Romney, West Virginia

“ PLATE VIII.—MISS RAMUS.
Two portraits of men I should include in my collection of significant Romneys—the "Warren Hastings," with its watchful dignity, and the inward smile that flickers on the calm, purposeful face of John Wesley. From the following extract, printed in Wesley's Journal, January 5, 1789, I judge that he, like Thurlow, belonged to the Romney faction: "Mr. Romney is a painter indeed. He struck off an exact likeness at once, and did more in an hour than Sir Joshua did in ten."
No one ever accused Romney of a lack of quickness. He could always begin ”

“ As a fact they took no alarm in Romney. But a shepherd, belated that night with a sick ewe, saw a long line of lanthorns go bobbing across the marsh to the sea, and went home and told his neighbours that Hunt was at his old tricks again. One of them, knowing that the soldiers were there, laughed in his face and went to see, and learning the truth carried the story into Romney, whence it spread to London and brought down a mob of horse and foot and messengers, and from one end of England to the other the descent and the audacity of it were a nine days' wonder. ”

“ The Cavendish Square house is let to Sir Martin Archer Shee: Romney has given up portrait painting, and in the Hampstead studio purposes to devote himself to heroic art and win immortality with his Miltonic subjects. But his health grows worse. The game is up. Oppressed, conscious of numbness in his hand and a swimming in his head, chagrined at the muddled failure of his building experiments at Holly Bush Hill, Hampstead—that "whimsical structure covering half the garden,"—where some of his pictures were destroyed by weather and others stolen, he longs only for peace and escape from himself. ”

“ Portland paused by the clustered pillars which divided the open windows; a few ghastly flakes of snow were falling from a disturbed sky against the worn, crumbling, and grey masonry.
"Miserable failure," repeated the Earl; his fine fair face was pale and stern in the colourless shadows of the heavy arches. "Parliament needeth a leader, the Republic needeth her magistrate, the allies their commander—there is very much to do—with every day, more—and the man who should do it is as useless as a sick girl."
"I think," said Romney, with some gentleness, "that his heart is broken." ”

“ George Romney, aged twenty-eight, mounts his nag at Kendal and rides forth, with fifty pounds in his saddle-bags, to seek fame and fortune as a painter in London. Nothing matters but his career. Doubtless he is sure—or as sure as an emotional, impressionable man, taking his colour from his surroundings, but conscious of great powers, can be—that when his pockets are full of guineas, he will send for Mary and the children ”

“ He completely ignored it, would not suffer it to be mentioned in his presence, considered that it was not worthy of any recognition, and went on painting pictures of all the loveliest women of society, but declining to allow a single one of them to be shown in the exhibitions of the Academy.
This determination was partly dictated, no doubt, by modesty, as there is every evidence that Romney was a modest, retiring, shy man, and even at the very zenith of his fame was not found in the brilliant society in which the President delighted. ”

“ The free hand was raised to Romney, who bowed to his knee before the man and woman.
"You mean beauty and manhood to me—you precious two," he whispered. "The packets shall be sunk as you say. I have been proud to serve you both. Always I shall feel you above and beyond."
"Ah, America—so often you bring her home to my heart. Godspeed to you, Romney. All is well with us. All is better than the best we could know or ask for.... We will be alone together. We shall have silence here.... Yes, that is well. Toss the yellow rug about us. Now we shall know the deeper dreaming." ”

“ This "Lady Morshead," doing nothing, but looking charming; bright-eyed "Mrs. Raikes," playing on a spinet; the dark Cholmeley girls; bewitching Sarah with the ringlets; and the more dignified Catherine—they were painted on Romney's best days.
A few of his "Mother and Child" groups must also have place on the walls of my imaginary room—the "Mrs. Russell," in a green dress at Swallowfield Park, holding the sash of her small child, who is standing upon a table, back to the spectator, regarding its chubby face in a circular mirror—a happy design this, most natural and winning ”

“ Her splendour was lifted now, her whole being crowned with the spirit that can only come to one whose quest has ended.... The Hunchback came toward them. The calm that Romney saw upon that face was marmoreal, the calm of one whose circle is almost finished. He led her to a chair which the yellow rug covered, and sat before her upon a cushion, his arm across her knees.
"You are young, but very old," he said. "You are a child, a girl, a woman all lavish in her love, but more than all a mother. This—this Romney—is like a son to us—and those brave young men—our sons. We are ancient, Moira. ”

“ His head came very close to Romney, but his eyes were mild and boyish.... "I liked you because you had an Occidental heart—a place for a woman. If my young men were here they would sit and talk with me about China. I love them. They are passionate countrymen—but I have finished with China. Only the woman is left in my heart. And you—you are a white man who can understand—"
"Yes, I can understand—" Romney whispered. "Where is Moira Kelvin?"
The Hunchback pointed forward toward the apartment where Romney had seen her in the yellow lamplight. ”

“ Far off in London, there to work and hope.
With that they parted. She kept sight of Heaven,
But not of Romney.⁠He had good to do
To others: through the days and through the nights,
She sewed and sewed and sewed.⁠She drooped sometimes,
And wondered, while, along the tawny light,
She struck the new thread into her needle’s eye,
How people without mothers on the hills,
Could choose the town to live in!—then she drew
The stitch, and mused how Romney’s face would look,
And if ’twere likely he’d remember hers,
When they two had their meeting after death. ”

“ He was reputed wealthy, his name given as Romney, being popularly supposed to denote ancestral, if not actual, connection with the town and district of that name on the South Coast. A man of highly-cultured tastes and of rare and varied information, he led a very retired life, divided between his books, the cataloguing of a valuable collection of antique gems, and cycle-rides into the surrounding country--for he was an ardent cyclist. ”

“ The modelling on the face is very dexterously painted, and the tender thoughtful expression of the dark eyes quite beautiful.
The hair is painted in very broad, powerful fashion, and the draperies over the bust indicated lightly and put on with a wonderful sliding movement which is notable. On the whole Romney seldom did a more pleasing piece of work than the portrait of this quiet and refined dainty girl. ”

“ I should not like to have to choose between the merry languishing Benedetta and the merry alert Miss Ramus, in her pink dress, with the flaming green gauze veil, and the gleams of gold in hair and gown.
Another beautiful girl, "Miss Vernon as Hebe," now in Warwick House, would have an honoured place in my roomful of fine Romney productions. Well may this charming goddess claim to restore beauty and youth to those who have lost them. Abundant brown hair crowns the pure, untroubled brow; she glides forward, bearing the wine cup, and looking upwards as she advances. ”

“ He kept it as a kind of secret sweetness of life. It honoured her, and the yearning that came with it was one of the finest ingredients for moral health. No man spends energy in yearning whose real forces are asleep. So they were good girding days and his health came back. He felt himself relaxing again in the slow rhythmic breath of the interior.
Romney only knew that he was going to the Gobi Desert. There was a Peking letter among his numbered documents; another letter to be opened in Tushi-kow and for all points of his journey ahead up to a town in the desert called Wampli. ”

“ There is more character and resolution in the face than in the generality of Romney's portraits. Indeed, she is almost matronly, but the complexion has all his rose-leaf freshness; the touch of colour he permits in the sleeve is characteristic.
This room at Hertford House, with its three portraits of Mrs. Robinson, by Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney, is the place to brood over and speculate upon the dazzling career of this charming woman. A recital of the facts is enough; imagination can supply the rest. ”

“ ROMNEY Our march to and from Romney was in midwinter in the month of January, 1862. It was the coldest winter known to the oldest inhabitant of these regions. Situated in the most mountainous country in Virginia, and away up near the Maryland and Pennsylvania line, the storm king seemed to rule in all of his majesty and power. Snow and rain and sleet and tempest seemed to ride and laugh and shriek and howl and moan and groan in all their fury and wrath. The soldiers on this march got very much discouraged and disheartened. ”

“ Romney arrived in London in 1762, having divided his little savings with his wife. His only friends in the capital were his two compatriots, Braithwaite of the Post Office, and Greene, the schoolfellow already mentioned. With Braithwaite's help he found a lodging in Dove Court, near the Mansion House, removing in the following year to the house of one Hautree, in Bearbinder's Lane. Here he set to work on the picture which was his first introduction to the world of art, ‘The Death of General Wolfe.’ With this he is said to have competed for the premium of the Society of Arts in 1763. ”

“ Questions came often to the white man, but his awe of the old priest forbade. Rajananda talked when he was ready. As the day rose, Romney met the brazen curtain again.
The picture of yesterday's dawn recurred at intervals with unabating horror; and the steady consciousness that he was moving farther and farther from his own. Sanity was difficult in this suffering, but always as it reached a certain pressure of destructiveness, its voltage seemed queerly lowered, and he lost the sand and sky, and travelled through the deadly glitter that had neither surface nor line. ”

“ Romney, I can scarce look you in the face for fear you’ll despise the fool that can govern herself no more than a child. I do improve—God knows I try hard enough—but still ’twill out when Greville or another vexes me, even though I know I pull down my shelter with my own hands. And for nothing that matters a brass farthing! ”

“ Romney was sensitive, eternally in love with the fleeting loveliness of women and children, the artist born in him again each time he saw a new face, but constantly diverted by his ambition, and by the bombastic sentimentalists moving in the Hayley mutual admiration circle at Eartham, where, for twenty years, he spent his summer vacation. ”

“ The utter hopelessness of Nifton Bend's repetition of his words brought to Romney something like an expression of Fate itself. The Hunchback, in accepting China, had accepted the code of her servants. The condemned never resist death.
But Romney did not share the attitude.
"Listen," he added. "They will be watching. They will think you dying from the poison—if they really fixed this tea. They will leave you alone in your rooms—possibly for hours. I'll go out and get your young men together. Don't you see? I am one of them. You are the Cause while you live. ”

“ I cannot give her any other epithet, for I think her superior to all womankind." Shortly afterwards the painter was plunged into gloom by an apparent coolness on the part of the lady, but it passed. She again sits to him, and we read of Romney, the recluse, giving a party in Cavendish Square in her honour: "She is the talk of the whole town and really surpasses everything, both in singing and acting, that ever appeared." Then followed her marriage to Sir William Hamilton at Marylebone Church and return to Italy. Romney and Emma never met again. ”

“ And eyes that, when they look on you, will lean Their whole weight half in indolence, and half In wishing you unmitigated good, Until you know not if to flinch from him Or thank him.—’Tis Lord Howe. ‘We’re all gone wrong,’ Said he, ‘and Romney, that dear friend of ours, Is no-wise right. There’s one true thing on earth; That’s love! ”

“ He was also asked by a person in the village to paint her portrait, and succeeded in performing the commission in so creditable a way, that it was quite clear to the elder Romney that his son was intended by nature to be an artist.
Accordingly, yielding to the persuasions of the lad himself, backed up as they were by those of many friends, he took steps to apprentice him to an itinerant painter, who was at that time in their neighbourhood, named Steele. ”

“ I think Rajananda would not make me stay."
"Now that's queer; I had the same thought," said Romney.
Anna Erivan was standing by the table, waiting for him to come to her.
"There should not be any mission—any task at this time," she said strangely. "There should be only two in the world—two and a desert—"
"They have given us power," he answered. "All these obstacles make us only cleave together more furiously. I think I could not have known you as I know you now, if everything had been smooth for us. Perhaps it is in the Plan. There are always rapids where two rivers come together." ”