picture of Hector, and indeed, with his classic profile and short, crisp, curly, golden hair, he would have made a capital representation of that Trojan hero. But Morland absolutely struck at the suggestion of sitting as model, declaring that he meant to enjoy himself during his brief leave, and should not even show his nose inside the studio.
"Dad must paint the kids," he confided to Claudia. "I'm fed up with portraits. Don't even mean to have my photo taken if I can help it. ”

“ They don't fit somehow into the twentieth century. Lorraine stirs them up like yeast. She'll be the making of Morland if she elects to take on so big a job."
The Ramsay girls were very much attracted by the Macleods. They liked Fay and her father and mother, whose experience of the world and sensible views appealed to them. They often went to Bella Vista and enjoyed a chat, or sat looking at American art magazines, while Morland, who could not keep away from the grand piano, sat improvising memories of Debussy or compositions of his own. ”

“ NATIONALITY IN ART. In looking through a collection of Reynolds, Gainsboroughs, Dobsons, Morlands, we are moved by something more than the artistic beauty of the pictures. Seeing that peaceful farmyard by Morland, a dim remote life, a haunting in the blood, rises to the surface of the brain, like a water-flower or weed brought by a sudden current into sight of the passing sky. Seeing that quiet man talking with his swineherd, we are mysteriously attracted, and are perplexed as by a memory ”

“ His drawing was graceful, his composition elegant, and his colour rich and pure. In a word he was a master of genre and animal painting, an artist worthy to be placed in the same rank as the best of those Dutch masters whom he studied as a boy.
Morland's work, after a period of neglect, is now rising greatly in public estimation. Not only his pictures, but the engravings from them, are eagerly sought for. An exhibition of 'upwards of three hundred mezzotint, engravings after George Morland' was held by Messrs. ”

“ Morland, who had saluted, turned to the girls with an eloquent face.
"It's Blake, our captain," he explained. "I saw him travelling down on Thursday, and I believe he's staying at the 'George'."
"Do you like him?" asked Claudia.
"Like him? If there's one man on the face of the earth whom I abhor it's that fellow! Thinks he's the Shah of Persia and we're dirt under his feet! He's not popular, I can tell you. He makes my blood boil sometimes!"
"He's dropped something," said Lorraine, bending down and picking up a small leather dispatch case that was lying by the side of the pathway. ”

“ General Morland was a fine, brave fighting soldier, but he did not have a ready tongue, and being quite nonplussed, he said in his Franco-Alsatian dialect that he was short of only a small number of men. The Emperor maintained that he was about four hundred short, and to get to the truth of the matter he wanted to have an immediate count; but knowing that General Morland was very much liked by the officers of the imperial staff, he feared a cover-up, and thought he would be more likely to discover the truth by choosing an officer who did not belong to his entourage nor to the Chasseurs ”