William Holman Hunt

“ Midway there is an infant bewildered to find that his new spiritual body bears no trace of the fatal wound. Behind in the air are babes; this sleeping, grieving group is the only one in the picture which in its sorrowing aspect connects the idea of human pain with the fate suffered, for the rest, in degrees differing, death is already seen to have no sting, the grave no victory. ”

“ But in this English picture all the story of the escape, as of the flight, is told, in fulness of peace, and yet of compassion. The travel is in the dead of the night, the way unseen and unknown;—but, partly stooping from the starlight, and partly floating on the desert mirage, move, with the Holy Family, the glorified souls of the Innocents. Clear in celestial light, and gathered into child-garlands of gladness, they look to the Child in whom they live, and yet, for them to die. ”

“ Need it be said that there had to be seven Brothers, and that the Brotherhood was to be kept a secret? Rossetti’s brother William, who had never learnt how to draw; a nominal pupil of Hunt’s, F. G. Stephens, who had never learnt how to paint; Woolner, who was a sculptor, and James Collinson, were quickly enlisted. “Collinson,” said Rossetti, “is a born stunner.”
“Where’s your flock?” shouted out Millais. “I expected to see them behind you. Tell me all about it.”
They held their first meeting in his studio, over a set of engravings of the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. ”

“ Holman Hunt’s father was the manager of a city warehouse, with tastes superior to his position in life. He loved books and pictures, and encouraged his son to pursue art as an amusement, though not as a profession. At the age of twelve and a half Holman Hunt was placed in a city office, but he employed his leisure in reading, drawing and painting, and at sixteen began an independent career as an artist. When he was between seventeen and eighteen he entered the Royal Academy schools, where he soon made acquaintance with his lifelong friend John Everett Millais, then a boy of fifteen. ”

“ In contrast to this mundane reflection of Heaven—which takes the leader’s steps for the moment—are the waves on which the children dance along. They are not clouds such as angels may be portrayed upon. ”

“ In the art of Holman Hunt, always masculine in its character and marked by the signs of indefatigable industry, emphasis is so evenly laid upon all the confluent qualities that contribute to the result that it is hard to signalise or to describe the dominating characteristics of his personality. In his treatment of religious subjects he showed a constant reverence that nevertheless scarcely touched the confines of worship; for the same earnestness of purpose, the same reverent research of truth, asserts itself no less in whatever subject engages his brush. ”

“ By his strong and constant individuality, no less than by his peculiar methods of work, Holman Hunt holds a somewhat isolated position among artists. He remained entirely unaffected by all the various movements in the art-world after 1850. His ambition was always “to serve as high priest and expounder of the excellence of the works of the Creator.” He spent too much labour on each work to complete many ”

“ Thomas Fairbaim, who became another sympathetic patron and whoso portrait Holman Hunt painted in 1874. The 'Valentine ' was resold in 1887. In the course of 1851 Holman Hunt and Millais spent some time at Ewell, near Epsom, afterwards removing to Worcester Park Farm. Each painted backgrounds for important pictures. Holman Hunt was beginning his 'Hireling Shepherd' and 'The Light of the World,' both of which were completed slowly at his Chelsea studio. 'The Hireling Shepherd' was finished in time for exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1852. ”

“ For three of his works Holman Hunt was awarded prizes of £50 and £60 at Liverpool and Birmingham, but in 1851 he had become so discouraged by the difficulty of selling his pictures, that he had resolved to give up art and learn farming, with a view to emigration. In 1854 he achieved his first great success by the famous picture of “The Light of the World,” an allegorical representation of Christ knocking at the door of the human soul. This work produced perhaps the greatest effect of any religious painting of the century. ”

“ Holman Hunt now remained in London, painting a few portraits, till 1875. He then left for Neuchâtel, where he was married for the second time. Thence he passed once again to Jerusalem by his old route of Alexandria and Jaffa. He arrived in the course of 1875, and stayed in Jerusalem or the neighbourhood for two and a half years. On the voyage out through the Mediterranean he painted 'The Ship,' which remained the property of the painter till 1906, when in honour of his eighty-first birthday it was purchased by a number of admirers and presented to the Tate Gallery. ”

“ They are all dead. Eliza McLoughlin married Captain Epps, an officer in the English army. John McLoughlin, Jr., was murdered in April, 1842, at Fort Stikeen, where he was in charge. Eloisa McLoughlin was Dr. McLoughlin's favorite child. She was married to William Glen Rae at Fort Vancouver in 1838. Rae was appointed, after his marriage, a Chief Trader of the Hudson's [25] Bay Company. In 1841 he was sent to California to take charge of the Company's business at Yerba Buena, now San Francisco. ”

“ Yet as the friend of Shelley, Keats, Charles Lamb, and others of the first spirits of the age, Mr. Hunt must be allowed, in this respect, to have been one of the happiest of men. It were no mean boon of providence to have been permitted to live in the intimacy of men like these; but, beside this, he had the honor to suffer, with those beautiful and immortal spirits, calumny and persecution. They have achieved justice through death—he has lived injustice down. ”

“ In his early years in Oregon on two occasions he caused an Indian to be hanged for murder of a white man. In 1829, when the Hudson's Bay Company's vessel, William and Ann, was wrecked on Sand Island, at the mouth of the Columbia River, and a part of her crew supposed to have been murdered and the wreck looted, he sent a well armed and manned schooner and a hundred voyageurs to punish the Indians. ”

“ To the last century, too, and to this, belong Holman, Munden, and Dowton. All began their careers as tragedians. Holman was graceful, but in striving to be original fell into exaggeration, and excited laughter. His London course only lasted from 1784 to 1800, when he wandered abroad with his daughter, whose mother was a grand-daughter of the famous Lady Archibald Hamilton, the daughter of the sixth Earl of Abercorn. Thus a family, into which had married the daughter of Miss Santlow, "famed for dance," gave to the stage the Miss Holman, who soon ceased to figure there. ”

“ When one can’t reason with a man one loses the desire to grasp his point of view. It struck him as odd that Holman should be one of these ill-balanced people; he had always regarded him as a shrewd and peculiarly level-headed man. As a political malcontent he appeared in a new light, a light that flared artificially about him and revealed a queer motley of anachronistic effects—modern civilisation practising the customs of bygone intrigue in a country that was young, in the accepted sense of development, and more ancient than history itself. ”

“ On the arrival of his wife in England, some time afterward, she found him who had left America a lawyer, now a clergyman, preaching from the pulpit, tranquillity. Mr. Hunt seems to have been one of those who are not made to succeed in the world. He did not obtain preferment, and fell into much distress. At one time he was a very popular preacher, and was invited by the Duke of Chandos, who had a seat near Southgate, to become tutor to his nephew, Mr. Leigh. Here he occupied a house at Southgate, called Eagle-hall; and here his son, the poet, was born, and was named after Mr. ”

“ It was hard to conceive of a more difficult way than the one by which we had come, and as if he had suddenly come to the conclusion that any other path would be preferable, Holman dropped upon his knees and lowered himself upon a ledge that was immediately below.
"Come on, Verslun!" he cried, in a choked voice that was altogether different from his cheery tones. "If there is no path we must roll down. ”

“ The Academy sprang to arms; the older artists, and their pupils, waxed furious. They enlisted literature on their side. Dickens joined in the hue and cry. With the honourable exception of The Spectator, every single paper attacked the men who had dared to break with tradition. Raphael had been insulted; Raphael was, it appeared, the idol of all England.
Ruskin came, flashing, to the rescue a year later, with a letter to The Times, in which he declared that since the days of Albert Dürer, there had been nothing in art so earnest or so complete as the pictures of Millais and Holman Hunt. ”

“ I am an old man, and my head is very white with the frost of many winters, but I have never before been accused as a cheat. I was born a British subject—I have had for twenty years the superintendence of the Hudson's Bay Company's trade, in Oregon, and on the North West Coast; and may be said to have been the representative of British interests in this country; but I have never descended to court popularity, by pandering to prejudice, and doing wrong to anyone. I have, on the other hand, afforded every assistance to all who required it, and which religion and humanity dictated ”

“ The spires of the distant village seemed like a mirage to him. This couldn’t be a station. What were those two doing down there anyway? Dared he risk calling the conductor and having him hold them? No, this affair must be kept absolutely quiet. Mr. Holman had said that if a breath of the matter came out it was worse than death for all concerned. He must just get off this train as fast as he could and follow them if they were getting away. It might be he could get the man in a lonely place—it would [169] be easy enough to watch his chance and gag the lady—he had done such things before. ”

“ Certainly no more impressive instance of accomplishment under trying circumstances can anywhere be found than in the travels and the accounts thereof credited to Lieutenant James Holman, who died in London almost fifty years ago, after a full and happy life. ”

“ Hunt has gone on qualis ab incepto; and deserved and done great things. The critic-wolves have long ceased to howl; the world knows and loves the man.
In process of time the Examiner was made over to other parties, and Mr. Hunt devoted his pen more exclusively to literary subjects. His connection with Byron and Shelley led him to Italy, where the Liberal, a journal, the joint product of the pens of those three celebrated writers, was started, but soon discontinued ”

“ A man, having the appearance of a priest, next harangued the whole body: each party in succession sang a war-song, the chiefs going on one, and the men on both knees. Each party now marched three times round a space which described a circle; after which, those under Chameleon suddenly started off at full speed, and were immediately followed by Cut-throat and his party, to the boundary of Hay River. The stragglers of the former, in their flight, disencumbered themselves of their yams, and calabashes of palm-wine, which the others, on coming up, amused themselves with breaking to pieces. ”

“ But it must be confessed the other person engaged in the colloquy gained Hunt’s interest and held it at once.
She was small, lissome, of a vigorous figure and vastly more attractive to his eye than any girl he had ever looked at. Indeed, he was amazed to see such a really beautiful creature in such squalid surroundings.
“Get up and come home with me,” said the girl again. “What will Mother Tubbs say when she sees you?”
“Heh? I reckon I better stay yere,” was the reply. “Man can’t keep his—hic!—dignity when a great walrus of a woman throws him ’round like he was a sack of spuds. ”

“ Holman was a man of remarkable energy and perseverance, of cool intrepidity and restless curiosity. Though in London he was always attended by a servant, he was accustomed to go without one abroad, travelling generally alone and trusting to his own sagacity and the sympathy of others. ”

“ Of commanding presence, strict integrity, sound judgment, and correct principles of justice, no man was better qualified for the position he occupied as the father and friend of both the Indians and the whites who then jointly occupied the Pacific northwest. Dr. McLoughlin was the arbiter to whom both whites and Indians looked for the settlement of their differences, and the friend from whom they sought relief in all [284] their difficulties.... Under the impartial supervision of this good and great man the business of the Hudson Bay Company prospered amazingly ”

“ He reasoned that he was dealing with desperate men who would stop at nothing to get back the original cipher paper, and stop his mouth. He was well aware that only death would be considered a sufficient silencer for him after what he had seen at Mr. Holman’s dinner-table, for the evidence he could give would involve the honor of every man who had sat there. He saw in a flash that the two henchmen whom he was sure were even now riding in the car on his right had been at the table for the purpose of silencing him if he showed any signs of giving trouble. ”

“ Holman's breath came hot upon my cheek. There was no necessity for speech. I knew that he intended to seize the first opportunity to attack, and that opportunity was at hand. Behind the bobbing lamp that was approaching us by an irregular trail, as if Soma was winding in and out amidst stone supports similar to the one that sheltered us, was the brute who held us in his grip, and after the events we had witnessed it seemed impossible to reconcile his actions with anything that smacked of decency or honesty. ”