Thomas West

“ Present Representative, Sir John Villiers Shelley, 7th Baronet.
West of Buckhurst, Earl de la Warr 1761; Baron 1427.
The Wests are remarkable, not so much for the antiquity of the family as for the early period at which they attained the honour of the peerage. Sir Thomas West is the first recorded ancestor; he died in the seventeenth of Edward II., having married the heiress of Cantilupe, and thus became possessed of lands in Devonshire, and at Snitterfield in Warwickshire. His grandson, Thomas, married the heiress of De la Warr, and thus became connected with Sussex. ”

“ I need not point out the picture of our father, as I believe you will find it in the print from memory." Tuckerman says that the work which, in the opinion of many critics, best illustrates the skill of West in composition, drawing, expression, and dramatic effect, is his "Death on the Pale Horse." His "Cupid," owned in Philadelphia, is one of his most effective pictures as to color.
The full-length portrait of West, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., represents the great artist in his character as president of the Royal Academy, delivering a lecture on "coloring" to the students. ”

“ There came the sound of a whoop, a sudden clatter of hoofs, the diminishing beat of horses' feet.
"They've seen Thomas, and they're after him on the jump," suggested Dave.
His friend's eyes crinkled to a smile. "Sure enough. They figure he's the tail end of our party. Well, I'll bet Thomas gives 'em a good run for their money. He's right careless sometimes, but he's no foolhardy idiot and he don't aim to argue with birds like these even though he's a rip-snorter when he gets goin' good and won't stand any devilin'."
"He'll talk them to death if they catch him," Dave answered. ”

“ Whether this was the result of the paucity, or incongruity, of his materials, or whether, from feelings of delicacy he might not choose to declare all he knew, are points into which I have neither right nor inclination to enquire. There seems every reason to conclude that, from youth, West had an elegant and well-directed taste in matters of literature and the fine arts. As early as the year 1720, he shewed the munificence of his disposition, in these respects, by befriending Hearne with a plate for his Antiquities of Glastonbury ”

“ West has declared that Liart drew the human figure well, and he has frequently been heard to observe, that had he studied the historical and highest class of the art, he was quite certain he would have succeeded. ”

“ How much to be pitied are the gifted esoterics who, in such a quest, vainly point their telescopes into the star-thronged firmament, and plunge their reasoning powers into the abyss of consciousness and such-like mysteries! ”

“ At its then phase, slavery had culminated into being a menace, portentous and far encroaching, to not only the moral life but the very civilization of the higher types of the human family, so debasing and blighting were its effects on those who came into even tolerating contact with its details. ”

“ The land of his birth proved herself equal to this imperative call of civilized Duty, regardless of customs and the laws, written as well as unwritten, which had doomed to life-long degradation every member of the progeny of Ham. Recognizing in the erewhile bondman a born leader of men, America, with the unflinching directness that has marked her course, whether in good or in evil, responded with spontaneous loyalty to the inspiration of her highest instincts. ”

“ Away with your criminal suggestion of toleration of the hideous orgies of heathenism in Hayti for the benefit of our future morals in the West Indies, when the political supremacy which you predict and dread and deprecate shall have become an accomplished fact. Were any special standard of spiritual excellence required, our race has, in Josiah Henson and Sojourner Truth, sufficing models for our men and our women respectively. ”

“ It is said that lying is the vice of slaves; but the ethics of West Indian would-be mastership assert, on its behalf, that they alone should enjoy the privilege of resorting to misrepresentation to give colour, if not solidity, to their pretensions. ”

“ Colonial administrators of the mighty British Empire, the lesson which History has taught and yet continues to teach you in Hayti as to the best mode of dealing with your Ethiopic colonists lies patent, blood-stained and terrible before you, and should be taken definitively to heart. But if you are willing that Civilization and Religion—in short, all the highest developments of individual and social life—should at once be swept away by a desolating vandalism of African birth ”

“ What, we ask, will in the coming ages be the opinion and attitude of the extra-African millions—ten millions in the Western Hemisphere—dispersed so widely over the surface of the globe, apt apprentices in every conceivable department of civilized culture? Will these men remain for ever too poor, too isolated from one another for grand racial combinations? Or will the naturally opulent cradle of their people, too long a prey to violence and unholy greed, become at length the sacred watchword of a generation willing and able to conquer or perish under its inspiration? ”

“ But what should be thought of the sense, if not indeed the sanity, of a grave political teacher who prescribes "European government" and "European education" as the specifics to qualify the Negro for political emancipation, and who, when these qualifications are conspicuously mastered by the Negro who has undergone the training, refuses him the prize, because he is a Negro? ”

“ Todd,” the new agent continued savagely, puffing rapidly at his cigarette, which winked brightly in the shadows, “it’s only leather bellies like you and me who should be sent up to the lonely stations where all the people one sees are negroes. I tell you, they’ve got to come to it. I never knew but one youngster who came through decently. That was Charles Markley. ’Member him?”
“Well, rather,” chuckled the captain. “I was just reading in the Times about his success as a radio wizard back home. Seems he’s succeeded in eliminating static, or something.” ”

“ The Negro race in Hayti, in order to obtain and to guard what it calls its freedom, has outraged every humane instinct and falsified every benevolent hope. The slave-owners there had not been a whit more cruel than slave-owners in the other islands. But, in spite of this, how ferocious, how sanguinary, [8] how relentless against them has the vengeance of the Blacks been in their hour of mastery! A century has passed away since then, and, notwithstanding that, the hatred of Whites still rankles in their souls, and is cherished and yielded to as a national creed and guide of conduct. ”

“ Can Modern Science and Criticism explain them away, or persuade us of their insufficiency as incentives to the hearty acceptance of the religion that has received such glorious, yet simply logical, incarnation in the persons of weak, erring men who welcomed its responsibilities conjointly with its teachings, and thereby raised themselves to the spiritual level pictured to ourselves in our conception of angels who have been given the Divine charge concerning mankind. ”

“ But there is a hope for mankind in the fact that Science itself shall have ultimately to admit the limitations of human inquiry into the details of the Infinite. Meanwhile it requires no technical proficiency to recognize the criminality of those who waste their brief threescore and ten years in abstract speculations, while the tangible, visible, and hideous soul-destroying trinity of Vice, Ignorance, and Poverty, above mentioned, are desolating the world in their very sight. ”

“ It is now supposed that human race has been on the planet for a hundred thousand years at least; and the first traces of civilization cannot be thrown back at furthest beyond six thousand. During all this time mankind went on treading in the same steps, century after century making no more advance than the birds and beasts. ”

“ Such was the commencement of a series of efforts which raised West to be a favorite painter in England, and, at last, president of the Royal Academy of London. His parents were Quakers, but they encouraged his efforts. He, however, had no advantages, and for some time he was obliged to pursue his labors with such pencils as he made himself, and with red and yellow colors, which he learned to prepare from some Indians who roamed about the town of Springfield: to these, his mother added a little indigo. ”

“ We have here the suggestion of a capacity too superhuman to be accepted on trust, especially when, as in this case, it is by implication self-arrogated. The modesty of this thaumaturgic traveller in confining the execution of his detailed scrutiny of a whole community to the moderate progression of some conventional vehicle, drawn by some conventional quadruped or the other, does injustice to powers which, if possessed at all, might have compassed the same achievement in the swifter transit of an express train, or, better still perhaps, from the empyrean elevation of a balloon! ”

“ Religion, as understood by the best of men, is purely a matter of feeling and action between man and man—the doing unto others as we would they should do unto us; and any creed or any doctrine which directly or indirectly subverts or even weakens this basis is in itself a danger to the highest welfare of mankind. The simple conventional faith in God, in Jesus, and in a future state, however modified nowadays, has still a vitality which can restrain and ennoble its votaries, provided it be inculcated and received in a befitting spirit. ”

“ He had fluttered fitfully from business to Blaines College; from the college to the Post; before long he would flutter on from the Post to something else—always falling short, always secretly disappointed, everywhere a failure as a man, though few might know it but himself. West's trouble, in fact, was that he was not a man at all. He was weakest where a real man is strongest. He was merely a chameleon taking his color from whatever he happened to light upon ”

“ This, of course, was due to the West Point training. It tends to make a lad stand on his own feet, for the Academy trains him with the idea of some day having him handle large bodies of men; and to rule over others one must first learn to govern himself.
“Let me see that paper, Mother,” Tom said, when they had talked the matter over a little longer.
She gave it to him, and he studied it earnestly. It was, as she had said, a copy, or draft, of a deed of trust, for the valuable land on which one end of the railroad bridge stood.
“I’ll see Doolittle about this,” Tom decided. ”

“ Frank asked, as he and Tom trotted toward the patrol ship.
"Hallucination, probably. Suspenso does strange things to a person sometimes."
"I don't think so. It fits in with rumors I've been hearing at Venusport. The Big Shots are up to something."
"Then here's a word of advice, son." Tom laid a hand on the captain's shoulder as they stopped before his ship. "If that's the way you feel, stop making these fool junkets to New Washington and spend your time finding out what Wildoatia's really up to. If any more trips are absolutely necessary, send Sadie." ”

“ I'm afraid!"
"There, there, Tom." Although his heart was breaking, it warmed to this display of humanness in the old man. "We'll lick this thing yet. Tell you what.... Tonight we'll go to the factory, barricade the doors and windows ... keep the fools out until they come to their senses."
"It won't be any use." Tom rose slowly, his fat old face drawn in stern lines. "Nevertheless, we'll fight it out together, if you wish."
"Very well, Tom." Jonathan stretched out his hand and grasped that of the other over the body of the dead girl. ”

“ West returned to his home in Springfield, in 1754, to discuss the question of his future vocation. He had an inclination for military life, and volunteered as a recruit in the old French war; but military attractions vanished (p. 257) among the hardships involved, and in 1756, when eighteen years old, he established himself in Philadelphia as a portrait-painter, his price being "five guineas a head." Two years later he went to New York, where he passed eleven months, and was liberally employed by the merchants and others. ”

“ A QUARREL
“Oh, Tom! How fine you look! How tall and straight you are! What a—why, what a man you have become!”
Thus our hero’s mother greeted him as she met him at the Chester station on the occasion of Tom’s first home-coming.
“Tom, you are so—so big!”
Her eyes were shining, as only a mother’s eyes can shine, while she held out her hands to welcome her son.
“Well, Mother,” Tom said, as he kissed her, “West Point makes a specialty of helping boys grow up. ”

“ Young Evans was imprudent and had to leave the country, and West went into business himself. In 1808 he was living in Cork, and published a guide to that city. Here he remained until 1830, when he printed his ‘Recollections.’ He then went to Birmingham, and devoted himself with much industry to the compilation of topographical works. Towards the end of his life he resided in London, and obtained employment as a bookseller's assistant or in literary work. His last years were passed in the Charterhouse, where he died on 17 Nov. 1854.
West came of a long-lived race and had a large family. ”

“ The strange possession which a vivid fancy may take of a lonely and imaginative mind is a phenomenon not unfamiliar to those who have studied the lives of men of fervid temperament; and the whim to which West now gave himself up was no more extravagant than many another which has had consequences far more serious. For days he went on, becoming more and more completely engrossed by the folly he was following. His writing-table was covered with papers upon which he had memoranda of stocks, of sales, of investments, calculations of commissions, and all the rest of it. ”