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Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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Mr. Mackay took me to one of the evening receptions that were given at
that time by Mr. John Chapman, the publisher. On our way he spoke of
Miss Marian Evans, then only known to a few as a translator from the
German, and to still fewer as a contributor of articles to the
"Westminster Review,"--a periodical that she partly directed. Neither
the translations nor the articles revealed anything beyond good ordinary
literary abilities. Mr. Mackay told me, however, that this Miss Evans
was a very accomplished lady, and played remarkably well on the piano.

She was at Mr. Chapman's little conversazione, and performed for us. I
remember being well pleased with the music, and thinking that she was
one of the best amateurs I had heard, but I cannot remember what she
played, nor anything about her talk, which would probably be a series of
little private conversations with people that she already knew.

Mr. John Chapman was young at that time, and a very fine-looking man. He
had entered upon the most unprofitable line of business that he could
have chosen in the England of those days, the trade in philosophic
free-thinking literature of the highest class. The number of buyers was,
of course, exceedingly limited, both by the thoughtful character of the
works published, and by the unpopularity of the opinions expressed in
them. The marvel is that such a speciality in publishing could be made
to support itself at all. As a matter of fact, some of the wealthier
free-thinkers published their works, or those of others, at their own
expense, and some helped to maintain the "Westminster Review." Things
have altered wonderfully since then. At the present day the literature
of free inquiry is presented to the world by the richest and most
eminent publishing firms, and free-thinkers have access to the most
influential and the most widely disseminated periodicals.

Some readers of this autobiography may still look upon John Chapman's
speciality with horror; but such a feeling would be unjust. The books he
published were generally high in tone, and they certainly never
condescended to the use of unbecoming language in dealing with matters
held sacred by the majority of the English people. The only object of
that modest propaganda was to win for Englishmen the right to think for
themselves, and also to express their thoughts. That battle has been
won, and, for my part, I feel nothing but respect for those who had
courage to confront the stern intolerance of the past.

My society in London was not entirely confined to the pursuers of
literature and art. I had a few other friends, especially one old
school-fellow, William Shaw, afterwards an able London solicitor. His
mind was an odd compound of manly sense in everything connected with his
profession, and boyishness in other ways. He always retained that
boyishness, which was probably an excellent thing for him as a
relaxation from serious cares. He took little interest in the fine arts,
but at a later period he had the wonderful goodness to give house-room
to some of my unpopular and unsalable pictures, and went so far, in the
way of friendship, that he actually hung them in his dining-room! He was
very fond of recalling reminiscences of our childhood, especially what
he characterized as "the great Fulledge railway swindle." When we were
little boys we undertook the construction of a miniature railway on his
father's land, and issued shares to pay for the rolling plant and the
rails. We got together rather a handsome sum in this way from various
good-natured friends, and after the expiration of some weeks could show
them a rather long embankment. Then we got tired of spade work, and the
enterprise languished. Finally the works came to a standstill, and I
believe we spent the shareholders' money on something else, for
assuredly they never saw it again. After beginning so hopefully in the
art of getting up bubble companies, it is perhaps to be regretted that
we did not continue, as we might have been eminent financiers by this
time. My friend was very active in his youth. I have seen him run by the
side of a galloping horse in a field, holding by the mane, and vault on
the animal's back, after which it went on faster than ever and leapt a
little brook or a hedge. An odd incident occurs to my recollection just
now. My friend had a susceptible heart, and a ravishing beauty was
staying at a certain, country house, so we drove over to call there that
he might see her. I went with him, and we had a dog-cart with a very
lively horse. The drive was in the form of a great circle before the
front door, so he tried to turn to the left; but the horse had decided
for the right, and between them they effected a compromise by taking a
straight cut over the lawn and flower-beds, which presented a deplorable
appearance afterwards. Any one else would have felt a little confused
after such an accident, but Shaw relied upon the good-nature of the
ladies, who always forgave him everything in consideration for his
winning ways and his handsome face.

William Shaw's brother, Richard, was the first member of Parliament who
represented Burnley. I met him in London in 1854, and remember a
description he gave of an old gentleman who was then living permanently
at the Tavistock Hotel. That old gentleman was a perfect mystery; no one
knew where he came from: he never either wrote or received a letter, he
had no settled occupation, but read all the papers, and used to swear
aloud quite dreadfully when he found any fact or opinion that displeased
him. He compensated for this bad language by shouting "Bravo! bravo! Go
it, my boy!" when he found an article to his mind. He once rambled twice
round Covent Garden market without being able to find his way out, and
on discovering that he had got back to the Tavistock, attributed all his
difficulties to the waiter, and scolded him most furiously. The mystery
about him, and his odd manners, would have been an attraction for
Dickens.

Amongst other acquaintances that I made in London was Mead, the
tragedian of Drury Lane Theatre. I recollect admiring his "Iago" very
much. His countenance, which was agreeable and bland in private life,
could be made to express all the evil passions with astonishing power.
He was rather a skilful painter, having occasionally been able to sell a
picture for twenty pounds. When he had a little time to spare, Mead
would come and work on Pettitt's great picture of the Golden Image. He
once drew my portrait, and I drew his. My guardian was not quite pleased
that I should know an actor, but Mead attracted me by the superior tone
of his conversation. It was the first time in my life that I had met
with an accomplished talker; I had known plenty of talkers who were only
fluent, but Mead had always something interesting to say, and he
invariably said it with easy finish and good taste. In a word, he was a
master of spoken English, and did not fear to make use of his power, not
having the usual English false shame which prevents our countrymen from
saying things quite perfectly. Mead had tender feelings. Once after
reading in a newspaper the account of some battle of no great
importance, as we consider such events from a distance, he suddenly
realized, in imagination, the effect of the news on the relatives of the
killed and wounded, and burst into tears. Mead was good enough to accept
on one or two occasions the simple kind of hospitality that I could
offer him at my lodgings, and I find notes in the diary recording the
happy swiftness of the hours I spent with him.

I never made the slightest attempt to enter what is specially called
"London Society," though I had some friends or acquaintances who
belonged to it. My time was entirely taken up with work and visits to a
few houses. I am astonished on looking back to those days by the extreme
kindness of people who were much older than myself, and for whom my
society could have no other attraction than the opportunity it offered
for the exercise of their own goodness. I had one merit, that of being
an excellent listener, which has been a great advantage to me through
life. A distinguished Frenchman once said to me, "You are the best
listener I ever met;" but he had been accustomed to his own countrymen
who are not generally patient or attentive for more than a few seconds
at a time, and who have the habit of interruption.

It is possible, too, that my manners may have been good, for my dear
guardian, so kind and mild about most things, could not tolerate
anything like boorishness, and never hesitated to correct me. Another
effect of her influence upon me was that I liked the society of
well-bred ladies, and felt quite at ease in it. There was a most
intelligent Danish family of ladies, Mrs. Rowan and her daughters, who
received me very kindly. They spoke English wonderfully, with something
like a slight Cumberland accent, and I believe their German was as good
as their English. Mrs. Rowan had been a friend of Thorwaldsen the
sculptor, and possessed three hundred and fifty of his original
drawings, which I did not see, as she had lent them to Prince Albert. A
singular and most vexatious incident is associated in my memory with
those drawings, and I am sure Mrs. Rowan could never think of them
without remembering it. She had (too kindly) lent them to an artist, who
returned them, indeed, but not without having exercised his own talents
in improving them, as drawing-masters do to the work of their youthful
pupils. The reader may imagine the depth of Mrs. Rowan's gratitude. Her
daughter, Frederica, whose name afterwards became generally known, was
one of the most cultivated and agreeable women I ever met. Her nature
had been a little saddened by family misfortunes (the Rowans had been a
very wealthy family in Denmark), but her quiet gravity was of a noble
kind, and if she took life seriously she had sufficient reasons for
doing so.

My studies under Mr. Pettitt went on very regularly all this time, and I
made great _apparent_ progress, although, as will be seen later, it was
not progress in the right direction. One little incident may be
mentioned in proof that I could at least imitate closely. The reader is
already aware that my master's system of teaching consisted in bringing
a picture slowly forward in my presence, whilst I was to copy what had
been done. One day, when the picture had got well forward, Mr. Pettitt
took up my copy by mistake and put it on his own easel. After he had
worked upon it for a quarter of an hour I thanked him for the
improvement. He said he had been quite unconscious of the difference,
and told me to work on his own canvas to repay him for his labor on
mine. Critics will please understand that I know how little this proves
as well as they do. It proves nothing beyond a talent for imitation and
the possession of some manual skill. I have sometimes thought in later
life that if instead of going so much to nature I had mimicked some
particular painter I might have obtained recognition as an artist.

Notwithstanding so much that was agreeable in my London life, it was
still a hard trial of resolution for me to work in a close,
ill-ventilated, and gloomy studio without any view from its window, and
in the beginning of April I returned to the country. From that day to
this I have never lived in London, which has probably been a misfortune
to me, both as artist and writer. I have been there frequently on
business, but have never stayed a day or an hour longer than the time
necessary to get through what was most pressing. It is curious, but
perfectly true, that I have never in my life felt the slightest desire
to purchase or rent any house whatever in London, and there is not a
house in all "the wilderness of brick" that I would accept as a free
gift if it were coupled with the condition that I should live in it.




CHAPTER XXIII.


1854

Some of my relations emigrate to New Zealand,--Difficulties of a poor
gentleman.--My uncle's reasons for emigration.--His departure.--Family
separations.--Our love for Hollins.

In the month of April, 1854, an event occurred which was of great
importance in our family.

My eldest uncle, Holden Hamerton, emigrated to New Zealand with all his
children, and a son and daughter of my uncle Hinde accompanied them.
This suddenly reduced our circle by eleven persons, without counting a
young family belonging to my cousin Orme.

My uncle, who was at that time a solicitor in Halifax, had reached a
very critical period in the life of a _père de famille_. His children
were grown up and expensive, and he had tried various ways of
economizing without any definite result. Amongst others, he had given up
Hopwood Hall, his mansion in Halifax, and had converted the stabling at
Hollins into a residence for his wife and the children who remained with
her. The stables were large enough to make a spacious dwelling. I
remember the regret I felt on seeing the workmen pull down the handsome
oak stalls, and remove the beautiful pavement, which was in blocks of
smooth stone carefully bevelled at the angles. My unfortunate uncle
lived like a bachelor in a small house in Halifax to be near his office,
and only came to Hollins for the Sunday.

It is, of course, very easy to criticize a comparatively poor gentleman
with a large family who is trying not to be ruined. It is easy to say
that he ought to live strictly within his income, whatever it may be;
but to do that strictly would require an iron resolution. He must cut
short all indulgences, annihilate all elegancies, set his face against
all the customs of his class. His attitude towards his wife and children
must be one of stern refusal steadily and implacably maintained. If he
relaxes--and all the influences around him tend to make him relax--the
old habits of customary expense will re-establish themselves in a few
weeks. He must cut his family off from all society, and with regard to
himself he must do what is far more difficult--cut himself off from all
domestic affection, behave like a heartless miser, and, at the very time
when he most needs a little solace and peace in his own home, constitute
himself the executor of the pitiless laws that govern the human
universe.

My uncle was not equal to all this. He could make hard sacrifices for
himself, and, in fact, did reduce his own comforts to those of a poor
bachelor, but he could not find in his heart to refuse everything to his
family; so that although they made no pretension now to anything like an
aristocratic position, my uncle still found himself to be living rather
beyond his means, and the expense of establishing his sons and daughters
in England being now imminent, and avoidable only in one way, he spent
days, and I fear also nights, of anxiety in arriving at a determination.

A journey to Scotland settled the matter. My uncle visited his eldest
son Orme, who was then at Greenock, and he discovered, as I had done,
that my cousin was married. Of course I had kept his secret, having
found it out by accident when a guest under his roof. The young man
offered to accompany his father to New Zealand, and my uncle, who loved
his eldest son, thought that this would be some compensation for leaving
England. He did not know that Orme's irresistible instinct for changing
his residence would make the New Zealand expedition no more than a
temporary excursion for him.

Another reason for emigrating to New Zealand was this: My uncle's second
son, Lewis, had abandoned the profession of the law and gone to
Australia by himself, where he was now a shepherd in the bush. He would
rejoin his father, and they would be a re-united family. All of them
would be together in New Zealand except one, my cousin Edward, who lay
in the family vault in Burnley Church. I had feelings of the strongest
fraternal affection for Edward, and if the reader cares to see his
likeness, he has only to look at the engraved portraits of Shelley,
especially the one in Moxon's double-column edition of 1847. The
likeness there is so striking that, for me, it supplies the place of
any other.

Edward died at the age of seventeen. He had a gentle and sweet nature;
but although he resembled Shelley so closely in outward appearance, he
was without any poetical tendency. His gifts were arithmetical and
mathematical, and whenever he had a quarter of an hour to spare he was
sure to take a piece of paper and cover it all over with figures. His
early death certainly spared him much trouble that he was hardly
qualified to meet. He had that dislike to physical exercise which often
accompanies delicate health, though there was no appearance of weakness
till the beginning of his fatal illness.

I well remember my uncle's last visit to his sisters. He did not say
that it was his last, but left some clean linen in the house, saying he
would want it when he came again. In this way there was a little
make-belief of hope; but I doubt if my aunts were really deceived, and I
did not quite know what to think. My uncle seemed flushed and excited,
and contradicted me rather sharply because I happened to be in error
about something of no importance. It was a hard moment for him, as he
loved his sisters, and had the deepest attachment to Hollins, where he
was born, and where he had passed the happiest days of his life. His
last visit has remained so distinct in my memory that I can even now see
clearly his great stalwart figure in the chair on the right-hand side of
the fireplace. Then he left us and passed the window, and since that day
he never was seen again at his old place. I can imagine what it must
have been to him to turn round at the avenue gate, and look back on the
gables of Hollins, knowing it to be for the last time.

His wife and the rest of his family went away without inflicting upon
themselves and us the pain of a farewell. I was present, however, at
Featherstone when my cousin Hinde left for New Zealand. One of his
sisters accompanied him out of pure sisterly devotion. She thought he
would be lonely out in the colony, so she would go and stay with him
till he married. He did not marry, and she never returned.

The colonial strength of England is founded upon these family
separations, but they are terrible when they occur, especially when the
parents are left behind in the old country. To us who remained this
wholesale emigration in our family produced the effect of a great and
sudden mortality. For my part I have received exactly one letter from
the New Zealand Hamertons since they left. It was a very interesting
letter, interesting enough to make me regret "there was but one."

My uncle's property sold well, and on leaving England he had still a
balance of ten thousand pounds in his pocket, which was more than most
emigrants set out with; but he built a good house on the estate he
purchased, and it was ruined in the war. His wife was a woman of great
courage and wonderful constitutional cheerfulness, both severely tested
by three months of incessant sea-sickness on the outward voyage. They
met with one terrible storm, during which the captain did not hope to
save the vessel, and my uncle and aunt sat together in their cabin
clasping each other's hands, and calmly awaiting death.

After their departure my guardian and her sister remained at Hollins as
tenants of the new proprietor. We still clung to the old place, but it
did not seem the same to us. On the night of the sale by auction my aunt
said to me, sadly, as we took our candlesticks to go to bed: "It is
strange to think that we positively do not know under whose roof we are
going to sleep to-night." The change was felt most painfully by her. My
guardian had a more resigned way of accepting the evils of life; she had
a kind of Christian pessimism that looked upon terrestrial existence as
not "worth living" in itself, and a little less or more of trouble and
sorrow in this world seemed to her scarcely worth considering, being
only a part of the general unsatisfactoriness of things. Her sister had
intense local attachments, and the most intense of them all was for this
place, her birthplace, where she had passed her youth. This attachment
was increased in her case by a strong, deep, and poetic sentiment that I
hardly like to call aristocratic, because that word will have other
associations (of pride in expensive living) for most readers. My aunt
had the true sentiment of ancestry, and it was painful to her to see a
place go out of a family. I have the same sentiment, though with less
intensity, and there were other reasons that made me love Hollins
very much. At that time the natural beauty that surrounded it was
quite unspoilt. We were near to the streams and the moors that I
delighted in, and the idea of being obliged to leave, as we might be
at any time by the new proprietor, was painful to a degree that only
lovers of nature will understand.

Even now, in my fifty-fourth year, I very often dream about Hollins,
about the old garden there, and the fields and woods, and the rocky
stream. Sometimes the place is sadly and stupidly altered in my dream,
and I am irritated; at other times it is improved and enriched, and the
very landscape is idealized into a nobler and more perfect beauty.

I need only add to this account of my uncle's emigration, that when he
landed on the shores of New Zealand in much perplexity as to where he
should go to find a temporary lodging, a colonist met him, and said that
he had been told by the Masonic authorities to receive him fraternally.
This he did by taking the whole family under his roof and entertaining
them as if they had been old friends, thereby giving my uncle ample time
to make his own arrangements. In a later chapter of this autobiography I
intend to give a short account of what happened to the emigrants
afterwards.




CHAPTER XXIV.


1854.

Resignation of commission in the militia.--Work from nature.--Spenser,
the poet.--Hurstwood.--Loch Awe revisited.--A customer.--I determine to
learn French well.--A tour in Wales.--Swimming.--Coolness on account of
my religious beliefs.--My guardian.--Evil effects of religious
bigotry.--Refuge in work.--My drawing-master.--Our excursion in Craven.

After returning to the country I went through another militia training,
and soon afterwards resigned my commission. According to my present
views of things I should probably not have done so, as it would be a
satisfaction to me now to feel myself of some definite use to my
country, even in the humble capacity of a militia officer; but in those
days the militia was not taken seriously by the nation, so the officers
did not take it seriously either, and, after a brief trial, a great many
of them resigned. The recognized motive for going into the militia was a
social motive, and as I never had any social ambition it mattered
nothing to me that there were a few men of rank in the regiment. I had
not any real companions in it, for I was much younger than most of my
brother officers, and it is likely enough that the society of an
inexperienced youth could offer no attraction to them. My love of my
chosen studies was accompanied by a complete indifference to amusements,
so that the cards and billiards after mess were not an attraction for
me, and my ignorance of field sports has always made me feel rather a
"muff" and a "duffer" in the society of country gentlemen.

The Colonel was always kind to me, and as I looked older than my age, he
quite forgot how young I was and procured for me a captain's commission.
As a matter of fact, I believe that a minor cannot hold a militia
captaincy, because it requires a property qualification. Somehow, the
Colonel was afterwards reminded of my age, and then thought he had made
a mistake; however, my resignation rectified it. In fairness to myself
it may be added that my military work was always done in a manner that
gained the approval of our real master, the adjutant.

One cause that certainly influenced me in leaving the regiment was the
necessity for appearing to be either a member of the Church of England
or a member of the Church of Rome. As I belonged to neither, I felt it a
hardship to be compelled to march to church every Sunday, and go through
the forms of the service. It will, of course, seem absurd to any man of
the world that such a trifle should have any weight whatever. Nobody
endowed with what men of the world call "common-sense" ever hesitates
about going through forms and ceremonies, when he can maintain or
increase his worldly position by doing so. As for me, I make no claim to
superior virtue, but cannot help feeling an invincible repugnance to
these shams. My own line had been chosen when I refused to go to Oxford
and sign the Thirty-nine Articles; the forced conformity in the militia
was a deflection of the compass, but it has pointed straight ever since,
and may it point straight to the end!

When free again, I set to work from nature, applying what Pettitt had
taught me. I drew and painted studies of rocks with great fidelity, and
as rocks are hard things, and my work was as hard as possible, there can
be no doubt that so far it was like nature. Pettitt had strengthened the
positive and scientific tendency that there is in me, so that I was
quite ardent in the pursuit of the rigid and measurable truths, neither
knowing nor caring anything about those more subtle and less manifest
truths that the cultivated artist loves. However, I painted away
diligently enough from nature, giving two long sittings each day, and
writing only in the evenings. My readings at this time were chiefly in
Shakespeare and Spenser.

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