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Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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As my tutor was very handsomely paid for the small amount of trouble he
took with me, my guardian had inserted in the agreement a clause by
which he was either to keep my horse in his stable, or else let me have
the use of one of his own. He preferred, for economy's sake, to mount
me; so in accordance with our agreement I innocently rode out a little
in the early mornings, long before the hour fixed for our Greek reading
together. As my tutor rose late, he was not aware of this for some time;
but at length, by accident, he found it out, and then an incident
occurred which exactly paints the charming amenity of the man.

His stable-boy had brought the horse to the gate, and I was just
mounting when my tutor opened his bedroom window, and called out, "Take
that horse back to the stable immediately!" I said to the servant, who
hesitated, that it was his duty to obey his master's orders, and
dismounted; then I went to my lodgings in the village, and wrote a note
to the tutor, in which I said that I expected him to keep his agreement,
and in accordance with it I should ride out that day. I then left the
note at the house, saddled the animal myself, and rode a long distance.
From that time our relations were those of constrained formality, which
on the whole I much preferred. My tutor assumed an air of injured
innocence, and treated me with a clumsy imitation of politeness which
was intended to wound me, but which I found extremely convenient, as the
greater the distance between us the less intercourse there would be.
However, after that demonstration of my rights, I kept a horse of my
own--a much finer animal--at a farmer's.

The intellectual influence of my present tutor was disastrous, by the
reaction it produced. He was a fanatical admirer of the ancient authors
who wrote in Latin and Greek, and was constantly expressing his contempt
for modern literature, of which he was extremely ignorant. I was fond of
reading, and had English books in my lodgings which were my refuge and
solace after the pedantic lectures I had to undergo. My love for Scott
was still very lively (as indeed it is to this day), but I had now
extended my horizon and added Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, and other modern
authors to my list. My tutor had all the hatred for Byron which
distinguished the clergy in the poet's life-time, and he was constantly
saying the most unjust things against him; as, for example, that the
"Bride of Abydos" was not original, but was copied from the Greek of
Moschus. This clerical hatred for Byron quite prevented my tutor from
acquiring any knowledge of the poet; but he had seen a copy of his works
at my lodgings, and this served as a text for the most violent
diatribes. As for Shelley, he knew no more about him than that he had
been accused of atheism. He had heard of Moore, whom he called "Tommy."
I believe he had never heard of Keats or Tennyson; certainly he was
quite unacquainted with their poems. He had a feeble, incipient
knowledge of French, and occasionally read a page of Molière, with an
unimaginable pronunciation; but he knew nothing really of any modern
literature. On the other hand, his knowledge of the Greek and Latin
classics was more intimate than that possessed by any other teacher I
had ever known. He was a thorough, old-fashioned scholar, with all the
pride of exact erudition, and a corresponding contempt for everybody who
did not possess it. I do not at this moment remember that he ever
referred to a dictionary. I only remember that he examined my Liddell
and Scott to see whether those modern lexicographers had done their work
in a way to merit his approval, and that he thought their book might be
useful to me. He had some knowledge of astronomy, and was building a
reflecting telescope which he never completed; but I remember that he
was often occupied in polishing the reflectors whilst I was reading, and
that his hand went on rubbing with a bit of soft leather, and a red
powder, when he would deliver the clearest disquisitions on the
employment of words by Greek authors, most of which I was not
sufficiently advanced to profit by. His manner with me was impatient,
and often rude and contemptuous. What irritated him especially in me was
the strange inequality of my learning, for I was rather strong on some
points, and equally weak on others; whilst he himself had an
irresistible regularity of knowledge, at least in Latin and Greek.

We did absolutely nothing else but Latin and Greek during my stay with
this tutor, and I suppose I must have made some progress, but there was
no _feeling_ of progress. In comparison with the completeness of my
master's terrible erudition it seemed that my small acquirements were
nothing, and never could be more than nothing. On the other hand, the
extreme narrowness of his literary tastes led me to place a higher value
on my own increasing knowledge of modern literature, and conclusively
proved to me, once for all, that a classical education does not
necessarily give a just or accurate judgment. "If a man," I said to
myself, "can be a thorough classical scholar as my tutor is, and at the
same time so narrow and ignorant, it is clear that a classical training
does not possess the virtue of opening the mind which is ascribed to
it."

Besides his narrowness with regard to modern literature of all kinds, my
tutor had the usual characteristic of the classical scholars of his
generation, a complete ignorance and misunderstanding of the fine arts.
All that he knew on that subject was that a certain picture by Titian
was shameful because there was a naked woman in it; and I believe he had
heard that Claude was a famous landscape-painter, but he had no
conception whatever of the aims and purposes of art. One of his
accusations against me was that, from vanity, I had painted a portrait
of myself. As a matter of fact, the little picture was a portrait of
Lord Byron, done from an engraving; but any artist may, without vanity,
make use of his own face as a model.

In religion my tutor was most intolerant. He could not endure either
Roman Catholics or Dissenters of any kind, and considered no terms harsh
enough for infidels. He told with approbation the story of some bigot
like himself, who, when an unbeliever came into his house, had loudly
ordered the servant to lock up the silver spoons. He possessed and read
with approbation one of those intolerant books of the eighteenth century
entitled, "A Short Method with Deists," in which the poor Deists were
crushed beneath the pitiless heel of the dominant State Church. It
happened one day, by a strange chance, that an antiquary brought a
Unitarian minister, who also took an interest in archaeology, to visit
the church where my tutor officiated, in which, there were some old
things, and as they stayed in the church till our early dinner-time, my
tutor could hardly do otherwise than offer them a little hospitality.
When the guests had gone (I hope they enjoyed the conversation, which
seemed to me artificial and constrained) my tutor said to me: "That man,
that Unitarian, will go to hell! All who do not believe in the Atonement
will go to hell!" I said nothing, but thought that the mild antiquary
who sat with us at table might deserve a less terrible fate. My tutor
troubled me less, perhaps, about theology than might have been expected.
He intended to inflict much more theology upon me than I really had to
undergo, thanks to his indolence, and the craft and subtlety with which
I managed to substitute other work for it. Still, it was a trial to me
to have to look acquiescent, or at least submissive and respectful,
whilst he said the most unjust and intolerant things about those who
differed from him, and with whom I often secretly agreed. And of course
I had to listen to his sermons every Sunday, and to go through the
outward seemings of conformity that my master had power enough to exact
from me. Beyond the weekly services in the church he fulfilled scarcely
any of the duties of a parish clergyman. He rose about eleven in the
morning, and spent his time either in mechanical pursuits or in
desultory reading, often of the Greek and Latin classics. In fact, my
tutor's mind was so imbued with the dead languages that he was unable to
write his own, but had constant recourse to Greek and Latin to make his
meaning clear.

A year spent with this clergyman, with whom I had not two ideas in
common, produced an effect upon me exactly opposite to that which had
been intended. My feelings towards the ancient classics had grown into
positive repugnance when I saw the moderns so unjustly sacrificed to
them, and my love for the moderns had increased to the point of
partisanship. My tutor's injustice towards Dissenters and unbelievers
had also, by a natural reaction, aroused in me a profound sympathy for
these maligned and despised people, and I would willingly have joined
some dissenting body myself if I could have found one that had exactly
my own opinions; but it seemed useless to leave the Church of England
for another community if I were no more in accordance with the new than
with the old. The fact that my master had been a tutor at Oxford and was
always boasting about his university career--he openly expressed his
contempt for men who "had never seen the smoke of a university"--made me
sick of the very name of the place, and to this day I have never visited
it. In a word, my tutor made me dislike the very things that it was his
business to make me like, and if I had ever felt the least desire for a
degree he would have cured me of it, as it was impossible to desire
honors that were accessible to so narrow a mind as his, a mind fit for
nothing but pedagogy, and really unable to appreciate either literature
or art.

At the end of a year, therefore, I said plainly to my guardian that I
was doing no good, and that it was useless to prepare me any further for
Oxford, as I could not conscientiously put my name to the Thirty-nine
Articles.

If, in those days, any human being in our class of society in England
had been able to conceive of such a thing as education not in clerical
hands, I might have gone on with my classical studies under the
direction of a layman; but education and the clergy were looked upon as
inseparable; even by myself. My education, therefore, came momentarily
to a stand-still, though it happened a little later that a sense of its
imperfection made me take it up again with fresh energy on my own
account, and I am still working at it, in various directions, at the
mature age of fifty-two.




CHAPTER XVI.


1852.

Choice of a profession.--Love of literature and art.--Decision to make
trial of both.--An equestrian tour.--Windermere.--Derwentwater.--I take
lessons from Mr. J. P. Pettitt.--Ulleswater.--My horse Turf.--Greenock,
a discovery.--My unsettled cousin.--Glasgow.--Loch Lomond.
--Inverary.--Loch Awe.--Inishail.--Innistrynich.--Oban.--A sailing
excursion.--Mull and Ulva.--Solitary reading.

The question of a profession now required an immediate decision. My
guardian's choice for me had formerly been the Church, but that was not
exactly suited to my ways of thinking. The most natural profession for a
young man in my position would have been the law, but my father had
expressly desired that I should not adopt it, as he was sick of it for
himself, and wished to spare me its anxieties. The cotton trade required
a larger disposable capital than I possessed, to start with any chance
of success.

My own desires were equally balanced between two pursuits for which I
had a great liking, and hoped that there might be some natural aptitude.
One of these was literature, and the other painting. A very moderate
success in either of these pursuits would, it seemed to me, be more
conducive to happiness than a greater success in some less congenial
occupation. My fortune was enough for a bachelor, and I did not intend
to marry, at least for a long time.

There was no thought of ambition in connection with the desire to follow
one of these two pursuits, beyond that of the workman who desires to do
well. I mean, I had no social ambition in connection with them. It
seemed to me that the liberty of thought which I valued above everything
was incompatible, in England, with any desire to rise in the world, as
unbelievers lay under a ban, and had no chance of social advancement
without renouncing their opinions. This was an additional reason why I
should seek happiness in my studies, as a worldly success was denied to
me.

The reader may perhaps think that I had not much, in the way of social
advancement, to renounce, but in fact I had a position remarkably full
of possibilities, that a man of the world could have used to great
advantage. I had independent means, enough to enable me, as a bachelor,
to live like a gentleman; I belonged to one of the oldest and
best-descended families in the English untitled aristocracy, had a
retentive memory, a strong voice, and could speak in public without
embarrassment. A man of the world, in my position, would have found his
upward course straight before him. He would simply have made use of the
Church as an instrument (it is one of the most valuable instruments for
the worldly), have given himself the advantages of Oxford, married for
money, offered his services to the Conservative party, and gone into
Parliament. [Footnote: The reader may wonder why the _Conservative_
party is specially mentioned. It is mentioned simply because all my
relations and nearly all my influential friends (who could have pushed
me) belonged to it. The Conservative party is also the one that gives
the best social promotion to those who serve it. There have been many
little Beaconsfields.]

It would have been much easier to do all that than to make a reputation
either in literature or painting,--easier, I mean, for a man starting in
life with so many good cards in his hand as I had.

I have been sometimes represented as an unsuccessful painter who took to
writing because he had failed as an artist. It is, of course, easy to
state the matter so, but the exact truth is that a very moderate success
in either literature or art would have been equally acceptable to me, so
that there has been no other failure in my life than the usual one of
not being able to catch two hares at the same time. Very few dogs have
ever been able to do that.

I decided to try to be a painter and to try to be an author, and see
what came of both attempts. My guardian always thought I should end by
being an author, and though she had no prejudice against painting, she
looked upon it as a pursuit likely to be very tedious, at times, to
those who practise it, in which she was quite right. It is generally a
hard struggle, requiring infinite patience, even in the clever and
successful.

One of the first things I did was to go on horseback to the English Lake
district in the summer of 1852, with the intention of continuing the
journey, still on horseback, into the mountainous regions of Scotland.
Unfortunately this project could not be executed with the horse I then
possessed, the most dangerous, sulky, resolute, and cunning brute I ever
mounted. I rode him as far as Keswick, where a horse-breaker tried him
and said his temper was incurable, recommending me to have him shot. The
advice was excellent, but I could not find it in my heart to destroy
such a fine-looking animal, so I left him in grass at Penrith, and went
on to Scotland by the usual means of travelling,--a change that I regret
to this day.

I had materials with me for painting studies in oil, and painted at
Windermere and Derwentwater. It was an inexpressible pleasure to see
these lakes, and a mental torment not to be able to paint them better.

My first sight of Windermere (or of any natural lake, for I had hitherto
seen nothing but fish-ponds and reservoirs) was enjoyed under peculiarly
impressive circumstances. I had been riding alone or walking by the side
of my horse during the night, and arrived at the lake shore by the
guidance of a star. I wrote down my first impression next day, and have
kept the words.

"I could not find the way to the little harbor of Bowness, and so went
on for a considerable distance till I came to a gate which, as I knew,
from the position of the north star, would lead directly to the lake
across the fields. There was a small and scarcely traceable footpath,
and a board to warn trespassers. However, I fastened the horse to the
gate and proceeded. I soon arrived at the shore, and was overawed by a
scene of overpowering magnificence. The day was just dawning. The water
mirrored the isles, except where the mist floated on its surface and
wreathed round their bases. The trees were massed by it into domes and
towers that seemed to float on the cloudy lake as if by enchantment. The
stars were growing pale in the yellowing east; the distant hills were
coldly blue, till far away lake and hill and sky melted into cloud.

"Opposite, I saw the dark form of an island rising between me and the
other shores, strongly relieved against the mist which crept along the
base of the opposite mountain and almost clambered to its dark summit.
The reflection of the dark upper part of the mountain (which rose clear
of the mist) fell on the lake in such a manner as to enclose that of the
island. In another direction an island was gradually throwing off its
white robe of mist, and the light showed through the interstices of the
foliage that I had taken for a crag.

"I had a pistol with me, and tried the echo, though it seemed wrong to
disturb a silence so sublime. I fired, and had time to regret that there
was no echo before a peal of musketry came from the nearer hills and
then a fainter peal from the distance, followed by an audible
rejoinder."

This is the kind of travel for the enjoyment of natural beauty. One
should be either quite alone, or have a single companion of the same
tastes, and one should be above all commonplace considerations about
hours. Samuel Palmer often walked the whole night alone, for the
pleasure of observing the beautiful changes between sunset and sunrise.

In the evening there was a fine red sunset followed by moonlight, so I
took a boat and rowed out in the moonlight alone. This first experience
of lake scenery was an enchantment, and it had a great influence on my
future life by giving me a passion for lakes, or by increasing the
passion that (in some inexplicable way) I had felt for them from
childhood. One of the earliest poems I had attempted to compose began
with the stanza,--

"A cold and chilly mist
Broodeth o'er Winandermere,
And the heaven-descended cloud hath kissed
The still lake drear."

I had already tried to paint lake scenery, in copying a picture, and my
favorite illustrations in the Abbotsford edition of Scott's works were
the lochs that I was now to see for the first time.

After a night at Ambleside I saw Rydal Water in sunshine and calm, with
faint breezes playing on its surface, and rode on to Keswick through the
Vale of St. John. The only way in which it was possible to ride the
brute I possessed was in putting him behind a carriage, which he
followed as if he had been tied to it. In this manner I reached Keswick,
after apologizing to a family party for dogging their carriage so
closely. As soon as the vehicle came to a stop opposite the hotel, my
horse, Turf, threw out his heels vigorously in the crowd. Luckily he
hurt nobody, but the bystanders told me that one of his shoes had been
within six inches of a young lady's face. A vicious horse is a perpetual
anxiety. Turf kicked in the stable as well as out of it, and hit a groom
on the forehead a few days later. The man would probably have been
killed without the leather of his cap.

Finding an artist at Keswick, Mr. J. P. Pettitt, I asked his advice and
became his pupil for a few days. I climbed Skiddaw during the night with
one of Mr. Pettitt's sons, who was a geologist and a landscape-painter
also. When we got to the top of the mountain we were enveloped in a
thick mist, which remained till we descended; but I lay down in my
waterproof on the lee side of the cairn, and slept in happy oblivion of
discomfort.

Mr. Pettitt's lessons were of some use to me, but as all my serious
education hitherto had been classical, I was not sufficiently advanced
in practical art to prepare me for color, and I ought to have been
making studies of light and shade in sepia.

There was nothing more difficult in those days than for a young
gentleman to become an artist, because no human being would believe that
he could be serious in such an intention. As I had a fine-looking horse
in the stable at the hotel, Pettitt of course took me for an amateur,
and only attempted to communicate the superficial dexterity that
amateurs usually desire. It was my misfortune to be constantly
attempting what was far too difficult for me in art, and not to find any
one ready and willing to put me on the right path. I was very well able,
already, to make studies in sepia that would have been valuable material
for future reference, whereas my oil studies were perfectly worthless,
and much more inconvenient and embarrassing.

I was enchanted with the Lake District, seeing Windermere, Derwentwater,
and Ulleswater, besides several minor lakes; but although I delighted in
all inland waters and the Lake District was so near to my own home, I
never revisited it. The reason was that, after seeing the grander
Highlands of Scotland, I became spoiled for the English Lakes. There was
another reason,--the absence of human interest on the English lakes
except of a quite modern kind, there being no old castles on shore or
island. Lyulph's Tower, on Ulleswater, though immortalized by
Wordsworth, is nothing but a modern hunting-box. Nevertheless, I have
often regretted that I did not become more familiar with Wordsworth's
country in my youth.

The mention of Lyulph's Tower reminds me that when I landed there after
a hard pull of seven miles against a strong wind, I was kindly invited
to take part in a merry picnic that was just being held there by some
farmers of the neighborhood. A very pretty girl asked me to dance, and I
afterwards played the fiddle. The scene with the dancers in the
foreground on the green sward, and the lake and mountains in the
distance, was one of the most poetical I ever beheld.

Turf had been ridden from Keswick to Penrith by the horse-breaker
already mentioned, and with infinite difficulty. I would have left him
in the breaker's hands, but he refused to mount again, saying that he
had done enough for his credit, and so had I for mine. By his advice I
took the same resolution, and as nobody in Penrith would ride the brute,
he was left to grow still wilder in a green field whilst I went on to
Scotland by the train.

I had a cousin at Greenock who was learning to be a marine constructing
engineer. He was a young man of remarkable ability, who afterwards
distinguished himself in his profession, and might no doubt have made a
large fortune if his habits had not been imprudent and unsettled. At
that time he was tied to Greenock by an engagement with one of the great
firms where he was articled. He had rooms in a quiet street, and offered
me hospitality. One day I came in unexpectedly and found a baby in my
bed, when the door opened suddenly, and a very pretty girl with dark
eyes came and took the baby away with an apology. I immediately said to
myself: "My cousin has been privately married, that pair of dark eyes
has cost him his liberty, and that child is an infantine relation of
mine!" This discovery remained a long time a secret in my own breast,
and I affected a complete absence of suspicion during the rest of my
stay at Greenock, but it was afterwards fully confirmed. My cousin had,
in fact, married at the early age of nineteen, when he was still an
articled pupil with Messrs. Caird, and living on an allowance from his
father, whom he dared not ask for an increase. He was therefore obliged
to eke out his means by teaching mechanical drawing in the evenings; but
though his marriage had been an imprudence, it was not a folly. He had,
in fact, shown excellent judgment in the choice of a wife. The dark eyes
were not all. Behind them there was a soul full of the most cheerful
courage, the sweetest affection, the most faithful devotion. For
thirty-seven years my cousin's wife followed him everywhere, and bore
his roving propensity with wonderful good humor. What that propensity
was, the reader may partly realize when I tell him that in those
_thirty_-seven years my cousin went through _eighty_-seven removals,
some of them across the greatest distances that are to be found upon the
planet. The only reason why he did not remove to all the different
planets one after another was the absence of a road to them. This
tendency of my cousin Orme had been predicted by a French phrenologist
at Manchester when he was a boy. The phrenologist had said, after
examining his "bumps," that Orme would settle in a place for a short
time and appear satisfied at first, as if it were for good, but that
very soon afterwards he would go elsewhere and repeat the process. I
never met with any other human being who had such an unsettled
disposition. The consequence was that he often quitted places where he
was extremely prosperous, and people who not only appreciated his
extraordinary talents, but were ready to reward them handsomely, in
order to go he knew not whither, and undertake he knew not what.

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