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THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

VOL. I
THE ANNALS OF AN ARTIST'S LIFE

( /rcrr/r ( ( latLs
.'/!,,,,/,;/ 6y kiss-on . g.SF^frJcLbbs ,ln l8 ',)

GEORGE FREDERIC

WATTS

VOLUME I

THE ANNALS OF AN ARTIST'S LIFE

M. S. WATTS

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

I91 2

A/,

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACE PAGE

George Watts. Painted by his Son, G. F. Watts, in 1835 Frontispiece

G. F. Watts, aged 17 (1835) 26

G. F. Watts. From a Photograph of a Drawing, now lost

(1848) 106

The Countess Somers (1849) . . . . . .122

G. F. Watts, by himself. A Portrait bequeathed by Sir
William Bowman, Bart., to the National Gallery of
British Art (1862-64) 218

Old Little Holland House. North-east aspect . . .159

Old Little Holland House. South-west aspect . . . 280

ERRATA

Page 6 1, line 4 from bottom, for villa read Villa.

„ 106, lines 14 and 15, for Cozens read Couzens.

„ 130, line 8, for Chambers $ Magazine read Chambers 's Journal.

„ 198, line 10, for Belgium read Belgian.

„ 204, line i<), for hooked read hooked.

„ 241, line 24, for Gold-Hawk read Goldhawk.

„ 241 (footnote), for Mrs. Reginald Cholmondeley read Lady Alice

Cholmondeley.

„ 244, line 5 from bottom, for Maddox read Madox.

„ 254, line 16, for Edward read Edwin.

„ 313, lines 3 and 7, for Evelene read Eveleen.

„ 319, line 16 from bottom, for Maddox read Madox.

„ 66, line 5, delete 2nd.

CHAPTER I

VOL. I I B

All that is most real and best in our lives is
that which has no material reality — sentiment,
love, honour, patriotism — these continue when
the material things pass away.

G. F. WATTS.

CHAPTER I

Any record of the early life of George Frederic
Watts now made, must certainly fail to give any-
thing but a meagre account of his childhood, of
his parents, or of the stock from which they
came. No letters were preserved, and, as his life
was a long one, those who knew him as a boy
have long passed away ; and now only do I seem
to be conscious that the years when I had the
privilege of being in close companionship with
him were those of flower and fruit, and that, in
my infinite contentment, these as it were habitu-
ally hid from my view any sight of the root and
the stem.

His own opinion was that in these days too
much is written of every one who comes at all
before the public, and he envied, as I have heard
Lord Tennyson say that he also envied, the
oblivion that now hides every fact of the life of
the man whose name stands first in literature.

He had a curious dislike to the sound of his
surname, and habitually took trouble to avoid
using it, a weakness best explained by his own
simile : " One man may walk into a beautiful

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

house with the dust of the highway on his boots,
quite unconscious of this ; while to another it
would be so disagreeable as to amount to its being
a real pain." He had fancies about the inherit-
ance of a name, and used to say when he heard
of one that pleased his ear, " Ah, if I had had a
name such as that, I should have done my work
better."

When Miss Thackeray, in her partly historical
novel Old Kensington, skilfully touched in with
words a miniature but most true and delicate
portrait of him, she introduced him to her heroine
as Mr. Royal : a name descriptive, in so far
that the qualities of large generosity in all matters
were essentially characteristic of him.

In answer to the question of a friend towards
the middle of his life, he says: " You ask me in
your letter if my name is British; I really know
nothing about it. Being a lover of the beautiful,
its want of music is distasteful to me ; and for
this reason, when I was younger, I often had
serious thoughts of changing it, and should have
done so if taking what did not belong to me had
not seemed to be a very unsatisfactory alternative.
I confess I should like to have a fine name and a
great ancestry ; it would have been delightful to
me to feel as though a long line of worthies were
looking down upon me and urging me to sustain
their dignity. This I feel very strongly, all the
time feeling still more strongly that to do good
work in the world is a better thing than an
accidental place in society. I like to see the

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

good in all, and rather pride myself on being a
real Liberal ; that is to say, being liberal enough
to see and understand that there are and must be
many conditions and many opinions."

He knew very little about his grandfathers or
grandmothers in the flesh ; the subject of his
ancestry did not interest him, nor could he believe
that it would interest any one else. He never
visited Hereford, where his grandfather lived and
married Elizabeth Bradford in 1774, and died
there early in the last century. He believed that
he had Celtic blood in his veins, but knew of no
proof of this. However, in the family of Eliza-
beth Bradford the Welsh names Edwards and
Pugh occur, and he knew of the name Floris, as
being common in the family as a Christian name ;
but how it came there, or what nationality it re-
presented, he did not know.

" I belong to a family that has gone down in
the world," he said, referring to ties of blood
relationship ; and the fact was painful to a nature
so finely touched in all respects. In all humility
he would turn with pleasure to the thought of a
closer kinship he knew he might claim in aspira-
tion and desire with great spirits of the past, and
say, " I am a very poor relation, but of the family."
His father was a man of fine perceptions, with
some ambition ; one who was capable of guiding
his son's self-education. On the mother's side,
though she herself was of delicate constitution,
he was fortunate in deriving something of the
hardier fibre of the English yeoman. To that

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

class her father and brother belonged, so probably
from her were inherited qualities which tempered
the nervous and aesthetic strain in her child.

This was all he knew of the family from
which he came. There is a proverb in Gaelic
of which a translation runs thus : " Behind the
wave is the ocean," and big events lay behind the
years into which George Frederic Watts and his
generation of brother-artists were born. When
reviewing progress in the eighteenth century,
Mr. Lecky wrote: "Few questions in history
are more perplexing and perhaps more insoluble
than the causes which govern the great mani-
festations of aesthetic genius." Without at-
tempting to discuss such a problem, it can be
affirmed without fear of contradiction that
English art, already great in portraiture and in
landscape, received a new impulse from the men
whose births occurred now and in the following
years. They appeared as a group, and seemed to
be sons of their age more than of any particular
family, the results, as it were, of some common
aspiration. Perhaps the victory of Waterloo had
relieved a tension caused by a long series of wars,
and men to carry forward the arts of peace were
needed. The story of one of these does, I venture
to think, show that in his regard for the honour
of his country he was not unworthy of the heroes
who won Waterloo.

Towards the end of life he wrote: " My great
and ever constant desire is to identify artistic out-
come with all that is good and great in every

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

creed and utterance, and all that is inspiring in
every record of heroism, of suffering, of effort,
and of achievement." This desire had inspired
him from the very beginning of his working life.

Some time towards the end of the eighteenth
century George Watts, the father, left his father's
workshop in Hereford, where, as I was told by a
granddaughter, they made musical instruments,
though his son writes of him as a cabinet-maker.
He came to London, and in 1 8 1 8 describes him-
self as a pianoforte manufacturer. But the am-
bition of invention filled his thoughts, and its
dazzle was always before his eyes, leading him
into desultory experiments and neglect of more
practical work ; and it is probable that failure of
business and other troubles had already beset his
steps when, in 1 8 1 6, he married, as his second
wife, Harriet, daughter of Frederic Smith, her-
self a widow. To them, living in a house in
Queen Street, Bryanston Square, the father being
already in his forty-fourth year and the mother
in her thirty-first, their eldest son was born, as
the entry in the Prayer Book carefully records,
at one o'clock on Sunday morning, the 23rd of
February 18 17. They christened him George
after his father and grandfather, and Frederic after
a brother of his mother to whom she was much
attached. There was a private baptism, and the
godfather who was present was given the little
basin that served as font, and this with its ewer
was carefully preserved by him.

The children of George Watts's first marriage

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

were three — a boy at this time aged sixteen, and
two girls of fifteen and thirteen years old ; and
though the second marriage brought some
addition to the slender purse, it was probably
quite put out of account by Mrs. Watts's invalid
condition, which greatly added to the cares and
anxieties of the home.

Of this marriage four sons were born in quick
succession, but the youngest survived his birth
only for a few weeks, and the two others did not
live much beyond infancy ; for in the winter of
1823 tne li^le boys all fell ill from an unusually
severe outbreak of measles. The parents' con-
cern at first was chiefly for their eldest, George
Frederic, but that thread of life, fragile as it was,
proved to be stronger than they knew ; and he
lived, while both his little brothers died and
within the space of a few days were buried in
one grave. With so much strain upon the
delicate constitution of his mother, it is easy to
understand why her image remained to the last
in her son's memory as one entirely connected
with sadness. He remembered her chiefly when
passing with the sad slow steps that mark the
progress of consumption to her grave by her
little sons, where in 1826 she was laid; a
lovable, patient, and good woman, of whom
her stepdaughters always spoke in admiration.
There is no picture of her, but a photograph
taken in old age of her sister shows that, though
George must have greatly resembled his father,
the slight frame and delicate poise of the small

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

head — and I believe his brown eyes — are all
characteristic of the family of his mother.

The father was now for the second time a
widower, and his two grown-up daughters
continued to take charge of the home, as they
had already done for some years. These four
completed the home circle.

The son's portrait of his father, painted about
the year 1836 and reproduced as a frontispiece to
this book, discloses the characteristics of a man
delicately minded, full of aspiration if not strong
of purpose. This, as his son described him, he was.
The pathos of the eyes seems to show that he
knew that the aim of his own life had not been
attained ; in the mouth there is something of
petulant protest against circumstances that had
proved too hard for his overcoming ; and yet,
underlying all, there is in the expression of the
eyes a hope — perhaps a confident hope for
another ; as if he saw the light that was rising
for him in the day of his grey hairs.

In an old desk once his, which since my
husband's death has come into my possession,
there lies a little agate seal, upon which may be
seen very unskilfully engraved, evidently by no
professional hand, the symbol of a rising sun.
Knowing that the father's inventive turn of mind
led him to lose time by taking up too many arts
and crafts, it may not be too fanciful to suggest
that this attempt at engraving was by his own
hand, and that the little seal bears in its device
something very personal connected with this

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

hope of his later years — the son whom he had
certainly " set as a seal upon his heart."

He had some taste for art ; even as a young
man at Hereford he cared to buy good engrav-
ings, an etching by Rembrandt and a few by
Greuze being amongst the still existing pos-
sessions of that date. He used both brush and
pencil, though he was never proficient, and as
none of these attempts remain, evidently never
satisfied himself in this direction ; on the other
hand, he carefully dated and kept many of his
son's earliest original drawings, and also preserved
some of the engravings from which the little
fellow's very exact copies were made. He either
inherited or collected a few books, in good
editions, the only luxury of the home ; for
instance, Le strange' 's Fables, some plays of the
time of Charles II., The Seven Champions of
Christendom, and others, the disappearance of
which was a matter of regret to his son. After
the death of his wife, his chief concern was for
little George. " His father watched him at
every turn," were the expressive words of one
who remembered his boyhood ; remembering
also with a tender clearness, though looking
down the dim distance of seventy years, that his
playmates looked eagerly for little George's
coming to join in their games, adding that she
could well remember the pleasure of hearing his
light step running to find them at play.

It is good to know there were fields still in
that part of London, fields rich with buttercups

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

and wild flowers ; and that there the little
George played. He could remember a day
when, after roaming about on a bit of ground
where timber was being cleared, he sat down at
one end of a fallen tree, when an impressive
figure in a long black cloak came slowly up and
seated himself silently at the other end. The
man with the fine thoughtful face that so
attracted the boy's attention was Edward Irving.

A few rare visits were paid to his godfather's
farm in Sussex, and thus he made acquaintance
with country pleasures, but on the whole the
memory of his boyhood was not a happy one,
chieflv because ill-health made him unable to
enjoy what boys of his age were enjoying.
Neither was he able to give himself to con-
secutive study such as his eager mind desired.

Amongst his earliest drawings there is one —
whether an original or a copy he could not re-
collect. It is undated, but in a round childish
hand the name of " Sisyphus ' is written ; and
comparing these pot-hooks with his handwriting
at ten years old, a time when copies made by
him could not as facsimiles be bettered, it is safe
to conclude that the Sisyphus belongs to some
years earlier — probably to the age of six or seven.
With firm and rather black strokes of the pencil
the strong muscles of the condemned one are
very descriptively given, and there is pathos in
the choice of this subject by a child who indeed
knew too early the steepness of the way of life
and the burden of its anxieties.

1 1

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

It has been suggested to me by a physician
that the attacks of headache, with vertigo and
sickness, from which he suffered so continually
may have been due to eye-strain. With a highly
nervous temperament (not sufficiently well under-
stood) perhaps also these were due to the strain
of being called upon when too young to share
his father's disappointments and anxieties. No
doubt these trials would have, on the elders of
the family, the effect of producing a tendency to
irritability, by laying nerves bare to the slightest
annoyance, and although little George was well
loved by father and sisters, they were probably
unaware of the torment he suffered from the
constant dread of recurring outbursts of temper.
In retrospect he concluded that the nervousness
of his later life was greatly due to the anxiety
he suffered in those early days, when these
thunderstorms of passion were continually brew-
ing and at any moment likely to burst upon the
household. In speaking of this it was character-
istic of him to blame no particular member of
the family, and indeed he appeared to take
pains not to mention any name. The attacks of
headache, from which he suffered so acutely all
through his boyhood, averaged, he believed,
something like one in every week, and they
would prostrate him completely for two days.
At the best of times he was conscious of a
malaise which seemed to halve all his pleasures ;
but when recovering from the worse, the better
would seem by comparison almost bliss, and he

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

would lie quietly enjoying the sense of freedom
from actual pain, when a strange mystic sensation
would come over him, as if his feet had travelled
off on some wonderful journey through space ;
further and infinitely further they went, and it
gave him a strange sort of joy to seem to follow,
and yet stay behind. He often alluded to this,
and wondered what explanation there might be
to account for the repetition of a sensation so
fantastic, and yet to him so real.

During the hours of enforced quiet he made a
little friend that became very dear to him. He
tamed a sparrow so completely that it perched
on his head as he lay in bed, ate from his plate,
and was a cheerful and much beloved companion.
Tragedy of course overtook it in the end, and
the grief he felt when he saw it drop dead at
his feet was not forgotten. " I feel the sorrow
as keenly to-day as if it happened yesterday," he
said. The end was the more terrible as it was
brought about by his own hand ; in shutting up
his sparrow for the night he accidentally caught
in the doorway the little head which, unnoticed
by him, popped oat for another last word.

In those days he looked very young for his
age, and, according to his own account, was so
backward that he was filled with shame as each
birthday came round ; but, if the boy may be
judged by the man, he took his measure by the
standard of what he wished to attain rather than
by that of other boys of his own age. " Self-
confidence," he said, " is called a fault of youth,

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

but if that is so, I think I may say it was one
which I had not ; I only knew one thing, which
was that I knew nothing."

His health preventing him from attending,
with any sort of regularity, any classes or school,
he was taught, or taught himself as best he
could, at home. He learnt to read fairly early,
his father giving a good direction to his boy's
choice of books. Later in life he could not hear
without something like indignation of boys who
were indifferent to and wasteful of advantages
which had been withheld from him ; perhaps
above all that of robust health. But Poverty
may also bring her gift of compensation ; want
of means made the books few, yet, as they were
choice, the limitation had this advantage that he
read them over and over again till they became
a part of his world and of his being. Without
the imposition of dreary tasks of grammar, he
entered freely and of his own choice into the
Greek mind, through such translations as were
accessible to him. The Iliad, perhaps the first
and best beloved of all, he read and re-read until
gods and heroes were his friends and acquaint-
ances ; he thought of them as such, judged
critically of their words and actions, and was
deeply moved by all that was noble and beautiful
and restrained ; he knew this to be a very living
school, and every fibre of his being answered to
the splendour of the great epic. And so, while
ill-health held him back from all pleasures of
the more active sort, there was given instead this

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

leisure, in which his imaginative mind could
roam the windy plains of Troy, or climb the
heights of Olympus. Moving through the dim
light of a London atmosphere, in his dull little
room he saw " the bright-eyed Athene in the
midst bearing the holy aegis, that knoweth
neither age nor death," and dreamed that he too
might be an aegis-bearer of that which cannot
grow old, the utterance of the human mind in
the language of an art.

Very early in life he also drew upon that
treasure-house of healthy and splendid romance,
the novels of Sir Walter Scott, whose knights
and cavaliers often supplied subjects for his
pencil, and with the Greek heroes inspired his
earliest compositions. These novels inspired
him then, and throughout life, and were — with
the novels of Miss Austen — the books that he
turned to most often when tired or unwell.

His family were members of the Anglican
Church, and into that Church he had been
baptized ; but the point of view held in the
home was too limited ; a narrow Sabbatarian
habit made Sunday a burden to his young mind,
and there was no help for the little fellow in the
bare and dreary Church services to which he was
taken. A preacher in a black gown spoke of
wrath to come, and his reason and his aesthetic
instincts were shocked, so much so that he re-
membered that at that time he thoroughly
believed all religious teachers to be insincere.

He sometimes spoke with surprise of the inde-

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

pendent view he remembered to have taken quite
early in life. " While I felt," he said, " for the
subject of religion so great a reverence that it was
difficult for me to speak about it, I reasoned and
rebelled against the unreality of ordinary religious
teaching." The early religious bent of his mind,
through the teaching then received, might have
been towards the narrowest side of the Evangeli-
cal school ; for instance, on Sundays he was
never allowed to read anything but a so-called
religious book ; on this day a newspaper was
absolutely forbidden, and all books except
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and the Bible and
Prayer Book were put away.

The pictures in the Bible and in the Queen
Anne Prayer Book (in which the entry of the
day and hour of his birth is made so exactly)
must have somewhat consoled him, until he had
made copies of the illustrations so many times
that at last he exhausted their fascinations. In
one of these the eye of the Deity is given — a
realistic eye, large in the sky — from which
a ray of light, solid as metal, streams upon the
head of Guy Fawkes, who with his lantern is
going about his evil business.

He remembered with what a revulsion of feel-
ing he heard as a little boy the story told of some
man who during the week had neglected to read
his Bible, but being sorry for this on Sunday,
was in the act of taking it down from the shelf
where it had lain, when he was suddenly struck
dead as a just retribution for his sin. The

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

horror he then felt at such a conception of
divine justice he could not forget. He had in
fact realised, when quite young, a certain want
of correspondence between his own nature and
his surroundings.

Yet one result of the early home training was
that he knew the Bible well, and remembered
every detail of the Old Testament stories, and, as
he retold these, just by an accent here and there
he would throw new and original comment upon
them, quite his own. Very possibly the element
of Puritanical austerity, which made Sunday so
dreary to the little boy, as it did not narrow his
views nor make him pretend to a piety he did
not feel, was valuable as a discipline ; and to
this may have been due a power of self-control
which in so highly nervous and emotional a
temperament was certainly remarkable.

Of the purpose he set before himself when
beginning to study art he once said to me :
" From the very first I determined to do the
very best possible to me ; I did not hope to
make a name, or think much about climbing to
the top of the tree, I merely set myself to do
the utmost I could, and I think I may say I
have never relaxed ; to this steady endeavour
I owe everything. Hard work, and keeping the
definite object of my life in view, has given me
whatever position I now have. And I may add,
what I think is an encouragement to others,
that very few have begun life with fewer
advantages, either of health, wealth, or position,
vol. i 17 c

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

or any exceptional intellect. Any success I may
have had is due entirely to steadiness of purpose."
He could not recall any time from his earliest
childhood when he did not use a pencil ; and he
seems from the first to have taken such pains
with his work that it might be assumed this
faculty was inherited. A comparison of his
copies in chalk, set beside the original etching
on copper with a metal point, prove with what
extreme care the boy of eleven or twelve years
old counted and copied every line, sharpening
the chalk, as he well remembered, between every
three or four strokes. This faculty for taking
pains, together with an enthusiasm for his work,
made anything like the ordinary training of an
art student quite unnecessary. His own axiom
that in art there was " everything to be learnt,
and very little to be taught," was spoken out of
his own experience. It may have been that in
later years, when giving advice to students, he
never quite realised the value of an opportunity
afforded for exclusive devotion to its study within
the walls of a School of Art. The limitations
of a boyhood precluded by ill-health from the
usual games, and a temperament that to some
extent marked him out for solitary study, may
possibly have made it difficult for him to under-
stand the advantage which schools offer to others
more exposed to the temptations of the active
and social life. The advice given by him may
at times have been misunderstood ; it certainly
was if it was taken to mean that he held that

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

art did not demand arduous and exclusive study
for many years ; a study which in one sense
must never cease ; the early training he held
was merely to find out how to study. He
wished the student to understand that he must
not depend upon academic rules, and very little
upon the experience of a teacher : all that others
could give him was quite elementary; for the
right development of the best that was in him
he had to equip himself by an intelligent study
of the book of nature and in the traditions of
great art.

As a consequence of bad health, regularity
of work in boyhood was not possible, but a
fortunate circumstance gave him an opportunity
which otherwise could not have been his.
His father, in his work of pianoforte making,
happened to be associated with a Hanoverian
of the name of Behnes, who had married
in England and had three sons. The Behnes
family had at one time living in the same house
with themselves an old Frenchman, a sculptor
by profession in England, but quite probably a
refugee of the French noblesse ; and his influence
caused both Henry and William Behnes to take
up the profession of art. Henry died early in
Rome, but William, though already helping his
father in his work, gave it up for the study of
art, and became for a time one of the most
successful and popular sculptors of portrait
medallions and busts then living. He made the
first portrait bust of the little Princess Victoria,

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

and on her coming to the throne was appointed
by her "Sculptor in Ordinary to Her Majesty."

His first studio was in Dean Street, Soho, and
here little George, then not more than ten years
old, went in and out as he liked. In his
recollection the best work accomplished by
William Behnes was in pencil. More especially
he recalled one magnificent drawing from the
antique group of Arria and Partus, and he often
regretted that these were lost, and that falling
into ignorant hands, they had in all probability
been destroyed. Henry Weekes, the sculptor,
mentions Behnes's paintings upon vellum as being
the finest he had ever seen. Writing of him,
he says, " The genius of Behnes was a sort of
Mephistopheles, always at his side allowing him
always to fancy he was going to be pleased, yet
eventually leading him to destruction."

But it was Charles Behnes, the brother, an
invalid and malformed, of whom but slight
mention is made in any account of the sculptor,
to whom George became attached. Some time
early in the 'thirties William Behnes removed
to the studio (then No. 13 Osnaburgh Street)
afterwards tenanted by Mr. Foley, and where
Sir Frederic Leighton modelled his athlete, the
present occupant being Mr. Brock. It was of
this studio that my husband most often spoke.
William and his brother Charles seemed to have
had a full appreciation of his gifts ; and as
Charles was some twenty years older, the contact
with his maturer mind was of great value to

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

him. Charles was an intellectual man, and this
his brother the sculptor was not. His liberal
view of life, and understanding of the best
things in literature, and above all his goodness,
attracted George to him. As was his habit at
all times, it so happened that in speaking of
these early friends he never emphasised the fact
that in this respect William Behnes contrasted
badly with his brother ; and that indeed in
William the moral sense was absent ; he would
merely say that William had no strength of
character, and that while Charles lived he kept
his brother's business affairs in order, and held
him up from moral slips as far as he was able ;
but that after Charles died — somewhere about
1844 — William "went all to pieces," as he
expressed it. It seems, however, certain, from
what is known of the story otherwise, that thus
early in life the boy stood between a good and
an evil influence, and that he chose the good. It
was during these early days that a friend of
Charles Behnes, a miniature painter, gave him
his first lesson in the use of oil-colour, lent him
a painting by Sir Peter Lely to copy, and at
the same time gave him a simple practical
formula for the colours to be used. This copy,
full of the characteristics of Lely's work, is now
placed with a small collection of early works in
the Watts Collection at Compton in Surrey. 1

1 Throughout this book, for the sake of brevity, the name Compton
Gallery is used, but as there are more than twenty towns or villages of that
name, it must be understood that this Compton is in Surrey, equally distant
from Guildford and Godalming (three miles).

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

About this date his father took some of his
son's drawings to the President of the Royal
Academy, Sir Martin Archer Shee, and being
anxious to know if it was right to encourage his
son to be an artist, asked his opinion upon them.
The verdict, given after looking at the drawings,
was, " I can see no reason why your son should
take up the profession of art." The father,
however, was undaunted and allowed the boy to
have his way.

One can fancy the light figure moving about
the big studio, using up every atom of daylight,
and probably singing at his work ; a habit never
wholly given up if work was going to his mind.
He had sung from his childhood, and well
remembered his regret when the inevitable
change came and the quality of voice peculiar
to boyhood was lost.

Even when he was working at home, he often
went to Osnaburgh Street, and sat there whilst
the studio grew dark, talking of many things
with Charles Behnes. Early in life he had
made acquaintance with some elementary books
on science recommended to him by his friend ;
they discussed Shakespeare, Virgil, Ossian, and
many another author. He had some fun too
with his mentors, once having amused himself
by painting a fraudulent Van Dyck on purpose
to see if they would be deceived. The head
was painted from himself, the dress being of
course of the time of Charles I. When the
surface was hard enough, he poked his picture up

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the chimney, and waited till it had sufficiently
mellowed ; he then took it round to the studio,
where, with some pretence of hesitation, he
suggested that he thought he had discovered a
Van Dyck. The sculptor looked at it critically,
and then said : " Well, I would not venture to
say that it is by Van Dyck, but it certainly
is by no mean hand." When the trick was
confessed, Behnes angrily cried out, " Why the
deuce don't you always paint like that ? ' It
was probably about this time that Benjamin
Haydon — amongst English artists the discoverer
of the true worth of the Elgin Marbles — one
day noticed a sketch-book in the hand of a boy
who passed him in the street ; possibly also he
may have noticed something unusual in the face
of one setting out on his quest to find the true
and the beautiful : anvhow he laid his hand
kindly upon young Watts's shoulder, and said,
" May a fellow-student look at your work ? ' He
spoke encouragingly, and invited the boy to his
studio, but for some reason, probably owing to a
certain hesitation in putting himself forward, he
never went ; and this was their only meeting.

After Mrs. Watts's death the family had
removed from Queen Street to Star Street,
Marylebone, probably for the sake of greater
economy, and it was in this house, I believe,
that a room was set apart as the studio ; but his
first studio (built as such) was in Roberts Road,
Hampstead Road, where it stood in the garden
at the back of the house.

2 3

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Talking once of early rising, it was mentioned
that it was far more difficult to get up early
when young than later in life ; and his answer
was, " Don't I know that very well, for I could
only overcome the difficulty myself by not going
to bed at all : I used not to undress, but rolled
myself in a thick dressing-gown, and lay on the
floor of my studio, sometimes on two chairs,
until I had taught myself to awake and get up
with the sun." The habit once acquired was
never lost. In his eighty-eighth year, as soon as
daylight permitted he rose and set to work. If
he was ill and obliged to remain in bed, he
would generally ask to have the curtains and
blinds closed, once explaining, " I cannot bear it,
the light calls to me."

In his early days the fight against self had
to be continually maintained, and taking into
account the ever-recurrent interruptions from
illness, the fact that he never allowed himself
to become desultory in his work shows that the
character was resolute then as it remained un-
altered to the end.

Up to this time, having carefully studied
from anatomical casts, and still more assiduously
from the skeleton, a knowledge of which, as the
foundation of all good drawing, he placed first
in importance, his pencil had been busy from
childhood with original designs of the gods,
kings, knights, and ladies that peopled his brain
at the time ; and before he was sixteen he
had begun to undertake small commissions for

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

portraits, drawn sometimes in coloured chalk,
sometimes in pencil, for which he asked the
sum of five shillings.

Affairs at home had been going from bad to
worse. The father, becoming more desultory,
gave elementary lessons in music, tuned pianos,
and did any clerical work that came in his way.
His son was glad to think that after the age of
sixteen he never cost his father anything, and
that later he was able to support him till his
death in 1845. By the year 1835 the young
student's power of accomplishment was maturing
fast, but, to perfect himself further, he made up
his mind to enter the schools of the Royal
Academy.

The ivory disc for a student's admission is
still extant with the name and date engraved
upon it : " George Frederic Watts, Admitted
April 30th, 1835," and on the reverse, "Royal
Academy Antique School." His name also
appears upon the books during the two following
years, but at that time the schools were practic-
ally closed for half the year, the space being so
limited that the rooms were required when
Exhibitions were being held. The teaching at
that time was exceedingly disappointing ; as he
said himself, a few years later, " there was no
teaching at all " : he therefore attended the
School only long enough to satisfy himself that
he could learn quite as much in his own studio.
" There was no test," he said, " no examination
of the pupils " — in a word, an absolute want of

2 5

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

instruction ; and when speaking of this time he
would say that he learnt in no school save one,
that of Pheidias, and in that school he had never
ceased to learn.

In 1835 the President was Sir Martin Archer
Shee, and the Keeper Mr. William Hilton, who
had but recently lost his wife — the sister of the
painter Peter de Wint — a blow which he felt so
severely that it undermined his health, and is
said to have shortened his life. Outwardly he
was an austere man of few words, one from
whom praise was worth winning. It was there-
fore no small matter when this was gained.

It so happened that twice during this time at
the Academy Schools young Watts's drawings
were picked out both by Mr. Hilton and by his
fellow-students as being certain of a medal ; the
first time for a drawing from the antique, the
second for a drawing from the life. He remem-
bered it as a thing of yesterday, and described
it thus :

" When the result of the judging was known,
and that my drawing had not been given the
medal, I was much pleased by Hilton's coming
across the room to me and whispering, ' Never
mind, you ought to have had it ' ; I liked that
better than the medal."

Another day Mr. Hilton pointed to the
drawing on George Watts's easel, and speaking
generally to the students, said, " That is the way
I like to see a drawing done." The praise was
remembered.

I iaj,fit

(; r jM(\ t ,i,

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ililfil SCI iii/rrn

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

He had, however, so far formed his own
opinion upon the course of practice he believed
would best develop and strengthen his powers
that he recollected taking a small picture he
had painted of a dying knight to show to Mr.
Hilton, who commended it, but at the same time
told him on no account to attempt anything
original in the way of composition. He weighed
the advice, believed it to be mistaken, and went
on with his imaginative work. " I was right, I
believe, and Hilton wrong. Although he was
right in warning me against drifting into mere
picture making, he should have said, ' Do this
kind of thing certainly, but take care that you
make very careful studies from nature as well.'

The year 1837 f° un d him hard at work in
his own studio, this being a room in Clipston
Street ; and in March of that year he sent in to
the Academy for exhibition the picture called
the " Wounded Heron," painted from the dead
bird he happened to see in a poulterer's shop.
Struck by its beauty, he bought it, and worked
from it as rapidly as the conditions required, but
with the utmost care and painstaking.

It is impossible not to see in the pathos of
the outstretched wing something more than a
prophecy of the pathos in the wing of Love
defending the door of Life of forty years later-
young Love impotent against the inevitable —
much also of the same mind, taking note of the
mysteries in the drama of life suggested by the
falcon high in the blue over the dying heron —

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

one beautiful child of nature joyfully pursuing
another to the death, and the mounted falconer
also following gaily, and possessed with the joy
of the chase.

This picture l was given a place upon the
walls of the Academy that year, when he also
exhibited two portraits, each under the title of
" The Portrait of a Young Lady." For one of
these, a portrait of little Miss Hopkins, the
delicate sketch in chalk now lies in a scrap-book
of early drawings ; he painted her three times,
and one of these portraits hangs amongst other
early works in the Compton Gallery.

It was about this time that an acquaintance
began between him and Mr. Nicholas Wano-
strocht — an Englishman by birth, though Belgian
by descent. He inherited, so to speak, a school
from his grandfather and uncle, where education
was carried on upon very original lines ; but to
the world his name is best known as Nicholas
Felix the cricketer, the author of Felix on the
Bat. It was with some idea of having illustrations
made of the various positions of the cricketer, as
the game at that time was played, that he com-
missioned George Watts to make the series of
seven such positions — afterwards drawn by him
upon stone. Four of these are portraits of Felix
himself, the others of Fuller Pilch and of Alfred

1 " The Wounded Heron " was returned to him in 1888. One Sunday,
talking with Mrs. Henry Holiday of his early work, he spoke of it as his
first picture at the Royal Academy, and regretted that it was lost. Mrs.
Holiday suggested that I should advertise. By a strange coincidence a
letter from the possessor, a dealer in Newcastle, was already in the post
offering the picture to us for a small sum.

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Mynn. Five of the original drawings, still in his
possession in 1895, he offered to Lord Harris, the
President of the Marylebone Cricket Club, where
they are now placed.

An amusing incident brought about this gift.
A friend paying a visit in a country house in
Cornwall, on going upstairs with his host one
night on their way to bed, paused with his lighted
candle before a lithograph of a cricketer hanging
on the staircase wall, and said at a venture, " Only
Watts could have drawn that leg." This led to
enquiries, proving that the guess was right, and
my husband, finding that the original drawings
would be of value to the Marylebone Cricket
Club, accordingly offered them.

Nicholas Wanostrocht and he found much
pleasure in each other's society, and the evenings
spent at Alfred House, Blackheath, were amongst
the happiest of the recollections of this time.
Mr. Wanostrocht was a very talented man, and
his school was for some time very successful.
One opinion, which he was able to demonstrate
in a practical manner, was that every boy, with
talent or without, was capable on Hullah's system
of being taught to sing. The music master at
the school of the name of May was an assistant
of Hullah's, and on this (the Do, re, mi) system
he taught, and every pupil of the school, and
every member of the family as well, could sing
and read from sight. Sometimes in later years,
when listening to even very excellent singing by
choristers, my husband would say, " They do

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

not sing as well as Wanostrocht's boys used to
sing." These were happy evenings for him, and
for others too. In a letter from an acquaintance
of that time, she says, " I am glad to find you
remember the happy old times spent at Black-
heath ; I think they were to many of us happier
than any of our later years."

Another correspondent recalls the whole
holiday given to the boys — of whom he had been
one — in 1 843, "in honour of the successful cartoon
by the rising genius of whom Wanostrocht was
an early and enthusiastic appreciator." It was
now that George cultivated his voice with some
care, studied French and Italian, and worked at
Greek also; but the regret of his life was that
the time which necessarily had to be given to his
art left but too small a margin for such serious
work, and he was therefore never able to read
Homer in the original with pleasure.

A trifle, perhaps, but one which shows the
earnestness of the young mind, is to be found in a
little copy of the book II Pastor Fido, where in
pencil, the writingbeing still somewhat unformed,
is scribbled on one page, G. F. Watts, and under the
name, " qui tie le sait lire, quit est malheureux ! " —
to which there is an addition, probably made later,
" II libro di G. F. Watts," and these words follow
in Italian : " It seems to me that I have a way
made for me, and that no one could have a
better opportunity for hoping to achieve some-
thing. If I can, I shall feel well paid for all
the past." The day he wrote those words there

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

must have been a rift in the clouds : on others,
when he painted a small picture — somewhat
earlier than 1837 as ^ e believed — the clouds
must have been lying very thick and low upon
him. In this the kneeling figure seems to be a
bit of history, part of the young painter's own
experience. It was not his intention to represent
" The Man of Sorrows " — it is but the figure
of one of the many human souls who have gone
along the Via Crucis. The impression given
out from that picture is of loneliness and bareness;
the background represents night, and the grey
streak on the horizon that the sun has long gone
down. The thin vesture, with few folds and little
colour, hangs severely about the spare young
figure, who with closed eyes and bowed head has
fallen upon his knees as if the burden of the day
had been too great for him. Now withdrawn
into self, wearied but tranquil, an inward vision
is being revealed, in token of which a silvery
shaft of light is falling down upon him ; and
round his head the ring of a golden Glory begins
to form.

Much of this early time of life was not happy,
and the remembrance was so fraught with pain
that those who loved him did not care to recall
it to his mind, by asking questions which can
never now be answered. In the face of ill-health,
and with the additional burden laid on him by
the necessity for earning money, the difficulties
must have been great ; for the boy determined
to pursue a general course of education as well

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

as the study and practice of his art. He was
much attached to his father, the failure of whose
life was a great pain to him ; and there was
much of hardship in those years to jar upon both
of those finely touched natures, for the father
was a man of peculiar refinement of mind, and I
have been told of manner also.

About this time George Watts made his first
acquaintance with the Greek family of Ionides,
a friendship which during his long life descended
from generation to generation. The first of the
family to come into touch with the young painter
was Constantine Ionides, the head of a Greek
Merchant House in London, with branches in
Constantinople and Athens. In a letter of a
later date Mr. Ionides recalls his first visit to
young Watts's studio :

" I recollect as if it was yesterday my visit
with Mr. E. Riley to see a portrait of a little
girl that you were painting when he recom-
mended you for copying Lane's portrait of my
father. Equally well your first visit to my
office, when you brought both original and copy,
and I said at once to Mr. G. F. Cavafy, who
was present, that I preferred by far the copy,
and that I was going to keep the copy and send
the original to Constantinople. This was in the
early spring of 1837. That Cavafy was quite
startled at the novelty of my preferring a work
for which I had paid £10 to one that cost £63,
and seemed quite incredulous, when suddenly in
the outer office I heard the voice of Du Roveray,

3 2

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

who was considered a good connoisseur, and was
occasionally employed by the Rothschilds to
value pictures for them — when I called him,
and he at once confirmed my view."

On being asked to point out the original,
Du Roveray replied, " I cannot tell you that, but
I can tell you which is by far the best painting
of the two."

From that time onwards George Watts had
many Greek friends, Mr. Constantine Ionides
being the first and, at that time, the most affluent
and generous. He spoke also with pleasure of
kind friends of the name of Ellis, who had a
charming house in West End Lane, in which he
made a water-colour study of some groups of
fine trees. Of these friends he writes in later
years, " Amongst the many changes in my life,
which I should be ungrateful to call unsuccessful,
I constantly recall the pleasant time spent at
West End Lane : seldom could enjoyment be
more real, or leave less to regret."

At this house he was introduced to Mr.
Roebuck, who sat to him for a portrait, also
engraved by the artist on stone, and gave him
the singular commission to paint a portrait of
Jeremy Bentham from the effigy which had
been modelled in wax as the terms of Bentham's
Will directed. The picture George Watts then
painted was once exhibited with his name, and
with no further explanation ; upon which he
wrote as follows to the secretary of the exhibition :

" As a portrait honestly painted from life
vol. i 33 D

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

becomes one of the most valuable of records, it
is important that the spurious and the faithful
representation should not be confounded. I
therefore beg to state that the portrait of Jeremy
Bentham, to which my name is affixed, is not
from life, but was painted by me, then a mere
lad, from a wax figure which was so far curious
that it covered, I believe, the philosopher's bones,
and was dressed in his clothes."

Besides the portrait of his father already
mentioned, there are a few portraits in oil colour
of small size belonging to the year 1836 — that
is the earliest date I know of for accomplished
work in this medium — one of Mr. Richard
Edmonds, of Mr. Richard Jarvis, and in 1837-38
of the Rev. Alfred Oliver Wellsted. Two por-
traits (on one canvas) of Miss Alice Spring Rice
were, I think, painted before 1839. Friends
of the name of Jarvis gave him many of his
earliest commissions, both for portraits and subject
pictures. In one of these, a hunting scene, the
slight figure of a boy holding the bridle of his
horse was painted from himself, and from this
I gather that when more than twenty years old
he looked very young ; one might take the
figure to have been drawn from a lad of sixteen.
Some time before he left Italy he had painted
the three children of the Earl of Gainsborough,
several portraits of the family of Admiral
Hamilton, Miss Brunton, Miss Jardine, Madame
Ionides, Miss Galenga, and the group of the
Ionides family, this being as to scale the most

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

important undertaking of this time, though not
by any means his first commission as some
writers have said. Mr. Haskett-Smith, an old
friend of the Hamilton family, told me that
Captain Hamilton (as he then was) was so
much pleased with the work done for him by
the young painter that instead of the £20 named
as the price, he sent £25. " But," Mr. Haskett-
Smith continued, " Mr. Watts immediately
insisted on painting the portrait of the baby,
which he threw in ! "

He went into Derbyshire to paint or draw
portraits for a Derbyshire squire, Mr. Offley
Shore ; and later again to the same neighbour-
hood to paint the children of a Mr. Bagshaw ;
but, though the commissions for portraits formed
of necessity a great part of his work, he had
already determined to make portraiture sub-
ordinate to creative work, notwithstanding that
he was advised by painters much older than
himself to wait till his later years, when his
fortune would be sufficient to allow him to
indulge in the luxury of composition. But he
kept his own counsel, and went on his way,
learning later that one at least of his advisers
had lived to acknowledge that he had been
wrong, and that when in affluent days he would
have turned to the use of that gift, it had perished.

Among other acquaintances of this time was
one with a young man whose early death some
years later he ever believed to be a serious loss
to the world. George Watts was painting the

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

portrait of the lad's father, a man who had had
some success in business. Though the family
were not altogether congenial to him, the mother
being a vain and foolish woman, on one occasion
when he was invited to dine and spend the
evening, he accepted. When he rose to go,
rather to his annoyance, the son of the house,
then a lad of about fifteen or sixteen years old,
whom he knew to be leading a very fast life, got
up also, and offered to walk across the park with
him. And so it was that, under the dome of a
sky brilliant with stars, the two pacing along
together came to talk of many things, when
suddenly some word that was said caused the
younger of the two to open his heart and to
make confession of his life. Plunged from his
earliest days by a dissolute father into vicious
company and vicious ways, something now
stirred within him to make him realise the
misery of it all. They were but as " ships that
pass in the night," and did not cross each other's
way again for several years, four of which George
had spent in Italy.

When they met again in the studio of Behnes,
the boy had grown to manhood ; tall and hand-
some — a brilliant talker and a delightful com-
panion. He was deep in the study of some
branch of science — at one of the Universities, I
think ; his professors predicting for him a very
distinguished career, but this promise was un-
happily ended by an early death. When they
were alone he confided to George that he dated

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the whole change in his life from the night
when they had walked together across the park.
When I asked what had been said, I re-
member the answer was simply, " We talked
of the stars."

CHAPTER II

It is not only for the moment that the artist
works. In common with all who enrich the
world his work will come to be regarded for
what it is, not with reference to the period
of its production. Two thousand years hence,
whether a picture was painted in the sixteenth
century and in Italy, or in the nineteenth in
England, will not matter. It will be common
property to all who care for art.

G. F. WATTS.

CHAPTER II

"The Commissioners appointed by the Queen
for the purpose of enquiring whether on the
rebuilding of Her Majesty's palace of West-
minster wherein her Parliament is wont to
assemble, advantage might not be taken of the
opportunity thereby afforded of promoting and
encouraging the Fine Arts in the United
Kingdom," issued on April 25, 1842, notice of
a competition in cartoons, in size not less than
10 and not more than 15 feet in their longest
dimensions, to be made in chalk or charcoal,
without colour, the figures not less than life size,
the subject to be from English history, from
Spenser, Shakespeare, or Milton. The finished
drawings were to be sent in the first week of
May 1843, but subsequently this time was
extended to the first week in June. There were
140 cartoons in the Exhibition opened at the
Westminster Hall in that month. They all bore
only a mark on the back, which tallied with a
mark on the sealed letter containing the artist's
name and address. The prizes offered were three
of £300, three of £200, and five of £100 each.

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

In a volume of Parliamentary reports labelled
' Fine Arts ' the award of the premium of £300
each stands thus in order :

" Caesar's First Invasion of Britain," Edward
Armitage.

" Caractacus led in Triumph through the
Streets of Rome," George Frederic Watts.

"The First Trial by Jury," Charles West
Cope.

The volume of reports was sent to my
husband in 1902 by a stranger to him, 1 who had
the kindly thought to bestow it because of a
pencilled note written on the margin of the
catalogue of the cartoons which it contains.
Against the " Caractacus led in Triumph through
the Streets of Rome " the note in a delicate hand-
writing runs thus : " Leaves nothing to be
wished, in my opinion should stand number
one.

That one of the three chief premiums had
fallen to his lot came as a complete surprise to
George Watts. Young as he was he had
schooled himself to be very temperate in any
forecast of success for himself. Young Horsley
first told him that he had heard it rumoured
that he was one of the winners of the first prizes,
but he assured Horsley that this was quite im-
possible, as he had very much doubted whether
it was worthy of being entered at all.

The fact was that in the endeavour to fix the
drawing by some process of steaming, the clumsy

1 Edwin Seward, F.R.I.B.A.

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

method that was then the only one known, he
had, as he believed, entirely ruined it, and had
turned it with its face to the wall and taken up
other work. A morning or two before the last
day for sending in he looked at it once more,
and rinding it not altogether hopeless, he spent
the remaining time in doing what he could to
restore it, and with great hesitation sent it for
exhibition. The large cartoon of Caractacus
exists in fragments only. Three of these
portions are known to be preserved : they were
bought some few years later by Sir Walter James
(the first Lord Northbourne) from a fine art
dealer, and are now at Betteshanger, and with
these there is also a drawing of the whole com-
position measuring 6 feet 3 inches by 4 feet
3 inches. The story of its destruction is briefly
this : with the sum of money which had so un-
expectedly fallen to his share, the young painter
determined to give himself the advantage of
going to France and Italy. Just as he was pre-
paring for this Mr. Horsley came to ask for his
co-operation with that of the other competitors
in a scheme suggested by a fine art agent, who
wished to exhibit the eleven prize cartoons in
various provincial towns. The agent had made
an offer to purchase this collection for a certain
sum, amounting, when divided, to something like
a third part of an offer already received by the
young artist. Finding, however, that if he with-
drew his cartoon it might prejudice the value of
the collection, he readily consented, and heard

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

no more of the matter until his return from
Italy, when he found that the " Caractacus " had
been resold to Dickinson the fine art dealer,
who had, to his vexation, cut it up into various
portions without communicating with him at all
on the subject. There exists a smaller water-
colour drawing made in part by Charles Couzens,
and worked over by himself, and besides this a
full -sized picture in oil-colour he had com-
missioned Couzens to make, upon which he also
worked.

Mrs. Henry Ross remembers hearing Mr.
Watts say that, whilst this design was in his
mind, he happened to be in the Zoological
Gardens making a sketch from one of the lions
there, and that from the sudden attitude of this
animal's head when thrown back for an instant
as if at bay, he got exactly what he wanted for
the head of Caractacus.

On first leaving England George Watts went
to Paris to join a friend of his own age, Edward
Armitage, and with him he stayed some six or
more weeks in the Quartier Latin. In this way
he saw something of the merry life of the young
French students of the time, and had very
pleasant recollections of it. The name of
Edward Armitage was entered as a student at
the Academy in the same month and year as
that of George Watts, but I think I am right in
saying that Mr. Armitage never attended the
schools, and studied entirely in Paris under Paul
Delaroche.

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

The journey to Italy was at that time a
tedious and, for those who had to study expense,
a disagreeable undertaking. The Diligence from
Paris to Boulogne took sixteen hours. The
Diligence itself, though built to carry some fifteen
people, seems only to have afforded anything like
comfort for three passengers in the body or
coupe, these seats being, of course, the most
expensive. After this the choice lay between
the Interieur with six seats, unbearably hot and
stuffy, the dusty Rotonde, or the seats outside on
the top in the Banquette, to be shared with the
conductor, but where at least fresh air and the
pleasure of seeing the country during the hours
of daylight were to be obtained. The journey
by Diligence from Paris to Marseilles took the
wearisome length of four days and three nights,
but there was an alternative for travellers who
did not object to spending more time on the
way. They could leave the Diligence at Chalons
and go down the Saone and Rhone by river
steamboats to Avignon, and so on to Marseilles.
It was by this route that George Watts chose to
travel, and he found the steamer a great relief
after the discomforts of the road. There is
a pencilled note, still decipherable, which de-
scribes something of this journey ; evidently part
of a letter written probably to Mr. Armitage,
whom he had just left in Paris, a chance scrap
of flotsam where all other written record has
sunk from sight. It begins : " A Frenchman
and a German and myself were the occupants of

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the Banquette. I soon discovered them to be the
most favourable specimens possible of the two
nations, and we soon became jolly companions.
Laughing, talking, and singing much relieved the
monotony of the journey, but I defy anything to
render the Banquette agreeable. I never passed
a more wretched night, except perhaps on my
passage to Boulogne. Fancy a cold night wind
and a horrid disgusting brute of a French con-
ductor, who I had the impression was possessed
with murderous monomania, who came and
plumped his disgusting corpus in butcher's
blouse down by my side, taking the room of six
men. We had some snatches of jollity, however,
and the second night we behaved so uproariously,
singing in chorus the Marseillaise and the
Parisienne, that the proprietors of the Diligence
took offence at the brilliancy with which we
executed some of the passages and complained
— the beasts. Thus reduced to silence, we were
forced to amuse ourselves by going to sleep, and
as I had not slept the night before, Somnus was
kind enough to squeeze his poppies on my eye-
lids."

A tremendous thunderstorm next enlivened
that night's journey, and as the Banquette had
only a rough sort of hood the travellers suffered
further discomfort by being thoroughly soaked.
With a note in a pocket-book of sundry expenses,
and regrets for a mistake which he had made
which cost him " a loss of both time and money,"
there is also a further entry : Monday, September

4 6

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

ii, 1843. — " A stranger and an American lent
me without being asked £8." On board the
steamboat going from Marseilles to Leghorn
were English travellers, General Robert and Mrs.
Ellice, who also accepted him at sight, and
evidently brought a favourable report of him
to Lord Holland, 1 then the British Minister at
Florence ; indeed later on they were the means
of his presenting himself at the Legation. They
parted at Leghorn, George Watts making his
first acquaintance with Italy from an open
country cart in which he drove from Leghorn to
Pisa. The vintage was in full beauty, as yet
ungathered ; he recollected at one point driving
under a roof of clustering vine, the deep purple
bunches hanging from the treillages within the
reach of his hand. The weather was divine ;
those who know Tuscany in September know
what he saw — what he felt, — a treasured
memory to which he often referred. Also, he
did not forget the pleasure of talking in Italian,
and understanding his driver's replies.

A few days' delight at Pisa, and then to
Florence. It was to have been at the longest
a visit of a month or two ; but caught away
from every thought other than what Florence
had herself to reveal to him, the weeks were
fast running out when a chance meeting with
General Ellice changed the course of events for
him during several years. " Why have you not

1 Henry Edward Fox, son of the third Baron, and his wife Elizabeth,
daughter of Richard Vassal. Under this lady's rule Holland House and its
circle became famous.

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

been to the Casa Feroni ? " he asked. " Lord
Holland has been expecting you, and has caused
all sorts of enquiries to be made for you ; you
must come ; " and so urged, to Casa Feroni he

went.

The Casa Feroni, as it was then called, is now
known as the Palazzo Amerighi, its present
number being 6 in the Via dei Serragli. Its
date is not more remote than the latter half of
the eighteenth century, but it was built by a
wealthy son of the traditionally wealthy Feroni
family, and is, on a large scale, extending from
the Via dei Serragli along the Borgo San
Frediano and back to the Piazza del Carmine,
enclosing a spacious garden within its quadrangle.
It is said to contain a hundred rooms, and one
of its chief features is a terrace 20 feet broad
running the whole length of the palace and
overlooking the garden, the pride of which, now
in these days of its departed glory amid broken
statues and dried-up fountains, is a grand old
pine, behind which comes to view the red dome
of the church of San Spirito.

To this house he was invited to luncheon
by Lady Holland, and then, as he happened to
be on the point of changing his lodgings, the
invitation was further extended to a visit of a
few days. Lady Holland once recalled this to us,
saying, " I remember perfectly well hearing Lord
Holland say, ' Why not come here ? we have
plenty of room, and you must stay till you find
quarters that you like.' " This invitation now

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

accepted by George Watts, finally became one to
be measured not by days, but by years. It was
in this manner that his stay in Italy became a
very pleasant one for the young painter, his kind
hosts, to whom but a short time before he was a
stranger, making him more and more welcome,
both to their house in Florence and to their
country home at Careggi. The grey mirk of
London he exchanged for Italian blue, and the
rarely failing sight of " the dear brother sun " of
St. Francis, " that greatest of colourists " as G. F.
Watts himself called him, while above all
Florence gave him the company of her glorious
dead.

When thinking of one of the very last times
that my husband and Lady Holland met, I seem
to hear their voices happily reminding each
other of these long past days. She was ill and
depressed, but she was roused by those memories,
and laughed over stories of this time ; and when
he said, pointing to me, " I tell her you let me
paint in every room in your house, and you did
not let any one else do that," she replied quickly,
with a pretty little movement of her head,
looking up with youth still in her eyes, " But you
were not anybody else."

He never had the slightest inclination to that
fine indifference to daubs of colour in wrong
places so commonly condoned as part of the
artistic nature; a spot of paint where it should
not be, vexed him exceedingly. " I feel de-
graded," he once said, " it is so inartistic " ; and

VOL. I 49 E

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Lady Holland's quick eye soon perceived this
inherent sense of order and care, rooted indeed in
a still deeper sense of reverence. She told him
that as a girl her mother * had taught her the
most careful and elementary housewifery — how
to dust a room and how a floor should be
scrubbed — and she herself saw that nothing in
her service was left undone, being up and about
in her palazzo at six o'clock to see that what she
required of her servants they did.

When such a new element as a painter, with
his possibly dangerous paints and mediums, first
entered her house, he was pointedly told that he
was allowed to use his colours only in the room
made over to him as a studio ; but not many
days passed before these limits were removed.
One of the last notes that she penned herself to
him begins, " Dear Fra Paolo " — thus reminding
him of the first picture he painted at Casa Feroni,
a portrait of Lady Holland in a Riviera straw
hat, and of the Italian guest, who exclaimed,
when it was first shown to him, " Ah, nostre
Paolo ! " though it is not quite easy to see how
the handling of the paint in this picture recalled
the work of Paul Veronese.

At no time were the conditions of life happier
for George Watts ; the climate suited him, he
was in much better health, he enjoyed the
society at the Legation ; most people of note,
either living in Florence or passing through,
being as a matter of course the guests of the

1 Countess of Coventry, daughter of the fifth Duke of St. Albans.

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

British Minister. Lady Holland, as he described
her, brilliant, full of humour, fond of society, and
at that time speaking French and Italian, perhaps
even more fluently than English, made a de-
lightful hostess. Lord Holland, large-hearted
and genial, was a sympathetic companion, always
certain to appreciate what was best in others —
a great lover of the beautiful in art and in nature.
The young painter made many friends here, and
it may be said with truth that he never lost one.
Time had taken a heavy toll of years before it
was my privilege to meet some of these, but
they were his faithful friends still. I remember
one lady whose father was at that time attached
to the Legation saying, " I was so proud when I
was allowed to sit by him at dinner " — and then
she added, " and he was so handsome."

Lady Holland's chef was of course a master
of his craft, and encouraged in the display of his
talents by his master, who, when a certain plat
had been considered so successful that the dish
was emptied, would call for it and send it down
to him with a guinea upon it as the reward of
merit. But George Watts, while always ready
with a tribute to anything well done, whether it
happened to be a housemaid lighting a fire or an
artist consummating a great work of art, sat at
this well-furnished table, and kept to the ascetic
habits of his life : he ate only of the simplest dishes
and drank nothing but water, and was amused
when Lord Holland told him that for this very
reason he would like to have his opinion on some

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

new specimen of wine upon the table. Neither
did the pleasant life betray him into idleness ;
he was at work early and late and accomplished
much. He had not been very long at Casa
Feroni before he persuaded Lady Holland to sit
to him for a portrait, and later he was at work
trying his hand at fresco-painting in the court-
yard of the Palazzo. His first attempts in this
medium have quite disappeared from the walls,
but his friend Count Cottrell had two studies for
figures painted here (St. John and St. Mary) —
and these are now in the possession of his
daughter.

In the late autumn of 1844 he saw something
of the worst side of the Florentine climate.
Torrential rains fell for something like a fortnight,
and he recollected that one morning early, as he
was preparing to go out, the rain having ceased,
he had a message from Lord Holland to say he
would like to see him ; he found him at a window
looking out upon one of the streets, but it was
no longer a street, but a fast-running river — a
torrent.

Later they stood, not on the Ponte Vecchio,
but near it, as the authorities would allow no one
to go upon it, and the greatest confusion and
anxiety prevailed. There they watched the Arno
rise upon the old Ponte Santa Trinita, till a thin
streak of light below the arches was alone visible.
Had the river risen above that line, the bridge
could not have withstood the force of the water.
The people, prevented from getting out of their

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

houses by the great iron stanchions covering their
windows, were fed for many days by the monks
and brothers, who went about in boats distri-
buting food. It was said that no such flood had
occurred for upwards of a hundred years.

At a ball given by Lady Holland in the winter
of 1844-45, a g uest 5 tired of the weight of a suit
of armour he was wearing, went to the room
George Watts was using as his studio and took it
off. Armour had always fascinated him, and
next day he was to be found making a study of
it. As the result was a portrait of himself that
the Hollands liked, he gave it to them, and it
is now at Holland House. At this time he also
painted Lord Holland — a portrait unfortunately
so greatly injured in 1870, in an outbreak of fire
at Holland House, that in spite of much labour
on his part he could not restore it to its former
worth. A little note from Lady Holland, dated
from her house, St. Anne's Hill, January 1871,
shows that it was a treasured gift of his to her.
" I feel so broken-hearted," she writes, " at the
contents of your letter last night that I am almost
unable to put pen to paper. For pity's sake, don't
take hope from me. Try, oh try, to do something.
Call picture-cleaners, picture-restorers, incur any
expense — I would starve to regain that portrait.
Dear, dear friend, I appeal to your old affections,
to the remembrance of days gone by, to every
feeling of your kind heart. On that canvas you
have still the outline ; you can recall the features
of that poor friend who valued you for so many

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

years. What other hand can do what you could
do ? I beseech you, I implore you, I have
lived ever since the disaster in the hope that you
would restore me the image of one no longer to
be restored to me in life ; and will my constant
prayers obtain that he be restored to me in an-
other ? I have not even that firm faith that
many are blessed with." All that could be done
he did, and to a certain extent as a likeness it was
restored, but as a painting its worth was lost.

His pencil drawings, in number somewhat
more than forty, in that same room were fortun-
ately saved ; these delicate pencil drawings made
by him during the evenings at the Casa Feroni, or
at the Villa Careggi, are portraits chiefly of special
friends of Lord and Lady Holland ; and in later
years, in her boudoir at Holland House, she liked
to sit surrounded by these friendly faces taking
her back to her life in Florence, a time, my
husband used sometimes to say, he believed to
have been the happiest of her life, English con-
ventions never being quite congenial to her nature.
For him, certainly, it was altogether a time he
liked to keep green in memory. It was delight-
ful to listen to his account of these happy days :
of the pleasant trysts at the Cafe Doney where
he often breakfasted or dined in the company
of such men as Hiram Powers, the American
sculptor, a hard-headed reasonable man, yet
latterly entirely converted to spiritualism ; Mr.
William Spence, and many others.

He also knew Mr. Seymour Kirkup, who,

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

under the whitewash on the walls of the Bargello,
had made the discovery of the priceless portrait
of Dante by Giotto. He often heard Kirkup
describe his night in hiding, when he caused
himself to be locked up in the Bargello, knowing
the portrait was condemned into the hands of a
restorer, and he, when refused permission for this,
had determined at all costs to make a facsimile of
the portrait as he found it, and succeeded in the
early morning in making both a tracing in pencil
and a water-colour drawing — thus earning the
gratitude of the world. The restorer painted in
the damaged eye, and made other changes in the
features, and in the colour of the poet's dress,
which was altered from red, white, and green to
a dead brown. Count Cottrell, then Chamberlain
to the Grand Duke of Lucca, was one of his
chief friends, to whose reverent care is owed the
preservation of some hundreds of delightful little
studies in pencil and water-colour ; these, with
several large canvases, were left in the Careggi
studio, and were eventually stored by Count
Cottrell in the cellars of the Palazzo Torre Arsa,
Via Cavour.

Years afterwards Mr. William Spence, writing
to Mr. Watts of his colour-men, says, " Bonelli is
dead, but there are two or three deformed helps
who always grin at the mention of your name " ;
and in 1853, on n ^ s return — after sixteen years'
absence — to Florence, the old flower-seller, so
long a well-known figure in the streets, on
catching sight of him leapt to her feet and ran

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

towards him, till to his dismay he found himself
enfolded in her motherly arms and kissed on both
cheeks, to the sound of great laughter from his
companions, Roddam Spencer - Stanhope and
Henry Prinsep.

In one respect during these years (1843-47)
he was unfortunate, for Walter Savage Landor
was absent in England, and the Brownings
arrived at Florence the month he left for home ;
so that to his great regret he never met Mrs.
Browning. Mr. Ruskin passed through Florence
and called at the British Legation, but they did
not meet until later in London. Nevertheless he
had many delightful friends ; and of the two in
chief who were his hosts he often spoke, wonder-
ing if he had been grateful enough, though in all
truth he did his utmost to show his indebtedness
to them, and to this every picture by him at Hol-
land House bears witness. " I often wonder," he
said, " when I think of the kindness of those two
to me ; as I think of that time I see how wonder-
fully they made me one with them. It pleases
me to think what confidence they had in me, talk-
ing to me about their most intimate concerns."

He liked to quote a verse by Shenstone he
had learnt from Lord Holland, and wished that
he had asked to be allowed to place the words
somewhere on a stone at Holland House.

I prized every hour that went by

Beyond all I valued before,

And now they are gone and I sigh,

And I grieve that I prized them no more.

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

One New Year's Day, his thoughts went
back to this festa spent at Casa Feroni, and he
recalled how those kind friends had wished him
good fortune. Lady Holland had sent to Bautte,
the famous watchmaker and goldsmith at Geneva,
for a watch and chain of delicate workmanship,
the only valuables of such a sort he ever possessed ;
and as she put the chain — then worn long — over
his head, she said, " We not only bind you to us,
we chain you."

Years later, when he was doing work that
took him every day through a crowded part of
London, fear of the pickpocket made him take
others into use, and he believed he had locked
up in safety these, so valued for the giver's sake,
as well as for the pleasure he found in Bautte's
good workmanship. But they were not beyond
the reach of thieving fingers. So vanished his
precious watch and chain, and he could never
speak of the loss without real pain, nor would he
allow any one to replace them.

CHAPTER III

The contemplation of what has been done in art
will go no farther to create an artist than the
reading of poetry will create a real poet. The
artist is born, not made. The latent genius
may be aroused no doubt, but, excepting that it
is good to know how much can be achieved, the
sight of accumulated greatness is more likely to
destroy all but the most original power, by
making the student an imitator.

G. F. WATTS.

CHAPTER III

As already said, G. F. Watts made his first study
of fresco upon the now whitewashed walls of
the courtyard at the Casa Feroni.

At the Villa Careggi the fresco painted some
two or three years later has been more fortunate.
On a blank wall space in a then open loggia he
found his opportunity. The wall was carefully
prepared, and as he had now acquainted himself
with the best tradition of pure fresco-painting,
he chose for his subject the exciting scene after
the death of Lorenzo de' Medici when an
attempt to drown his doctor was, or was said
to have been made. The fresco is lasting well,
and has every chance of being well preserved by
the present owner of Careggi, Professor Segre,
who values it and has made a delightful sitting-
room of the former loggia. While Lord Holland
was minister at the Court of Tuscany from 1839
to 1846, Careggi was his country home.
Celebrated from mediaeval times, the villa
Medicae di Careggi — to give it its correct name
— is well known as one of the most historic in
the Val d'Arno. The original villa was bought

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

by Cosimo de' Medici, "Pater Patriae," in 1417,
who caused it to be rebuilt by Michelozzo
Michelozzi, and by good fortune his work
remains almost untouched to this day. During
the years that Lord Holland lived there the
Roman road still ran by the north side of the
house, and its strangely irregular line of wall
seems to suggest that Michelozzi chose to keep
to the line of the road, and make his great
foundations bend to this, much as a man to-day
would plant a hedgerow. Whatever reason the
great artist may have had for planning this
irregularity, certainly the effect of the curving
line of frontage, the wall rising grandly to its
overhanging gallery under the roof, is sur-
prisingly delightful.

The public road was diverted by a later owner
of the villa, Mr. Soames, and trees were so
planted that a vigorous young wood now secludes
the villa on this side ; perhaps rightly, as it has
long passed from the glare of a great Court into
the quiet shade of private life. Cosimo lived
much at Careggi, and died there ; so did his son
Piero, and again his son Lorenzo the Magnificent,
who to its courts and loggias, in Plato's name,
drew poet and thinker of that great age. The
paintings by Benozzo Gozzoli in the chapel of
the Riccardi Palace were in all probability
almost transcripts of the processions of that date,
and present to the mind something of the
pageant of colour that may have passed through
the gates of this villa, and streamed about

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

beneath its walls in the day of its pomp. Again,
but in more sombre colour, Careggi comes upon
the page of history when, at the bidding of
Lorenzo from his death-bed, Savonarola arrived
to make those inflexible conditions upon which
alone he would consent to absolve the passing
soul. On a summer evening, in the glow be-
loved by Venetian painters, nature having had
time to play delightfully with the modern colour
on its walls fretted by the shadow cast by the
machicolated gallery, an impression of old gold
shining upon a ground of cypress velvet is left
on the mind.

And Careggi keeps its fascinations ! At
least so it seemed in 1910, when its master gave
to two travellers kindly welcome, showed them
its rooms from basement to roof, and went round
the hanging gallery to find points in the landscape
made familiar by paintings done by a vanished
hand that had worked here with tireless zeal
when Lord Holland was the tenant. And at
Careggi Lady Holland loved to be, and here she
brought the young English painter, who quickly
converted a large building in the garden into a
summer studio. It was built to shelter lemon
trees in winter and was of grand proportions,
somewhere about a hundred feet in length ; but
now the building has gone — pulled down when
the villa was in the possession of Mr. Soames.
The light was high, with a row of windows so
lofty that the painter needed steps to reach his
paint-brushes put there to dry in the sun. He

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

remembered how narrowly he had escaped being
stung by a viper which had curled itself to sleep
upon the handles, and upon which one day when
he was about to take his brushes down he laid
his hand. In this studio much work was going
on, and with a mind attuned to the thoughts of
the poets of greater Italy, he designed on one
large canvas the story from Boccaccio, now in the
gallery of British Art ; on another Buondelmonti
riding beneath a portico and looking up towards
the fair lady whose beauty brought about his
murder — the first blow struck in a quarrel
between Guelf and Ghibeline, which caused the
streets of Florence to stream with blood.
Bojardo gave him the Fata Morgana ; Ariosto,
the Witch pursuing the Knight ; Dante, the
tragedy of the lovers " whirled ever like driven
leaves." The work accomplished in these four
years was immense, and the large studio made
possible many large canvases. One of these is
the picture called " Echo " (now in the Tate
Gallery), the under -painting of which is in
tempera colour.

The good state of this picture my husband
thought remarkable, because for many years for
want of wall space it was fastened upon the
ceiling of his studio in Kensington, and rather
loosely strained upon the stretcher. In course
of time it curved outwards like a filled sail ; and
yet when it was taken down it was solid and
whole as when newly painted. " On a tempera
ground prepared in Florence," he once said when

6 4

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

describing to me the way in which he set to
work upon this picture, " I painted a figure in
distemper, laying in the skeleton very simply,
just the principal bones ; these I next covered
with the flesh in monochrome (probably in
white and terra verte — or it might have been in
white and raw umber — I don't quite remember) ;
then, still using distemper, I laid in colour, and
finally, using oil colour, I painted just what you
see." The ordinary distemper prepared as it is
in Italy, is still very superior in quality — so
Mr. William de Morgan told him — to the same
pigment (whitening with size) as known in
England. The studio at Careggi must have
held an astonishing number of large canvases.
It was always his habit to carry on as many
designs at a time as easels or wall space admitted,
often in the same hour working alternately
on some five or six, or even more, different in
subject and in treatment. He found that the
change of thought was good, that it kept his
mind alert with fresh interest, and that his eye
turned with a clearer perception from one to
another. Another change for eye and hand he
found in modelling, using either clay or wax.
The one remaining example of his work in the
round belonging to this date is the head of the
dead Medusa, which was twice carried out in
alabaster, the last chiselling being done by his
own hand. The face is that of a noble woman
entirely unindividual, one who has suffered in
causing suffering ; she seems to have welcomed
vol. i 65 f

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

death because it released her from the curse
under the spell of which she had turned all
warmth of life and youth to stone.

He painted many portraits at Florence, the
2nd Count Cottrell, the lovely Countess Valeska,
gifts to the Hollands ; that of Mr. William
Spence ; Madame Ristori ; Princess Matilde
Buonaparte ; Madame Leroux, afterwards Prin-
cess de la Tour d'Auvergne. He also paid a
visit to Lucca to paint a three-quarter-length
portrait of Carlo Lodovico the Grand Duke of
Lucca, 1 who gave him his first decoration, the
Order of San Lodovico.

A careful study' of the work belonging to
this time will reveal little mark of change in
the style and character of the artist's work as
the result of these years spent in Italy. The
careful handling, called by a recent writer
" hard " when speaking of the portraits at
Holland House, was the training he purposely
gave himself from the first. Whether the word
" hard " should be applied to such portraits as
Lady Holland's in the Riviera straw hat, or to
that of Panizzi, is an open question. There is
certainly an absence of a certain freedom which
he allowed himself in his later manner. The
representative work done by George Watts at
this time will, I think, show no evidence of any
great change during his stay in Italy as the
result of the more direct influence of the great
masters. The characteristics of his portraiture

1 Now in the possession of the Duke of Parma.

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

had been, and for many years continued to be,
these — an evident avoidance of effort to produce
a pictorial effect, an absence of any strong
contrast in the shadows, a very evident careful-
ness of drawing, and the avoidance of any touch
of the kind that he would call a smear. There
is a portrait in the Compton Gallery of Miss
Marietta Lockhart, painted at Florence, to which
he specially liked to draw the attention of
students, pointing out the absence of shadow,
while notwithstanding, all necessary rotundity
and projection of the features is preserved.

His long habit of drawing with gold or lead
point on metallic paper, a method which
admitted of no correction, was, he believed,
valuable to him, and this practice he always
recommended to students. He discouraged the
notion that a student should make copies from
the old masters. When he was in Italy he never
made a copy of any picture whatever. The
water-colour sketches from Titian's " Battle of
Cadore," and one from Tintoretto's " Miracle of
St. Mark," are the only drawings upon which he
bestowed more time than was required to secure
small notes in water-colour which he occasion-
ally made from frescoes in the churches. He
studied the great masters, but not to copy them.
He was convinced that a man who follows
another must always lag behind ; his aim was
to find out the general principle upon which
they had worked. In the evidence given by
him in 1863 before the Royal Commission on

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the Academy, he said, " A good general method
will never interfere with the expression of genius
or trammel originality " ; and on being asked if
he had himself gained great benefit from the
opportunity of studying in Italy, he answered,
" Unquestionably it must be so, but I do not
think it absolutely necessary that an artist should
go to Italy. There are in England quite a
sufficient number of works of art to prove to
him what may be done, and I think that with
these and the Elgin Marbles it is not absolutely
necessary that students should travel ; but it is
obvious that much is to be gained by travelling,
the mind must be enlarged by it." That which
the young painter gained for his art during his
stay at Florence his own words express in writing
of Haydon only a few years after he had left
Italy. " A visit to sunny climates would have
afforded Haydon a valuable lesson. There he
would have seen the unrestrained form acquiring
that development he could but imagine, and
might be excused for exaggerating — the rich
colour of the flesh that gives at once the key-
note of the picture, the out-of-door life so
suggestive of breadth and brilliancy. In Italy to
this day, though gorgeous colour no longer
contributes its magnificence to the general
splendour, one constantly sees forms and com-
binations that might be adopted without
alteration in the grandest composition."

Besides his devotion to his work he found
time to enjoy going into society both Italian and

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

English, and those who knew him best in his
later life of seclusion may be surprised to hear
of a little surviving note written by him to his
friend Mr. William Spence, saying, " I wish very
much to go to the ball to-night, but cannot get
hold of a dress. Have you anything of the kind
you could lend me? " This might have been the
fancy-dress ball at Feroni. He was tasting of
the best pleasures that life had to give to a
young man, whose looks and manner found
favour with most, and music and poetry, in the
cool of Italian gardens, were suggestive of
romance. It was now that his picture the
" First Whisper of Love " was painted, and little
scraps of verse belong to this time, written to
one who was fair.

Both music and the drama in Italy, during
these years, received much support from English
residents and travellers. In Florence this was
notably the case, much being due to Lord and
Lady Normanby. Lord Normanby was the
British minister to whose post Lord Holland had
succeeded in 1843 ; they were still resident in
Florence, and their interest and encouragement
attracted the best musicians and actors, a pleasure
that to G. F. Watts was not small. There is a
little pencil drawing of the head of Verdi.
Madame Ristori was well known to him, and he
painted a portrait of her when, as he said, she
was a pretty and charming girl. She came to see
him again in London in the 'fifties, when he made
a drawing of her. Endowed by nature with a fine

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

ear, and answering as he must to everything that
was great in any art, he would sometimes speak so
enthusiastically of music as to express regret that
he had not in early life turned his whole attention
to it, rather than to the sister art. Lord Holland
liked to tell a story of some one much the senior
of Watts, a man of the world, and one who very
much believed in himself, who, standing among
a group of listeners one day at Casa Feroni, and
rather boasting of his contempt for music, turned
to those about him — Lord Holland being of
their number — and said, "It has not the
slightest effect upon me, pleasurable or otherwise
— what does that mean, I ask you ? ' " It means
a defective organisation," answered the young
painter hotly, obliged, in defence of the divine
art, to drop his habit of never putting himself
forward. Lord Holland was as much delighted
as the boaster was furious.

Though half a lifetime lies between the two
utterances, the conviction that brought the quick
rebuke to his lips was clearly explained when he
wrote the following passage: "'All beauty,' said
the devout mystic, 'is the face of God' ; there-
fore to make acquaintance with beauty, in and
through every form, is the cultivation of religious
feeling. This while it is the noblest aspect of
art, is also the most primitive. Nothing can be
more important to remember than that in the
cultivation of the artistic perceptions we are
developing one of the essential endowments of the
human creature — one in which that difference

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

between him and the lower creation is most
distinctly marked. It seems to me to be the
duty of every one to answer to every such call."
George Watts was able also to see something
of Italy ; he travelled with Lord Holland on
several occasions, once driving along the Cornice
road to Marseilles. They visited Milan together,
and he remembered the Cenacolo as the work
which in his opinion placed Leonardo da Vinci
as a great painter ; for while he demurred as
to the popular estimate of Leonardo's pictures,
which he thought extravagant, he found in this
fresco what he called " the greatest conception
of the Christ ever painted." One journey
made with Lord Holland was to England, to
which in 1845 they together paid a flying visit.
During this brief visit to London he saw
for the first time Holland House, then in the
possession of Lord Holland's capricious mother,
Elizabeth, Lady Holland. Though she was
living in Stanhope Street at the time, her son had
to sneak in at a back entrance, and the visit they
paid was made under the rose, as her ladyship
objected to her son's going there at all. He
brought George Watts an invitation to dine with
his mother one evening, but Lord Holland
warned him to be prepared for a bad reception,
as he explained she made a point of being rude
to all his friends. However, that evening she
chose to be particularly civil to the young artist.
This was the only opportunity he had of being
received by her, as she died some months later.

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

That evening her sarcasm was so mercilessly
directed against her daughter, Lady Lilford, that
at last, to the great discomfort of her guests, she
reduced her to tears. At another time he drove
with Lord Holland to Naples, where he stayed
at the Villa Rochella, and on the way stayed both
at Perugia and Civita Castellana.

One whole day they spent in Rome ; it was
a burning day in August, and my husband
remembered how Lord Holland, hurrying to
give him glimpses of the most famous sights and
monuments, still delayed the visit to the Sistine
Chapel, the one moment impatiently expected
by the painter. His cicerone told him he knew
he would be disappointed, for the light was
never good enough to see the work, but at last
his eagerness prevailed, and they stepped under
that matchless roof to find the whole chapel
flooded with light. Lord Holland afterwards
declared that in all his visits he had really never
seen the frescoes till that moment. Perhaps
something of this enjoyment may have been due
to the companionship of one who certainly had
the gift of opening the eyes of those who could
share with him the joy of beauty in art or nature.
Apart from the walls of this chapel, only by line-
engravings could these frescoes be known ; and
these convey but a small idea of the grandeur of
Michael Angelo's style. George Watts, prepared
as he was, by all that he had read or heard,
for something supreme, was nevertheless un-
expectedly overwhelmed. The reproductions

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

that photography has made possible — so often
pondered over in years to come — once reminded
him that Gabriel Rossetti had said that till he
saw the photographs he had disbelieved alto-
gether in the greatness of the work. " On the
whole, as a complete work by one man, they are
the greatest things existing," was my husband's
mature verdict ; " for we know but half of
the work of Pheidias, and we can judge of his
greatness only by the fragments that remain,
as nothing remains of that which happens to be
mentioned in the very meagre written records
that have come down to us." He has also said,
" Not only does Michael Angelo give a character
to his epoch, but he stands for Italy almost as
Shakespeare does for England."

With all his reverence for Michael Angelo,
he did not place him high as a sculptor, and
withheld his praise from the world-famous
" David " ; indeed, I have heard him declare
that in his opinion it was a bad statue — the right
foot not good, the waist too small, and the hands
not the hands of a youth. He had great admira-
tion, however, for the marble tondo in the Diploma
Gallery of our Royal Academy ; of this tondo he
wrote to Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower in 1 903 :
" It is a thing of supreme and even pictorial
beauty. It is quite lovely being left with a
chiselled surface, for it is incomplete according to
general apprehension, but in my opinion more
perfect, especially the infant Christ, which is as
full of sense of colour as any Venetian picture."

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

To Lord Ronald he also wrote at this time : " My
only disagreement with you would be in the
estimate of his [Michael Angelo's] comparative
excellence in sculpture and painting. He called
himself sculptor, but we seldom gauge rightly our
own strength and weakness." And later in the
same letter he adds : " This seems presumptuous
criticism, and you might, considering my aspira-
tions and efforts, say to me c Do better.' I am
not Michael Angelo, but I am a pupil of the
greatest sculptor of all, Pheidias (a master the
great Florentine knew nothing of), and so far, I
feel a right to set up judgment on the technique
only." However, for the studies in wax made
by this great master he felt an unbounded admira-
tion, and he thought that Michael Angelo was
prevented, by the obstinacy of the material, from
dashing his thoughts into marble, as he did with
the brush upon the walls of the Sistine Chapel.

The Hollands were now often at the Villa
Rochella, which had been Lady Holland's home
before her marriage, and to her was a very
favourite one, long after her widowhood. More
than forty years later, when my husband and I
looked down from our hotel windows upon the
Villa, now surrounded by buildings, it seemed to
him that it had been transplanted from the
country into the heart of Naples. Men were
then busily felling the beautiful ilex and pine of
the neighbouring garden, and he turned hastily
away, exclaiming, " Don't let us look at it."

Of this delightful first visit Pompeii seemed

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

to remain most clearly in his mind. His imagina-
tion was touched by the signs of life and death
in this long-buried city, and by Vesuvius, the
great destroyer and preserver of it all, still sending
out its columns of smoke as when all was busy in
these ancient streets.

He remembered too his scramble up the side
of the mountain, when he and only one other of
the party (Lord Walpole) went to the top to peer
down into the fiery throat of the crater.

He now returned to Careggi and to his
work, which went on as earnestly as usual.
During the autumn of 1845, wnen alone, as the
Hollands were absent in Naples, I think on
account of the illness of Lady Holland's mother,
he received the news of the death of his father
who had long been in delicate health. A chill,
upon which bronchitis followed, was the cause of
his death. The previous year his son had returned
to England to see his father, when travelling
with Lord Holland, who, as has already been said,
had invited him to be his companion. Of this
sorrow he writes to a friend, many months later :
" My father's death has been a sad blow to me,
nor have I yet recovered from the effects."

In the following year both spring and
summer were entirely spent by the painter at
Careggi. Lord Holland having resigned his
post at Florence and retired from the diplo-
matic service, he and Lady Holland spent much
time at Naples, and the villa would perhaps
have been a little lonely for him in spite of

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

hard work, but that Lady Holland had begged
her friend Lady Duff Gordon, with her two
daughters, to make as much use of it as they
chose. In this way he was again surrounded
by that affectionate care which something in
his nature required and compelled. When he
was unwell Lady Duff Gordon looked after him
with motherly care ; and he and the daughters,
Georgie and Alice Duff Gordon, became great
friends over the arts both of painting and
music. After the day's work was accomplished,
duets and trios often followed ; and on a charm-
ing old French guitar he played and sang
little songs, the words of which he sometimes
wrote himself. In the autumn of 1846 they
left for Rome, and he was again alone, and
at work designing his large picture to be called
" Alfred inciting the English to resist the Danes
by Sea," where they were considered to be in-
vincible — England's first naval victory. During
the summer he had also been in communication
with Mr. lonides about a large picture he pro-
posed to paint for Greece, if Mr. lonides would
supply the cost of the materials.

From Careggi in June 1846 the painter
writes to him thus : " If I have not made
money, it has been my own fault. With the
connection I have made, if I applied myself to
portrait-painting I might carry all before me ;
but it has always been my ambition to tread in
the steps of the old masters, and to endeavour,
as far as my poor talents would permit, to

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

emulate their greatness. Nor has the sight of
their great works diminished my ardour ; this
cannot be done by painting portraits. Cannot
you give me a commission to paint a picture
to send to Greece ? Some patriotic subject,
something that shall carry a moral lesson, such
as Aristides relinquishing his right to command
to Miltiades, that those who look upon it may
recollect that the true hero and patriot thinks
not of his own honour or advantage, and is ever
ready to sacrifice his personal feelings and his
individual advancement for his country's good.
Such subjects grandly painted and in a striking
manner would not be without effect upon
generous minds. Take advantage of my
enthusiasm now ; I will paint you an acre of
canvas for little more than the cost of the
material. My cartoon, as you say, was not sold
for a large price ; I could have got a great deal
more for it, but an offer was made to purchase
the eleven prize cartoons for a certain sum to
be equally divided amongst us, and I did not
think it right, by refusing my consent, to
prevent those who were less fortunate than
myself from making a little money."

There was some correspondence about this
suggestion, Mr. Ionides preferring the meeting
of Nausicaa with Ulysses, which apparently did
not appeal to the mood of the painter. Mr.
Ionides having consented to his choosing a
subject from Xenophon's Cyropcedia, he began
to paint a picture to be called " Panthea," but

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

this design was afterwards obliterated, and no
sketches for it can be identified.

But the question of again entering as a
competitor for the prizes offered by the Royal
Commission of Fine Arts had now to be con-
sidered. All his friends urged him strongly to
compete ; and he was told that people at home
were blaming the Hollands for making him
idle. There had been two competitions for
which he had not entered. In 1844 the prizes
offered had been for arabesques and decorative
designs, for friezes, lunettes, panels, and pave-
ments ; also for designs to be carried out in
wrought iron. In 1845 followed a competition
for fresco - painting, six selected artists being
chosen, though the competition was open to
others. A cartoon, a coloured sketch, and a
painting in fresco of some part of the design
were required, and three premiums of £200
each were offered. In the next competition
(June 1847) tne particulars again varied, for
the size of the painting was left to the artists,
their names need not be concealed, and the
medium employed was to be oil-colour.

When he had decided to compete, during
this summer and autumn he began to make
very careful drawings for his picture of Alfred ;
and in December he writes to Miss Duff Gordon
a very full description of this design. She had
asked him to describe it, and he consents to
do so as he has " nothing better to write about,"
and adds that it will be after the manner of the

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

showman. " You ask me to describe my
picture of Alfred ; the general design you are
acquainted with. Alfred stands, as you know,
in the centre of the picture, his foot upon the
plank, about to spring into the boat. I have
endeavoured to give him as much energy,
dignity, and expression as possible, without
exaggeration. Long-limbed and springy, he is
about the size of the Apollo, the other figures
are bigger, so you see my composition is colossal.
Near to Alfred is a youth who, in his excite-
ment, rends off his cloak in order to follow his
King and leader ; by the richness of his dress
he evidently belongs to the upper class, and I
shall endeavour to make that also evident by
the elegance of his form, and the grace of his
action. Next to him is a youth who is probably
a peasant ; he grasps a ponderous axe and
threatens extermination to the whole Danish
race. Contrasted with him you see the
muscular back of an older man, who turns
towards his wife, who, with a child in her arms,
follows distracted at the thought that her
child's father is about to rush into danger. He
points upward, and encourages her to trust in
the righteousness of the cause and the justice
of Heaven (religion and patriotism). Behind
him two lovers are taking a hurried and tender
leave, and beyond them a maiden with dis-
hevelled locks (your sister's hair), whose lover
or father has already departed, with clasped
hands is imploring the protection of Heaven.

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

In the corner a youth is buckling on armour ;
his old mother, with trembling hands and tear-
ful eyes, hangs about his neck a cross ; the
father, feeble, and no longer able to fight his
country's battles, gives his sword with one hand,
while with the other he bares his chest, points
to his wounds, and exhorts his son not to
disgrace his father's name and sword ; while
with glowing cheek and beating heart the
youth responds to his father's exhortations with
all the ardour characteristic of his age. This
I think my most interesting group. I have
made the parents old and infirm and the young
man but a lad, in order to show that he is the
last and youngest, the Benjamin of the family ;
his brothers, we will suppose, have already fallen
fighting against the Dane, defending their
country. You see I endeavour to preserve a
rich base accompaniment of religious and
patriotic feeling. A boy, carried away by the
general enthusiasm, clenches his little fists,
draws his breath, and rushes along with the
excited warriors ; which helps to indicate the
inspiring effect of Alfred's harangue. In the
foreground two men lift from the ground a
bundle which has been provided by the
prudence of the king. On the other side of
the picture some men, impatient of delay, rush
through the water and climb the vessel-side,
while others are engaged in getting it under
way. Now I think you have an idea of what
my picture is intended to be."

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

He made numberless pencil drawings for
this picture ; some forty of these are preserved
(mostly owing to Count Cottrell's care), none
of them measuring more than twelve inches at
their longest dimension ; sometimes the figure
of Alfred is repeated five times on the same
bit of paper, and the whole group, in most
careful outline, is drawn over and over again
whilst he considered various changes.

He was much absorbed in this picture,
which he described in a letter as " dedicated
to patriotism and posterity." Work must have
been incessant, as on December 21 he writes
that the painting is not yet begun, and only
the studies are made ; yet by April 15 he was
on his way home with it almost completed,
and during this short time he went to Rome
for a fortnight. He had been driven away
from Florence by the intense cold of that
March, but returned hurriedly to Careggi
when he found that there was little time to
spare. On April 1 5 he started from Leghorn,
going home by sea, and taking with him five
canvases varying in size from twenty feet down-
wards. He left Careggi meaning to return in
a few months, though a foreboding that he
should never see it again is shown in a letter
of good-bye to Miss Duff" Gordon : " I reply
to your kind letter and say farewell to Italy
at the same time. The boat is steaming away
in the harbour, my place is taken, and in a
short time my back will be turned upon my
vol. 1 81 G

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

beloved Italy. I grieve to leave it, particularly
at this moment, when it is beginning to put
on all its charms. Careggi was looking
beautiful. Dear Careggi, I may never see it
again ! though it is my intention to return,
if possible, immediately ; I am too well aware
of the accidents to which the future is subject
to count upon anything." And so it was ;
when he went back to Italy, sixteen years
later, Careggi was in the possession of strangers
and he could not bear to revisit it.

CHAPTER IV

The artist must bring to his work the ardour
of the young lover or the missionary. No
matter what his artistic organisation, if he is
satisfied with a few hours' hard work — no
matter how hard — and can throw thought of
it aside and say he has done enough for the day
and will throw aside " shop " ; not for him
will be a place on the highest level for all time.

G. F. WATTS.

8 4

CHAPTER IV

Once more in London, George Watts did not
decide upon taking a studio, as his intention was
merely to pay a short visit and to return to
Florence immediately after he had been able
to arrange matters for his two stepsisters, and
when the big picture had been completed and
placed at Westminster Hall for the competition
in June.

In the meantime Mr. R. S. Holford, the
well-known connoisseur, kindly offered him the
use of a large empty room at Dorchester House.
He had made the acquaintance of Mr. Holford at
Careggi during the last months spent there. A
letter of introduction from the Duff Gordons
having taken a fortnight to reach Careggi from
Rome, he did not receive it until the day after
Mr. Holford and Mr. Reginald Cholmondeley
had been to visit him, when, as he writes, he
was much puzzled, first by the Italian servant's
version of their names, and then by being
expected to welcome them. However, stiffness
was soon at an end : " We plunged into art ;
the dear and only love was hanging upon the

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

wall ; I prosed away about Pheidias, they listened
with politeness ; I mentioned Giorgione, they
went off in their turn ; my own pictures were
forgotten, I don't recollect whether I showed
them — if I did, I am sure they don't recollect
seeing them. Finding them such enthusiasts, I
promised to go next day into town, and carry
them to the house of an old gentleman whose
acquaintance I have lately made, and who has
some of the finest pictures in the world. Ac-
cordingly this morning I breakfasted with them
and Lord Ossulton, and afterwards introduced
<v. them to the pictures, which are wonders. Mr.
Holford will never survive if he does not carry
off the Giorgiones." This bond of enthusiasm
soon made them, he says, " old acquaintances,"
and the result of this introduction was that he
was for some time provided with a temporary
studio. Having now no home in London, he
found rooms for himself at 48 Cambridge Street ;
these he kept until 1849, when he became
tenant of the studios at 30 Charles Street, Berkeley
Square. His stepsisters had, on the death of
their father, removed to the country, and, as
he writes before leaving Italy, he wished to see
that they were comfortably settled ; but the
father's loss had greatly loosened the tie to his
old home. In spite of a considerable difference
of age, the father and son were the two who
completely understood each other, and certainly
they were one in a search after something that
seemed to each never to be attained. The

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

father, bent on making music through some new
channel — an adaptation of wind upon strings —
so I seem to understand it — but never able to
perfect his invention, in the bitterness of his
disappointment, finally broke up and utterly
destroyed the whole fabric upon which so much
had been lavished. The son also, from his
earliest days, was bent — so it were possible —
upon making the world richer by the music of
another art. With the sisters, for whom he had
now arranged the matter of an income for their
lives, it was different. " There was a difference
of fibre," as he expressed it, existing always,
but probably much accentuated by the years of
absence in Italy, and later by unhappy friction,
greatly due, as I have been told, though not
by him, to the temper of one sister ; so that
the breach ultimately widened until they had no
part in his life.

In June of that year, 1847, the exhibition
of competing works was opened. The names
of the three winners to whom were awarded
first premiums of £500 stood as follows : —

To F. R. Pickersgill for his picture, " The
Burial of Harold " ; to George Frederic Watts
for his work, " Alfred inciting the Britons to
resist the Landing of the Danes by encountering
them at Sea " ; and to Edward Armitage for the
picture, "The Battle of Meeanee." 1

1 Upwards of forty years later Sir F. Burton told me that he remembered
well this competition for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, and
how when he came away he said, "We have two men who will do well —
Watts and Stevens."

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

On the close of the exhibition Sir Charles
Eastlake recommended the purchase of four
of the pictures for the nation — Pickersgill's
"Harold" ; Watts's "Alfred" ; "Richard Coeur
de Lion," by J. Cross ; and " The Battle of St.
Vincent," by W. A. Knell — to be placed in
committee rooms of the House of Parliament.
In his letter to the Treasury Sir Charles East-
lake says : " With respect to the prices of the
four pictures selected, the Commissioners have
directed me to acquaint you that Mr. Watts had
intimated his readiness to present his work to
some national building or public institution.
The Commissioners were unwilling that the
picture should be obtained on such terms ; their
wish to purchase it, with the sanction of the
Treasury, arose from their high appreciation of
its merits, and was altogether uninfluenced by
the views of the artist. Mr. Watts, when
invited to fix a price, named £200 only,
explaining his reasons for doing so in a letter
of which a copy is annexed. I am directed to
request the sanction of their Lordships to the
proposed application for £1^°° f° r tne pictures
above named." The letter enclosed by Sir
Charles to Her Majesty's Secretary of the
Treasury is as follows : —

" Sir — In accordance with your request that I
should distinctly put a price upon my picture, I
have again considered the subject. I will not
occupy your time by repeating the reasons I

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

before submitted to you for declining to name a
price, but will content myself with saying that
the distinction and amount of the prize awarded
to me is more than sufficient recompense and
payment for my labours ; that if I may not have
the honour of placing my work at the disposal
of the Royal Commission, I wish to name a sum
which, by not drawing too largely upon the funds
devoted by the Government to the encourage-
ment of art, may leave it in the power of the
Royal Commission to extend to other artists the
honour and advantage of having their works
purchased by the nation. In naming as a price
£200 I trust my intentions may not be
misunderstood, — that it will be seen it was my
desire to assist the object of the Royal
Commission, and by no means to establish a
precedent prejudicial to the interests of the
profession. — I am, Sir, your faithful and obedient
Servant, G. F. Watts.

In November the picture was moved into a
convenient light in one of the committee rooms,
where Mr. Watts was allowed to work further
upon the figure of Alfred ; Sir Charles Eastlake
had made some suggestions which he thought
well to carry out. It now hangs upon the walls
of a committee room in the House of Lords.
The choice of this subject, England's first naval
victory, with its dedication " to patriotism and
posterity," indicates the trend of his desire
throughout life to be numbered amongst those

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

who had dedicated themselves to the service of
their country. He expressed this hope fifty-two
years later, saying to me, " If in the future
any one writes of me the little there is to say, I
hope that they will say, not that I had painted
many pictures, but that my strongest feeling
was for the honour of the nation."

It was at Dorchester House that he painted
" Life's Illusions " and " Time and Oblivion " —
this being the first realisation on canvas of the
dominant idea of his life to deal in art with the
great problems of human existence. In 1897,
when turning away from the door of the New
Gallery where his work was collected, he said,
" Only two pictures there seem to me to come
near my mark — 'Time and Oblivion' and 'Life's
Illusions.' Of 'Time and Oblivion' I think
Pheidias would have said, ' Go on, you may do
something.' ' Of this picture he also said, " I
never did anything better, but discouraged by
those who alone regarded art seriously, I did
not go on working in the way that I believed
in ; I lost many years of my life for this reason."

It was whilst he was working at Dorchester
House that he and Mr. Ruskin became acquainted.
Mr. Ruskin greatly cared for this picture, asked
that it might be lent to him, and had it hanging
on the wall of his house in Park Street for some
time ; but, gradually becoming more and more
in love with the faithful rendering of fact, this
prepossession seemed for a time to obscure his
vision, and his mind closed against the view held

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

by Mr. Watts, that in imaginative and poetic
painting certain material facts must be sacrificed
to convey the impression, exact imitation being
then out of place.

Seeing that the picture had ceased to please
him, Mr. Watts asked that it might be returned.
Years afterwards it was bought by Lord Somers,
and is now at Eastnor Castle. It was exhibited
at the Academy in 1864, and described in the
catalogue as " A design for sculpture, to be
executed in various materials."

Of the difference of opinion upon these points
between Mr. Ruskin and himself he writes : " I
have been thinking a great deal about your
remarks and the tendency of your criticisms, and
I cannot help inflicting some tiresome observa-
tions upon you, not, I beg you to understand,
with any reference to my own things : my own
views are too visionary, and the qualities I aim
at are too abstract, to be attained, or perhaps to
produce any effect if attained. My instincts
cause me to strive after things that are hardly
within the province of art, things that are rather
felt than seen. If I worked to please myself
only, instead of making a weak and insufficient
compromise, I should make outline compositions
filled up upon a monochromatic principle, and in
my most elaborate efforts aim at nothing beyond
the highest and noblest beauty of form, truth of
movement, and general colour. I confess that,
failing so greatly, my work never gives me the
slightest pleasure. I cannot bring myself to

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

labour upon a thing that disgusts me, and my
instinct rebels against imitation. I will do a bit
some day just to show you I am capable of it.
Perhaps it is not necessary to say all this about
myself, but I want you to feel and believe that
my remarks are made not as an artist, but as an
amateur. Like you, I am most interested in the
progress of art, and believe it can only be great
by being true ; but I am inclined to give truth a
wider range, and I cannot help fearing you may
become near-sighted. That I feel with you
with regard to earnestness and truth in painting
must be evident from my agreeing with you in
admiration of certain productions ; but I do not
agree with you in your estimation of truth, or
rather your view of truth. It appears to me
that you confound it too much with detail, and
overlook properties ; and that in your apprecia-
tion of an endeavour to imitate exactly, you
prefer the introduction of what is extraneous, to
the leaving out of anything that may be in
existence. Beauty is truth, but it is not always
reality. In perceiving and appreciating with
wonderful acuteness quality and truth of accident,
you run some risk of overlooking larger truth of
fundamental properties. In fact you are rather
inclined to consider truth as a bundle of parts,
than truth as a great whole.

" I venture to say this to you, because your
opinion has great weight, and your judgment
is listened to with great respect ; and I want
you to consider well, and walk round the

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

truth, viewing it from the distance as well as
examining it with a magnifying glass, lest
your eye and taste, becoming microscopic, fail
at length to take in the length and breadth."

The answer to this letter has not been pre-
served ; possibly it may have been as a verbal dis-
cussion, perhaps prolonged over many meetings.
The two friends were often in combat, though on
each side there was great appreciation — certainly
on Mr. Watts's side unbounded reverence, — but
upon principles of form they differed to the
end, and had many a passage-at-arms. In the
volume collecting Mr. Ruskin's " Notes on
Pictures " the editor (Mr. E. T. Cook) says : —

"In a letter of the year 1849 Ruskin wrote
to a friend : * Do you know Watts ? The
man who is not employed on Houses of Parlia-
ment — to my mind the only real painter of
history or thought we have in England. A
great fellow, or I am much mistaken — great
as one of these same Savoy knots of rock ; and
we suffer the clouds to lie upon him, with
thunder and famine at once in the thick of
them. If you have time when you come to
town, and have not seen it, look at " Time and
Oblivion " in his studio.' "

As I read to my husband one day, I
remember that he stopped me to say of Mr.
Ruskin, " How earnestly he pleads for all that
would develop the best in humanity. Never
let us be a week without reading something of
his. In another generation he will be placed

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

as the greatest thinker of the age. As a
teacher, his theories are opposed to political
economists, but are truer, because they are
based on a belief in the best side of human
nature. It seems to me in taking this for
his starting-point he is perfectly right."

Though not in its place chronologically, the
following letter shows that through many
years the two friends were at variance upon
this matter of realistic truth and essential truth,
a point of great importance in judging of my
husband's work. In a note of mine made after
a visit to his studio in the 'seventies, I find the
following : " Signor told me to-day of his
meeting Mr. Ruskin outside Burlington House
during a winter exhibition of the works of
old masters, and how, in a discussion they had,
Mr. Ruskin had said that these great men were
all wrong, because they did not paint exactly
what they saw ; and, denying that there were
any truths more essentially true than surface
facts, said almost fiercely, ' Paint that as it is,'
pointing to a scavenger's heap of mud lying
at the foot of a grimy lamp-post ; ' that is
truth.' They walked for some way discussing,
and, before they parted, Signor rather hoped
that his friend had come to be somewhat con-
vinced by his arguments ; but a letter followed
next day, Mr. Ruskin probably suspecting his
thought.

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

" Bull Hotel, Piccadilly,

but usually
" Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire.

[Postmark, x^th February, 1873.]

" My dear Watts — I am sometimes a little
hypocritical in conversation. I took laughingly
your charge of losing sight of all the points
of things while I pursue one. But — seriously
— you ought to know me better. I challenge
you (so far I am proud of what I have done
though not of what I am) to find any writer
on art ancient and modern — whose range of
sight is so microscopic and yet so wide as
mine, and when you fancy I am losing sight of
things, they are continually most in my mind.
But I purposely veil every other part of my
subject, that my reader may understand one at
a time. As for breadth of sight, do you suppose
there is any other man, even among your most
thoughtful and liberal friends, who can not
only admit but intensely enjoy the good in
De Hooghe and in Luini — in Reynolds and
Angelico — in William Hunt, and Tintoret ?

" But not one of you — even of my best
friends — have the least idea of the work I have
done, privately, in getting my knowledge of
my business ; nor have you any notion of the
power it gives me now to have steadily refused
to be warped from the sight of the pure facts
by my likings. ..."

(His lash here descended on others of his

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

particular friends, and he then turns again upon
G. F. Watts.)

" You fancy you see more than I do in
Nature — you still see less, for I, long ago,
learned how impossible it was to draw what
I saw — you still struggle to do so ; that is to
say, to draw what you like in what you see
without caring about what others like — or what
God likes.

" In saying all this, I retract nothing of
what I said of my discontent with myself, nor
do I equal myself for an instant with Jones and
you in personal power of thought and deed.
I merely speak as a poor apothecary's boy who
had earnestly watched the actual effect of sub-
stances on each other might speak to (when he
got old, and did know precisely what gold
and lead were) two learned and thoughtful
physicians, who had been all their lives seeking
the philosopher's stone. — Ever affectionately
yours, J. Ruskin."

It was at Dorchester House that the picture
called " Michael the Archangel contending with
Satan for the Body of Moses " was begun ; it
was never carried out to completion, but is a
suggestion of the two figures standing in a
great light. Though fresco-like in quality, it
has also such atmospheric qualities as might
make an expert, some hundreds of years hence,
place it chronologically as work belonging to
the latest years. In this respect it differs

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

much from "Time and Oblivion' and other
work of this period. Mr. Ruskin cared for
this picture sufficiently to buy it, about 1849—
1850. Through the kindness of Mrs. Severn
it has lately returned to the studio at Limners-
lease. He also painted his Miltonic Satan with
the face averted from the light of the Creator
with whom he talked. For title, these words
were used : " And the Lord said unto Satan,
Whence comest thou ? Then Satan answered
the Lord and said, From going to and fro
in the earth and from walking up and down
in it." The Satan the painter conceived is a
mighty power ruling over the evils which were
unconnected with sin.

At this time also, in the days of her youth
and beauty, Lady Waterford x came to sit to
him. The portrait was to be a present from
him to the Duff Gordons — but a labour of love
paid back a hundred-fold by thus making him
acquainted with this gifted lady.

" For certain he has seen all perfectness who
among other ladies hath seen her. She walked
with humbleness for her array ; seeming a
creature sent from Heaven to stay," are the
words upon her grave chosen to express the
greatness of her nature by those who best knew
her. That characteristic of " humbleness,"
expressing itself by a little touch, a very slight
touch, of hesitation in manner and speech,

1 Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford, whose memoirs, with that of her
sister Lady Canning, are to be found in Mr. Augustus Hare's book, Tavo
Noble Lives.

vol. I 97 H

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

appealed much to him in one so richly endowed
both by nature and fortune.

Of her genius for art he has said that he
believed she was born an artist greater than any
England has produced, the circumstances of her
life alone preventing her from working on to
the full achievement. What work she did
accomplish was, as far as it went, of the very
highest order. Her brush full of colour, so
unerringly blotting in all that she knew was
essential to her subjects : these were always
poetical, imaginative, and dignified, beautiful
in colour and in arrangement of line. No
faltering about truths of proportion and move-
ment, or in the disposition of masses : nothing
to jar as being out of keeping with the con-
ception of her subject. He hoped that some
day examples of her work would be preserved
in one of our national galleries. The inter-
course now entered upon was carried on inter-
mittently throughout her life ; and, until illness
prevented her moving from Ford Castle, she
often came to find him at work in his London
studio. They also met at Blickling, but he
never visited her at Ford ; and memoranda of
trains by which he never travelled, written out
by her own hand, still lie in some of his old
blotting-books. This portrait of Lady Water-
ford was one of the gifts he made to what he
sometimes called " The Casa Gordon," and they
were not a few ; for, from the happy Careggi
days when the acquaintance with Lady Duff

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Gordon and her daughters was first made,
delicate little pencil portraits and paintings in
water-colour were frequently bestowed upon
these friends. Many letters passed, usually in
a most cheerful tone ; but in one he becomes
more serious, and defines the points that in his
opinion a student and lover of art should regard
as most important. In the autumn of 1847,
having heard from Miss Duff Gordon that she
wished to study art more thoroughly than she
had as yet, he bids her " set about it in the
right way ; if not, the harder you work the
more laborious will be your idleness ; all
the energy and power of endurance will not
enable a man to reach his journey's end, if he
be not on his right road. It must first be your
object to separate the essence from the material,
to discover in what consist those qualities which
affect the mind, and what their properties. I
say discover, for no man can teach that great
point : Pheidias himself could but direct the
attention, and lay down simple rules. No poet
was ever formed in a school. . . .

" The mere mechanical difficulties are always
to be overcome by the means of judicious and
continual practice. The elements of the
beautiful and the elevated are the real diffi-
culties. Master them, and fill the mind with
the contemplation of what is great ; the hand
may tremble, but it must obey the impulse.
But it is not the knowledge of proportion, it is
not the knowledge of the rules of poetry that

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

will make the Pheidias or the Homer. ... I
cannot think real greatness compatible with
the existence of mean passions, hence the
impossibility of attaining perfection. But I
have allowed my subject to run away with me,
I have been prosing away at a great rate, when
I merely intended to say that the technical
difficulties of pursuing a course of study would
not prove formidable."

Lord and Lady Holland were now living
at Holland House, and deeply interested in
restorations and improvements there. The
hospitable door was as open to Mr. Watts as
it had been in Italy. He was much there,
Lady Holland reserving a room for him, and
he in return throwing himself into their
interests, and doing all in his power to give
them pleasure. He restored the ceiling in the
Gilt-room, and painted upon both ceilings of
what was then known as the Inner Hall :
amorini on the first, and on the second, figures
and a balcony representing mediaeval Florence.
Guizot sat to him there at this time, and he
also persuaded Lady Holland to let him paint
a full-length portrait of her, or, as she called
it, a " full shortness." In this picture he intro-
duced, what is unique in his work, a mirror in
the background to reflect the plaits of her
auburn hair. His two portraits of the librarian
of the British Museum, Anthony Panizzi, belong
to this date ; they were painted at the Museum.
One of these is at Holland House ; the other

IOO

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

he reserved for himself, and it is now in the
National Portrait Collection. He was also
working upon his two big pictures, " Life's
Illusions' and "Time and Oblivion." Other
designs were in his mind, such as " Death and
Resurrection," " Satan, Sin, and Death," and
" Charity giving the Water of Life to thirsty
souls," " Satan calling up his Legions," and the
" Temptation of Eve," where she and Adam lie
asleep, while above them on spread wings Satan
hovers and whispers in the ear of the woman.
There is also the drawing named by him "The
people which sat in darkness saw a great
light," a design for a fresco never carried out.
Taking shape in his mind at this time was the
scheme which may be described as the ambition
of one' half of his life and the regret of the other
half. He called it later " The House of Life,"
and at a very early stage tentatively outlined
this conception in words a fragment of which
in faded ink remains. It runs thus : —

" The ceiling to be covered with the uniform
blue of space, on which should be painted the
Sun, the Earth, and the Moon, as it is by their
several revolutions and dependence upon each
other that we have a distinct notion of, and are
able to measure and estimate, the magnitude of
Time. The progress of Time, and its conse-
quent effect, I would illustrate for the purpose
of conveying a moral lesson — the design of
Time and Oblivion would be exactly in its
place. To complete the design, the Earth

IOI

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

should be attended by two figures symbolic of
the antagonistic forces, Attraction and Repul-
sion. I would then give, perhaps upon one
half of the ceiling, which might be divided
with a gold band on which the zodiac might
be painted, a nearer view of earth, and by a
number of gigantic figures stretched out at full
length represent a range of mountains typifying
the rocky structure or skeleton. These I would
make very grand and impressive, in order to
emphasise the insignificance of man. The
most important (to us) of the constellations
should shine out of the deep ultramarine firma-
ment. Silence and Mighty Repose should be
stamped upon the character and disposition of
the giants ; and revolving centuries and cycles
should glide, personified by female figures of
great beauty, beneath the crags upon which the
mighty forms should lie, to indicate (as com-
pared with the effect upon man and his works)
the non-effect of time upon them."

Reduced to the dimensions of a picture, some
ten feet in length, now hanging in the National
Gallery of British Art, there is a characteristic
representation of this idea. Torn from its true
setting, and named by him " Chaos," l there is
enough to show the painter's largeness of style
and imaginative power, and perhaps to make
some minds regret that the spirit of Pope Julius
II. was not alive in England to give him the

1 After he had presented this picture to the National Gallery of
British Art, he regretted not having chosen the word " Cosmos " for
the title.

102

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

walls of a Sistine Chapel on which to consummate
his greatest conception. The manuscript con-
tinues : —

" Then I would begin with man himself,
trace him through his moral and political life ;
first the hunter stage, gaining, through the
medium of his glimmering yet superior intelli-
gence, advantages over the stronger yet inferior
animals, almost his equals. Next the pastoral
state, his intelligence further developed to the
consequent improvement of his condition :
serviceable animals domesticated, reclaimed by
his thoughtful care, the stronger and finer sub-
dued by the force of his will, aided by all-
conquering intelligence. This is the Golden
Age,' the age of poetry. Of experience comes
tradition, of tradition is born poetry, here per-
forming its natural and legitimate function —
instructing. This portion of the work might be
rendered most beautifully, since in this period of
the history of society it is possible the human
animal enjoyed the greatest possible amount of
happiness, equally removed from the penalties
of ambition, and from the degradation of a
precarious and merely animal existence. There
would be a great chance of exquisite subjects to
illustrate this epoch, and here might be intro-
duced the episode of Job.

" Next should be man, — the tyrant — the
insidious oppressor — the slave, a dweller in
cities — the Egyptians raise the pyramids — their
mythology — the habits of the people."

103

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

The manuscript seems roughly to indicate
that his first scheme was to end in a pageant of
the progress of civilisation through Palestine,
Assyria, Persia, India, Greece, Rome, each
with their mythology and their representative
men : the dawning of the Christian era ; the
fall of Jerusalem ; the history of the Middle
Ages in Europe ; the rise of the Saracen power ;
the preaching of Peter the Hermit. As the
idea developed in his mind the scheme became
more abstract, and less realistic and historic ; it
is certain that as the mythology of the races
was traced by him, its place would have been
prominent, and possibly the whole scheme would
have developed into the history of the progress
of the spiritual side of man's mind ; and he
would simply have niched the men whom he
considered most representative of all forward
movement.

The fragment quoted belongs to a very early
stage of the conception of this scheme. In later
years he writes of the work he had been able
to accomplish as " only to be called a series of
reflections mainly upon ethics. With certain
material advantages, which would have caused
me by their nature to weld my thoughts into
a regular form, I think my efforts might have
been given place as an epic." As he described
it, it seemed like some magnificent dream ;
a magnificent dream, yet not at all impossible of
realisation had enthusiasm been stirred in the
right way, and directed in a practical manner.

104

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Perhaps it was asking too much of his con-
temporaries that they should see any use for
such a Temple of ideas : at the moment the
public was satisfied by, and understood best, the
expressions of decorative art, to be found housed
in a giant glass building. The aesthetic and
spiritual emotion of the time, led variously by
Keble, Newman, F. D. Maurice, and Charles
Kingsley, found different satisfactions. The
great preacher Thomas Carlyle had not the
vaguest sense of the proportionate value of great
art in the history of civilisation. To Mr.
Ruskin, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood — his true brothers in devoted ser-
vice to art — he failed to make his aims intel-
ligible. With the greatest reverence each for
the other's achievements, there remained a
difference : neither the mediaeval nor the theo-
logical nor the decorative point of view was
his.

To the question of what gifts the painter
could have brought as his contribution to "The
House of Life," an answer must now be found in
what he always considered to be but scattered
pages torn out here and there from some book
which had cost a lifetime to compile : the first
page — to carry on this figure of speech — to be the
picture called " Chaos," and the last, " Destiny,"
begun in the latest working hours of his life, and
destined to be left unfinished.

In the winter of 1848 he was on the point of
paying a visit to Greece, travelling with Mr.

i°5

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Ionides and returning to Italy ; but, because of
the disturbed state of Europe, this journey had to
be given up, and during the following year he
established himself in a large studio at 30
Charles Street, Berkeley Square, moving his
pictures from Dorchester House — I believe on
account of alterations and rebuilding in progress
there. And here, surrounded by the large can-
vases, " The Muffin Pictures " as he called them
(alluding to the skit by Thackeray on the painter
in Our Street), he went to work still hopeful.
Below this studio was another he found himself
able to lend to a miniature painter and copyist,
called Charles Cozens. They had known each
other as boys, and Cozens, being greatly influenced
in his work by that of his friend, obtained
commissions and occasionally made copies of
G. F. Watts's portraits, as these were frequently
required by the Ionides family.

By this time he had many acquaintances and
friends, and young men whose names were after-
wards distinguished were often in that studio.
When Sir Robert Morier came to see my
husband in 1891, they talked much of the friends
who used to gather there and at his rooms in Bond
Street. Chance accidents preventing, they had
not met for about forty years ; but the friendship
was fresh and alive as ever, and Sir Robert
declared that his face was quite unchanged —
" singularly so," he said to me.

Sir Robert Morier believed that this group of
friends met first at his rooms in Bond Street.

106

( /.. T.HX all.J

I rem a hlicl rijin hit r a, clrcuvuia, now lo&t, made akcrut- 18J1.8

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Subsequently it would seem that the meetings
were at Colonel Stirling's, 1 and it seems probable
that when war was declared and Colonel Stirling
left for the Crimea, the friends to whom the
studio in Charles Street was well known during
Mr. Watts's tenancy, applied for these rooms
and there established the club that became
known as the Cosmopolitan. Amongst the
earliest members of this club Sir Algernon West
mentions Edward FitzGerald, Francis Palgrave,
Monckton Milnes, Henry Reeve, Danby Seymour
(the owner of" Life's Illusions "), Lord Goderich,
Julian Fane, Philip Hardwicke, and Henry
Phillips the painter (honorary secretary of the
club).

The members with whom my husband was
best acquainted, and whom he recollected meet-
ing at Mr. Morier's rooms were : John Ruskin,
Henry Layard, Vernon Harcourt, Tom Taylor,
Chichester Fortescue, James Spedding, Thomas
Hughes (?), Henry Phillips, and Lord Arthur
Russell. For many years his picture " Echo,"
the story from Boccaccio, and an " Early Study,"
a sort of Arcadian picture, hung upon the
walls of the club-room. Sir Robert told us
that at one time, when the finances of the club
were not flourishing and a considerable outlay
was necessary, to avoid this expense they moved
to other rooms ; but they so missed the associa-
tions, and the pictures, that members began to

1 See Sir Algernon West's article on "The Cosmopolitan Club" in the
volume entitled One City and many Men, and also his volume of
Recollections.

107

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

give up going there, and signs were evident that
it was falling all to pieces ; so to pull it together
again, they spent a far larger sum of money, and
returned to the original house, 30 Charles Street.
In 1902, when the club removed, the members
generously presented the large picture which they
had bought to the Tate Gallery, and the Arcadian
picture was returned to my husband and is now
in the collection of his works in the Compton
Gallery. The painting called " Echo ' he had
claimed many years before.

Amongst the congenial friendships begun at
this time was one with Mr. Aubrey de Vere,
a life-long friendship, for until his visits to
London had to be given up, Mr. de Vere came
yearly to spend some hours with his friend. The
wife of the poet Sir Henry Taylor (Miss Alice
Spring Rice), a cousin of Mr. de Vere's, had
brought these two poetic minds together. Mr.
de Vere, in his hours of uncertainty before he
decided to join the Church of Rome, had often
paced the studio in Charles Street (1849-50)
pondering this question. Perhaps with intui-
tion thus quickened he knew that his friend
was also passing through a time of crisis.
However that may have been, Mr. de Vere,
writing from Coniston in October 1850 to
arrange with him to go to Curragh Chase at the
invitation of his brother Sir Vere de Vere, says :
"You would find much to interest you deeply in
Ireland, besides its scenery, including not a little
of which you must have had a second-sight

108

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

vision before you painted your ' Irish Eviction '
(afterwards called " The Irish Famine ").

A few days later, with further plans, Mr. de
Vere writes (doubtless referring to something
in his friend's reply to the former letter) : " To
fortune you may well be cold, especially if she
is cold to you. Fortune, like other flirts, can
only be made amenable by being paid in her
own coin. ' The lion on your own stone gates
Is not more cold to you than I,' so sings
Tennyson to the foolish beauty. Fortune is
commonly only kind to those who, like poor
Byron, have a great wish to be spoilt. Those
who have every greatness in them are not
attentive to her, and the energies which are to
end in conquering the minds of men are trained
at first by conquering her petty caprice. She
will do you little harm, though she will some-
what delay your harvest, and it is better that
she should be unkind to you than to those who
are more easily disturbed or depressed. The
office of genius is to do good and receive good —
not from men ; so you must begin by doing
good to Ireland, who will thank you or mis-
understand you, just as accident may determine."

To Mr. Watts, Ireland was of great interest,
and he remembered being vexed by the ordinary
tone of the Members of Parliament who some-
times appeared early in the evening at Holland
House, explaining that only " those tiresome
Irishmen " were speaking, and consequently they
had been able to come away. To Ireland he

109

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

went, staying at Curragh Chase, where, as they
were going upstairs one evening, he drew a little
figure — a recollection from Flaxman — on the
wall, in charcoal, meaning to rub it out next
day ; but instead it was carefully preserved,
and was still in existence when, forty years later,
Mr. de Vere told me of it. From Curragh
Chase he went on to Dromoland, where Mrs.
O'Brien, Mr. de Vere's sister, invited him.
When there he made a drawing of Sir Lucius
O'Brien. No doubt his friend thought that it
would be a good move for the young painter to
get away from London, good for his health, and
good for his mind. Mr. de Vere's letter shows
that Mr. Watts was already missing the sun-
shine of Italy — his health was not as good as it
had been when there ; his visions of " The House
of Life ' were fading before his eyes ; he was
liable to be depressed and to gibe at Fortune for
being unkind. This visit was a delightful one,
he had many a scamper across country ; and a
letter written to a niece of Mr. de Vere's — Mary
O'Brien — shows him in his merriest mood, one
that to the last the "delightful people," as he
sometimes expressed it himself when speaking
of children, never failed to bring him.

" 30 Charles Street,
" Berkeley Square, London.
[I8 5 I]

" My dear little Mary — I was delighted to
receive your nice little letter and pretty present,
for which I fill this letter with thanks, and if

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

you don't find them in it they must have dropped
out at the post-office. The purse is beautiful,
but it has one defect, which is, when all the
money is taken out of it, it is empty ; now if
you can send me a purse that will always be
full, you can't think how I should value it ! In
the meantime I am very grateful for this one,
which I shall always keep for the sake of Mary
O'Brien and my first visit to Ireland, where I
should now like to be playing at Brush with
little Irish boys and girls. Your great card
house was prodigious ! what a pity you could
not send it to our great glass-house exhibition
as a specimen of Irish industry ! I hope you
have missed me on rainy days and riding expedi-
tions ; I have very often wished I could take
a good jump and come down right in front
of Dromoland. Pray remember me to your
Grandmama and your Aunt, and your Mamma
and Papa. I am glad you have beaten him at
chess ; do you remember how shamefully he
locked us all up one day ? — but we gave him
plenty of trouble though. How you will enjoy
your visit to Curragh ! I should like to go and
see you all there, and as I shall be all the
summer at Liverpool ! perhaps the temptation
will be too strong to resist — will you undertake
to get up a subscription of welcome for me ?

" I have only seen your Aunt Grace once and
that was on Saturday, for I have scarcely been

1 The work at Liverpool was not undertaken ; as, before anything
definite had been decided, the commission for a fresco in the House of
Lords had been arranged.

ill

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

in London at all. When you go to Curragh
Chase do not forget to tell your Aunt that I
cannot get any of those songs I was so fond of,
in London, nor over in Brussels. I owe your
Uncle Aubrey some letters — do you think the
purse will enable me to pay that debt ?

" I wish I knew something extraordinary or
interesting to tell you, but as I don't I must
finish my letter with all this paper to spare.
Mind you remember me to all ; you may kiss
the smallest of the children for me if you like,
and the largest too while you are about it, but
that will be if they like ; one thing you must
certainly do, and that is always believe me to
be — Yours most sincerely and affectionately,

" G. F. Watts."

Mr. de Vere in 1896 retold for my benefit a
story of heroism which should never be for-
gotten. Of this I made the following note :
<c After luncheon Mr. de Vere came in ; his visits
give one a pleasure apart from all others. To-
day as he sat by us, his short silver curls shining
in the light, his clear bell-like voice and pleasant
enunciation, I thought how well his name
Aubrey de Vere described him. I love to see
him by Signor, they are absolutely harmonious.
Asked to repeat the story of courage, one that
Signor could never hear too often, he told us of
his niece Mary O'Brien, who as a child of
twelve had shattered a finger when playing
with gunpowder. She wrapped it up and said

112

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

nothing about it, but her mother insisted on
seeing it, and at once sent for a surgeon, who
said the finger must be cut off. ' Well,' she
answered, ' if that is so, please do it quickly, for
papa will be home in half an hour.' She then
begged her mother to leave the room, and on
her refusing to do so, she said, ' Very well, then,
don't look at my hand, look into my eyes and
then you won't mind.' No wonder that a boy
of fourteen hearing the story became her boy-
lover on the spot and her husband in after
years."

Mr. de Vere remembered that when he first
visited the studio in Charles Street, he had said,
as he was leaving one day, " You must feel great
joy in the fact that you have such close affinity
with the great Italian masters, for certainly
their mantle has descended upon you " ; to
which the answer was, " Ah, well, if I have
received a mantle at all from them, it was only
after it had been quite worn out ! "

It was about this time that he first proposed
to himself to paint the distinguished men of his
time, and so to form a collection to leave as a
legacy to the country. For this end he some-
times thought of approaching the Duke of
Wellington and asking him to allow him to
paint his portrait, but a certain hesitation as to
whether it would be acceptable or not prevented
him from writing, and the request was never
made. One of the very first of this series was
painted at Holland House about this date —
VOL. i 113 1

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the head of Lord John Russell, now in the
National Portrait Gallery ; and also the drawing
of Sir Henry Layard, and that of Mr. James
Spedding made in the studio in Charles Street,
to which some of his most interesting and
beautiful sitters came. Lady Holland had said,
" I never know my friends until you have
painted them " ; and though Mr. Ruskin twitted
him with turning his sitters into angels when
they were not, it can hardly be doubted that
so shrewd an observer well understood that his
friend had a power of compelling his sitters to
the highest mood of which their natures were
capable. Some one has said, " Mr. Watts paints
people alone, and with their best thoughts."
To those who knew him best, the meaning of
the word alone went further ; it meant that they
had met somewhere, somehow, where the
barriers of individual self fell away, and they
talked to him as if to their own souls. " They
look upon me as nobody," he used to say, laugh-
ing, as he turned to explain matters to some one
who might be by, when a beautiful fair-haired
angel or two happened to flit in, and enfolded
the painter in their arms as naturally as they
would have enfolded some darling child — one
of the commonest, but one of the highest
tributes paid to his high nature, and sign of
theirs. " I think people do care for the desire,
there is nothing more in me to care for," he
told me one day, always feeling a wonder why
he was held dear by so many friends.

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

No outline of his personality can be at all
adequate without the attempt being made — if
also in mere outline — to describe an exceedingly
elusive, but at the same time distinguishing
characteristic, which the word charm does not
entirely cover; it was this, that the Seer in
him, or, if it must be called by the more modern
name, the transcendental Self, was always
visible. Intensely human as he was, under-
standing all in the lives of those about him —
the most trifling difficulties and the most pro-
found — entering gaily into the merriest mood
or the manliest sport, the presence of this trans-
cendental Self was always apparent. Everything
about him seemed an expression of this, and if
touched by some thought of specially wide
reach from a friend or from a book, the contact
with his imaginative Self sent a sort of trans-
figured look into his face, as if a flame had been
lighted.

Knowing nothing of psychical phenomena,
it is not for me to suggest any connection
between this visionary quality and three un-
accountable incidents which happened to him
in these years. Of any psychic faculty he was
not in the least conscious, he never encouraged
anything of the sort in himself by going to
seances or making acquaintance with mediums.
Strange things happened to him, he knew, but
how they occurred, or what they meant, he
did not attempt to explain. The first of these
adventures was at Careggi, and bears on the face

115

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

of it such possibility of a practical joke, played
by an undiscoverable though no ghostly being,
that it need not be recounted here. The second
was different. It happened when he was walk-
ing home late one evening to the house of
Mr. Ionides, who was then living at Tulse Hill.
Coming to a long stretch of pavement, walled
in for the villa gardens on each side of the road,
a very plainly dressed woman in a plaid shawl
went along the pavement before him, and very
naturally his eyes were fixed upon the folds of
her dress, taking note of the varieties of shadow
and the play of light as she passed under the
light of several street lamps. As the hour was
late he was walking quickly, and therefore over-
took her, and he just turned in passing to glance
at her — but she was not. He stopped, astounded
to find himself alone, looked forward and back-
ward, examined the wall to see if there was
any way through it, but there was none, nothing
but a stretch of blank wall, lighted by the lamp
that was close to her and to him when she
vanished. He told his friends of this strange
experience, but no story of murder or other
tragic occurrence connected with that place was
ever heard of.

An even more strange and more beautiful
thing out of the mysterious came to him during
the first months of his tenancy of the Charles
Street studio. At one end was a staircase with
a landing leading to his bedroom door. One
night, hearing a sound for which he could not

116

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

account, he got up from bed, and without a
light went out upon the landing, standing
quietly there to listen. He then became aware
that the sound he heard was the sound of wings
beating against the vaulted ceiling of the studio,
and that as they circled round and round, a
voice cried softly ; " anima mia, anima mia"
now farther, now nearer, and then all ceased,
and there was perfect stillness. " It seemed
to me then," he once said, " that it was a soul
seeking its own essence." It was no dream ;
the sound of the fluttering wings and the voice
that he heard were as real to him as the floor
that he stood on, or the wall against which the
wings beat.

117

CHAPTER V

n 9

Love of art almost implies sympathy ', since its
productions are as much to give pleasure to others
as to ourselves^ unless it has been debased to a
mere trade.

G. F. WATTS.

I20

CHAPTER V

Into the three or four years of the painter's
tenancy of the Charles Street studio a good
many events were crowded, all of which fall
with importance into the story of his life. He
was working hard and refusing all temptations
to go into society, though many doors were
open to him at this time ; but one day, being
at Holland House, he fell into conversation
with a man much about in London — a Mr.
Fleming — who happened to mention the beauty
of a certain young lady, Miss Virginia Pattle,
now living in Chesterfield Street, as he explained,
with her sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and
Mrs. Thoby Prinsep. To them he declared
Mr. Watts must be introduced ; but for answer
he pleaded want of time, and his intention not
to make any new acquaintances, and so the
matter dropped.

Not long after this, it came about that in
the neighbourhood of Charles Street he happened
to pass two ladies walking with a little boy.
All three were in the matter of good looks so
much out of the common — the younger lady

121

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

especially so, her long grey cloak falling in
beautiful lines against her tall figure — that
Mr. Fleming's description of the beautiful Miss
Virginia Pattle came into his mind, and he felt
certain that he had now seen her. He went
home and wrote to Mr. Fleming that he believed
this had happened, and that now he was as
eager to be introduced to the Prinseps as Mr.
Fleming had been to bring this about. The
letter was shown to Mrs. Prinsep, and he was
accordingly invited to their house, 9 Chesterfield
Street. Being near Charles Street, they soon
saw much of each other, and the acquaintance
thus made rapidly passed into a friendship.

Artistic to their finger-tips, with an apprecia-
tion — almost to be called a culte — for beauty,
the sisters were quickly at home in the studio,
and in love with the work and its aims. " I
was never dazzled by any other painter's brush,"
I remember Lady Somers once telling me,
adding, with a smile, " all other brushes were
like boot-brushes to me."

The dress of the sisters was not quite of
the fashion of that time, but designed by them-
selves upon simple lines ; it depended upon
rich colour and ample folds for its beauty, and
was very individual and expressive. Many
were the admirers who sat at Miss Virginia's
feet, both men and women. " Her smile
lighted a room," Mrs. Erskine Wemyss once
said to me, having known her in her youthful
beauty. The first portrait for which she stood

122

1849

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

to Mr. Watts is in delicate silver point, the
long grey cloak falling about her with all the
grace that he had seen on that first morning ;
the next almost a profile outline also in silver
point, showing the deep lids drooping over the
beautiful eyes. But these studies are many,
one so minute that her sister, Mrs. Cameron,
always carried it inside her watch - case.
Through all the adulation she remained un-
spoilt and unaffected — " great," as her painter used
to say, " in the absence of self-consciousness."

Mr. Prinsep was now a Member of Council
at the India Office, having returned to England
after some thirty-five years' work in India — one
of several brothers who had laboured there with
distinction. Large and philosophic in mind,
grand in his stature, his learning, his memory,
his everything, even to his sneeze ! (once
received with an encore from the gallery of a
theatre), childlike in his gentleness and in the
sweetness of his nature, it was no wonder that
Mr. Watts was quickly attracted to him. In
after years he deeply regretted that of the
many literary men who knew Mr. Prinsep
well, none had left any description of a
man so remarkable for his endowments. He
remembered the Poet Laureate, as he rose to
go, having ended a long hour's talk one day
with his friends then living at the Briary at
Freshwater, exclaiming in that sonorous voice
of his, and with the deliberation that gave such
weight to his words, "Well, Thoby, you are

123

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

a wonderful man." " He was," my husband
said once, " an encyclopedia of valuable informa-
tion on every sort of subject. It was just like
turning the pages of a delightful book, and, like
it, open if you wanted it and shut when you
did not. Like a child in the perfect un-
consciousness of his wonderful knowledge and
absence of display — as simple as a child, and
with its charm."

It will be granted, however, that there is a
whole biography in the portrait head of him
painted in the early 'seventies, and now amongst
the collected works in the Watts Gallery at
Compton, Surrey ; * and further that it reaches
the painter's own standard of true portraiture,
that of finding the man behind the surface.
The surface is there rendered as it was in life,
the blood circulates, the bones lie beneath, but
the man is there also : the brain at work, the
eye alive with thought ; and yet through all
these appears the charm of his childlikeness.

Mr. Thoby Prinsep will live in this portrait,
as also in the drawing made in charcoal when
he was a much younger man about 1850-52.
These were the friends into the centre of whose
life George Watts was gradually being drawn,
and, amidst the unseen flow of events carrying
him to this haven, none perhaps had more force
than that he was again slipping back into a bad
state of health. His old enemy of headache and

1 The portrait was generously given to this gallery by Mrs. Andrew
Hichens.

124

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

nausea had returned, and so violent were these
attacks that, while they lasted, he would lie
quite motionless for hours, with almost the look
and the pallor of death upon his face. 1

This, of course, appealed to the large mother-
heart of Mrs. Prinsep, with her genius for all
sorts of confections in the way of delicate foods,
and endowed as she was with untiring energy,
especially where nursing was required.

A serious and prolonged illness of this nature,
which was then described as a nervous fever,
befell him during the early months of 1850,
with a threatening of paralysis. Throughout
this illness Mrs. Prinsep took care that he was
well nursed, and during his convalescence both
sisters were constantly with him. It was decided
that he was to have the advice of Dr. Gully at
Malvern, the Prinseps being already there. On
his way to join them he spent some days at
Eastnor Castle, and the beautiful Virginia and
her sister drove over to fetch him from the place
which was afterwards her own home. It is said
that Lord Somers — then Lord Eastnor — first saw
her portrait in Mr. Watts's studio and fell in
love with it. However that may be, he
certainly captured the original, and they were
married in October of this year, 1850.

Many were the reminiscences I used to hear
of her forty years later. " Oh, how in love with
her we all were ! ' Lord Aberdare exclaimed

1 This description was given to me on separate occasions, but in almost
the same words, both by General Arthur Prinsep and by Mrs. Ross (Miss
Janet Duff Gordon).

125

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

once, turning away from a charcoal drawing,
perhaps the portrait that above all others renders
her beauty to the utmost — the face in full view,
life size, and with eyes deep as the night sky.

Sir Charles Newton, amongst others, used to
break out into reminiscences, and point to this
picture and that, saying, " It was painted when
my friend Watts and I, in company with several
others, were deeply grieved by the thought that
Lady Somers had married ; we thought she ought
not to marry any one." It was at this time,
perhaps under an impulse to make an effort to
conquer his own depression, by going beyond
self into the sufferings of others, that Mr. Watts
painted three or four pictures of such sorrowful
sort as " Found Drowned, " the wreck of a
young girl's life, with the dark arch of the
bridge she had crossed from the seen to the
unseen, the cold dark river, and the deep-blue
heaven with its one star watching all. "The
Irish Famine" (which at this date Mr. de Vere
calls " The Irish Eviction," so possibly its title
was still uncertain) was painted over and
obliterated another design, called " Panthea,"
a more splendid subject from Xenophon's
Cyropczdia ; also " Under a Dry Arch," a dying
woman with all the anguish of a long life scored
upon her face ; and perhaps " The Seamstress,"
recalling Thomas Hood's " Song of the Shirt,"
though this picture was completed later at Little
Holland House.

There was much to sadden him ; the want of

126

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

response, except amongst his own personal friends,
to all the enthusiasm with which he had returned
to England, full of faith in a revival of great art,
was making itself felt with chilling effect year
by year. In a moment of depression he writes :
" I do not expect at most to have the opportunity
of doing more than prepare the way for better
men — and not that always ; more often I sit
among the ruins of my aspirations, watching the
tide of time. Will not that explain somewhat
the picture you call the ' Seashore ' ? " No wonder
that in such a mood he once signed " Finis " in
the corner of one of his pictures. But the
challenge to despair was given by Mr. Ruskin,
who, on reading the word, took up the charcoal
and added beneath, " et initiutn." If the end,
then a beginning ; and so it proved to be.

During the autumn, finding that for various
reasons Mr. and Mrs. Prinsep were anxious to
live more in the neighbourhood of London, and
not in it, Mr. Watts took them to see a house
now to be let, known as a sort of dower-house of
Holland House, in which Lord Holland's aunt,
Miss Fox, had lived for many years with her
cousin Miss Vernon ; and the result was that on
December 25 a lease of twenty-one years was
entered upon, and in January they established
themselves there.

Little Holland House, with its rambling
passages and many stairs and quaint rooms,
showing clearly that formerly two houses had
been made one, had its garden and fine trees and

127

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

its paddock, and beyond again the farm, which
later Mr. Prinsep also rented, lay only two miles
from Hyde Park Corner, with much untouched
country still around it.

The place had its history : Miss Fox had
entertained most of her brother's friends there —
Macaulay, Mackintosh, Coleridge, and others.
Jeremy Bentham was her friend, and report says
that he wished to marry her. The glimpses
given to us are of a most lovable lady, and her
uncle Charles James Fox had a great affection
for her. To Little Holland House they carried
the dying Lord Camelford from the field behind it,
after the fatal duel that he had himself provoked
with Mr. Best, and there four days later he died.
Its windows looked out upon the field upon
which Cromwell and Ireton had walked dis-
cussing affairs so secret that they chose this
remote spot, in order to prevent Cromwell's
words, when speaking loudly to Ireton, who
was deaf, from reaching other ears. The
twenty-one years' lease now held by Mr. Prinsep,
and in the end extended by four more, was
destined to be the last of the old house, but if
this latest chapter of its life could have been
written, it would have in no way diminished in
interest.

How Mr. Watts came to live there was once
picturesquely described to me by Mrs. Prinsep :
" He came to stay three days, he stayed thirty
years," she said, with a little descriptive action of
her hand ; and it seems a pity to destroy such

128

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

dramatic summing up by mere fact. But Mr.
Watts's recollection was different, and he felt
certain that the arrangement was made from the
first. Perhaps neither memory was quite at
fault, the arrangement most likely being proposed
at first, but not carried out, and some months
later initiated somewhat accidentally.

In girlhood Mrs. Prinsep and her sisters had
lived in France with their grandmother, Madame
de L/Etang, whom, by the way, Mr. Watts
remembered seeing, when upwards of eighty,
down on her knees in a passage in the house in
Chesterfield Street, keenly interested in playing
a game of chuck -halfpenny with her great-
grandsons. Madame de L'Etang had solved the
problem of education for her granddaughters by
having them taught all sorts of housewifely arts,
rather to the neglect of lesson-books and accom-
plishments. Listening to Mrs. Prinsep's descrip-
tion of her early life, and her regrets that she had
had what she called " no education," riveted all the
while by her power of vivid description and her
originality of expression, one could but acknow-
ledge the perfect success of the omission. It
was a remarkable group of sisters, each so
individual in her own way. The eldest, Mrs.
Jackson, had now become known to Mr. Watts.
The intimate friend of many literary men and
women, she also seemed to me in her old age to
be the most beautiful of the sisters ; for, as my
husband explained to me, the structure of her
face was so fine that the beauty of line only
vol. i 129 k

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

increased with age. A drawing of her was
in the Royal Academy Exhibition of the year
1850, as well as one of her daughter Adeline.
With these he also exhibited his picture, the
" Good Samaritan," dedicated to Thomas Wright,
the Manchester philanthropist, an account of
whose labours Mr. Watts read in turning over
the pages of Chambers's Magazine while having
luncheon at some restaurant. The work for
discharged prisoners, later to be so greatly
developed by Lord Shaftesbury, was begun by
this man. While earning a daily wage in a
cotton manufactory, with a large family to
support, his attention was drawn to the case of a
poor man who earnestly desired to re-establish
himself honestly after having been in gaol, and
who was being driven out by the strong pre-
judice of his fellow-workmen. In the end the
managers gave him his discharge, and though
this was rescinded on Wright's intercession, it
was too late, and the man had already gone they
knew not where. The " Good Samaritan " is
described thus in the catalogue : " Painted as an
expression of the artist's admiration and respect
for the noble philanthropy of Thomas Wright
of Manchester." It was given with this dedica-
tion to the Town Hall of that city, and a few
months later Wright himself appeared, bringing
Mr. Watts a thank-offering of six pocket-
handkerchiefs. He also gave him the great
pleasure of hearing that the presentation of that
picture, having called attention to his work, had

130

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

been already of great service to him. Seeing
that the head of Wright was remarkable in its
refined and spiritual beauty, he asked if it was
possible for him to give a sitting of an hour
or so ; with the result that a drawing in black
and red chalk — now in its place in the National
Portrait Gallery — was made in the Charles Street
studio, and there Wright is niched amongst
men who have made their mark.

"The Saxon Sentinels," painted at Dor-
chester House, was at this time exchanged for
a little piano ; this picture being afterwards
sold to Mr. Burton of York by a dealer in the
Strand, it disappeared for some time. It is
believed that Mr. Burton stored the picture and
forgot the painter's name ; but under his will it
passed into the possession of the Corporation
Gallery of York. It was there rediscovered by
Mr. Marion Spielmann, who recognised it from
the description he remembered hearing from
Mr. Watts. At the same time he began, but
never completed, a companion picture, which he
called " Bayard and Aristides," choosing these
as representative men.

In 1852 Mazzini was brought to his studio
by one who cared much for the picture of
"Time and Oblivion." To this friend Mazzini
had maintained that it was not possible for a
picture to have any moral influence, and denied
that it could have intellectual suggestions, after
the manner of a poem. However, he came, and,
after looking at the picture, confessed that he

131

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

had been wrong, and that the painter was
working in a new way.

Still anxious for wall space upon which he
could fresco some subject worthy of commemo-
ration, he asked Lord Elcho to be mediator.
Acquaintance with him had first been made in
Florence in 1843 when, on their marriage tour,
Lady Anne and Mr. Frank Charteris — as he
then was — came to the Casa Feroni. The great
hall at Euston Station had been built, and Lord
Elcho approached the Chairman of the London
and North- Western Railway on the subject of
allowing his friend the painter to decorate it on
condition that the railway company should pay
for scaffolding and pigments. The Chairman
stated privately that even such expense was not
justified by the state of the company's finances :
the architect was much alarmed, and declared
that he and the directors would probably be
stoned if such a scheme were sanctioned by
them. It has somehow come about that, in
mentioning Mr. Watts's offer to fresco Euston
Station, recent writers have made the mistake of
saying that it was there he intended to paint
the history of Cosmos — the House of Life.
Reading a statement of this sort once to him, he
told me very positively that " it was entirely
disconnected with Euston, for this remained a
vague idea never taking any particular form
through want of encouragement."

Meantime the Fine Arts Commissioners
offered a small space, in all only thirty feet long

132

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

and divided into six compartments, to the same
number of painters, in which subjects from
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden,
and Pope were to be painted, "with a view
to the future decoration of the Palace of
Westminster." Unfortunately there were many
objections to this scheme. Where space was so
limited, to accomplish a good result by means of
six different minds, at work on different themes
from six different poets, a kind of patchwork
must have been the inevitable result. The light
reflected by means of mirrors from the windows
above the pictures was exceedingly bad ; more-
over the corridor was in frequent use, which was
most disturbing. Mr. Watts was so little satisfied
with what he was able to accomplish that he
wrote to Sir Charles Eastlake, offering either to
repaint his picture under more favourable con-
ditions, or, as he says, " to paint some other
space instead, if Her Majesty's Commissioners
will give me permission ; and this I should con-
sider a very great favour indeed, and I would
not venture to make such a proposal but that,
regarding the whole work as a national one, I
feel that every individual member has a right to
offer his best services, and I can never consent
to leave in the House of Parliament, or indeed
anywhere else, anything that is not as good as I
can make it." Unfortunately these panels were
destined to rapid decay. I do not know to
what cause it has been attributed.

I think I understood that these were not

133

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

pure fresco paintings; anyhow, in 1858 Mr.
Watts saw the first symptoms of decay, the
colour peeling off the plaster, not only in his
own fresco but in Mr. Cope's also. At the
present time, as the mischief was beyond repair,
the remnants of the six paintings are entirely
covered up from view. Some very delicate
pencil drawings, done at this time by G. F.
Watts, and two sketches in oil-colour for this
design, called by him " St. George overcoming
the Dragon," are preserved, so is the cartoon ;
though greatly damaged. These are sufficient
to show the artist's conception of Spenser's
" Triumph of the Red Cross Knight," when

All the people as in solemn feast

To him assembled with one full consort,

Rejoicing at the fall of the great beast

From whose eternal bondage now they were releast.

Of this composition he writes : " I fear it
may be thought too crowded ; but I would
venture to defend this as being characteristic of
the poem, the intention and style of which, it
appears to me, the artist should endeavour to
illustrate, rather than any particular incident."

About 1852 a remarkable Greek was in
London — Theophilus Kairus — and some of his
compatriots, Mr. Watts's friends, were anxious
that he should be painted. A young Greek
once told me a story that had grown up about
this portrait. Kairus, he said, had refused to sit,
and it had therefore been quietly arranged that
he and the painter should meet at dinner, and

134

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

be seated opposite each other. Mr. Watts had
come, and had eaten nothing, but had given his
whole mind to the study of his subject, and so
without further sittings had accomplished his
fine portrait. My husband, when he was told
this, said that it might be partly true, though
he did not remember how far it was so ; but
he added that Kai'rus certainly sat to him
several times. He was of the type of an old
Greek philosopher, wonderfully good and noble.
Because of his religious views he was prosecuted,
sent to prison, and thereby ruined, as he depended
on his school for a livelihood. The original
portrait was lost ; it was lent to a copyist, who
finally pawned it, and it utterly disappeared.
Mrs. Coronio ] had a replica of this picture.

Still urgent for wall space, in June 1852,
having seen the blank spaces on the walls of
the great Hall at Lincoln's Inn, Mr. Watts
wrote to make a definite offer to the Benchers
as follows : —

" Believing that no man of liberal education
denies or undervalues the importance of art, at
once the test and record of civilisation, it is
still a disgrace to us that, while in literature,
in science, and in arms we are second to none
in the highest and noblest branches, our paint-
ing and sculpture can lay claim to no very
great excellence. This I am certain is not to
be attributed to want of talent. Long reflection
and extensive comparison of the different schools

1 Aglaia Ionides.
135

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

and epochs of art have convinced me of the
importance of mural decoration as a means of
developing those qualities which would place
British artists by the side of British poets, and
form a great national school. It is with these
views and in the earnest desire to apply what
little talent and acquirement I may possess to
useful purposes, and feeling that no man of
intellect can prefer dumbness of language and
blank spaces to the eloquent literature of art,
that I venture to make to the Benchers and
students of Lincoln's Inn the following pro-
position, namely, if they will subscribe to
defray the expense of the material, I will give
designs and labour, and undertake to paint in
fresco any part or the whole of the Hall."
Owing mainly to the representations of the
architect of the Hall, Mr. Philip Hardwicke,
the hearty consent of the Benchers was obtained,
and the fresco was begun in the following year,
and went on intermittently whenever the courts
were not sitting. Whilst waiting for this
opportunity the painter was keeping his hand
in — so to speak — by decorating the walls of
Little Holland House, in company with Mr.
Roddam Spencer Stanhope, who in the summer of
1850 had been introduced to him by Dr. Henry
Acland, 1 who wrote : " He is the Commoner of
Christchurch of whom Newton spoke to you
as an aspirant amateur draftsman. You will be
pleased with his simplicity and bonhomie."

1 Later Sir Henry Acland.
136

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

A glimpse of their companionship at this
time has been given in letters from Mr. Stanhope
to his people at home. 1

" I am undergoing what Watts terms the
discipline of drawing. ... I am at work now
upon a towel scattered in a picturesque way
upon the floor, and which Watts has enjoined
me to draw with as hard a pencil as I can get,
and shade with the finest lines possible, in order
to study and imitate everything I see upon it,
even to the blacks.

" He says the first object is to acquire power
in representing any object whatsoever upon
paper in black and white, and this is the surest
and quickest way of arriving at this facility.
After that has been obtained, the rest is com-
paratively easy — anatomy, study of form, etc.,
being most necessary, and painting may follow
close upon that. He recommends me to draw
lots of outlines as well, carefully and decidedly,
and without rubbing out ; but to avoid drawing
even from the antiques indiscriminately, and he
says it is a sure way of spoiling one's taste for
form. He seems to approve of few besides the
Elgin Marbles as lessons to study from." As
I copy these words of advice given in 1851, I
feel how entirely they represent the views he
held to the end of his life — the advice given
in the 'seventies to me, and again so often
repeated when students came to him during

1 Quoted by Mrs. Stirling in her article entitled "Roddam Spencer
Stanhope," Nineteenth Century and After, August number, 1909.

137

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the last years of his life. One gathers from
this letter that Mr. Stanhope had accepted his
views as to the value of daylight ; for he
writes that he breakfasts at a quarter past seven,
and gets to the studio in Charles Street about
eight o'clock.

"About one o'clock I find myself at Little
Holland House, where I do a little in the way
of luncheon, and when that is cleared away
Watts and I set to work, which we carry on till
it is nearly dark.

" Watts, now I know him, is a glorious
companion, and the Prinseps are very jolly
people."

Although in the letter of introduction from
Sir Henry Acland the desire is that the relations
between them should be as master and pupil,
I think it may be said with absolute certainty
that Mr. Watts never did undertake to give
more than a certain direction either to Mr.
Stanhope's studies or to those of others. " I
never had a pupil in the true sense of the
word," he often said ; and I remember Lord
Carlisle turning round suddenly when talking
to him, and laughing heartily, he walked down
the studio to where Mrs. Percy Wyndham
and I were, and explained, " Signor has just
told me he never felt advanced enough himself
to take a pupil." The position is — so it seems
to me — made clear by Mr. Stanhope himself,
who writes — and this in 1853 after working
beside Mr. Watts some eighteen months : " You

138

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

see what I have done in the way of study has
been all original, and without the aid of masters.
I think Watts is right ; he is very fearful of
influencing me in any way, and never makes a
comment upon anything I show him, but only
urges me on, and gives me good advice about
keeping in the right way."

The relationship between them, in Mr.
Watts's eyes, would be that of fellow-students ;
as he had the advantage of years and experience,
he believed that he might have principles to give
to the younger man, but this was all. Lady
Elizabeth Stanhope, anxious about his influence
upon her son, " moral as well as artistic," is
reassured, partly because her son thinks most
highly of his character ; partly because he
tells her of the giant-stride in Little Holland
House garden — she calls it a merry-go-round
— where the three Prinsep boys, their tutor,
with Roddy and Watts, go round and round
till they are quite exhausted ; and she adds,
" very innocent." Then, after Mr. Watts had
given up his studio in Charles Street in
September 1852, she invited him to stay with
them at her son's request, mentioning that after
his kindness to " Roddy " this cannot be refused,
and she is still further reassured. " Watts is as
quiet as a mouse," she writes, " working from
morning to night, and is not an expensive guest,
as he drinks nothing but water." I rather
think that his friend Henry Phillips may have
taken over the studio, or else the Cosmopolitan

139

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Club allowed him to make use of it at times, as
he seems to have made appointments with his
sitters in Charles Street as late as September
1853. I* was P r °bably about this time that
he built his first studio at Little Holland House.
A gap between two walls was filled up by him,
and this was his working studio, though in
the heat of summer he found it too sunny,
and for this reason he built another later, on
the north-west side. This studio shows to the
left on the drawing of the old house from the
north-east.

In May 1852 Dr. Acland had asked Mr.
Watts to consider the idea of filling a spandril in
his house at Oxford. He suggested that an
outline of a composition by Flaxman, a particular
design for which Mr. Acland had a great
admiration, might be suitable for the space.
The design was one taken from Flaxman's illus-
trations to Hesiod, engraved by Blake. To this
request Mr. Watts replied in a letter a copy of
which exists ; it is dated from Little Holland
House, May 8, 1852. In it he says : "I should
find it very difficult to reply suitably to your
most kind letter, and I will not make the attempt.
I know that you do not intend to flatter, and
therefore take that which would really give me
great pain as an over-estimation of my abilities
to be only a proof of sympathy with my views
and aspirations, and as such most gratifying and
encouraging. I am most sincere in my wish to
do good, for many years grieving to see art

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

without a mission or an aim, and ardently
desiring to awaken some remembrance of its
legitimate purpose and real use. Professionally I
have neither interest nor ambition besides the
furtherance of what I feel to be a worthy object
in any way that I can imagine, or in any way
that may be suggested. The most that I can
expect is to be instrumental in preparing the way
for better men, and I am right glad to see upon
the walls of the Royal Academy this year ample
evidence that these will not be wanting. Mean-
while I will paint and send you a picture from
Flaxman to fill up the space you offer. I was
sure you would duly admire the great productions
of that fine genius."

This spandril is now in the Ashmolean
Museum. In 1902, on receiving a letter from
Oxford inquiring about the spandril, my husband
told me that Sir Henry Acland had greatly
admired this particular design, and that in con-
sequence he drew it out on a large scale and
laid it in flat colour for him.

" Flaxman had no sense of colour, that was
his great fault ; his outlines were superb," my
husband once said to me. " It was the lack of
this sense that made him blind to the beauty of
the Elgin Marbles. In the best sculpture you
feel the palpitations of colour, the elements of a
picture ; you unconsciously see it painted ! His
work was beautiful on a small scale, but on larger
work he was all abroad. Actual dimension has
an impressiveness all its own.

141

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

" Accustomed to draw in outline on a small
scale, Flaxman overlooked the fact that the
simple mass that had such a good effect in his
outline would be, when put into stone, but a
lump of stone, not representing flexible conditions
or colour."

In June 1852 Sir Charles Newton, writing
from Mitylene, where he had lately been
appointed Consul, tries to entice him there.

" Why are you not here ? If you could but see
my cave by the seashore, where I lie all through
a summer's day, and read Shelley. All nature
shut out by the over-hanging rock except one
blue bit of the Mediterranean, which comes in
little summer waves, splashing at my feet. All
through my siesta I hear the monotonous
murmur, which has continued to lull weary
mortals to sleep since the time when in these
islands was the cradle of Greek civilisation. I
am getting very fond of the place ; it would suit
you exactly. I feel that the landscape before
my eyes is the landscape which Homer saw, and
has described in his similes, and which Pheidias
turned into beautiful impersonations in sculpture ;
here there is no sensation of collision and conflict
between the elements and man. His physical
frame and the nature around him, though different
in kind, seem so completely in harmony that we
are for ever reminded that we are parts of one
great system. I gaze at the landscape till my very
soul seems absorbed and blended into it, till I
forget the material constraints of the body. No

142

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

wonder that the ancients made death beautiful ;
who would hold any other faith in such a
climate ? Have you finished your fresco ? [St.
George, in the House of Lords]. When will
you come out to me ? "

This must have been a great temptation to
the man

Who in that monstrous London dwelt,
And half-remembered Arcady,

and he writes in reply : " Indeed I could find
it in my heart to desire no better fate than
to dream away my life in such an isle as
Mitylene, but I repress the half-formed longing.
I wish you here very much daily, nay, hourly ;
we have views and sympathies in common, and I
see with great interest and satisfaction the time
approaching when the principles I have so long
worked for, and which you with more dexterity
and power were beginning to dash into shape,
may be carried into effect and brought to bear
upon a useful purpose."

But in the autumn of the following year he
allowed himself a month's holiday, and in
company with Roddam Spencer Stanhope and
Henry, the eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. Prinsep,
he went back to his beloved Italy. After a day
or two in Paris they left for Marseilles — no
dreadful diligence experience this time ; but
the railway was not open beyond Chalons, so
he again went down the Saone and Loire to
Avignon, where trains were available, and so on
to Marseilles. They saw something of Genoa

143

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

on their way to Leghorn, stayed at Pisa and
Florence, and went thence by vetturino to
Bologna, Padua, and Venice. These two last-
named places he had not seen during his former
stay in Italy. I find a fragment of a letter from
him beginning : —

" My dear Ruskin — I have been to Venice :
you are right " — here the rest of the sheet is
torn off, but on another side the letter con-
tinues : " I can better understand now why I
fail ; Titian, Giorgione, and all the most glow-
ing and gorgeous translations of the Venetian
School have rendered Nature as I feel her — as
I too would render her — but my imagination
is not vivid, nor my memory powerful. In
Venice especially the exquisite colour of the
time-tinted stone against the splendid sky gave
me ideas of combinations such as I have scarcely
ever seen even in those great masters I have
named. The fine bearded heads, grandly
coloured chests and limbs every moment being
presented to view, made me long for colours
and brushes. Under the influence of the
glowing sun every object is presented in a
manner so in harmony with my own feelings
that the whole language of Nature seems to me
perfectly intelligible." And here the fragment
ends.

In another note on this journey his en-
thusiasms awake and are crying out : —

"Then ! the glories of that Golden House,

144

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the Cathedral of St. Mark's, more, to my
thinking (no critic as I am), like a house not
made with hands than anything I ever saw ;
with its uneven pavement and walls, its strange
antique mosaics, and the more modern ones of
equally high import and more beauty : not
pictures, but representations of heads, arms, legs,
or draperies — the large utterance of a majestic
language — how impressive, how intelligible is
the whole ! When the rays of the setting sun
passing through the windows of one side of the
dome illumine the opposite side, the effect is
wonderful — wonderful in the variety of colour
and ornament. Below, niches that seem to be
scooped out of solid gold are thrown into
depths of shadow by massive projections. Upon
the broken surface of gold, bright spots start
out like gems, as some tessera on the surface
presents a different plane to the light. As the
eye travels upward to that part of the dome in
full light, by contrast it looks like the glory of
heaven itself. Such wealth of material, bound-
less profusion, and reckless scattering of variety
is a rendering of nature's joy. I had not
imagined it possible to attain such completeness
of design with apparent absence of it ; largeness
of whole, with its marvellous impression of
unity, profusion without confusion, finish with-
out smallness, contrasts without discords, har-
monies without monotony."

This happens to be the only bit of writing
fresh from his first impressions of Venice. One

VOL. 1 145 l

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

would like to have found something that he
had written when he first stood before the
" Peter Martyr," Titian's great " Assumption,"
the " Miracle of St. Mark," or the " Colleoni " —
all of these great works remembered by him as
" amongst the greatest examples of art, reflect-
ing all the splendour of the great republic." I
recollect that the Accademia was at that time
in a state of some confusion, and Mr. Kerr-
Lawson tells me he remembers Mr. Watts
saying that all the Carpaccios — which were
unknown to him — were turned with their faces
to the wall, and that he ventured to turn one
partly round, exclaiming to Mr. Stanhope,
" This is not bad ! "

On their return journey they stopped at
Padua for the purpose of seeing the work of
Giotto in the cathedral. Of him he writes a
few months later : " Giotto was a most wonder-
ful man ; departing from manner, dryness, and
positive deformity, he displays beauty, dignity,
and sweetness in degrees that perhaps have
never been exceeded. There is a majesty of
form and largeness of character that no artist
since his time has ever produced with equal
simplicity. Haydon remarks upon the really
strange resemblance some of his heads bear to
the heads of the frieze of the Parthenon, and
concludes that he must at second-hand have
received instruction from Pheidias. He supposes
that some wandering artist had made him
acquainted either with some fragments or some

146

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

drawings from the Panathenaic procession ; but
in Giotto there is so little evidence of imitation,
and all appears to be so much of a piece, that
it is more likely his original and powerful mind
enabled him to perceive and seize upon the
noblest properties in nature ; and indeed it
would require a still larger compass of mind
to avoid servile imitation and repetition of a
beloved model, and there is no trace of the
mannerism that would have been inevitable
in the works of Giotto. Yet certainly the
resemblance in principles of form, exhibited in
his heads especially, to those of the best time
of Greek art — the age of Pheidias — is little less
than marvellous. There is in the cathedral at
Padua, amongst other fine things by him, the
figure of an angel seated in a boat, that for
grandeur and style might have been the work
of Pheidias himself. I have seen nothing so like
in the whole range of art, the dry sculpturesque
qualities rendering it to the superficial observer
more like, by suggesting sculpture, but at the
same time rendering it less like in fact ; for
Pheidias was eminently pictorial, stopping short
exactly at that point where richness and flexi-
bility merges into the florid. In this quality
of luscious breadth and richness of surface, his
style later comes out gloriously ; for Giorgione
and Titian are wonderfully Pheidian in texture
of flesh and drapery. In the flesh, the same
breadth and richness of general treatment,
rendered firm and solid by the larger markings

147

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

given with great determination. The form is
less perfect, but the feeling is identical. The
drapery is really exact in treatment, crumpled,
folded in every direction, sitting close to the
figure, because it has been worn. The direction
of fold is given by the movement and play of
muscle ; it is never tortured to make out the form,
never clumped into masses, in a mistaken notion
of breadth. However voluminous and ample
the drapery may be in the works of Pheidias,
Giorgione, or Titian, the figure never seems
smothered or loaded. The drapery of Raphael
has been justly celebrated for its grandeur and
simplicity, but excellent as it is, it looks
academic and like new blanket by the side of
the Greek and the Venetian. It is remarkable
that this peculiar quality of ease, flexibility, and
richness seems to have been entirely overlooked
in the Parthenon fragments, if indeed they
have not been regarded as defects, which
perhaps is most probable. No sculptor has
seemed to consider that the great master in-
tentionally cut up his drapery ; yet what pro-
found knowledge of both nature and of his
materials has he not displayed ! He knew that
large plain masses, in so solid a material, would
necessarily tell with great effect upon the eye ;
therefore if he made his less interesting forms
of drapery heavy and simple, he could not
prevent them from having an undue effect. By
cutting up the drapery with innumerable folds,
he gave the idea of flexible material, covering,

148

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

but not trammelling the wearer, worn for orna-
ment and use ; by flowing lines he gave grace,
by difference of surface he suggested a different
material, by many folds he took away the
importance of the mass, leaving the head and
limbs free and uninterfered with, simple, massive,
and important.

" An advocate for the use of colour in sculp-
ture, and believing that Pheidias employed it, I
see in the general treatment reasons in favour
of the contrary opinion, which I am surprised
have never been remarked ; for his method of
suggesting difference of texture and colour in
the drapery (by means of his chisel alone) would
certainly go far to render colour unnecessary,
and might be triumphantly appealed to as an
argument that Pheidias did not use colour.

" It has been often said that Nature is always
the same — the broadest and simplest principles
taken into consideration ; she is, but it cannot be
denied that great modifications take place. The
sun shining upon scarlet drapery produces an
effect as splendid as ever it did in ancient Greece
or Venice; and — allowing for the effect of
sun and climate — the vagabond scantily-covered
tramp is not very unlike the mendicant who
asked alms of Alcibiades. The country boy, in
his well-worn smock frock, will to this day treat
you to Pheidian folds. But form and colour of
flesh have certainly deteriorated. The well-
dressed gentleman of 1854 can bear small
resemblance to the exquisite of the time of

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Pericles ; the limbs, deprived, by the fashion
of modern clothing, of freedom, and shut off
from the action of sun and air, never acquire
their natural development, texture, or colour.
The junctures alone are fine in form and natural
in character, because they have so much work
to do, they are obliged to perfect themselves,
and therefore nature's intentions cannot be
thwarted."

Here the MS. ends — whether intended for
publication or merely part of a letter there is
nothing to show.

On his return to England he took up the
work at Lincoln's Inn, painting there by ar-
rangement, only during the spring and summer
vacations, and unfortunately much interrupted,
especially as years went on, by illness. He had
proposed to himself to paint on this great wall
— the space being forty-five feet wide and forty
feet high — the design he afterwards named
"Justice — A Hemicycle of Law-givers." Pre-
ferring to work without having made any
cartoon, as he had done for the " St. George," he
followed the practice adopted by him for the
large picture of Alfred, and made drawings,
sometimes on so small a scale that the whole
composition went into half a sheet of notepaper ;
no study seems to have been larger than a
medium- sized sheet of drawing-paper could
carry, though many of the heads of the legis-
lators were drawn or painted life-size, his friends
being laid under contribution in some degree

15°

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

as models for the various types. At one time
he thought of asking students of art, " anxious,
like young soldiers, to prove themselves," to
give him assistance in the work. He did not
remember whether or not he ever applied for
this, but was quite certain that he never had any
help whatever, and he attacked the big work
single-handed. To him the subject appeared to
be a great one, bound up with the evolution
of civilisation — " that evolution in which our
religion takes its place," he explained — and it is
noticeable that Moses in the central place is
head and shoulders above all others ; and not
only this, but he alone amongst the law-givers
has the uplifted head and face, as if listening to
something higher than human argument — the
" practical mystic " who receives his orders
direct from Heaven. Mahomet also turns with
something of the same action, but he looks
towards Moses rather than to the Invisible. He
is one of the four singled out with intention to
stand somewhat apart ; the others being Alfred,
Charlemagne, and Justinian.

The plaster was always freshly laid the day
before he worked upon any part, and as far as he
was able, with the careful attention of Messrs.
Winsor and Newton, the colours were carefully
chosen with regard to permanency.

One of the most enduring pleasures remain-
ing in his memories of this time was that, whilst
he painted, the voices of the choristers reached
him from the chapel, either during service or

I5 1

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

at practice ; the pure sound of the boys' voices,
going and returning as it were, wound about the
building from the unseen and distant ; and he
liked to fancy that a choir of angels was singing
to him while he worked.

152

CHAPTER VI

15:

We want the soldiers of art, not the fencing

masters.

G. F. WATTS, 1850.

154

CHAPTER VI

Now under the hospitable roof of Little Holland
House went in and out an ebb and flow of
various members of the family : some staying
for days, some for weeks, and some for years,
but all claiming Mr. Watts as one of its
members. It thus became impossible for them
to continue to call him " Mr. Watts." A name
had to be found, and it was found for him by
Mrs. Prinsep's youngest sister Sophie — Mrs.
Dalrymple — the one who, to the end of his life,
when writing to him, signed herself as "Sore//a."
It was she who first called him Signor, the
little word, half name, half title, that suited so
well ; for the many who liked to claim him
especially could use it without feeling that it
had the familiarity of a Christian name. They
generally took the first step by saying " the
Signor," and yet it seemed a suitably intimate
little name, when used by the few who were
most near to him.

It is not easy to explain why, but somehow
his personality made people think of queer little
names for him, in great variety — from the little

i55

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

girl who tried to bribe him, all her heart intent
upon his doing something she particularly
wanted, who looked up coaxingly and said,
" Do, and I'll call you Fish " ; to the full-grown
girl who chose to call him " Lamb," mixing
her metaphors when he was a little fussed about
some unpunctuality one day, by saying, " Now,
darling Lamb, don't be an old maid " — to which
he replied, laughing, " Ah, you have none of the
vices of old maids, nor the politeness of kings."
" Early Lambs," she dubbed his first paintings.

But "Signor" was the universal name, and
his own name George fell out of use entirely.
In Mr. Harry Prinsep's mind remains a charming
bit of vivid recollection of the godmother who
gave Signor that name ; and though he spoke of
the years 1864-65, the reminiscence may take its
place here. A nephew of Mr. Thoby Prinsep's,
he was one of the family for whom Little Holland
House was a home, and where for some two
years between school and taking up his profession
he lived and used to write for and read to
his uncle, who was suffering from cataract.
" Perhaps we were all round the dinner-table,"
he said, " in the lower dining-room — Uncle
Thoby thinking about his work, passing his hand
over his eyes and silent ; Signor not very well and
silent ; Aunt Sara occupied giving all sorts of
directions in a low tone to a servant ; the young
people awed and silent. Suddenly there was a
rustle of silks, a lovely vision appeared — for
Aunt Sophie wandered in, dressed in a gown of

156

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

some rich colour, all full of crinkles " (the male
mind describing marvellously drawn gathers and
folds). "Aunt Sara would scold her a little for
being late, and she would put her head on one
side and answer with a little bit of pathetic
humour ; and before she had been amongst us
three minutes, the whole party was laughing and
talking."

With her head a little on one side, with down-
dropped lids and red-brown hair, Signor has
painted a miniature portrait of her on panel, in a
green dress full of " crinkles," a string of coral
beads about her neck. Years afterwards, on the
back of that picture he wrote the words,
" The days that are no more."

Mrs. Dalrymple's movements were beautiful,
and the soft material she wore fell into arrange-
ments of line full of suggestion to the artist's eye.
To be always at hand, he carried in his pocket a
small notebook of indelible paper with a metal
point in the sheath, and when his eye fell on
any particularly beautiful arrangement in posture
or line he would call out, with a gesture of his
hand, " Oh, pray, stay where you are for a
moment," and the notebook was taken out to
receive a monumental outline on the tiny page.
These drawings, perhaps the least well known of
his artistic expressions, may be placed, I venture
to say, beside his greatest. They are chiefly
drawn from Mrs. Prinsep, Lady Dalrymple, Mrs.
Jackson and her three daughters Adeline, Julia,
and Mary, who from their childhood were much

i57

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

at Little Holland House. His larger drawings
in chalk and charcoal are much better known.
Several of these of the Prinsep family were to
be seen on the walls of old Little Holland
House, including that of Mr. Thoby Prinsep
himself, his three sons, and one of Lady Somers.
And with these were also the studies from Arthur
as a boy, with the locks that the painter bribed
him to keep uncut while he was making the
drawings from which his pictures of " Sir
Galahad," " Aspiration," " Hyperion," and of the
" Red Cross Knight with Una," were afterwards
painted. The full -face portrait of Arthur,
reproduced in the picture " Aspiration," was
borrowed by Mr. Holman Hunt when he was
painting his famous picture of " Christ among
the Doctors." He told Signor it was the type of
head that he wished to keep in his mind when
rendering this subject. By the time this picture
was painted Arthur Prinsep had developed into
the usual close-cropped schoolboy, and therefore
never sat for this.

These drawings were not exhibited at the
time that they were made ; not that Sir Charles
Eastlake did not appreciate them, but a rule in
the Academy bye-laws at the time prevented any
drawing that was merely a head from being
shown there. Sir Henry Thoby Prinsep tells me
that he remembers Sir Charles Eastlake coming,
time after time, to try and persuade Signor to
add just a few lines to outline the shoulders in
each ; but he would not, as he could not per-

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suade himself that it would add to the artistic
worth.

As the attractions of Little Holland House
gradually became more widely known, an un-
usually interesting society gathered there ; especi-
ally on Sunday afternoons, when Mrs. Prinsep was
" At Home " and Mr. Prinsep and Signor were
known to be at leisure. Women remarkable for
gifts of talent and beauty went there, as well
as statesmen, soldiers, painters, poets, and men
famous in literature. Thus under the cottage-like
thatched porch many a distinguished head stooped
and uncovered, to whom, figuratively, the world
now pays that mark of reverence. So near London
— though the sound of its traffic was not more than
the sound of a distant river — the stately trees,
and the wide green spaces merged on all sides in
the acres of Holland House, were alone attractive
enough to make the place popular. But when to
this was added a hostess who, with a genius for
hospitality, drew wit and beauty and talent to-
gether, the entertainment was irresistible.

In a letter to me from Lady Constance
Leslie, she recalls her visit to Little Holland
House. "It was in 1856, when we were first
engaged to be married, that John took me to
what was to me a new world — something I
had never imagined before of beauty and kind-
ness. I was a very ignorant little girl, and oh
how proud I felt, though rather unworthy of
what seemed holy ground. The Signor came
out of his studio all spirit and so delicate, and

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received me very kindly as John's future wife.
Thackeray was there with his young daughters,
Coutts Lindsay, Jacob Omnium, and Lady
Somers glorious and benevolent. Signor was
the whole object of adoration and care in that
house. He seemed to sanctify Little Holland
House. I also remember well the Sunday,
June 13, 1858, when we were dining with
the Prinseps, Alfred Tennyson, Rossetti, Tom
Taylor, Adelaide Sartoris, Edward Burne-Jones,
Coutts Lindsay, and Richard Doyle. Adelaide
Sartoris sang his own poems to Tennyson. In
later years arose the vision of beauty, dear May
Prinsep, and I remember seeing Val carry
young Philip Burne-Jones upstairs — such a con-
trast ! Val as St. Christopher ! "

On weekdays the round of work went on —
Mr. Prinsep at the India Office, the work in the
studio rigorously uninterrupted. Signor's nature,
his work, and his health all compelled him
to live somewhat apart ; though sympathy and
vivid life were so essential to him that through
life he almost craved for these, and drew them
to him unfailingly. Amongst other friends of
this time the author of 'Tom Brown s School
Days, Mr. Tom Hughes, his brothers and
their only sister Jeanie (Mrs. Nassau Senior),
were much at Little Holland House. Being
an only daughter, she had been brought up in
her country home entirely with her brothers ;
her naturally bright and spontaneous out-of-door
nature appealed to Signor greatly, and she soon

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

became a friend-in-chief amongst many friends.
To her care is owed the preservation of many-
sketches and designs, made while he was
working out various ideas, and collected in two
scrap-books at a time when they were littering
his studio, which but for her forethought would
certainly have disappeared. His health during
these years was very uncertain ; and the letters
written to her seem to point to physical depres-
sion, and to confirm Mr. Valentine Prinsep's
opinion that old Little Holland House did
not suit Signor — the sanitation he declared was
very far from satisfactory. Partly for change,
and partly on the invitation of the Hollands,
who were in Paris at the time, he spent some
months of the winter of 1855-56 there, having
a studio at 10 Rue des Saints Peres. He took
with him Arthur Prinsep, a boy of fifteen, full
of spirit and fun, and needing some handling.
He tells me that Signor's curb upon him was
simply, " Well, if you do that I shall have a
headache " — an appeal to his affectionate nature
much more effective than any command would
have been, the boy knowing what real suffering
the word headache could cover in Signor's
case. It was here that M. Thiers came to sit
to him, and one sentence of the conversation
Signor remembered, because it seemed to him
very typical of the Gallic mind, as distinct from
the Anglo - Saxon. When talking of the
Frenchman who had invented a statement that
his fellow-countryman had anticipated Newton's
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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

great discovery of the law of gravitation, M.
Thiers, though admitting that it was untrue,
ended by saying, " Well, he had the glory of
his country at heart, and I applaud this, and
would like to put up a statue to his memory."

Prince Jerome Buonaparte, brother of the
first Napoleon, also sat to him here ; so did the
Princess Lieven, whose husband had been from
1812 to 1834 the Russian Ambassador in
England ; the portrait happened to be painted
during the last months of her life. Her letters
to Metternich, and to her brother, Count
Benckendorff, are well known. She was the
friend of Lady Holland, to whom he gave the
portrait. Of this time Mr. Nathaniel Hone
kindly writes to me : —

" I was commencing my art studies, and I
shall never forget Mr. Watts's kindness and the
excellent advice he gave me. Some successful
artists become vain and conceited ; Watts had
not those faults, he was most affable and kind
to me as a student. We smoked many pipes
together, discussing past and present art. I think
among the ancients Titian was his favourite."
" The many pipes smoked " — as far as one
person was concerned — is a figure of speech, as
Signor never smoked at any time of his life.

At the end of February he left Paris and
returned to Little Holland House. During the
months when he could not work at Lincoln's
Inn, he had begun to fresco the dining-room of
a house in Carlton House Terrace (No. 7), then

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belonging to Lord Somers ; and this work he
continued and probably completed during the
spring and summer. The subjects he chose
for these frescoes were the Elements, and to
represent these he drew upon Greek mytho-
logical story. But he was constantly ill, and
later in the same year, greatly urged by Dr.
Gully, he accepted Charles Newton's invitation
to join the staff of the expedition he was direct-
ing for the recovery of the Mausoleum of
Halicarnassus at Budrum in Asia Minor.

lie left England in the middle of October,
in H.M.S. Gorgon, then under the command of
Captain Towsey, with a crew of 150 men. He
looked back upon this time — some eight months
spent almost continuously upon a man-of-war,
with great pleasure. He appreciated the order
and discipline on board, made friends with both
officers and men, and had a favourable outward
journey till within sight of Malta, where for
two days they tossed about, unable to enter the
harbour — not a pleasant experience. At Smyrna
they picked up Mr. Newton and went on to
Budrum, where they got to work on the great
excavations ; Mr. Newton, an officer, and some
sappers encamped on shore, while the staff
remained on board. Christmas on the Gorgon
was kept in English fashion, the sailors dancing
and making merry. There was an impromptu
concert in which Signor took part, and sang
Dibdin's song " Tom Bowling ' with such
effect as to reduce the bluejackets to tears.

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

But Mr. Newton was above all things
anxious to secure the lions' heads — Greek, and of
the school of Scopas. He had the year before
discovered these in the mediaeval tower of St.
Peter, built into its walls by the Knights
Templars. A firman for this being necessary,
he sent Signor on to Constantinople with
despatches to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the
British Ambassador, asking him to obtain the
firman with all possible speed. Signor soon
learnt, however, that speed was neither likely nor
possible. Delay after delay occurred, but mean-
time he had a pleasant life at Constantinople,
sometimes making acquaintance with the ex-
tortions of Misseri, the owner of the Hotel
d'Angleterre, more often on the man-of-war, a
guest at the Embassy, or sometimes on board the
Royal Albert, the flagship of"* Admiral Lord
Lyons ; and he was also sent for a cruise on
board H.M.S. Swallow (Captain Maddiston)
through the Greek islands and to Athens, a cruise
he had permission from Lord Lyons to direct,
who said playfully, " I put you in command."
He never forgot the delight given him by the
wonderful blueness of the waters seen through
the port-holes at night, and often spoke of one
night as more splendid than all others when he
was dining on board the Royal Albert.

With Sir Henry Layard, in late years, he often
talked over acquaintances and episodes of this
time. Sir Henry was not with him there, but
knew intimately Lord Stratford and all the staff

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

of the Embassy at that time. Of Charles Alison
— the many-sided and most remarkable of men —
they often talked. He seemed to possess every
talent, and a kind of mesmeric power over his
chief and over most people whom he came
across, and had much influence with the Turks.
When Signor was at Constantinople, Mr. Alison
was living in a tent in the Embassy garden,
refusing, as a protest, to live under the roof of his
impetuous chief.

Lord Stratford consented to sit for two por-
traits : one of these now in the National Portrait
Gallery was unfinished and was completed many
years later. When speaking generally of the
confidences made to him by his sitters, Signor
used to say that Lord Stratford was the most
indiscreet of them all. Perhaps he knew
best the loyalty of his painter. Meanwhile
Mr. Newton was beginning to get desperate
about the firman, and the wily Turks were
at work, trying to possess themselves of the
lions' heads ; indeed they were actually already
in a caique on the morning when the Swallow
appeared with the necessary firman. Mr.
Newton secured them not a moment too soon.
In excavating they would now and then find
an absolutely perfect specimen of colour, but so
evanescent that, in a few minutes of sunlight, it
would utterly disappear. One instance of this
Signor mentioned as almost unbelievably swift in
its disappearance. A great block happened to
be turned over while Mr. Newton was absent,

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

and the workmen called Signor to see it. On it
was a border of leaf and flower ornament in
strong fine colour — red, yellows, and blues. He
had the slab covered up as quickly as possible,
but when turned round and uncovered again for
Mr. Newton's inspection, the colour had utterly
vanished.

He was much attracted by the men of the
place. The dragoman, with his good looks and
Eastern gift of good manners — " such a gentle-
man," as Signor used to say — sat to him for
studies more than once. He was struck by the
true spirit of the Mahommedan's interpretation
of their prophet's teaching. For instance, as the
habit of smoking was not of his time, it could
not have been forbidden by him ; nevertheless,
during their fast of Ramadan the workmen
never smoked from sunrise till sunset, and he
watched them sitting with pipe filled and match
in hand, waiting till the gun was fired as the sun
dropped before they entered upon this delight.
Later, an earnest convert to the Church of Rome
happened to be sitting to him in Lent, and
remarked, as he smoked, how glad he was that
tobacco had not been discovered when the fast
was instituted.

Towards the end of May, a man-of-war
homeward bound took him, Val Prinsep, and
Roddam Spencer Stanhope on board, and they
set their faces homewards. Landing at Rhodes,
they saw the pathetic sight of that town which
shortly before had been shattered by a terrible

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

earthquake. One single wall of a clock-tower
stood alone, the hands pointing to the hour of
the catastrophe. Still more impressive was the
bowed figure of an old woman, who sat day after
day on the summit of a high staircase still intact
against an otherwise ruined wall, her head bent
upon her knees, the very impersonation of ruin,
loneliness, and despair ; they were told she sat
there constantly. The misery had been greatly
enhanced by the apathy of the Turkish
authorities, who did nothing to rescue, nor later
to compensate in any way, the miserable remnant
of the population.

It was June before they reached England.
The visas on his passport are dated Smyrna,
May 22, and Malta, May 26. On his way
between these places, he writes to Mrs. Nassau
Senior about the work of his brother-artists : " I
long to hear what the exhibition will be, and
shall expect to hear at Malta. Alas, I shall not
be at home till long after the opening. I hope
and trust Leighton has done his best and will
thoroughly establish himself. I expect much
from Hunt and also from Millais."

The news of the outbreak of the Indian
Mutiny had not reached them at Malta ; but on
his return he found his friends at Little Holland
House had been receiving disquieting news from
India, where their eldest son, Henry, had gone,
and where the youngest, Arthur, had but lately
joined his regiment. The year that followed
was naturally one of great tension. But the arts

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

of peace, in spite of all the anxiety and trouble of
that time, must needs be carried on, and his first
care was to write as follows : —

" Little Holland House,

" Kensington,

" \\th June 1857.

" Sir — I hasten to inform you that I have just
returned to England, and am most anxious to
recommence and carry out the work I have on
hand at Lincoln's Inn, and which, unfortunately
for myself and to the annoyance of the Benchers,
has been so much interrupted. With the reason
of the slowness of my progress, and the long
interruption, the gentlemen forming that body
must be acquainted, as I wrote to Mr. Hardwicke
upon the subject, and my deplorable state of
health was well known to many gentlemen
connected with Lincoln's Inn. I have returned
from a warm climate for the present at least
much better, and whilst I am so, I desire to
devote my whole time and energy to the pro-
secution of the fresco, and unless my health
should break down again entirely, may reason-
ably hope to complete almost the whole of the
picture before the winter sets in. If I were
strong, 1 might bind myself by a positive engage-
ment to finish it altogether by that time, but the
work is laborious, and although my health is
greatly improved, I have been so long and so
very ill that I dare not hope it is yet perfectly
restored. I beg to assure the Benchers that

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

nothing but actual physical inability has pre-
vented the vigorous progress of a work which
I feel myself peculiarly bound by honour to use
my utmost exertions to bring to a successful
conclusion. — I have the honour to be your
obedient servant, G. F. Watts.

"Sir John Stuart."

On his return from these travels he found
the Poet Laureate a guest at Little Holland
House ; and Signor well remembered the grand
figure, pacing up and down in the garden thinking
over those lines in " Guinevere " where Arthur
passes from her sight. He also remembered
that the poet told him that at one time he had
intended to use the character of Arthur as a
figure to represent Conscience, but in working
out the poem he had found himself unable to
carry on this idea. Mrs. Tom Taylor was often
at Little Holland House at this time, and had
set to music the poem called " The Sisters."
She sang the words so dramatically that at the
line,

Three times I stabbed him thro' and thro'.

the poet turned to Signor, and said in his deep
voice, " And she would have done it too." It
was now, or very soon after this, that the first
portrait of Tennyson was painted, not that which
is so well known, and which at the time it was
painted was called " the great moonlight
portrait," the one which is in the possession

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

of Lady Henry Somerset. The first portrait is
now in the Melbourne Gallery, the head is seen
in profile ; it was painted in 1857, the other in
1 858—59. While this last portrait was being
painted, the Laureate, who was then writing
the idyll, " Elaine, the Fair Maid of Astolat,"
asked Signor what was in his mind when he set
to work upon a portrait, and the words of his
reply, having passed through the mind of the
poet, lie embedded in the poem. It was at this
time that another life-long friend came to Little
Holland House. In the Memorials of her
husband by Lady Burne-Jones, she quotes from
a note of his : " One day Gabriel took me out
in a cab — it was a day he was rich, so we went
in a hansom, and we drove and drove until I
thought we should arrive at the setting sun —
and he said, 'You must know these people, Ned;
you will see a painter there — paints a queer sort
of pictures, about God and Creation.' So it was
he took me to Little Holland House."

Signor had known Rossetti for some time,
Millais and Holman Hunt longer ; but with
Mr. Burne-Jones only now began the long
friendship. A year later, when Mr. Burne-
Jones was staying at Little Holland House, the
Poet Laureate, also staying there, overheard
Ruskin in another room exclaim, "Jones, you
are gigantic," and the Laureate dubbed him
" Gigantic Jones." At this same time Signor
writes to Mrs. Nassau Senior : " With regard to
the painted window, there is at this moment —

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staying at Little Holland House with Val — the
very man you want, Jones by name — a real
genius ! really a genius ! " — the apostrophes
probably referring to his having already spoken
to her too often, perhaps in superlatives, of all
that was good in the work of other painters.
It was indeed a gift of his nature to find out
excellencies, and to avoid seeing failure ; although
the gift was not needed in this case, where the
real genius had existed and been attested. But
its possession was well known to his friend
" Ned Jones," who once said, " Signor admires
paintings that would make very good soles
for his boots ! " I remember repeating to my
husband a remark of Mr. Du Maurier's on the
lenient view he always took of the foibles and
faults of human nature ; alas, I cannot now
recall the humorous saying at which Signor
laughed heartily, and said, " Any affection that
has been given to me, I am sure is due to the
fact that it is difficult for me not to see the best
in people. I think I am not deceived, but their
good qualities are uppermost to me."

It was in July that Rossetti and Burne-Jones
began their work of painting on the walls of
the Oxford Union, having drawn upon Little
Holland House for the help of two young
painters, Roddam Spencer Stanhope and Val
Prinsep, who joined them a few weeks later.
In a letter to his old friend Lady Duff Gordon,
Signor mentions his share in persuading Mr.
Prinsep to take up this work : " I daresay even

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

in Rome you think of India in the morning and
of India at night, as we do here. Never were
expectations more signally disappointed than
those of universal peace that were so confidently
indulged in in 1 85 1. Mrs. Prinsep has been in
great agony of mind about her two sons in India,
but thank God they are, or were by the last
news, safe, though they have both run fearful
risks. I daresay you know that the second son
has taken up the arts as a profession. I have
conscientiously abstained from inoculating him
with any of my views or ways of thinking, and
have plunged him into the Pre-Raphaelite Styx.
I don't mean to say that I held the fine young
baby of six feet two by the heel, or wish to
imply the power of moulding his opinions at
my pleasure ; but, to continue my figure, I found
him loitering on the banks and gave him a good
shove, and now his gods are Rossetti, Hunt, and
Millais — to whose elbows more power. The
said Master Val — commonly called Buzz by
reason of his hair, which is this sort of thing

[Here follows a scribble of the bristling hair.]

— has made most satisfactory progress, and
has distinguished himself by painting a picture
at Oxford fourteen feet long with figures
ten feet high — ' A muffin ! ' "

Later Signor, becoming somewhat anxious
about the effect that this dominance of Rossetti's
mind was having over the mind of " the fine
young baby," wrote to Mr. Ruskin about it,

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

feeling truly that the medievalism natural to
Rossetti was but a mere reflection in the younger
mind, not his own natural expression. Upon
this Mr. Ruskin writes (Oct. 18, 1858) : —

" I was very glad to have your letter, entirely
feeling with you in this matter, and even more
culpable than you charge me with being," and
admitting that he had encouraged the stiff-
ness and quaintness and intensity as opposed to
classical grace and tranquillity, adds, " Now I am
suffering for so yielding to my own likings, all
the more that I have been having a great go
with Paul Veronese. I was six weeks at Turin,
working from a single picture of his, a bit here
and a bit there : came to great grief, of course,
but I learned a great deal : more than I ever
learned in six weeks, or six months, before. I
will try to get hold of Val this week and have a
serious talk with him. I see well enough there's
plenty of stuff in him, but the worst of it is
that all the fun of these fellows goes straight
into their work, one can't get them to be quiet
at it, or resist a fancy; if it strikes them ever so
little a stroke on the bells of their soul, away
they go to jingle, jingle, without ever caring
what o'clock it is. When can I see you ?
Sincere regards to Mrs. Prinsep. — Always yours
affectionately, J. Ruskin."

To the Exhibition at the Academy of 1858,
after being absent as an exhibitor for five years,
he sent a portrait head of Miss Mabel Eden,

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and two full-length portraits, one of Miss Senior
and the other of her sister-in-law, Mrs. Nassau
Senior, all three painted during the last nine
months. Signor was now occasionally using
copal varnish as a medium, the result of talking
over the advantages of various mediums with
Rossetti, Millais, and perhaps Ruskin. Being
at this time at work upon walls, not only at
Lincoln's Inn, but at Carlton House Terrace and
at Bowood, he was, in his portraits, using the
utmost care — sometimes even hatching with fine
strokes of the brush in the underpainting — to
counterbalance the effect of the work which,
as a whole, was of necessity broad and less pre-
cise. His own inclination was for matt surfaces
and crisp dry touches, and the use of varnish as
a medium was really disagreeable to him. I
have heard him and Val Prinsep have a passage-
at-arms upon the subject, Mr. Prinsep maintain-
ing that under Rossetti's influence Signor had
for some years painted all his pictures with copal
varnish, which he in his turn most stoutly
denied. The portrait of Mrs. Nassau Senior,
one of Mrs. George Cavendish-Bentinck and her
children, and the portrait of Miss Alice Prinsep
at the piano were painted with copal ; but on
beginning a portrait of Lady Somers, which in
the general scheme of colour and treatment
greatly resembles this last-mentioned portrait,
and is of the same date, he made use of benzo-
line ; and finding that when he tried to take
out a certain part of the background the paint

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

used with this medium had become so hard that
nothing would touch it, he continued to use
benzoline until later, when the chemists, Messrs.
John Bell and Co., provided him with a pre-
paration of petroleum, called by them rock oil.
This, suiting him even better, was the medium
he used to the end, the smallest possible quantity
of linseed oil being added to diminish the volatile
quality of the petroleum. While the portrait
of Mrs. Nassau Senior is brilliant in colour,
and as delicate in handling as a miniature, Miss
Senior's is much broader in treatment and richer
in the impasto quality of its surface.

He wished to avoid enthralment by any fixed
method, and therefore approached different sub-
jects, each with the technique he thought the
most suitable. In various parts of a drawing
he would point out where he had purposely
varied the character of line. He considered it
unintellectual not to do this. No compliment
gave him such pleasure as to be told, by any one
looking at his work, that they would not have
known that the picture was by his hand. " I
don't endeavour to be different," he said, " but
taking a different class of subject, the treatment
naturally becomes different. If I tried to make
it so purposely, I should most likely get into a
mess."

Owing to a sort of curiosity to see whether
his manner was recognisable or not, he exhibited
three pictures at the Academy Exhibition this
year (1858) under the name of F. W. George.

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

The secret was in fact no secret ; for if his
sitters had been bound over to silence the subject
of his portraits would have betrayed it, for they
were ladies with large acquaintances, and he was
well known as a great friend of theirs.

This year Signor painted the portrait on
panel of Mr. Gladstone, now in the National
Portrait Gallery ; and at this time he used
occasionally to go to the breakfasts given by
Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, as he had some years
before gone to those given by Samuel Rogers.

The big fresco had now been carried well
forward during the spring and autumn vacations,
and Sir Henry Taylor, having been allowed to
see it, had written in warm praise of the work.
From Sandown House, Esher, on September
1 8, 1859, Signor replies : —

" I am somewhat late in returning my
acknowledgment to you for your letter, because
I am very much occupied by my fresco, and
writing costs me at all times an effort I am but
too much inclined to defer. A thousand thanks,
for I know that you intended me gratification.
I neither affect nor desire to be indifferent to
praise, for it would be no advantage to arrive
at that unsympathetic state which could render
one careless about sympathy. Criticism is indeed
unpalatable to me, as it can only tell me what I
so well know already, and do not require to be
told, as I would remedy that matter if I could.

" I have plenty of ambition and ardently desire
to be useful in my generation, but I would

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prefer working silently and unnoticed, save by
that amount of encouragement that would cheer
my efforts when well directed, and for the sake
of their direction alone ; to produce great things
one ought to be intent only upon doing one's
utmost, and never stop to consider whether the
thing be great or little in the abstract. The
really great is so far beyond one's reach that
comparison becomes an unworthy consideration ;
to work with all one's heart, but with all
singleness of heart, is the right thing, and whoso
does this may feel satisfied, whatever the result
of his labour may be. I, in this instance, would
feel satisfied if I had been able to do my best ;
but many circumstances, want of health foremost
amongst them, have prevented me from doing
my best, so I cannot be contented. The utmost
I can hope is that my work will not be a
disgrace, and my hope is founded upon a steady
rejection of small effects. If I have shown the
way to better things, I shall be very well
contented, but I neither expect nor desire that
my work may be considered a great one.

" Mrs. Cameron's enthusiastic and extravagant
admiration is really painful to me, for I feel as if
I were practising a deception upon her. She
describes a great picture, but it is hers and not
mine. Saying so much upon the subject will
probably look very much like vanity, and I
confess that I feel conscious of some worth which
I do like to be estimated justly ; but my pride is
more hurt by over-estimation than by want of

VOL. I 177 n

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

appreciation, — and I am really humiliated by
praise which is only due to perfect success."

In October 1859 he writes to Mrs. Nassau
Senior : —

" I have this day put the last touches in my
fresco at Lincoln's Inn ! I dare not call it
finished, but it must go. I feel sad at giving it
up, for now I cannot cheat myself any longer
with the belief that I am going to improve it ;
alas, for the failure, as it is, for I shall never
again have so fine a space. I don't mean to say
that it is a disgraceful or a mean failure, but it is
a failure ; and the only consolation I have is in
the very strong feeling I have that I can do
much better." And to the architect of the Hall
he sent the following letter : —

" Little Holland House,

"Kensington, W.

" October \jtk, 1859.

" Dear Sir — I beg to announce to you and
to the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn that I have
completed the fresco in the Hall, and to thank
the gentlemen composing the Honourable Society
for their patience and consideration. It has been
with great vexation to myself that their patience
has been tried by the delay caused by my want
of health.

" I will say nothing about my work excepting
that I sincerely wish it were better. I do not
expect that it will be popular, but I hope and
think it will improve upon acquaintance.

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

" I have preferred to leave it a pure fresco —
' Buon Fresco ' — instead of retouching it with
distemper colour, the effect of real fresco being
nobler, and the work more permanent (careful
washing will not injure it).

" I beg to be allowed to suggest that the long
window on the south-west side should have
stained glass put in throughout ; it would
harmonise better with the opposite window, and
though it would in a slight degree diminish the
light, the picture would lose nothing, my object
being dignity and monumental solemnity.

" Fresco also, unlike every other method of
painting, lights up the space it occupies, which
is one of its great advantages over every other
kind of painting applied to the purpose of mural
decoration.

" I have the honour to be your obedient
servant, G. F. Watts."

The fresco was warmly approved by many of
his friends, amongst them Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
who, writing to Mr. Bruce (afterwards Lord
Aberdare), says : " I have indeed seen Watts's
fresco and think it by far the finest specimen of
the method we have seen among modern ones.
The foreground figures and those of the second
plane are especially admirable, and do not betray
in the least the trammels of fresco. No doubt
Watts has overcome the difficulties of his task
in the only possible way, that is, by risking
much, painting fearlessly, and removing part

179

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

when necessary. The advance in power from
the background parts, painted first, to the fore-
ground ones, is most refreshing. It is a very
good work indeed, taken altogether, and does
honour to the country."

To Mrs. Dalrymple he also writes : " Let
me add a word to tell you how I smuggled
myself in at last (hoping, however, that friends
were no longer contraband) to see that great
work of Watts's. From what I have heard of
its progress he must have done wonders at the
last, in almost no time. And certainly the last
parts must be as fine as any fresco to be seen
anywhere ; they are far finer than any I ever saw.
How one must feel that one may rest a little
after finishing such a work, yet how one must
long to begin again. Will it ever be my lot,
I wonder, to earn such a double sensation !
It is the only thing to hope for in the world.
Will you give the Signor my share of the thanks
that every one owes him ? "

The Times had a most appreciative article
on this fresco, and published a day or two later
a letter from a friend, Sir Henry Layard, his
principal object in writing being " to express
a hope that when the day is longer, and the
sun brighter, the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn will
open this noble hall for a short time to the
public at large." " I have read, " the letter
continues, " with much gratification the remarks
in the Times of yesterday on Mr. Watts's noble
fresco in the new Hall of Lincoln's Inn. I

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

had previously seen but one notice of that
remarkable work, and had read it with sincere
pain. Whatever there may be in the fresco
deserving of criticism — and what human work
is without fault? — no man of feeling or of
knowledge could approach without reverence,
or describe without deep respect for its author,
this great effort of a man of undoubted genius,
the result of some years of earnest labour and
study, carried on in spite of the disadvantage
of ill-health and want of sympathy, and exe-
cuted without other reward than that which his
ardent love of art could afford.

" In Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican an
angel may be detected with three legs and an
apostle with six fingers, but what should we
think of the man who, after contemplating
those immortal works, could leave them with-
out any other impression than the satisfaction
afforded by the discovery of such blemishes ?
I am one of those who have long hoped to see
painting again employed, as it was during the
Middle Ages, on truly great and National
subjects, and worthily exercising its best and
highest mission among us. I have consequently
watched, as others have done, with interest and
anxiety the progress of the fresco upon which
Mr. Watts has been employed for the last five
years in Lincoln's Inn. The result has far
exceeded my expectation ; we have at last one
great work worthy of the country. I trust that
it may lead to the introduction of a class of

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

painting which will place the English school
in the first rank, and will restore to this branch
of the Fine Arts its highest and most legitimate
function. An intimate acquaintance with, I
believe, every fresco of importance of the great
painters in Italy, and with most of the attempts
at mural decoration that have been made of
late to the north of the Alps, leads me to assert
without hesitation, although it is sometimes
dangerous to pronounce dogmatically on matters
of art, that there has been no such fresco
painted since the best period of Italian art,
whether as regards mastery over the material,
breadth and truth of conception, right under-
standing of the noblest end of painting, or philo-
sophic treatment. I will even venture to say
that the upper line of seated figures will bear
comparison with the greatest works of the old
masters, and I entirely agree with your remark
that had this fresco been anywhere else but in
England, it would have become to us ' an
object of reverent pilgrimage.'

" That we shall sooner or later appreciate it,
and that it will ultimately exercise that influence
upon English art which such a work ought to
exercise, I cannot doubt."

When answering a letter which had expressed
pleasure in this work, the painter says : " I am
much gratified by your expressions of approval
of my fresco, and hope you will not find cause
to change your opinion.

" I think the only explanation I can attempt

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

will be limited to naming the figures ; the
picture cannot be said to have a subject, being
neither historical, nor allegorical, nor poetical,
and aiming at no dramatic expression or effect ;
I would call it suggestive, my intention being
to produce a combination of forms and colour
which should have a grand monumental effect,
and pervade, so to speak, the building like a
strain of Handel's music, becoming one with
the architecture. This may seem too fanciful
and vague to such as look upon art only as a
means of illustrating actual events, or interesting
by direct and exact imitation ; but I think, if
I have opportunities, I shall be able to prove
that the principle is well worth working out.
I should wish to see painted round the Hall
a series of pictures representing such historical
events as have reference to the development of
law in England, painted with historical exact-
ness. In accordance with this principle I have
avoided disturbing the flat surface of the wall
by much perspective or projection, endeavouring
to give my figures solidity rather than relief,
general power rather than individuality, the
region being altogether different from domestic
or dramatic art ; feeling that to attempt any-
thing like illusion, to stick real men and
women upon a wall, would vulgarise, even
though it might increase the effect. For the
same reason I have avoided high lights, even
on the faces ; and indeed have made no more
of the heads than of other parts, keeping the

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

uniformity of tone which figures have when
seen from a distance.

" Knowing the interest you take in the
subject, I intrude these remarks upon you
because I would anticipate certain criticisms
which I know will be made, and I wish to
account for some things which will be con-
sidered objections, and to separate intentional
results from defects arising out of inability to
do better.

" Perhaps you may sometimes discuss the
subject of mural decoration. At the risk of
being tedious, I will repeat that I am convinced
we shall never have really great art in England,
or have the capabilities of English art fairly
tested, until wall-painting becomes habitually
practised ; until artists know by experience that
the general treatment of a design must be varied,
according to the conditions under which he
works.

" At present the Royal Academy Exhibition
supplies a universal test which is in reality only
applicable to exhibition pictures. The noblest
art ever has been and ever must be connected
and almost identified with architecture, and the
effects of oil-painting, beautiful as they are, will
never harmonise with architectural effects. I
have some hope that the Benchers of Lincoln's
Inn, having taken up the subject of mural
decoration by giving me the opportunity of
painting so large a space, will think over the
design I had in view with regard to the

184

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

complete decoration of the Hall (at a convenient
height from the floor), subjects from the history
of England. It appears to me that this is exactly
the sort of thing the Royal Academy ought to
undertake, by supplying designs to be worked
out by competent students, under the supervision
and with the instruction of professors ; the ex-
perience gained, if these courses of study were
pursued, being exactly what created great artists
formerly. To these, paintings by fresco would
be a prelude, or introductory chapter."

The painter was entertained to dinner by the
Benchers on April 25, i860, "an honour," the
Times remarks, " before conferred on no other
painter except Hogarth, who dined there in the
year 1750." Mr. Watts was presented by the
Society with a cup of the value of £150 and a
purse containing £500, "the testimonial," so the
address explained, " being not in the character
of compensation, but as a testimonial of the
friendly feeling of the Society for the man who
had selected it as the recipient of so valued a
gift, and of its appreciation of his genius as an
artist."

During the winters of the late 'fifties and
early 'sixties, it became the habit of the family
at Little Holland House to migrate to Esher,
staying there several months during the worst
part of the year. A widowed sister of Mr.
Prinsep's, Mrs. Sandeman, invited them to do
this, as she felt her loneliness ; and Sandown
House was capacious. Glad to escape the damp

185

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

of winter and the fogs, Signor was generally of
the party. Here he was able to enjoy hunting,
sometimes with the Surrey Union Foxhounds,
but more often with the Due d'Aumale's
Harriers. In a letter from Tom Taylor I find
he says : " Thoby tells me you are doing nothing
but laying in a stock of health and fresh air for
the coming year's work." He baits an invitation
to their house, within riding distance of Esher, by
telling him that Mrs. Tom Taylor has " a newly
dug-up composition of Beethoven's to play to
you, the loveliest bridal chorus and maiden's
magic from some long- forgotten melodrama
called c King Stephen of Hungary.' "

Beethoven was also being interpreted for him
by a young German lady, who, in writing later
to him, says that she found she could play her
favourite master better to him and to Mrs.
Tennyson and Sir Henry Layard than to any
others.

The winters at Esher were good for him.
The nearest approach to the understanding of
the joie de vivre was when he had a good mount,
and hounds were running. Riding to him was
a fine art, and his groom was not allowed to
exercise his horse on a snaffle-bit, his opinion
being that by the use of this would-be humane
bit the mouth of the horse was hardened, and
the rider's hand became heavy. He condemned
it as a practice which had never obtained
amongst the nations habitually accustomed to
be on horseback. He was much opposed to the

186

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

docking of horses, and also to the bearing-rein,
and published letters upon both these subjects.

Of the former he wrote : " The brutal fashion
of docking horses is a disgrace to our civilisation,
and cannot be too strongly protested against.
With regard to the artistic side, there is a
degraded want of taste in destroying the har-
monious balance of nature's arrangement, the
somewhat heavy head of the beautiful animal
being balanced by the tail, which naturally
should have considerable volume. Setting aside
the disgusting cruelty, this want of taste, which
can prefer to see the noble creature changed by
the destruction of the fine appendage into a thing
that resembles the stump of a worn-out broom
— made to resemble a pig or a tapir — is very
lamentable, when found among the classes that
can boast of education and refinement. The
cruelty is barbarous in those who practise it,
infinitely degrading in those who encourage it
from so mean a motive as fashion — only not
contemptible because so much worse. I do not
see how the Legislature or the Church can be
indifferent to it. Cropping dogs' ears was, I
believe, put down by law — docking is far worse ;
indeed it is, I think, more degrading than bull-
fighting. There is in that courage and address,
though in a bad cause ; for the brutal practice
of docking, a mere caprice of fashion, nothing
can possibly be said — indeed, the short agony in
the time of excitement is probably less than that
suffered by the horse during the protracted

187

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

time between the brutal (I wish I could find a
stronger word) operation and the healing of it."
And, as Signor pointed out, the suffering does not
end with healing. To their latest years these
unfortunate animals, when turned out in fields,
are deprived of their natural protection against
the stings of gnats and flies. In the hunting-
field, the tail should act as a rudder.

He had once been able to teach a young
lady 1 the art of a light hand. She had said to
him despairingly, " I can never ride well — my
brother tells me my heavy hand will always
prevent this," and he undertook that if she came
to ride in the paddock at Little Holland House,
he would show her how to cure this fault, and
he did so in two or three lessons. His love and
his understanding of a horse was akin to that
which is more commonly given to dogs ; and in
his art he liked to use the horse as a symbol as
much as he liked to use the little child. " The
horse worships too," some one has said in writing
of the picture of Sir Galahad ; and if carefully
considered, I think it would be granted that the
horse, wherever it is to be found in his work,
is made to express an emotion almost human.
His love of riding was a bond between him and
many delightful friends at Esher, amongst them
the French princes of the Orleans family, who
were living then at Claremont and Twickenham.
He saw much of them, and there are many
friendly notes and letters from the two brothers,

1 Miss Probyn, sister of Sir Dighton Probyn.
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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the Prince de Joinville and Due d'Aumale, and
their nephew the Due de Chartres.

In the first of these, the Prince de Joinville
asks permission for a party from Claremont and
Twickenham to visit Lincoln's Inn, where the
fresco had just been completed: another consults
him about a drawing- master for his daughter,
and Signor having recommended a Mr. Morelli
for this post, the prince at first gratefully accepted
the recommendation, and afterwards sent in hot
haste to make all inquiries as to this man's
political views. At the same time he explained
that Panizzi had once recommended as a teacher
an Italian, with whom all arrangements had
been made, and the week following he was to
have been at Claremont ; however, they heard
from him that he had suddenly been called
on urgent business to Paris, and was therefore
unable to present himself at Claremont. That
man was Orsini, and his mission to Paris was
the assassination of Napoleon Third. " History
would never have cleared us had Orsini ever set
foot in Claremont," and, the prince continued,
" you may suppose we are careful now." A note
from the Due d'Aumale, though written some
years later from Worcestershire, is characteristic
of the prince's friendly regard.

" i-jth Dec, 1862.

" Cher Monsieur Watts — Aimez vous tou-
jours l'air de la campagne and a good ride across
country ? Si cela est, vous conviendrait-il de

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

partir de Paddington le 26 a 1.5 p.m., d'amener
votre cheval avec vous, de vous arreter a la
Station d'Evesham, et de venir achever le mois
et l'annee dans ce cottage au fond d'un bois ?
Nous vous monterons des lievres qui valent
mieux que ceux du Surrey, et des fermiers
hospitallers et bons vivants qui ont conserve les
traditions des vieux Yeomen. Au cottage, la
vie de Campagne la plus simple, telle que vous
l'aimiez je crois, et des gens qui seront charmes
de vous avoir quelques jours sous leur toit. —
Votre bien affectionne H. d'Orleans."

Society at Esher was in those years fortunate
in having some residents to whose houses came
people of whom Carlyle might have said, "They
look beyond eating their pudding." One of
these was the home of Sir Alexander Duff
Gordon l and his wife Lucie, talented and beauti-
ful, one whose charm won for her troops of
friends ; and with them was their daughter
Janet, still in the schoolroom, but nevertheless
a personage whether in the hunting -field or
elsewhere. Then the Prinseps attracted their
friends, and George Meredith his ; for he was
living at Copsham at this time, and it was now
that the great novelist met Mrs. Norton, 2 though
— as he once told me — only twice, and studied
her as a type for Diana of the Crossways chiefly

1 The son of his friend at Careggi. Their daughter Janet (Mrs. Henry-
Ross), now as well known as hostess of the villa Poggio Gherardo at
Florence, and authoress.

2 Daughter of Thomas Sheridan (1808-77), married the Hon. George
Chappie Norton.

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

through the mind of her friend, Lady Duff
Gordon. The chief incident, however, in the
life of Diana was never suggested by this loyal
friend, who always refused to listen to anything
of the nature of scandal connected with Mrs.
Norton's name, and indeed the incident was
acknowledged to be pure fiction by the novelist
himself. I heard Mr. Meredith and my husband
talk over these memories. The grand flexibility
of her beautiful nostril had struck them both.
Diana is described as having the nostril of a war-
horse ; and Signor told him that when painting
Mrs. Norton sometime before the Esher days —
I believe at Holland House — he kept in his
mind the thought of a grand old hunter, alert at
hearing from a distance the running of hounds.
In speaking of the extraordinary charm of Mrs.
Norton's personality, Signor told me that no
Diana, or any other heroine of romance, could
represent her indescribable fascination. He had
frequently met her at Holland House, and there
also he had first made the acquaintance with the
French princes.

During the winter of 1859 Lord and Lady
Holland were at their villa in Naples, and there
in December he died. Thus when Lady Holland
returned again to England it was as the widowed
mistress of Holland House, and Signor had
suffered an irreparable loss.

191

CHAPTER VII

VOL. I

193

/ WANT to make art the servant of religion by
stimulating thought high and noble. I want to
assert for art a yet higher place than it has
hitherto had.

G. F. WATTS.

194

CHAPTER VII •

The first fresco at Bowood, painted in 1858,
the subject being Achilles watching Briseis led
away from his tents, seems to have been painted
in a few weeks' time. The artist worked some
twelve hours in the day if the weather prevented
him from getting out for a canter over the
Wiltshire Downs. On this first visit Lord
Lansdowne, not being at Bowood, had begged
him to take his own horse — his dear Undine
— with him. The second fresco was delayed
till July i860 for reasons which he explains
to Lady Somers. " In consequence of the want
of health you are well acquainted with, and
the heavy undertaking I had on hand at Lincoln's
Inn, which I was under the necessity of com-
pleting, my affairs had become a good deal
involved. I had some hard knots to untie,
being positively obliged to paint some portraits
in order to be able to pay my debts, or I
might have — should have — been at work for
Lord Lansdowne in the summer. I do con-
fidently hope to paint the fresco in the spring.
I have great difficulty in working out the

195

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

subject ; it is not a good one. It is impos-
sible to invest the figure of Coriolanus with
dignity, for indecision is not noble, and the
shape of the space does not lend itself to
picturesque general treatment, which might com-
pensate for want of grandeur ; but I must get
over it as best I may. As for every reason it
is important that the fresco should be begun and
finished without any break, it is work that
must be done during long and light days. In
addition to the difficulty arising from short days
in winter, the cold and varying temperature
would be fatal to the drying and permanence of
the colours and plaster. ... I will write to
Lord Lansdowne : no one can honour him more
than I do, and no one's good opinion should I
value more."

Letters from Lord Lansdowne show that the
Coriolanus fresco was begun at the end of July,
and in September final touches to both frescoes
were all that remained to be done. As Signor
certainly always spoke of the Lincoln's Inn fresco
as the only true fresco in England, it is doubtful
whether these two paintings were in " buon
fresco." I am told that the frescoes look faded.
If they have lost colour, they could not have
been painted in pure fresco.

It was at this time, when the country was
aroused by the general fear of invasion, that
the magnificent Volunteer movement suddenly
sprang into existence. Within the space of a
few months a hundred thousand men had proved

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

themselves willing and able to offer military-
service to their country, without coming upon
the Government for the smallest fraction of the
cost of equipment or training. It need hardly
be said that this spirit was in accord with all
Signor's ideas of patriotism, and he was himself
soon enrolled as a member of the Artists' Corps
— the spirit at least being more than willing.
Almost simultaneously the movement to en-
courage the practice of rifle - shooting was set
on foot, and with both these he was glad to
be identified. I find a note from Lord Elcho,
who had just then raised the London Scottish
Volunteers.

" St. James's Place,

" J ait. \\th, i860.

" My dear Watts — I wish to leave the
conception as well as the drawing of our shield
entirely to yourself. Our association calls itself
the National Rifle Association. Our object is to
encourage Volunteers and to nationalise rifle
shooting, by establishing a Grand National
Annual Meeting, where prizes will be shot for,
first by Volunteers, secondly by all comers. If
you could let me have a rough sketch of your
idea of a shield for us, by Thursday morning, as
we have a Committee Meeting at twelve, I
should feel grateful. I hope you are getting
strong. Can I help you in getting more wall
space ? — Yours sincerely, Elcho."

In a letter recently received by me (June

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

191 2) from Lord Wemyss, he says of the shield :
" Its shape was designed by a son of Mr. Cayley,
M.P. for some Yorkshire constituency. Your
dear husband said to me, ' Let it be made in
iron, and six feet high.' On this basis we
worked, I suggesting the subjects, and he
drawing them as they seemed fittest for the
shield. The work was entrusted to Elkington,
the silversmiths, and the execution was by them
given to a Belgium or Frenchman — ' Mainfroid '
by name ; and when you think that it was
repousse out of a solid bit of iron plate, one's
admiration is lost in wonder."

The figures on the shield were drawn by
Signor, but not the surrounding decoration. It
was at his suggestion that the target known
as " the running man " became part of the
Wimbledon programme for the National Rifle
Association.

In the spring of 1855, friends writing from
Rome had begged Signor to go to Bryanston
Square to make the acquaintance of " a delight-
ful young painter" who had just arrived there
to pay a short visit to his father. The young
painter had brought over his picture " Cimabue's
Madonna " for exhibition at that year's Academy,
and the name of Frederic Leighton was be-
coming known in London. " Forty years of
unbroken friendship " were the last words written
to lay at the feet of him whose acquaintance he
now sought. In spite of a difference in age of
some thirteen years, and perhaps because of a

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

still greater difference in the two characters, the
bond between them became a strong one : each
seemed to find in the other that which he would
afbove all things have liked to find in himself.
Leighton once said to a friend, " Don't envy
me, envy Signor " ; while he, sketching out
Leighton's admirable qualities and his own
deficiencies as he was wont to do, remarked,
" Nature got tired when she was in the middle
of making me, left off, and went away and made
a Leighton." A note now lying before me
seems characteristic enough to quote : —

" 2 Orme Square,
" Saturday.
(Addressed to Esher ; Postmark, Feb. 1 8, 1861.)

" Dear Signor — Your letter has been duly
forwarded to Mr. Barlow (Thomas O.), who
lives at Auburn Lodge, St. Albans Road, Victoria
Road, Kensington. I shall be charmed to hear
of the dodges you have been devising in your
rural retreat. Of course you will practically
modify the method we talked over the other
day — no artist with the stamp of his own can
adopt unchanged the procedure of another —
different results require different means. The
happy years in which one believed implicitly in
panaceas are no longer ours, I am afraid, my dear
Signor ; those days of enviable intolerant convic-
tions don't reach much beyond our teens. I
hope when you come to town we may rub our
brains together, to our mutual benefit — certainly

i 99

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

to mine. — Many things to Mr. and Mrs. Prinsep,
and to Alice, from, dear Signor, yours very
truly, F. Leighton."

It was a singular friendship, quite without
undue interdependence. If Sir Frederic could
have influenced Signor, there is no doubt that
he would have dissuaded him from painting the
class of subject which he (Signor) called
" ethical reflections " ; those pictures which
Signor himself regarded as alone worthy to
bequeath to public galleries.

On the other hand, Signor would fain have
persuaded Sir Frederic to retain more of the
beauty of his sketches in the finished work.

After Leighton had built his house in Holland
Park Road, attracted to that part by the friends
at Little Holland House, scarcely a day passed
without a meeting between the two brothers-in-
art ; and young people coming home from their
balls in London would often come across Leighton
running in, soon after dawn, to have a few words
with Signor before the day's work began.

In Mr. Harry Prinsep's vivid recollection
of this time, this studio was singular for its
simplicity : its floor covered with rough cocoanut
matting, with only the simplest furniture, rich
only in its " strange pictures of God and Creation,"
and to him in the beloved presence of Signor.
He recollects how the door would fly open, and
Leighton would appear running in as if finishing
a two-mile race, and begin talking eagerly of a

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

thousand things, his handsome mobile counten-
ance lighted up with enthusiasm on one subject
or another. " And I, only a chit of a boy, would
receive every bit as much consideration from him
as Signor did."

The " chit of a boy " was very dear to Signor,
who after the separation of almost half a century
still often regretted that his fate had taken him
to the antipodes. They never met again.

Harry Prinsep could also give a vivid account
of the first evening on which Joachim played at
Little Holland House. It was after dinner in
that drawing-room of harmonious colour, under
the deep-blue ceiling, and Joachim leaning back
had sunk into one of the biggest of sofas, when
Signor ventured to ask him to play. Just at this
time he and Harry Prinsep had both been
impressed with the idea that they must learn to
play the violin. 1 Signor had bought one for
some twenty-five pounds, and Harry one for
twenty-five shillings ; and for the moment their
great wish was to accomplish playing the melody
of Beethoven's song " Adelaide." It was this
song that Joachim was asked to play ; he rolled
that leonine head of his, and answered, " Why,
yes, if you have a violin," upon which the boy
sprang to his feet with delight, and ran to fetch
his own. Joachim took it up, and still almost

1 Signor continued to study this art for some years, but rinding that he
could not get beyond the point of having merely learnt his lesson, he
became discouraged, and finally gave up the attempt. He explained to me
that the whole difference lay between the execution which conveyed the
sense of acquirement (with which he could not be satisfied) and the
execution when the music seems to be the creation of the interpreter.

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lying back, his left arm thrown up, and the violin
held upright in the air, he drew the bow across
the strings once or twice with a very dubious
expression ; then Signor intervened, saying,
" There is one in my studio which is rather
better," and it was sent for. "Ah ! this will do,"
Joachim allowed, upon the second trial ; and then
away he went, drawing from the violin all that
was possible, and making the room fill with the
wonder of the song — an evening to remember ;
and the old twenty-five shilling violin, across
the strings of which the master once drew the
bow, is still intact, thousands of miles away from
England, with a big "J " scratched upon it.

"A Lamplight Study — the Portrait of Joseph
Joachim," will preserve for future generations his
aspect on these evenings. In imagination one
can see him standing, bow in hand and chin upon
the violin, in that room with its wealth and colour
from floor to ceiling, the art upon its walls
answering so nobly to the music. Halle at the
piano, Joachim with eyes that seemed only to
hear, not to see, the lamplight falling softly on
the faces of beautiful women — probably Mrs.
Sartoris (Adelaide Kemble), possibly Miss Emma
Brandling, 1 Mrs. Norton, Lady Somers; Leighton
was almost always there, perhaps Herschel and
Browning, and besides these, other men of mark,
politicians, statesmen, or soldiers — a company
sitting silently wrapped away from all else, whilst,

1 Afterwards Lady Lilford, almost the most beautiful head, Signor told
me, from which he ever painted. He made several studies and used one of
these as a type when painting the Alfred in his Lincoln's Inn fresco.

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in the painter's mind, musician and music were
being transferred to another art.

Mrs. Prinsep kept open house on Sunday
afternoons in summer, and in the evening was
also prepared for a party to remain for dinner ;
when the garden emptied, and tea and the games
of croquet or of bowls were at an end, the big
crimson sofas and seats, that looked so picturesque
under the shade of the trees, were carried in, and
this impromptu dinner-party followed. The
evenings were filled up, either by music or by
much delightful conversation, of such sort as was
once described to me, when speaking of some
special occasion, by a listener who said, " They
talked of things that belonged to no date ; their
subjects would have interested men of any age."
It was from the garden of Little Holland House
that Sir John Herschel first saw the great comet
of 1857, and here the drawing of his grand head
was made and completed, all but the eyes. The
astronomer's form of face and features are there,
but empty space in place of the eye that had seen
so far into the secrets of the universe. At this
point the artist's hand held off, perhaps waiting
for a special reserve of power, and to him it
seemed never to come.

Some thirty years later he expressed his deep
regret that he had not painted the portraits of
two men — Darwin and Herschel. " The mart
of science should be better than any other," he
said, " dwelling as he must in a kingdom of
infinite wonder — larger than that of the poet or

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artist whose work of necessity turns him so much
within himself and makes him think of and
about his own emotions, and whose thoughts are
necessarily more occupied with his own time and
generation."

About this time Signor used to go round
occasionally to Campden Hill, where Sir James
South the astronomer then lived. There he
looked through the great telescope at Saturn and
his belt, and said that it was a sight that dwarfed
all others.

When dining at Little Holland House, Mr.
Doyle, who seems to be yet ever affectionately
spoken of as Dicky Doyle, first met the Poet
Laureate, and afterwards described how he had
waited with bated breath to catch and treasure
up the first syllables that should fall from his
lips, expecting at least that such words should
flow as, " He clasped the crag with hooked hands,"
but no ; the poet spoke — he said, " Legs of
mutton should be cut in wedges." A very
frequent guest at all times, Dicky Doyle came
without fail on all Christmas Days, put his old
umbrella into the stand on arriving, while it was
taken for granted that he found a new one in its
place on leaving, and not a word was said upon
the subject.

From any mention, even by name, of the
habitues at Little Holland House, the name
of Mrs. Cameron (Julia Margaret), the sister
of Mrs. Prinsep, cannot be omitted. To all
who knew her she remains a unique figure,

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

baffling all description. She seemed in herself
to epitomise all the qualities of a remarkable
family, presenting them in a doubly distilled
form. She doubled the generosity of the most
generous of the sisters, and the impulsiveness of
the most impulsive. If they were enthusiastic,
she was so twice over ; if they were persuasive,
she was invincible. " I had always to quarrel
with Mrs. Cameron, that we might keep friends,"
was Signor's description of the attitude he had
to adopt. If she had little of the beauty of her
sisters, she certainly had remarkably fine eyes,
that flashed like her sayings, or grew soft and
tender if she was moved, perhaps when reading
aloud some fine poem with modulations of voice
and change of countenance, to which no one
could listen unmoved. Like her eyes, her wit
flashed out also. Her adoration for the author
of Philip Van Artevelde, and for Lady Taylor, is
well known ; and it seems to have been borne
by them with patience ; or, at times, with
impatience scarcely disguised. Their mutual
friends had also to bear with her enthusiasms
when they went somewhat beyond bounds, and
the Poet Laureate's love of chaff was so far roused
one day by her praises of Sir Henry Taylor's
beauty as to say in banter, " I don't see what
you mean by his extraordinary beauty — why he
has a smile like a fish." But she retorted
instantly, " Only when the Spirit of the Lord
moved on the face of the waters, Alfred."

At Freshwater she commanded, and it was

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

done. Mr. Cameron once regretted that too much
space was given up to vegetables in their garden.
Her orders went forth secretly to friends and to
henchmen that this must be remedied ; but on
no account could the work be done when Mr.
Cameron wished to walk in the garden, which
was every day. In cartloads, therefore, turf was
brought and laid down out of view, and as soon
as Mr. Cameron had gone to bed, her army was
marshalled and, by lantern light, the vegetable
garden was swept away ; so when Mr. Cameron
looked out next morning a fine grass lawn spread
out before his astonished eyes. She used to
describe how her letters to her sons in Ceylon
were written up to the last possible moment.
She would go on mail days to the General Post
Office in London, and write there, crying out
from time to time, " How much longer ? " to
which an enthralled clerk would reply, " Ten
minutes more" — "five" — and so on, until the
last second of time to be allowed had come,
when her letter was shut and flung to the
officials now waiting to seal up the last sack.
She used to say that in her photography a
hundred negatives were destroyed before she
achieved one good result ; her object being to
overcome realism by diminishing just in the
least degree the precision of the focus. Thus
when a real success was attained, she was able to
give to her work a poetry and a mystery far
removed from the work of the ordinary photo-
grapher, far even from that of the very best who

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have followed her. While other photographs,
after long acquaintance, weary the eye, hers
remain always an abiding pleasure. She had
much correspondence with Signor on the subject
of principles of composition, and quotations
from his words were often written below her
pictures : " Quite Divine — G. F. Watts," under
the photograph called the " Dream " — the profile
of " Madonna " Mary, from whom most of Mrs.
Cameron's successes were taken. Of some new
batch of prints he writes : " All the heads are
divine, and the plates very nearly perfect ; the
tone too is excellent. If you are going on
photographing your grandchild, and he is well
worth it, do have a little shirt made of some
yellowish material. The blot of formless white
spoils the whole picture. What would not do in
painting will not do in photography, but other-
wise I am delighted with the amount of gradation
you have obtained."

The same letter continues — " I have not time
to write much, for I am very hard at work,
trying to get ready for Freshwater. Amongst
other things I am designing a St. John, one of
four figures to be executed in mosaic for St.
Paul's ; so my mind is tuned to a grand major
key, and I can well appreciate what is noblest in
art, and your last photographs harmonise well
with the effects I wish to produce. But you
must not be satisfied ; there is more to be done,
and whilst this is the case we must never think
anything done. I know your difficulties, but

207

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the greatest things have been done under
difficulties."

In another letter he thanks her for photo-
graphs of Tennyson ; some he considered
magnificent, others he criticises and adds : " Do
justice to the noble and beautiful head, the
finest you will ever have before your lens. I
have at last seen the new poems, and think
the * Northern Farmer ' beyond all praise. It
conveys to my mind the birth, parentage,
education, life, and death of a whole community
of rustics ; nothing can be better or more
complete." And again to Mrs. Cameron, when
refusing a commission for a portrait, he
writes : —

" Nature did not intend me for a portrait-
painter, and if I have painted portraits decently
it is because I have tried so very hard, but it
has ever cost me more labour to paint a portrait
than to paint a subject-picture. I have given
it up in sheer weariness ; now come what may,
my time must in future be devoted to the
endeavour to carry out some of my large designs,
and if I fail either to make a living or to do
anything worthy of an artist (as I understand
the term), I fail, but I submit to the drudgery
of portrait-painting no longer. . . .

" If I could carry out my own feeling
perfectly, my pictures would be solemn and
monumental in character, noble and beautiful
in form, and rich in colour ; but the subtle
varieties of sunlight I should never aim at pro-

208

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

ducing. I can see in nature what Turner saw,
and can appreciate the excellence of his imita-
tion, but my natural tendency is to see nature
with such eyes as Giorgione and Titian had ;
I see only with their eyes, but do not work
with their brains or hands. Alas ! "

The reference made in the letter to Mrs.
Cameron, to the design for one of the spandrils
under the dome of St. Paul's, recalls that in
1 86 1 Signor had been in correspondence with
Dean Milman on the subject, having had
occasion to write to the Dean to urge the
fitness of his friend Charles Newton for the
post of Keeper of Greek Antiquities at the
British Museum ; a post Mr. Newton — then
Consul at Rome — was anxious to have. The
Dean replies that he had the fullest appreciation
of Mr. Newton's character and attainments, and
continues : " You must allow me to add that if
anything had been necessary to convince me of
Mr. Newton's special fitness for the important
office, your high opinion would have gone far.
With regard to St. Paul's, it gives me the
highest satisfaction to find that you take an
interest in its embellishment ; I shall carefully
put your letter by, that when we arrive, as I
trust we may (our only difficulty being funds),
at the great question of mosaic ornament or
fresco painting, we may avail ourselves at least
of your counsel, if not — as I understand your
generous offer — of more active and valuable
support."

VOL. I 209 P

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

The result was the design for the two
evangelists, St. Matthew and St. John, which
were eventually carried out in mosaic, and it
was Dean Milman's wish that Signor should
be entrusted with the whole scheme of decora-
tion ; nevertheless after the Dean's death the
matter was dropped.

To this time belongs the portrait of John
Lothrop Motley. I find his letter appointing
a sitting in May 1861, and remember that once,
when we were reading over old letters that had
escaped destruction, we came on this note ; and
my husband told me, out of his varied ex-
perience, that of all his sitters Motley was by
far the finest talker he had ever come across.
Signor used to quote against himself an example
of no memory for faces : that a few years after
these sittings he had allowed himself to be re-
introduced to Motley, as to a stranger ; Motley
exclaiming, " Well, that is rather too bad, con-
sidering you have painted me twice." The
following year he was staying at Blickling
during several weeks, painting the portrait of
Lord Lothian ; a portrait of which Mr.
Meredith wrote, on seeing it many years after-
wards, that he was struck " by the living in-
telligence in the eyes, a point rarely achieved.
I remember it at this moment only in the
Titian Schoolmaster ; as it is called generally."
Signor was deeply interested in the subject of
this portrait, impressed as he was by the beauty
of character, rare intelligence, and the rich

210

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

promise of a young life never to be fulfilled ;
for he knew he was painting a doomed man.
All that medical skill and all that absolute
devotion could do, was to be of no avail ; and
the tragedy of it seemed heightened by its
passing in this poetically beautiful home. Life
truly in flower at its best and loveliest ; and so it
was that the sight of Death inexorable, and
Love impotent, came before his eyes. Here
he painted in two hours' time the head of
Lord Shrewsbury, Lady Lothian's father. Lady
Waterford had asked him to show her his way
of handling oil-colour, or rather one of the ways
of setting about to paint a portrait, for his usual
method took far more time ; he seldom finished
a picture at what the French call the first blow.
Certainly, considering the subtleties of form and
colour, he never surpassed that feat, excepting
perhaps in the portrait of Sir Leslie Stephen
painted many years later. He was also at work
for his own pleasure on a portrait group of the
three sisters, Lady Lothian, Lady Gertrude, 1 and
Lady Adelaide Talbot ; 2 and he made a study
from the head of their brother, 3 for a picture
he named the " Standard-Bearer " : this was
done in the hope that he should some day paint
a life-size equestrian portrait of Lord Shrews-
bury in armour, representing some ancestor,
with his son Reginald as standard-bearer, walk-
ing beside the horse. The project never went

1 Afterwards Countess of Pembroke.

2 The Countess Brownlow.

3 General the Honourable Sir Reginald Talbot.

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

beyond a small sketch, painted in water-colour,
and now placed between the two portraits in
the collection at Compton. This visit to
Blickling, and later another to Ingestre, Lady-
Lothian's old home, remained, in spite of the
cloud on the horizon, a very happy recollection.

The great interest he found in Lady Water-
ford's work, the rides through wood and glade
with pleasant companionship, the beginning of
a friendship accorded to him through life by
the family, all combined to leave a charming
impression on mind and memory. He described
one evening when out walking with a party,
they suddenly saw Lady Waterford coming to
join them, moving along so grandly that both
he and the friend at his side could only exclaim
in a breath, " O Pallas Athene ! "

In the following year, 1863, to consider the
need of a separate building for the Royal
Academy — at that time occupying a part of the
National Gallery — and other measures for extend-
ing its usefulness, a Royal Commission was held,
before which the President, Sir Charles Eastlake,
and several members of the Academy, with a
few outside of this body, were called to give
evidence. Amongst these last were John Ruskin,
Holman Hunt, and G. F. Watts. The general
tenor of Signor's evidence reveals his ever-con-
stant desire that the Academy should stand as a
great national institution for the encouragement
of great art, and for the elevation and cultiva-
tion of the national taste ; and that it should

212

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

be recognised as a body entirely devoid of the
element of a personal and professional clique.

For this reason he proposed that there should
be a certain proportion of non-professional men
elected as Members of Council ; and he did not
think the want of practical technical knowledge
in these lay members would be in the least
degree an objection. He considered that the
non - professional element might more fairly
represent the opinion " out of doors " than could
the general body of artists themselves. " The
non-professional man would be without predilec-
tions, — not entirely — no one is — but without any
special taste for one style of painting." In the
schools he strongly advocated a reform in the
system of teaching, especially in the antique
school, the most important of all, as there the
pupils lay the foundations of all art — the drawing
of the human figure.

He suggested that a specially competent
teacher should be always there, and that while
the students drew from casts, demonstrations
should also be given from time to time from the
living model. " I would demonstrate the action
of the limbs, and the use of the muscles,
from the living model in combination with the
antique. It is impossible to learn much about
the human form by merely drawing the figure
in a set position."

He would like to see sculpture, painting, and
architecture connected together as one and the
same ; and that students should be encouraged

213

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

to study the whole range of art as much as
possible. " I look upon architecture as one of
the most important branches of art. I lament
the three branches ; they were not considered as
three formerly, but were combined in one and
the same man."

The more they are combined the better it
would be for art in general. Above all things
he wanted to see the Royal Academy students,
under the supervision of an accomplished artist,
trained to make designs, or even to copy designs,
such as Flaxman's, upon wall spaces and on a
large scale ; not only because he considered that
the practice of mural painting was of paramount
importance, but that also it might lead to a
more general diffusion of art, giving the public
a very much greater opportunity of seeing some-
thing beautiful, both in colour and line. "At
present," he wrote to Lord Elcho, one of the
Commissioners, a few days after giving his
evidence, " it is a melancholy fact that hardly a
single object amongst those that surround us has
any pretension to real beauty, or could be put
simply into a picture with noble effect ; and, as
I believe the love of beauty to be inherent in
the human mind, it follows that there must
be some unfortunate influence at work. To
counteract this should be the object of a Fine
Art Institution, and I feel assured that if really
good things were scattered amongst the people,
it would not be long before satisfactory results
exhibited themselves."

214

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Lord Elcho propounds the grave question,
with mischief lurking in his look, no doubt, " Is
the system a sound one in your opinion, of giving
panels in a corridor to different artists, to be
decorated according to their own notions ? ' "I
disapprove of it very much, the result of it must
be inharmonious." And again in the same spirit
he asked the question, "Whether, under arrange-
ments more favourable to the selection of the
best art for our public places, we should have
had at the present moment the Duke of Welling-
ton's statue on the arch at Hyde Park " ; and
Mr. Watts replies, " I think there would have
been a chance that we should have had a better
thing." It is clear that the Commissioner and
his witness understood each other.

The Chairman, Lord Stanhope, asks, " Have
any other points occurred to you in which you
think alterations for the better might be made
in the Royal Academy?" Mr. Watts replies, "It
is very difficult to point out how the Academy
might be improved, and I have not given much
attention to the subject ; but, considering the
position the Academy holds, it has displayed
very great apathy. I do not see its influence
in our architecture, our fashions, or our taste
in general, in any way whatever. The only
National School which has grown up at all
has grown up outside the Academy, and indeed
in opposition to it, that is the Water Colour
School ; and the only definite reform move-
ment (which the Pre-Raffaelite School may be

215

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

called) was certainly not stimulated by the Royal
Academy, and even met with opposition from it."

Chairman : " You ascribe the fact which you
have mentioned to some defect in the Royal
Academy ? " " It seems to me that there must
be some defect. If the members were extremely
anxious to develop taste, or to encourage art, I
think that some means could have been found.
A merchant finds means if he wants to improve
his commercial arrangements ; whatever a man
wishes to do he finds a way of doing it more
or less satisfactorily. But I do not see that the
Royal Academy has done anything whatever.

" I must beg to say, in making these remarks,
that I have no kind of feeling against the Royal
Academy. Many of the members whom I have
the honour to be acquainted with I esteem very
much indeed. They have always displayed to
me great consideration, and indeed kindness, and
as I was never a candidate for the honour of
membership I cannot say that I have been
overlooked ; and I have not the smallest per-
sonal feeling of any kind against them."

In the supplementary letter to Lord Elcho,
after giving evidence before the Royal Academy
Commission, Signor wrote : " I insist upon mural
painting for three reasons — first, because it is
an exercise of art which demands the absolute
knowledge only to be obtained by honest study,
the value of which no one can doubt, whatever
branch of art the student might choose to follow
afterwards ; secondly, because the practice would

216

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

bring out that gravity and nobility deficient in
the English school, but not in the English
character, which being latent might therefore
be brought out ; and, thirdly, for the sake of
action upon the public mind."

Of the benefit of studying the old masters he
wrote : " The great Italian masters worked un-
questionably upon some principle (for technique) ;
no one can undervalue the practical importance
of placing at the disposition of the student means
of expressing his ideas much sooner than he
could possibly find them out for himself."

During these years Signor, having some
occasion to consult an oculist, was recommended
to go to Mr. Bowman, whose reputation for skill
and delicate manipulation he had been aware of
for some years. They were kindred spirits ;
as those who may happen to remember Sir
William Bowman will understand — " a nature
finely touched to fine issues," and a great lover
of art and literature. He had seen the painter's
own portrait — painted, I believe, some years
before, for Signor told me it had been " knocking
about for some time in the studio, and at last
Bowman much wished to have it," and the last
portrait of the Poet Laureate as well. As was
very much his habit, he had hesitated about
price, fearing that he was asking too much, and
Mr. Bowman replies : —

" \jtk November 1863.

" My dear Mr. Watts — I really can on no
account let you off, so I have the pleasure of

217

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

enclosing a cheque for one hundred guineas ; and
why should I take a tenth of you ? I am no
parson !

" I am delighted to hear you propose soon to
finish for me the head of the great poet. The
sooner the better. The only thing I would have
wished otherwise in the head of the great artist,
is that in size and handling it does not (but
perhaps my impression is wrong) match the
other ; for I would fain have painter and painted,
a pair of nobles answering one to the other on
my walls. Shall you ever treat yourself ' with
variations ' ? If so, may I have the only locus
penitentiae I can ever desiderate ? But believe
me I fully appreciate the true humility and
delicacy of mind which dictated your note of
to-day. — Always truly yours,

"W. Bowman."

Preserved in the same envelope with this
note is a letter from Ruskin of almost the same
date — 1 8th November 1863.

" Dear Watts — Indeed I love you much, and
it was not ill-treatment of you. I was too ill
to see any one, it would only have hurt you to
see me : so tired and sad I was about many
things. Now I have given up everything but
friends — and dinners, so judge if I won't come and
dine with you.* I shall like to see you all again
so much. Only I am just home for a week just
now. I'm going into the country on Monday,

218

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

and I can't arrange for anything before that ; but
I'll be back in no time and at home all the
winter. I mean to try and see you in the fore-
noon before Monday, but mayn't be able, but I
think I shall. — Always affectionately yours,

"J. RUSKIN.

" P.S.* — Not that I would dine with many
people, because friends and dinner are too good
to have at once : I like to eat like a bear, and hug
afterwards, but to growl over my bones."

During these years Mr. Ruskin seems to
have been often and much at Little Holland
House, and the following little note, evidently
written from Denmark Hill, shows what he had
lately been looking at in the studio : —

" 14M May 1864.

" Dear Watts — I find all my apple-blossoms
(nearly) on the ground this morning in fading
snow, so I won't let you come to me for a fort-
night yet, when I shall have got some flowers
out and some strawberries ripe, I hope, and some
of Jones's sketches framed ; but I shall beg of
you to come then, very earnestly.

" That haystack and Colleone : and the new
Trionfo della Morte Madonna stay by me- — but
you know — you must learn to paint like Titian !
— Ever affectionately yours, J. Ruskin."

1 The words haystack and Colleone refer to the small landscape called
" All the air a solemn silence holds," an impression he received when riding
home one evening ; both stacks and trees were close to Little Holland
House. The other picture is known as "The Court of Death."

219

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

In the spring of 1864 Garibaldi came to
England to receive an ovation, which appears to
have exceeded in enthusiasm all such for many
years before or since. The admiration of the
crowd for their hero put his life, at one part of
the progress from the station to Stafford House,
into as much danger as it had ever been during
his campaigns ! Signor, as a true sympathiser
with the emancipation of Italy, who admired
him greatly, had arranged with the Duchess of
Sutherland to attempt to make a portrait of him,
but the sittings had to be from seven to eight
in the morning, and even then there were
deputations waiting below to pay him homage.
The duchess came herself and read aloud to the
patient sitter. There was a study made of the
head, as well as a more finished picture ; and of
this portrait the Countess Martinengo Cesaresco
wrote in 1903 : "I sent one of Mr. Hollyer's
photographs of your beautiful portrait of Gari-
baldi to his surviving son, General Ricciotti
Garibaldi, whose acquaintance I made lately in
Rome. I have just had a letter from his wife,
in which she says, ' My husband received the
portrait with the greatest pleasure ; it is most
wonderfully like ! '

" I feel a temptation to send this little word to
you, and I hope that you will pardon the liberty
I take in doing so."

In spite of the constant intercourse Signor
had for years enjoyed with friends, many of
whom, sooner or later, have been given their

220

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

place in making the history of their time ; in
spite of the solicitous care given to him by all
at Little Holland House, and the real affection
in which he was held by the whole circle of the
family, there is often a note of great sadness in
his letters. A sense of loneliness seems to per-
vade his life. Perhaps this is the case even in
the happiest surroundings, where the nature has
been given intimations of some place afar, which
it is ever seeking, partly aware that only there
can it ever be truly at home. In more than one
letter I find that he expresses regret that he had
never married ; as if he were asking himself
whether it was this companionship that was
missing from his life. To what is well known
I wish to add nothing ; all who have heard
his name know also that a beautiful young girl
who, with her yet undeveloped genius, was
destined later to fascinate and delight thousands
of her generation, came into his life, that they
were married in February 1864, and were parted
in June 1865, and, except for the accident of one
chance meeting in the streets of Brighton, never
met again, the marriage being dissolved in 1877.
But to return to what had just been said, of
the something akin to loneliness that contributed
to make him know a tinge of sadness, as if for
some reason he was not quite at home in the
ways of life, a feeling which is probably shared
by all highly sensitive natures, and to be accounted
for by their spiritual elevation. That this eleva-
tion was visible in him can best be explained by

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the effect his presence had upon others. After the
last visit Mr. F. W. H. Myers paid to Signor,
he wrote of him as " one who without sect or
dogma shall answer to the welcoming Infinite
with simplicity and calm." Or, in the simple
words used by a French lady who, forty years
later, looking back to her early teens, said,
" Mr. Watts was the first person to make me
want to be good." It was not an aloofness,
which would have put a distance between him
and you — this was never so ; it seemed as natural
to be aware of that elevation as to be aware of
the air breathed on a mountain top — you were
beside him, but on a plane that you knew was
different. Not long ago I had the pleasure of
talking to a lady at Brighton who had known
him well in these early 'sixties. She spoke with
enthusiasm and affection of many of his friends,
and describing one brilliant personality after
another, ended by saying, " But Mr. Watts was
different — he had something apart."

In 1865 the introduction of Mr. Charles
Rickards to Signor, through the medium of
Mr. J. E. Taylor and his namesake, though not
related, Mr. Tom Taylor (author and critic), was
the means of bringing a very sincere admirer and
constant purchaser of pictures to the studio at
Little Holland House. Mr. Rickards wished to
have a portrait painted by him, and from the
time of their first acquaintance kept all the letters
and notes that passed between them for more
than twenty years. They are docketed by him

222

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

as " Letters written to me by my friend, pre-
served by me from motives of warm regard, as
well as for the future biographical or other
public service. — C. H. Rickards." These letters
were kindly given to me in 1904 by his cousin,
Miss Chesworth. The first of the bundle is
from Tom Taylor to his namesake : —

" i-th June 1865.

" Dear Taylor — I have written urgently to
Watts re Rickards, pointing out to him how
important it is that the great North should be
impregnated with great Art of a different
character from much of that which enriches your
picture dealers, and fills the galleries they have
the catering for. — Always yours,

"Tom Taylor."

The first sitting for this portrait was in
September 1865, the artist having told Mr.
Tom Taylor that it could not be painted out of
hand, as he had much work about in his studio,
to complete which he was giving all the
time possible. The portrait was therefore not
finished until the end of September in the year
following, and when appointing the last sitting
Signor writes : " I am glad to find that the
subject of art is become one of interest to you,
and I hope, from what you say, to some of your
friends. I am sure that you now feel it is an
interest that should not be left out of any man's
life. However little I might care about being
known myself, I am glad that the opinions I

223

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

have arrived at by really earnest thinking should
be known and tested. In the belief that art of
noble aim is necessary to a great nation, I am
sometimes tempted in my impatience to try if
I cannot get subscriptions to carry out a project
I have long had, to erect a statue to unknown
worth — in the words of the author of Felix
Holt, ' a monument to the faithful who are not
famous.' I think this would be a worthy thing
to do, and if I had not unfortunately neglected
opportunities of making money, I would certainly
do it at my own expense.

" I am at this time making a monumental
statue, and feel confident I could execute a
colossal bronze statue that should be a real monu-
ment. I would give up all other work to be
enabled to carry out such an idea, and should be
contented if guaranteed against loss ; contented
to be able to meet the expenses of the under-
taking. Please think a little about this plan."

When the portrait and another picture were
about to be sent off to Mr. Rickards, he writes :
" I will send the pictures in a day or two, and
I must ask you to hang them on a dark wall ;
an oil picture suffers so very much if hung upon
a light ground. If your walls are light I would
beg you, for the sake of your own pleasure in
the pictures, to have your room re-papered.
It may seem a rather bold request, but pictures
are expensive luxuries, and a man ought to get
all the satisfaction he can out of them, and, I
may say, in justice to the artist. Any dark

224

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

colour, red or green, and no matter how rich,
would do, and if possible the picture should be
hung with the light on the spectator's left, and
not too near the window, because the spectator
should stand between the pictures and the

light.-

The portrait of Mr. Rickards gave entire
satisfaction, and to him Mr. Frederick Walker, 1
an intimate friend, writes of this : " It is no
exaggeration to say that it is the best portrait
I have ever seen of one intimately known to
me. The features are drawn with photographic
avoidance of flattery, and at the same time the
noblest side of your character appears." In this
letter he also says that he agrees with Signor
that frescoes might be invaluable instruments
of education. It had occurred to him some
years ago, on seeing the fresco at Lincoln's Inn,
that with the aid of the sixth book of the
JEneid, Roman history could be well condensed
into a single picture. "There in the Elysian
fields Anchises points out to iEneas the unborn
souls of all the men who in after times were
to make Rome great, the long list ending with
Pompey, Caesar Augustus, the young Marcellus.
Perhaps the subject is not susceptible of pictur-
esque treatment, but I should like to see the
experiment tried." To this Signor replies :
" You may be sure that I am most gratified to
find your friends approve. Some success such
patience as yours insured ; but, anxious as I

1 In later years headmaster of St. Paul's School.
VOL. I 225 Q

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

am, I never feel sure of succeeding under any
circumstances, as portraiture is certainly not
my line, and I find it very difficult, hence it
is that I undertake a portrait with very great
reluctance, but my pleasure in giving satisfac-
tion is of course in proportion. I am much
interested by Mr. Walker's letter and certainly
sympathise with his idea. What he proposes
is exactly the right kind of thing for educational
purposes, and exactly the right treatment of the
subject. Ten years ago I would have offered
to paint a mural picture of the kind, provided
the materials were found. It is not in my
power to do so now, but I would gladly make
some sacrifice in order to carry out so admirable
a scheme. Your Manchester School of Art
ought to be able to supply students competent
to carry out designs under the direction of an
experienced artist. Surely something might
be done in such a place as Manchester."

In the next letter, some six months later,
he writes : " Flattered as I must be by your
wish to buy some of my pictures, I feel great
difficulty about taking advantage of your newly
awakened taste. It is possible you may here-
after regret spending money upon works which
may never be generally cared for ; at the same
time, as I naturally think my direction a right
one, or I should not follow it, and — as I am
desirous of giving an impulse to taste for art
of a graver and nobler character than that
which is characteristic of the English school,

226

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

you shall have such pictures of mine as you
may take a fancy to, upon the understanding
that I take them back at the same price if you
should change your opinion of them, or grow
tired of them." Later in the same letter he
writes : " I shall keep you to your offer to
purchase a picture from some young artist, and
will take care that you shall run no risk.
Thank you for the promise. As to the
criticisms — even the best art critics are very
unsafe guides, talking more glibly than wisely,
upon the subject ; even when they form —
speaking generally — a right estimate of the
excellencies of the picture, mostly praising
it for qualities it does not possess, and dis-
approving of qualities which really are merits,
so that real artists who began by resenting their
patronage as much as their blame, soon become
indifferent to both."

Again, three months later, he writes to Mr.
Rickards : " I have always told you that I feel
the greatest unwillingness to take advantage of
your wish to buy so many pictures, lest I should
be injuring you and defrauding others. How-
ever, we have discussed that matter, and I won't
say more about it " — a promise he felt himself
unable to keep ; and over and over again Mr.
Rickards is warned that he may be defrauding
him, or that those who come after him may
feel that his investments in these pictures were
ill-judged ; and often he had to apologise for
returning Mr. Rickards's cheque, if sent before

227

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the picture was completed, or if in payment
of one he could not make up his mind to sell.
" The Court of Death " was designed and well
advanced. " Time, Death, and Judgment " was
also designed. The small version of " Sir
Galahad" had been completed before 1862.
The study for the head of the knight was made
from Arthur Prinsep as early as 1855 or 56.
" The Court of Death " was originally designed
for a Mortuary Chapel. Signor had been told
of a project to open a cemetery for London
paupers, in which a chapel was to be built
where the coffins would be collected, to ensure
that one burial service would be sufficient for
several paupers. This cold calculation to save
trouble had touched Signor to the quick, and
he immediately set to work to think out such a
design as he believed might dignify the building.
The scheme for this cemetery was, I believe,
given up, certainly in its original bareness. Of
this design and of his " Time, Death, and Judg-
ment " he writes to Mr. Rickards : " Allegory
is much out of favour now and by most people
condemned, forgetting that spiritual and even
most intellectual ideas can only be expressed by
similes, and that words themselves are but
symbols. The design ' Time and Death ' is
one of several suggestive compositions that I
hope to leave behind me in support of my
claim to be considered a real artist, and it is
only by these that I wish to be known. I am
very glad that you find the ring of poetry in it."

228

CHAPTER VIII

229

THOUGHT and imagination are the attributes of
man alone. Surely the development of the con-
ception of beauty indicates an assimilation to the
most divine — that which is most beyond our mere
material existence.

G. F. WATTS.

230

CHAPTER VIII

On Thursday, January 31, 1867, Edward
Armitage and George Frederic Watts were
elected Associates of the Royal Academy,
William Holman Hunt standing next in the
order of votes.

These elections were made without the candi-
dates putting down their names. When the
news was brought to him by his friend Leighton,
no one was more surprised by the result of the
election than Signor himself. He had given
his opinion at the Royal Academy Commission
that the regulation by which each candidate for
admission into that body was required to write
his name down every year until elected was
" vexatious and unnecessary."

" I know," he had said, " within the range
of my own personal acquaintance, that it has
been felt to be very disagreeable to many men."
He thought that every man should be eligible
who had been an exhibitor for any length of
time. After Sir Charles Eastlake's death, Sir
Francis Grant being President he worked to
get this rule altered, and he afterwards told

231

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Signor it was chiefly on his account. Signor's
first impulse was to refuse the honour, on the
ground that the state of his health precluded
any possibility of his being useful in the
Academy. He explained that the uncertainty
of his condition made ordinary social life for
him impossible, and kept him almost entirely
in the seclusion of his studio. However, his
friends Leighton and Armitage, and several
members of the Academy, all pointed out to
him the opportunities he would have for useful-
ness. Mr. Armitage wrote : " You would be
able to give a vote at the election, and any
opinion you expressed would, I am sure, have
great weight with the junior members, and
indirectly on the state of public feeling about
art." He also says : " I was in hopes that in
the Academy we might have united to give a
new direction to the school." On February 7
Mr. Armitage again writes : " No one can
rejoice more than I do that you have withdrawn
your resignation ; your note gave me very great
pleasure." No doubt the opinion of his friend
Leighton, who had been elected as Associate in
1864, had weight with him. In such matters
it would ; but he was also sensible that there
was liberality in the action of the members of
the Academy, as he had not conformed to rules,
and was personally unknown to by far the larger
number of the members, who might very well
consider that he was critical of the Institution, if
not hostile to it. His election as Academician

232

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

followed in December of the same year, which,
he thought, was generous ; though some of his
friends considered it to be " but tardy justice,"
as his work had been before the public for
twenty-three years, and over and over again men,
much his junior, had in the meantime been
elected. However that may have been, there
was no feeling of soreness on his part ; and in
1869 he was busy, with his friend Frederic
Leighton, at work as one of the Hanging Com-
mittee for the summer Exhibition. With them
Sir Francis Grant had some difference of opinion
on the subject of two pictures, which they refused
to place on " the line," although the President
had received — with one of them at least — a
special request from high places to have it
well hung. He writes afterwards : " You and
Leighton acted with Roman virtue according
to your judgment. . . . However, although we
have differed, it has always been done in good
humour ; and I can assure you as friends I value
you both greatly, and I am only happy to have
seen so much of you, and to remember so much
that has been so pleasant and agreeable. With
the only trifling exception of the two pictures,
I think I never remember to have seen the
exhibition so well hung, and I never before
have seen such general satisfaction. I am so
sorry to hear you are poorly — you want another
room to hang ! "

The two friends had been given a very free
hand in the matter of arrangement, but when

2 33

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

they chose to hang their own pictures above
" the line," their colleagues objected, and they
were obliged to give way.

Many of Signor's well-known designs belong
to these years, though few indeed can be said to
belong to one year only. A design laid in in
the 'fifties might be completed ten, twenty, and
even thirty years later. He could not be per-
suaded to see his own work from the point of
view of the expert of the future, who would
require to place such-and-such work in an early
or late period of the artist's life.

Mr. Thoby Prinsep, who was not aesthetic,
grew impatient at times, and was once heard to
exclaim, " I never saw such a fellow as you are,
Signor ! Why don't you finish one picture before
you begin another ? " and from the doorway
came the parting shot from Signor as he went
back to work, " My dear friend, you don't paint
a picture as you would make a pair of boots ! "

If, while it was still unfinished, he could
improve a picture in any way, he would work
upon it for any number of years. He very
rarely retouched a completed work, one which,
after some four or five years — the time he
usually allowed for the colour to harden — he
had had varnished. The only exception to this
that I know of is the " Fata Morgana," now
in the Municipal Gallery at Leicester. This
picture, painted at Careggi, had been laid in
with the simplicity of fresco. In 1889 he had
all the mastic varnish removed from the picture,

234

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

and in a very few days changed it from one
thinly painted, laid in in broad simple masses,
into a picture extremely rich in texture and
brilliant in colour. I remember Sir Frederic
Leighton chaffing him about the " tocchi reso-
luti" and for once approving of this union of
two periods of manner. His counsel was usually
against delay in completing pictures, the two
friends differing very distinctly. Signor often
begged Leighton not to attempt to finish for
exhibition in May pictures he had begun in the
autumn. They talked things over, but each
went his own way ; it could not have been
otherwise.

I must here venture to correct an error that
has appeared more than once in published
accounts of Mr. Watts's work with reference to
a portrait of Lady Somers, begun in i860. It
is a mistake to say that he worked all over this
in 1889. The right arm, sleeve, and lower part
of the picture had originally been sketched in
monochrome, and so left. Naturally, the colour
painted over these parts in 1889 * s distinguish-
able from that which was painted thirty-eight
years before ; but he put no touch upon the
panel where the work was already complete, save
only on one small spot upon the lower lip, where
there was some slight damage to the colour.

The designs he had now in hand were the
" Court of Death," " Time, Death, and Judg-
ment," "The Creation," "The Denunciation,"
" The Genius of Greek Poetry," " The Island of

2 35

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Cos," "Ariadne in Naxos," "Daphne," "Thetis,"
and "The Mid-day Rest." Besides these, he
was at work upon a full-length portrait of Lady
Bath, now at Longleat. It was carried on during
more years than he could remember, that subtle
quality of resemblance eluding him. He asked
Lady Bath once, during the last sittings, if she
could remember when the portrait was begun,
and she answered, " I am not quite sure of the
exact date, but I know it was soon after my
marriage, and now I have seven children."

It was at this time that Mr. Gladstone wrote 1
to express a wish to possess the picture described
in the catalogue of the Royal Academy Exhibi-
tion of 1868 as "The Wife of Pygmalion, a
translation from the Greek," and in reply Mr.
Watts writes thus : —

" May yd, 1868.
" Little Holland House.

" Dear Mr. Gladstone — I am really rather
shocked by your great admiration of the ' Wife
of Pygmalion,' for it makes me feel like a
humbug. I cannot think you could find her
so deserving on longer acquaintance. In pro-
portion as I value I am encouraged by sympathy
with the direction of my efforts, having, I believe,
a right to feel that they are worthy of some
respect. I am really pained by applause which

1 This letter is not preserved, but of the picture Mr. Bernard
Bosanquet wrote to me in 1886 : "Ever since I saw the 'Galatea,' I have
hung on Mr. Watts's works as the one realisation of what modern art
might do. He has kept alive the conception of great art almost single-
handed."

236

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

is more than my due ; if you will come out here
some day I will cure you of your love and
console you from your disappointment (the
picture is claimed), by showing you the frag-
ment from which it was painted, wherein you
will see all that you admire in the picture, with
infinite beauties altogether missed.

" I much desire your good opinion of my bust
(The Clytie), and must explain that my aim in
this my first essay has been to get flexibility,
impression of colour, and largeness of character,
rather than purity and gravity — qualities I own
to be extremely necessary to sculpture, but
which, being made, as it seems to me, ex-
clusively the objects of the modern sculptor,
have deadened his senses to some other qualities
making part — often glories — of ancient Art, and
this has resulted in bare and cold work. When
you have time I should like to talk this matter
over with you, for I have it much at heart, and
I am full of anxiety to do something for the
national honour. Mr. Jones and myself hope to
avail ourselves of your invitation next Thursday.

" You may believe that I should be proud to
know my c Greek ' head hung up in your house,
but I am sure a cast of the antique bust will
more than console you. — Yours very sincerely,

« G. F. Watts."

Some years before, Sir Charles Newton and
Signor had visited Oxford, to look over the
Arundel Marbles. These marbles, though pre-

237

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

sented in 1624, had been left, in great part,
neglected in a cellar. The object of their visit
was to look, over the fragments, and to pick out
those which were of real worth for exhibition
in the Ashmolean Museum. Si^nor was the
discoverer here of a beautiful head severed at
the neck, and unhappilv without the nose. The
missing parts were searched for, and thev were
successful in rinding the bust and shoulders. It
is now one of the o;ems of the collection. Si°;nor
ranked this bust with the best art of Greece in
the time of Pheidias, but he believed that it was
a portrait, because certain characteristics of the
Greek ideal were lacking. For instance, the
eves were slightlv prominent, which alone
denoted that it was a likeness. Casts were
made from the bust, and one of these always
stood in his studio. The reverence in which
this was held by him was so great that it in-
spired him to paint the transition of Galatea
from marble to life. To compare this picture
with the Greek bust is instructive, the attempt is
so often made to discover plagiarisms committed
by our poets, a form of criticism from which
Shakespeare does not escape. Had the picture
been in anv way a copy of the bust, it could not
have been ranked, as it was bv Mr. Gladstone
and others, as amongst the painter's most
imaginative works. All art is transmitted by
a natural process of fertilisation. Almost un-
consciouslv this process had stirred his imagina-
tion. From his letter to Mr. Gladstone, it is

*3«

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

clear that Signor looked upon his picture as ^
sort of portrait of the bus:. But how far it is
removed from this, comparison of the two will
show. The distinction between a copy and the
work inspired bv the great work of another

■:*5 imagination is evident. The imitator
of anv school, or of any artist's productions,
must in his own production fall so short of the
original that he can never hope to stir the
enthusiasm of the spectator.

T:< a voung student I have heard Signor say:
• Go and look at the old masters, not to copv
them but to admire them ; look at Nature and
be vourself. Learn the principles of art, but
never mind about the rules ; thev mav be
broken, and are bv every great painter ; the
principles are fundamental."

Great Art and great Nature fertilise the
minds of those gifted to receive ; for as Walt
Whitman says, "The great masters hear the
inaudible words of the earth."'

One full-length portrait was painted during
these years, and is now the best known of the
portraits because it has been so generously lent
to various exhibitions in London. It is one that
probably to his mind came nearer than any other
towards that attainment to stvle always kept
in view bv him — the portrait of Mrs. Percy
Wvndham. He proposed to begin this picture
in the summer of i S66, but it was not begun
till the spring of 1S67, and was on the easel
until the spring of 1870, when he hoped that

- :

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

he might complete it for exhibition at the
Academy ; but he writes later to say he is so
unwell that he has given up all idea of sending
it. Though it was finished shortly after this
date, it was not exhibited until the first
exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877.
The painting of this portrait brought a new joy
into his life, as he writes many years afterwards
when he speaks of his regret at ever having
finished it, because he saw Mrs. Wyndham less
often. " But not the less you will believe that
your friendship is very precious to me." In
another letter of an earlier date he tells her that,
through the letter he had just received from her,
he had been entering keenly into her enjoyment
of great art and great nature ; and he says
further: " What depresses me in general is not
so much that I cannot give utterance to ' the
thoughts that fill my heart to bursting ' " (her
own words), "though it is painful enough, but
that people walk through all this glory, and
only coldly recognise that something is round
about them, interesting perhaps when they
have time to think upon the matter, after
business and the claims of society. With me
it is like a religion, in fact, I believe it to
be part of the same thing ; the sense of the
beautiful in the highest manifestations is
religious. I am really moved — much more
than pleased — that you should have been
prompted to write me a long letter, for I take
it as a proof that my own efforts have not

240

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

altogether failed in helping you to take in what
you have seen. . . . That you are reminded of
me is precious to me, as a sign that in direction
and intention my aspirations are in harmony
with what you so truly appreciate. Alas, that
aspiration and achievement should be so far
apart."

During the last five or six years, he had been
working much with clay. His " Clytie," a bust,
had been completed ; but the first large piece of
sculpture was for a memorial — a life-sized figure
— commissioned by his friend Mr. Reginald
Cholmondeley, to commemorate his elder brother
Thomas, whose career of usefulness and high
endeavour had been too early closed by death,
tragically soon after his marriage in 1864. This
memorial, now in Condover Church, was placed
there a few years afterwards. 1 In 1869 he under-
took to make a recumbent figure of the Bishop
of Lichfield, Doctor Lonsdale. At first his
sculpture studio was but a small greenhouse put
to this use, and there the " Clytie " was modelled ;
but for larger work he shared part of a studio
in Gold-Hawk Road, where the sculptor Mr.
Nelson was at work. The commission for the
Bishop's monument was not accepted without

1 The question whether this memorial was by Signor or the work of
Mr. Reginald Cholmondeley having been publicly raised, a friend, Mrs.
Baldwin Childe, wrote to the former to confirm her (correct) statement, and
received the following reply : "The statue of Thomas Cholmondeley Owen
is wholly mine. — G. F. Watts, December 20th, 1898."

A confusion had been made between this work and a memorial in the
same chapel at Condover Church to Mrs. Reginald Cholmondeley, that
her husband had designed and carried out with the aid of advice from
Signor.

VOL. I 241 R

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

some hesitation, and Sir George Gilbert Scott,
who was to design the base and canopy, seems to
have misunderstood this, and wrote to Mr. Watts
saying that, in the event of his not undertaking
the work, it would be offered to Mr. Armstead.
Mr. Watts had replied in his usual generous way
anxious to leave the commission to fall to the lot
of another ; and Sir Gilbert Scott writes to thank
him for the manner in which he had received
his letter. " You have, however, carried your
generosity far beyond what I had intended,
which had been suggested solely by your ex-
pressions of doubt as to your acceptance of the
commission. It was only in case these doubts
should be confirmed that I ventured to offer
the suggestion I made. I feel that for you to
decline the work when these doubts have been
removed will be to deprive it of the benefit of
the highest talent that could be devoted to it, and
of which I cannot over-state my appreciation.
I beg, therefore, that you will reconsider what
the impulse of generosity has dictated."

The letters in which this spirit of generosity
is referred to are many ; sometimes on his
returning a cheque for a portrait that has been
criticised, sometimes when it was a question of
hanging a work of his less well than his colleagues
at the Royal Academy knew to be his due. On
his exhibiting for the first time as an Associate
there was a question of this sort ; and Mr. George
Richmond wrote : " I must, though very tired,
thank you for your kind and obliging message.

242

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

My colleagues felt that I was treading on very
delicate ground when I sent a message to you.
Your generous answer has convinced them that
I have not mistaken my man, and we are all
grateful to you." Very often this spirit appears
when he is anxious to obtain the commission for
a younger man, and he has stepped aside in his
favour. His treatment of the Bishop's lawn
sleeves and robe was, he believed, at that time
unique. It brings to mind his careful observation
of Pheidian work, shown in the letter already
quoted, on the frescoes of Giotto at Padua, and
their likeness to the work of Pheidias. It will
be remembered that of the Greek sculptor he
said, " By many folds he took away the importance
of the mass, leaving the head and limbs free and
uninterfered with, simple, massive, and import-
ant." He never saw the memorial when placed
in Lichfield Cathedral, but Sir Gilbert Scott told
him with honourable candour that to his regret
the canopy had destroyed the figure. Of this
effigy Signor writes to Mr. Rickards : —

" I am glad you like the Bishop, but imagine
you did not think the likeness good ; a probable
thing, for the materials I had to work from were
very unsatisfactory, until I got two photographs
from Miss Lonsdale ; but then the alabaster was
already so much advanced that alteration was not
possible. Such an effigy is a very different thing
from a portrait for a drawing-room, and the kind
of likeness required should be in accordance rather
with an abstract idea than of a realistic character ;

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

but I would have made a great difference in it, if
the photographs had come to hand earlier."

In colder weather he was prevented from
working with clay, on account of the damp and
chill, its effect upon his health being very bad.
This material he afterwards ceased to use alto-
gether, and replaced it by the Italian gesso grosso.
But though prevented from going to work in the
damp studio, he tells Mr. Rickards that his mind
was much occupied with the subject of sculpture,
and in the following summer he writes : " I have
been sculpturing a good deal lately, and the more
I do in that way, the more confidence I feel in
my power as a sculptor." Mr. Rickards, though
not a very rich man, was now buying from him
paintings of mythical and symbolic subjects, at a
time when very few indeed cared to possess these,
and his generous appreciation was met in the
same spirit. Always anxious that he should not
defraud his friend, he writes : " I am relieved to
find that the last importation was not a dis-
appointment to you or your friends. You know
I am always afraid of trafficking upon your
predilections for my works, dreading lest I may
injure you in your pocket or your taste. I am
always anxious to hear that you are satisfied and
that your friends approve. For this last reason
I am really gratified to find Mr. Maddox Brown
expressing a favourable opinion ; for in addition
to being an artist of real genius, his sentiment
for art is in many respects so different from my
own that it was hardly to be expected that he

244

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

should find much to care for in my work. You
have twice expressed a wish that the portrait
that you have of me should be exhibited; this I
should be most unwilling to have carried out, and
hope you do not greatly set your heart upon it,
for it would be really disagreeable to me ; not
that I see any reason against an artist painting
himself, but the contrary. The most interesting
gallery I know is the collection of artists' portraits,
painted by their own hands, and I paint myself
constantly ; that is to say, whenever I want to
make an experiment in method or colour, and am
not in a humour to make a design. So there are
other portraits of me, and if I live there may be
many more, but I should not like to display them
to the public. I should feel a sort of absurdity
attaching to such a proceeding."

With an organisation peculiarly sensitive
to pain, whether physical or mental, it will be
easily understood that the appreciation of a few
friends, whose opinion he could respect, helped
him to become inured to the indifference of a
public led by criticisms either ignorant or hostile.
Mr. Rickards not only gave this sympathy, but
gave it in a material shape, often possessing him-
self of pictures which had been painted many
years before ; and thus he had found one of the
greater satisfactions in life, one which he rejoiced
in sharing with a group of friends artistic or
literary, who were capable of entering into his
pleasure. He liked to ask his friends to come to
luncheon and afterwards to take them round his

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

rooms, enjoying each picture in turn, or making
the acquaintance of some new acquisition. He
was led by Signor's influence to admire the works
of other and younger men, and an occasional
commission, where it was very welcome, was
given through him. Of one of the first of these
he writes to Mr. Rickards: " As to your generous
proposal respecting the money that was to buy
a picture by some young artist, I can only say
that your feeling does you infinite honour, and
makes me proud to reckon amongst my friends
Charles Rickards ; but whichever way you
desire generously to apply the money, you may
be sure that I should be the last person to deprive
you of your honest credit. I should like you
to have this credit ; I will surely find an
opportunity of gratifying your good feeling."
Monsieur Legros was then but little known in
England, and a commission for a picture to be
painted for Mr. Rickards was acceptable to him.
Of this Signor writes: " I shall be very anxious to
know how Legros's picture is liked. I do not
expect that it will be much approved of at first,
but I think you will find that its grave simplicity
will make its effect in time." In the next letter
he writes : " I am delighted to find that Legros's
work is appreciated. I own it is rather more
than I expected, fearing that the simplicity of
the workmanship would be regarded as want of
finish. I am sure it is a picture that will give
you more and more pleasure, as you become used
to it ; there is in it all the poetry your friends

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

have fancied, but it is the unconscious poetry of
the bird's song, and not an elaborated effort,
therefore so much more delightful, being per-
fectly natural — a most rare quality."

Mr. Rickards's high services as a citizen of
Manchester having been acknowledged publicly,
Signor writes to him : " I wish all testimonials
were as well deserved. I don't see why, for fear
of seeming to be a flatterer, I should not add my
testimonial, and say that I believe that you
belong to the class that has made England great,
and would make any nation great, earnest, sincere,
and courageous, sympathising with all that is
good in action and great in aspiration, free from
meanness, and impatient only of wrong-doing.
Perhaps it signifies little whether such are Whig,
or Tory, or Radical ; the cause of humanity is
sure to be helped. For myself I honour you and
your like."

In spite of the opinion he expressed now in
writing to a friend — " I am specially unfitted to
paint a portrait " — his friends refused to be per-
suaded ; and when Mr. Henry Bruce — then
Home Secretary — now better known as Lord
Aberdare, was asked to give sittings for a pre-
sentation portrait and to choose the painter, he
wrote to beg Signor to undertake it, saying :
" Of this let me assure you, with all earnestness
and sincerity, that I desire you to undertake the
task, not only because I hold you to be the first
of living artists, but because it will always be
a pleasure to me and mine to know that my

247

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

portrait was the work of a valued friend." In
his reply Signor again begs to assure Mr. Bruce
of his own incapacity. " I am not a good
portrait painter," he writes ; " I know you will
point to a certain amount of success, but if you
knew what toil, anxiety, and positive pain that
success represents, you would feel it is in no
degree commensurate." He also explains further,
" The best part of my life is gone, and I devote
what remains to the endeavour to produce works
that will be worthy contributions to the national
honour. I am conscious that it will be only an
endeavour, so the aspiration is not presumptuous."
The appeal made by Mr. Bruce must have been
hard to resist ; but the painter was at the moment
realising to the full the difficulty of achieving a
successful portrait, for Carlyle was giving him
sittings, and Signor was more than ever confirmed
in the opinion that he was not intended by nature
to succeed in portraiture, and Mr. Wells under-
took the commission.

Carlyle was an impatient sitter, and though
he tried to conceal the fact, Signor was conscious
of this, and told me that it so acted upon his
nerves that one of the most important portraits
he had ever taken in hand was thus spoilt.
" You have made me like a mad labourer," was
Carlyle's well-known comment. In spite of
this ruggedness of character, Signor's impression
of Carlyle was one of goodness and nobility of
disposition, and he thought that the emphasis,
in Mrs. Carlyle's letters, upon his irritability,

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

exaggerated what may have been a blemish in
a childlike and generous nature. Three portraits
of Carlyle were begun ; two were completed and
one left incomplete. The sittings had already
begun in June 1867, perhaps earlier, and were
still being continued in July of the following
year, when Carlyle writes : " Unexpectedly I find
I have to go to Scotland in about ten days, and
continue there I know not how long. If you
do want me again, therefore, let it be within
that time, fairly within ; I am anxious to
neglect nothing for perfecting of our mutual
enterprise, in which I see in you such excellent
desire after excellence, and shall be ready within
the prescribed limits and times, any time at a
day's notice."

The two had many discussions, the artist in
vain trying to open the eyes of the great prophet
to the value of art outside the historical record
in a portrait. Signor liked to tell his friends
the opinion he gave him upon the works of
Pheidias, and it has therefore become common
property. Carlyle had been to see the Elgin
Marbles, and stated that there was not one
clever man amongst them, the jaw was not
sufficiently prominent ; and, he added, " depend
upon it neither God nor man can get on with-
out a jaw." He thought the long upper lip
was a sign of intellect, though his opponent
could quote Napoleon, and Byron, and Carlyle's
hero Goethe, as being remarkable for the beauty
of a very short one. He did not find in the

249

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

frieze or any fragment from the Parthenon
what he called " a clever man amongst them
all, and I would away with them," he said,
" away with them — into space." They also
differed as to whether the brown eye or grey
eye denoted the man of action, Carlyle main-
taining that the brown eye belonged of necessity
to the active temperament and the grey eye to
the contemplative. Signor, denying this, could
quote Guizot, who had seen Napoleon I. in
Switzerland, and had told him he could never
forget the steel-coldness of his eye. Carlyle
sends a copy of an extract at the end of which
he writes : " Mahomet's eyes were large, black,
and full of fire (Biographie Umverse//e, tome
26, p. 206, by Silvester de Lacy). For its
excellence and clearness, from which you might
paint, I have had the whole description copied
for you, and send it revised with my compli-
ments. — T. Carlyle, Chelsea, June 18th, 1867."
In accordance with the regret he had ex-
pressed to the Commissioners then considering
the state of the Royal Academy, that archi-
tecture, sculpture, and painting had ceased to
be looked upon as one, and that artists were
therefore in the habit of keeping exclusively
to one branch, he was devoting himself more
than ever to the study of sculpture, the adapta-
tion of painting to architecture being denied
to him. About 1867, for the larger work he
had in hand, he felt the necessity of a sculptor's
studio ; and, on obtaining permission from Lady

250

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Holland to build this, he found with some
alarm that there was no written promise to
Mr. Prinsep that his lease — expiring in
December 1871 — would be extended. Signor
therefore begged Lady Holland to allow him
to enter into an agreement for an extension of
ten years at any rental she might like to ask,
the lease to be in his name ; but she was then
quite sure that she would never wish to make
changes during her life, and seemed rather to
smile at the idea that legal arrangements were
necessary between them. The sculpture studio
was therefore built, and there the Condover
memorial was modelled. Four years later
(1871) he was at work upon a memorial to
Lord Lothian, for Blickling Church ; and in
correspondence with the Marquis of West-
minster about a great equestrian statue of Hugh
Lupus. While thinking of this group, he had
at the same time sketched out in his mind the
work he was anxious to make as great as might
be, the embodiment of physical energy. He
was therefore overwhelmed when he heard
that Lady Holland was being advised, for the
good of the estate, to sell off that part of Little
Holland House garden on which his sculpture
studio stood. To him it appeared to be the
destruction of all privacy, all beauty, and even
more : it seemed as if his hope of realising his
desire to do one great work was to be taken
from him. Being of nervous temperament, the
change appeared to be a calamity, for he now

251

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

realised that they had no guarantee that Little
Holland House would continue to be leased
to Mr. Prinsep after six months' time. So far
they had felt secure, as Lord Holland had
always given them to understand that he could
never be tempted to destroy Little Holland
House, the place being dear to him from old
association ; and Lady Holland, after his death,
had confirmed this view herself, both to the
Prinseps and to Signor. There was some
friction, Signor writing his views very plainly,
and believing that no money could compensate
for the loss to the property of this pleasant
old house with its fields and farm, so unique
in its situation now that Kensington had be-
come a part of London. To other arguments
he adds : " You know that from the very outset
of my career my one desire has been to prove
myself a true artist, studying and labouring hard,
in spite of want of health or means or encourage-
ment, with the direct object of contributing my
little — but my best — towards the enrichment
not only of the nation but of humanity in
general — aspirations perhaps in me ridiculous,
certainly not ignoble. All my way through,
clinging to this idea, I have abstained from
throwing myself into popular art, resigning
money-making (to the increase of my difficulties
in the present juncture), but have steadily
worked on, generally against discouragement,
endeavouring by severe labour to acquire know-
ledge and experience, making large designs

252

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

both in painting and sculpture with this great
end in view." The outcome of this corre-
spondence was nothing very definite ; Lady
Holland felt sure that she would not wish to
make any change, yet at the same time she
does not seem to have given any distinct
promise, with the result that, at the end of
the lease in 1871, the Prinseps became merely
tenants by the year. Meanwhile Signor had
bought some acres in the Isle of Wight, adjoin-
ing the Farringford property ; for on learning
that Lady Holland had received an offer for
the site of Little Holland House, amounting
to some forty thousand pounds, he told her
that he withdrew any kind of suggestion that
might " interfere with her prudential arrange-
ments " ; and he writes that " with any reference
to^the future, Little Holland House had," for
him, " practically ceased to exist." He ends
his letter, of which a copy exists, by telling her
that he is now going to devote his time to
painting portraits, with the object of making
money for the purpose of building new studios.
" Trouble and expense are before me," he writes,
" but the only real misery to me arises from loss
of time ; and I must hope to live long enough
to make that up. I have not spoken at all to
the Prinseps about this, and shall not do so :
the question of Little Holland House is now
entirely between you and them, and I sincerely
hope that with the removal of all difficulty
between us, there may be a removal of all

253

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

vexation. It would grieve me very much to
feel any coolness between so old a friend and
myself." The letter was addressed to St. Anne's
Hill, bearing the date of December 3, 1871.

Lady Holland, as I have already said,
granted a further extension by the year, and
for three more years the Prinseps were her
tenants.

It was in 1870 that the then Marquis of
Westminster first asked Signor to consider the
possibility of undertaking a big equestrian group
to represent in sculpture what he called his
mythical ancestor, Hugh Lupus (Le Gros
Veneur), to be placed in one of the courts at
Eaton Hall. Lord Westminster had at one time
spoken to Sir Edward Landseer on the subject,
but on referring again to this matter, Landseer
had definitely replied that he was already too
deeply engaged to venture on a fresh commission.
This left the ground clear, and the offer was
exceedingly agreeable to Signor, who writes :
" What I should wish would be to have the
materials and necessary aid provided and paid
for by an agent of yours, and would gladly
do my part for nothing, and think myself over-
paid by the chance of distinguishing myself."
Writing to Mr. Rickards, November 22, 1870,
he says : " I don't know where you saw an account
of the design for the equestrian statue ; it had
very little existence except in the poetical
imagination of the writer. All that is, is the
merest sketch on a very small scale, nothing to

2 54

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

photograph. I hope it will start into form with
the coming spring." The work was begun in
this way at old Little Holland House, and carried
on during 1873-74, though much disturbed by
the prospect of change, and by the necessity for
undertaking many portraits, that he might carry
out his desire to provide a home at Freshwater,
where he hoped his friend Mr. Prinsep 1 might
yet enjoy many years of life and repose. For
Signor himself, these early years of the 'seventies
were full of vexation. There was the certainty
that the home to which he had become attached
was so soon to be destroyed — an uprooting
peculiarly painful to his nature ; and the new
venture required money, which could only be
made with anything like certainty by painting
portraits. Of this he writes to Mr. Rickards :
" No one can imagine the intense weariness of
my existence as a portrait painter." It was
really more than weariness ; he was often
prostrated by nervousness before the arrival of
some new sitter ; and, as he once said to me,
" No one knows what it costs me, and yet when
I take people's cheques, I feel as if I were
cheating them." He had not quite completed
the monument of the Bishop of Lichfield, nor
was the statue of Lord Holland's father, 2 made
more or less in conjunction with Mr. Boehm,

1 Mr. Prinsep had suffered from various causes a considerable loss of
fortune, the first of these causes being a contested election for a seat in
Parliament, which threw unexpected expense upon him.

2 In the park at Holland House ; behind the fountain in High Street,
which was the work of Sir Edgar Boehm.

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

yet out of hand; and he writes in June 1870
to say he was " too much overworked by the
necessity of finishing sculpture I have on hand
before the clay falls to pieces. I always get to
work soon after 5 a.m. and work all day, so you
may suppose I am rather done up, which is the
reason I have not answered your letter." The
Hugh Lupus he intended to be simply decorative
with some suggestion of a time when violence
and force were characteristic.

The Duke took great interest in the progress
of the work, and wrote many letters referring
Mr. Watts to the pattern of spurs, or of the
actual sword supposed to belong to he Gros
Veneur preserved at the British Museum, and he
sent to Normandy for a perfect specimen of a
horse — the Normandy Percheron. It was brought
over to Cliveden to be at Signor's service when he
required it, and was photographed in the garden
at Little Holland House. This statue was
taken to the foundry at Thames Ditton in 1883.
It took nine months to cast and was delivered
at Eaton Hall in September 1884. The original
work of the artist (in gesso grosso) was presented
to the collection of casts at the Crystal Palace
by the Duke of Westminster.

While working out the small sketch the
thought occurred to him that on the same scale
he would some day allow himself to design a
group, untrammelled by costume or period ; and
almost simultaneously he made sketches for the
" Physical Energy," which was eventually to be

256

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

worked at during the fine weather, as the work
was done out of doors. Dauntless as always in
the tasks he set himself, he now proposed to
undertake his diploma picture, and on December
31, 1870, he says: "I am now about to
paint for the Royal Academy a picture contain-
ing six or seven life-sized figures " ; and this
picture was completed and exhibited in the May
following. As he never devoted himself ex-
clusively to any one picture, believing that it
was better for hand and eye to be kept alert
and awake by turning from one train of thought
and its artistic expression to quite another, and
yet another successively, it was an unusual feat
for him to have carried out so large a design
in such a very short time. The picture, hanging
as it does in the little-visited Diploma Gallery,
is not well known. During the exhibition of
1 872 the effect of the work was so far neutralised
by the strong contrasts beside it that in con-
sequence he asked permission of the Council to
be allowed to work upon the picture after the
exhibition had closed, and arriving there one
day with his materials for work, the Royal
Academy porter, who carried these for him, on
entering the now empty gallery, stopped short
in surprise and exclaimed, " Why, sir, it's a
different picture " ; and Signor found that there
was nothing he wished to change. This picture
awaits the judgment of time. The name in the
catalogue was "My Punishment is greater than I
can bear " — later known as the " Denunciation of

VOL. I 257 S

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Cain" ; it is one of the fragments of the " House
of Life." In his mind a sort of epic grew up
about this early record of a crime, the brother's
hand against a brother. He believed it to be a
subject for a great cantata, and now and again
tried to give shape to it in words ; but nothing he
wrote seemed to him adequate, and these remain
only in fragmentary notes. In speaking of it,
he once outlined the general idea in this way : —
" If I were a poet and musician like Wagner,
I could make a fine cantata or oratorio of the
subject. The first act would be to describe the
innocence of the two brothers in their boyhood,
the first shadow of the stain in the character of
Cain just indicated ; then, as the story grew, to
mark the widening difference between them —
the angelic guilelessness of Abel and the darken-
ing of Cain's heart through the sin of jealousy,
the ever-increasing desire to make himself greater
than Abel ending in the madness of his wrath
and the murder of Abel. The denouncing
spirits, as I have painted them, represent the
voices of conscience reproaching him with the
many sins that culminated in the murder. The
brand is set upon him ; he is shut out from con-
tact with all creation ; he has closed the avenue
of sympathy with his fellow-men ; as he decides
that they shall be unknown to him he becomes
unknown to them. 1 The brand, forbidding
human vengeance ('No man may slay him'),

1 I am reminded by this description that the isolation of Cain was in
the painter's mind the retribution that follows upon the sin of selfishness.

258

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

constitutes the most terrible part of his punish-
ment ; he is driven out from all contact with
created things — unseen, unacknowledged, un-
known. Not only are his fellow-men unconscious
of his presence, but all animate nature has cast
him out : no bird or living creature acknowledges
his being. For him no bird sings, no flower
blooms, evil passions haunt and follow him,
making discords in his ear ; but all the while,
one voice, as of an angel, is heard, and more and
more prevails, until worn and weary nature can
bear no more, and, surrendering to the Voice, he
returns to Abel's altar, there to give himself up
a sacrifice ; and there the angel removes the
curse and he dies forgiven. I should have
liked to have made a sort of psychological study
of it all, not only of Cain and of Abel, but of
the human beings who passed by Cain during
his term of isolation." Carrying on the theme
in his mind during several years, he painted a
second picture called the " Death of Cain," not
exhibited until 1886. The Angel in this design
is seen removing the curse, and to a corre-
spondent on this subject — Mr. Edward Butler —
to whom the picture had suggested a poem in
blank verse, he writes : —

"May z$tA, 1886,
" Kensington, W.

" Dear Sir — I am much gratified by your
poetic illustration of my picture, ' The Death of

He sometimes spoke of it as the only sin that might be called " the un-
pardonable," because, when carried to the utmost limit, it must entail the
death of love, the most vitalising of all human instincts.

2 59

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Cain.' You have exactly rendered my intention,
very nobly and beautifully. The picture is one
of a series illustrating a sketched-out poem of
my own. Cain is, in my intention, a symbol of
reckless, selfish humanity (always killing his
brother). I intend simply that the sacrifice is
accepted. The flaming angel sweeps away the
cloud which represents the brand. I am much
pleased that you felt so distinctly the return to
the deserted altar. — Very sincerely yours,

" G. F. Watts.

" Edward Butler, Esq."

In a subsequent letter Mr. Watts adds : " I
identify myself and my work with no especial
dogma. I think there may be as much of Cain
in sitting on one's own altar, and choosing one's
form of sacrifice, as in making none at all. Cain
is in the grasping of riches to the hurt of others,
or in indifference to others ; in the building of
houses unfit for dwelling in ; in the polluting of
streams without regret ; in short, in the absence
of sympathy with the weaknesses of our fellows ;
and there is need to return to the deserted altar
of sympathy before the cloud of unhappiness
and gloom that hangs over all life can be swept

away."

Pictures such as these, he knew very well,
could no more make an appeal to the mind of
visitors to the summer exhibition than could a
chapter of Isaiah read in the midst of a company
at some ordinary afternoon party in modern

260

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

London ; and to this want of concord was added
the necessarily destructive effect upon a painting
low in tone and subtle in drawing, of conflicting
colours, and the dazzle of upright and level lines
of new gilding. It was, however, the message
which he had come to bring, and he had to
give it. The sympathy of a few friends was
meanwhile a solace to him, and amongst these
some two or three Manchester merchants were
foremost.

Mr. Richard Johnson at this time had ex-
pressed a wish to obtain from him the painting,
then incomplete, which was afterwards named
" She shall be called Woman." Of this Signor
writes to Mr. Rickards : —

" With regard to the proposition, I hardly
know what to say. In the first place, Mr.
Johnson has not seen the picture, which is a
large one — seven feet high — though narrow,
and he can scarcely have space for it in his
house ; secondly, it is a perfectly naked figure,
and though I hope my endeavour to render
it perfectly unobjectionable on that score has
not been wholly unsuccessful, still, such sub-
jects are more fit for a gallery than a dwelling-
house, and one could not expect a household
that has not been brought up in familiarity with
this class of work to escape being shocked.

"Thus far, you see, I am thinking of Mr.
Johnson, and am anxious he should not feel like
the man who came into possession of a white
elephant. Now, as for what concerns myself,

261

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

these designs — Eve in the glory of her innocence,
Eve yielding to temptation, and Eve restored to
beauty and nobility by remorse — form part of
one design and can hardly be separated, any
more than one would think of separating the
parts of an epic poem. My intention was to
make them part of an epic, and they belong to
a series of six pictures illustrating the story in
Genesis, viz. the three Eves — ' The Creation of
Eve,' ' After the Transgression,' and ' Cain ' —
three single figures, and three full compositions.
These I always destined to be public property,
and if I could afford to do so I would paint them
and present them to Manchester. Such hope
have I of Manchester from my knowledge of
yourself, Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Barlow, all caring
for art in the highest sense, and sympathising
with efforts that meet with very little popular
encouragement. But I don't suppose it will
ever be in my power to carry out such an
intention."

From this letter it is evident that the hope
of having the means given to him to create the
great epic of life, and story of mankind, had
been entirely given up ; and that the scheme
which was in some measure to take its place —
his gift of pictures to the nation of a certain
class of subject — had been decided upon, though
not their final destination. The want of general
sympathy with this object was very bitter to
him, though it did not embitter him. Like
the young knight in " The Court of Death," he

262

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

accepted with bowed head the verdict, laid
down his dearest hope, and went on to work
upon that which was left to him. He wrote
of this, in a note perhaps only meant for his
own eye : " I feel as some athletic man who,
awaking from a fever, finds himself reduced to
half the strength of infancy ; as Samson might
have felt, when shaking off his lethargy, and
shorn of his locks feels the wonderment of
strangeness, the despair of weakness."

He would at any rate enter into and do
something to forward his friend Mr. Ruskin's
lofty ideals. St. George's Guild was in the
making, and he proposed to help him in this
matter. " I hope you fully understand that I
intend to join you in your scheme, though I am
not sure it will result in any practical success.
I know nothing about that, perhaps it is entirely
Utopian. I don't care, it is a protest against
Mammon-worship, and the giving up of every-
thing in the desire to ' get on ' — characteristics
of the age I cannot but deplore. Whilst I
perceive that they are natural, at least I wish to
add my name to the list of those who think that
humanity, and even society, is capable of better
objects. The assistance I can lend you will be
but very little indeed, and I offer it only as a
proof of sympathy. The tenth of my earnings
I will give yearly, but that will amount to very
little, for my professional (labours) are not valued
in the market ; and, after having worked indeed
very earnestly for five-and-twenty years, I have

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

not succeeded in realising enough to give me —
after satisfying just claims — if I should be from
accident unable to work, £50 a year. But that
need not be thought of while I can work. I
do not complain, I do not know that I even feel
disappointed. The fault is mine, no doubt. If
I had possessed real power, I should have com-
manded success. The only thing that some-
times crosses my mind is that some of the many
with worth and influence whom I have known,
and who have professed to believe in my capacity,
and in the direction of my aim, might have
shown without material difficulty the material
sympathy without which I have failed to carry
out my aspirations."

To this letter Mr. Ruskin replies : —

" Denmark Hill,
'■'■May \oth, 1871.

" My dear Watts — I am deeply grateful for
your letter. You can, of course, help us in all the
best and most noble ways. I do not move in
any wise until next year, when my purpose will
be completely laid before all who care to know
it. I will then hope that you will consider of
it deliberately before giving it the sanction of
your name. I would fain have no man regret
joining hand with me. — Ever affectionately
yours, J. Ruskin."

During the lamentably short career as an artist
of George Mason, Signor became greatly attached

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

to him. He lent him at one time a studio at
Little Holland House, and there, I think I
am right in saying, the " Harvest Moon " was
painted. I know he told me that he had seen
that moon travel from one end of the picture to
the other, and finally go back to its original
place in the design. He said that there were
quite six pictures on that canvas. The artist
Frederick Walker was a very constant visitor at
old Little Holland House, and Signor spoke of
the attractive qualities of his nature. He liked
to recall that when the picture " Man goeth
forth to his Labour unto the Evening ' came
before the Hanging Committee at the Academy
not one word was spoken, but a burst of
spontaneous applause was given to it by every
member clapping his hands. I remember one
morning as we walked down the village street
of Compton (Surrey), the splendid figure of a
young countryman went along before us, and
Signor exclaimed, " How like Walker ! and yet
critics objected to his ploughman because they
said it was too like a Greek statue in modern
clothes." He pointed out, however, that there
is a possibility of a scientific arrangement of line
becoming too apparent, and in the avoidance of
this Jean Francois Millet went further than
Frederick Walker.

The building of the new home at Freshwater
in the Isle of Wight began in the summer of
1872. The attraction to that place was that
both Farringford and Mrs. Cameron's house

265

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

were in the near neighbourhood, also that the
climate of the Isle of Wight was mild, and
certainly in May the untouched, unbevillaed
country of the Isle of Wight was a paradise of
beauty. To make money for the building he
set himself to the unwelcome task of painting
portraits professionally, writing that it is " an
occupation as distasteful to me as any exercise
of my profession can be." He made engage-
ments sometimes with three sitters in one day,
the consequence being that later he was much
knocked up and went to Brighton for some
weeks to recruit. He was, however, unfortunate
enough to have a bad kick on his shin from a
horse the first day he happened to be out with
the Brighton Harriers, and so was laid up for
some time, the pain and confinement to his
room obliging him, as he writes, to spend
" much time being ill and getting well." It
was here, and now, that he took upon himself
the guardianship of a little orphan girl. It so
happened that a young widow, a great-niece of
Mrs. Prinsep's, had died quite suddenly, leaving
several little children, and, being at Brighton,
they were brought to see the Prinseps. They
had not been very long in the room when the
youngest — a tiny thing to wear so black a frock
— made her way to Signor's side, found him to
her liking, jumped upon his knee, and so into
his heart. She came to live at Little Holland
House under Mrs. Prinsep's care, but she was

to be his little Blanche.

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

A year or two before this time the volume
of poems written by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
had been published. These poems placed
Rossetti, in Signor's estimation, amongst the
greatest of our English poets. To him the
poet Rossetti stood higher than the painter.

It appears to be doubtful whether Rossetti
knew, or did not know, that it was Signor's
intention to paint for the National Collection
the portrait for which, soon after the appearance
of the poems, he was asked to give sittings,
though the portrait was certainly painted with
this view. It is quite possible that Signor
forgot to mention its destination, or if he did
mention it, that the poet had forgotten this
in 1875, when he wrote asking if he might
have it in exchange for a crayon drawing, un-
named, but labelled, " Drawn in Chalk by Dante
G. Rossetti, 1874."

It was in fact straining generosity to break-
ing point, and possibly Rossetti afterwards
recognised this, when he wrote his thanks for
the gift.

" 16 Cheyne Walk,
u z6th August 1875.

" My dear Watts — You must have thought
me very ungrateful in not having written again
till now.

" On seeing the portrait anew, I really felt
that I had asked too much of you. I re-
membered it only as a beginning, and had no
idea that it was so happy and brilliant an

267

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

example of your work, or a framed picture so
near completion. In proposing the exchange
I wished for it in order to make a present,
having always found it impracticable to paint
my own portrait. Were it not for this I must
in conscience have offered it you back again,
seeing the utter inequality of the exchange as
it stands ; but things being thus, I will instead
beg your acceptance of some further memento
of my work, such as it is, when I have any-
thing worthy of you at disposal.

" I feel sincerely that I have unduly taxed
your friendly feeling, and that you have re-
sponded as few would have done.

" You know how glad I should be to see you
here any time, but I am well aware that you
are little more given up to visits than myself.
Moreover, I am not an early riser, and after-
noons are of course precious with you. I will
hope to see your own works one day yet. — Ever
yours sincerely, D. G. Rossetti."

To which the reply was : —

" My dear Rossetti — It gives me infinite
pleasure to find that you like the picture. We
will not bandy compliments or I might tell
you how much I value your drawing. I cannot
think you indebted to me and should be very
unwilling to take anything more from you in
return ; that would be to rob you of your time
and labour, a very unjustifiable sort of proceed-

268

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

ing, though of course I should like to possess
any number of your works.

" I hope you are working, and when I am
settled shall make an effort to come and see
you ; meantime I am obliged to you for giving
me the opportunity of affording you pleasure. —
Yours very sincerely, G. F. Watts."

A mutual friend once told him that Rossetti's
reason for asking for the portrait was that a
great dislike for it had so grown up in his
mind that he wanted it to destroy it ; but, on
seeing it, he was greatly surprised to find that it
was so fine a portrait. What truth there is in
this story I cannot say, and the letter quoted
gives a different version.

The picture, after Rossetti's death, came into
the possession of Mr. Frederick Leyland ; it
was said that he bought it from a pawnbroker.
My husband, deeply regretting that his collec-
tion was without that portrait, got permission
from Mr. Leyland to make a replica by his
own hand.

Of the two paintings, Mr. William Rossetti,
brother of the artist, wrote to Mr. Watts in
1892: "Will you allow me to express my
thanks to you for that very beautiful portrait
of my brother ? I looked on it long with deep
interest and satisfaction. It will continue to
long distant years to represent my brother to
his countrymen in the most advantageous light,
and a truthful one too. Certainly in that

269

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Victorian Exhibition you have made my brother
shine forth pre-eminently among his con-
temporaries, both for aspect of genius and for
those attractive qualities of person which one
is glad to associate with mental superiority. I
think the original exceeds (as was natural under
the circumstances affecting the two cases) in
the look of personal presence and activity : on
the other hand, I think that the duplicate
exceeds in suavity of expression, and in the
sort of beauty which accompanies this, and it
is not less of a definite likeness."

Not many years later, when the Leyland
collection of pictures was in Christie's auction
rooms, Mr. Woods was told the story of this
portrait, and was asked to mention how it had
strayed from Mr. Watts's possession. Perhaps
in consequence of this, Mr. James Smith (of
Blundell Sands) bid for the picture, and, be-
coming its possessor, subsequently kindly allowed
Signor to exchange it for another work. And
so the original picture was restored to the
collection at Little Holland House, and is now
in the National Portrait Gallery. At the
memorial exhibition of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's
paintings at Burlington House in 1883, this
portrait was on an easel ; and, surrounded by all
the mystic poetry of Rossetti's imagination, it
was found to be not less subtle or mystic,
although but a literal record of a man, and so
belonging also to the prose of everyday. The
poet in Rossetti was what the painter wished to

270

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

honour, and to the presence of a poet in this
portrait he endeavoured to bring the spectator.
As I (and that not seldom) read to him from
" The House of Life," from " The Rose Mary,"
or from " Hand and Soul," he listened with ever-
increasing admiration. He placed the sonnet
called " Lost Days " beside the very greatest in
the English language. He liked to talk of him
with old and intimate friends, such as Mr.
Watts-Dunton and Mr. Frederick Shields, and
I can never forget the emphasis laid by the
saintly Mr. Shields upon these words : " Depend
upon it, Rossetti had a very holy mind." And
that marvellous bit of a poet's prose, " Hand and
Soul," witnesses to this.

Signor saw very little of Rossetti during
these later years ; his own habit of keeping
within his studio walls and Rossetti's failing
health led naturally to this ; but there was no
sort of breach between them. When Rossetti
was younger, and perhaps less occupied with
work, he came often to Little Holland House.
Later, these visits were less frequent, and in
1868 Signor writes to him : " I have been con-
stantly on the point of going to see you, as I am
always anxious to know what you are doing, but
you and I are not good at visiting." And the
following year he says : " I don't ask you to
come and see what I have for exhibition, I
always dislike the whole thing, and am disgusted
with my work ; however, if you should be out
this way, I need not say, ' Pray, walk up and see

271

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the gems ! ' " He never met Mrs. Rossetti
(Miss Siddall), about whom in a postscript of a
letter from Mr. Ruskin to Signor I find these
lines : " Yes, Rossetti's a great great fellow,
and his wife is as charming as the reflection of
a golden mountain in a crystal lake, which is
what she is to him."

" I wish I had seen her," Signor once said to
me. " I told Rossetti that I was sorry I had not
met his wife, and he answered, ' Oh, come and
dine. I will write to you.' Sometime after-
wards he wrote : " I did write to ask you to
dinner, but as you did not come I thought the
letter had miscarried, and I was partly confirmed
in that impression by rinding it in my pocket."

One of the saddest stories in the annals of Art
was told to Signor by Rossetti. An elderly
man once came to see him, and bringing speci-
mens of his paintings and drawings with him,
had begged Rossetti to give him a candid
opinion upon them as to whether they were
worthless or not. Rossetti looked at them care-
fully, wondering how he could break to the
poor man the fact that there was nothing good
in them whatever, and eventually he gave him
to understand this as kindly as he could. The
man then drew out from under his coat another
collection of drawings, and spread them out
before Rossetti, telling him that they were the
work of a young student. Rossetti was delighted,
exclaiming that they showed remarkable talent,
and that there was every reason to believe that

272

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the young student would distinguish himself.
" Ah, sir," said the poor man, " I was that
student." The letters from Rossetti to Signor
are evidence of his wish to be of use to younger
men ; each one is written with the object of
serving some one, and he applies to Signor to
lend a helping hand.

In March 1873 the portrait of John Stuart
Mill was painted. The undertaking of this was
the outcome of conversations with Sir Charles
Dilke, while painting his portrait and that of
Lady Dilke, in the early months of the year.
Mr. Mill wrote to Sir Charles : "I hardly know
how to answer your very kind and flattering
proposal regarding a portrait. I have hitherto
disliked having my portrait taken, but I am
unwilling to refuse the high compliment paid
me by Mr. Watts and yourself; and if sittings
can be arranged within the limited time of my
stay in London, I shall be happy to make an
appointment." Miss Helen Taylor, his step-
daughter, had also urged him to consent to Sir
Charles's request. Of the first appointment
Signor writes on March 17: "Mr. Mill is to
come to-morrow to give me a sitting." As
this is the only portrait for which Mr. Mill
ever sat, it may be reckoned amongst the most
fortunate accidents of the artist's career that he
succeeded in painting what must be called one
of his most subtle delineations of character.

During these sittings Mr. and Mrs. Fawcett
came to see the portrait, and I think then first
vol. 1 273 T

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

made acquaintance with Signor. Mrs. Fawcett
tells me that Signor seized that characteristic of
Mill which gave the impression of his great
refinement and delicacy. I remember that my
husband found himself entirely in agreement
with Mr. Mill when he said that the real
change required for social reformation is a
change of character. He found his sitter sur-
prisingly sympathetic ; sensitive to all that was
beautiful in form and poetic in thought.

Mr. Mill left for France early in April and
died at Avignon on May 8. Signor was able
to make a replica of the portrait for the
National Collection, and was so far satisfied
with this that he doubted whether the replica
did not surpass the original. Sir Charles, how-
ever, preferred to purchase the original portrait,
and this is now, by his bequest, the property of
the City of Westminster. The duplicate is in the
National Portrait Gallery. Later, Signor made
yet another. It was not to be expected that the
level could be sustained, and this replica — cer-
tainly in Sir Charles Dilke's opinion — lacked
some of the inspiration in the other two paintings.

The picture was etched by Rajon, at Sir
Charles's desire ; and of this Signor writes,
when he sends the original portrait and replica
for inspection : —

'■'August z%th, 1873,
" Little Holland House.

" Dear Sir Charles — I send you the two
pictures and the photograph. I am told that

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

it would be best to have the picture etched, and
that there are some French engravers who would
do it very well. I think Mr. Stephens would
be able to give information on the subject. I
know little or nothing about such matters. —
Yours very truly, G. F. Watts.

" P.S. — I believe according to law it is
necessary to mention that the copyright of a
picture is, or is not, disposed of with it, and in
parting with my portrait of Mr. Mill I must
reserve the copyright."

To Miss Helen Taylor Sir Charles very
generously offered to give the picture, but she
would not accept this for herself, and, writing
from abroad, suggests that she should be allowed
to ask Mr. Watts to make a replica for her to
give to the nation, but the painter had already
forestalled her wish.

He makes an allusion to the sittings, under
the date of March 28, 1873, in writing to
Mr. Rickards of Mr. Johnson's wish to possess
the picture he afterwards called " Chaos " :
" Without reference to the success or failure of
my work as a painting, I feel sure that Mr.
Johnson will gain no small credit for the proof
given of sympathy with endeavours to give
utterance to the highest qualities of art, as such
sympathy is very rare in England, even where
it might be expected to exist.

" Yesterday I told one of our most profound

275

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

thinkers and most influential amongst our in-
fluential men (referring to yourself and Mr.
Johnson) that from Manchester and commerce
I had received encouragement to carry out those
abstract views which he to my satisfaction was
rinding full of interest — I had failed to receive
from those whose inherited position, whose
education, wealth, and leisure, constituted the
natural fosterers of the noblest aspirations in
Art ; he was surprised."

During these later years, both Mr. and
Mrs. Prinsep were more or less invalids. The
hospitality at Little Holland House could not
be offered in the same liberal way, and Mr.
Watts's life continued to be one of arduous
devotion to work, his ride every morning for
health's sake being the only interruption per-
mitted. His companion on these rides was,
more often than not, Mr. Prinsep's niece, May
Prinsep, whose home from childhood had been
at Little Holland House, and who now a grown-
up young lady was going out in London. Old
and young friends joined them, and the ride in
the Park made a pleasant hour in the day of
work. It was now that he saw something of
Mr. and Mrs. George Lewes, and would have
painted " George Eliot " for the National Collec-
tion ; but he knew that the features belonged
to a type he would have found most difficult ;
and afraid of not doing the great mind justice,
he did not venture to make the attempt.

To her he writes, thanking for her apprecia-

276

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

tion of his " Clytie " : "I would pay my respects
to you and Mr. Lewes, but I am a wretched
creature, and dare not go out in the evening,
or even in the daytime, unless the weather is
perfect ; then every moment is required for work.
But if — kindly overlooking the apparent want
of respect due to you and Mr. Lewes — you
would sometimes give me your opinion of
things scattered about in my studio, it could not
but be of great service to me. I aim at what
is beyond me, and, in a wholly unsympathetic
age, struggle with my half-formed conceptions ;
miserable in the consciousness of my incapacity.
You who can not only imagine but give perfect
form to your poetry, cannot fortunately realise
such a struggle with phantoms." When thank-
ing him for a cast of " Clytie " he had sent her,
she tells him that she had heard from Mr.
Rossetti that he had long been, and was still,
suffering from bad health, and adds : " That
experience is almost sure to include some sadness
and discouragement. Therefore when I tell you
that such conditions have made a large part of
my history, you will understand how keenly I
feel the help brought me by some proof that
anything I have done has made a place for me
in the mind which the world has good reason
to value ; and this strong proof from you
happens to come at a time when I especially
needed such cheering. The bust looks grander
in my eyes, now that I can turn to it from time
to time."

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

During the autumn of 1873, the new house
at Freshwater was finished ; but for Mr. and
Mrs. Prinsep, both being somewhat of invalids,
the dry air of Bournemouth was recommended,
and three months were spent there ; Signor also
recruiting after two strenuous years in which he
had been surpassing his usual record of work.
He was also glad to know that his companion-
ship was a solace and comfort to his friends.

I thought myself very fortunate at this time
to be with an elder sister at Bournemouth for a
week, and used to feel very shy and very proud,
when Mr. Watts came to see us, and took us
for a walk, or when we went to find him at
Trinity Lodge. I remember his pointing out
beauty in the bare branches of trees in villa
gardens, or perhaps in sky or sea ; but what I
remember most distinctly was the sense of being
in an unusual presence. This had not so much
to do with anything that he said, as it had to
do with that which he was. It gave me a
feeling of awe, and I was always grateful for his
patience, and wondered at his understanding of
a girl's stupid timidity.

From Trinity Lodge he writes to Mr.
Rickards, who had disappointed him by his
want of appreciation of the picture " The
Shadow of Death," by Holman Hunt : " With
regard to the intention of the work I do not feel
as you do ; I think the painter more than justified
in illustrating the historical side of his subject,
and there is something very touching in the

278

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

words, e He was subject to his parents.' I feel
also that there is much real religious poetry in
the allusion to the dignity of labour, and charm
in the idea conveyed of human love between
Mother and Son. As to my own picture ('The
Spirit of Christianity ') it is wholly different, and
not to be placed in the same category in any
way whatever. Mine is but the symbol of
compassionate tenderness. I take an idea that
may be accepted by all Christian Churches, and
even, I think, by the hardest philosophy which
will admit the divinity of love and charity, too
much forgotten, it appears to me, in all the
contributions to the controversy. I have not
time to write at any length, or endeavour to
express myself properly. I shall look forward
to showing you my picture, but I doubt if you
will find it satisfactory ; I don't think it can be
fairly called a religious picture, certainly not a
doctrinally religious picture."

The spring of 1874 found the Prinsep family
settled at the Briary, while Signor arranged to
remain one more year at Little Holland House.
Although at the Briary he had now built two
good studios, he soon realised when there how
difficult it would be for him to live so far from
London. Therefore his friend Mr. Frederick
Cockerell was preparing plans for a new house
on a piece of ground sub-let to him by Valentine
Prinsep, who had found his garden, and the
ground-rent he paid for this, too large. Lady
Holland, burdened by the management of the

279

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

property, had now made it over to her successor,
Lord Ilchester ; and with him, or his agent,
business arrangements had to be made. All such
matters troubled Signor greatly ; he had not the
faculty for business he so greatly admired in
Leighton, and with which even the poetic mind
of Dante Gabriel Rossetti seemed to have been
endowed. It fretted him when he had to give
up time from his work to such considerations,
and much now happened to thwart and annoy him.
The work of the memorial to Lord Lothian,
commissioned by Lady Lothian for the church at
Blickling, and a replica for Jedburgh Abbey were
in hand, as well as the Hugh Lupus for the
Duke of Westminster, and he felt more or less
paralysed by the thought of removing all this
work to a new studio. He had also undertaken,
on behalf of the Benchers, to paint a portrait of
the Prince of Wales, and was anxious that the
sittings should if possible be all at his own studio ;
but this was not found practicable, and he was
under the disadvantage of having at times to take
his work to Marlborough House, and so to paint
in different lights ; also of having to retouch
without the presence of the sitter, a thing he
never cared to do when painting from life. In
spite of these disadvantages, the sittings left a
pleasant impression. The considerate thought-
fulness of the Prince struck him much, and he
formed a very high estimate of his abilities, and
regretted that he had not long been given more

responsible work for the country.

280

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

There were frequent interruptions, and the
portrait of the Prince was not exhibited till 1882,
when it met with hostile criticism, which caused
him to withdraw the picture and beg the
Benchers to ask Mr. Frank Holl to paint the
Prince, at the same time returning their cheque.
Early in February (1875) he returned to Little
Holland House, believing that he should have
to leave it at Lady Day. However, so over-
whelming was the task of removing and rehous-
ing the great accumulation of work contained
in four studios, that it was found to be quite
impossible to arrange all in the time. He was
therefore fortunate in being able to obtain a
further lease of part of the old house, with his
studio, now surrounded by the debris of the half-
demolished walls, till the end of the following
August. He was working hard to finish his
large picture, the " Spirit of Christianity."
Certain discussions between Church and Church
had made him anxious to paint what to him was
the Life of the Life in all religion, and this
picture was shown at the summer Exhibition.
It suffered much from its surroundings, seeming
to him to be out of place ; but he writes : —

" I do not in my more thoughtful pictures
work expecting that the drift and higher qualities
of my aims will be discovered or cared for, as a
rule ; but, though I am not influenced by this
consideration, trusting to, and satisfied with, the
justice of time, the sympathy of a few minds is
always most encouraging, if only as proof that I

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

am not wholly deceiving myself with regard to
such aims ; therefore it is a great pleasure to me
to find the Bishop reading my imperfect work
aright. I was surprised to find that Ruskin
found something in the picture, 1 and though his
praise could hardly be called very cordial, or
unqualified, it was far more than I expected."

The large picture called the " Mid-day Rest "
had also to be completed. Some years before
(in 1863), the dray, the horses, and the carman
were lent as models to Signor through the
kindness of Mr. Charles Hanbury. Believing
that this particularly fine breed of horses would,
under the inevitable changes of time, practically
disappear, he had already approached a firm of
brewers, making known his wish to paint these
animals, and had politely asked the firm if they
could see their way to lend a pair to him for such
a purpose. For answer he had received a curt
refusal, with the information that the firm
required no such advertisement. On hearing
this Mr. Hanbury, anxious to vindicate the
honour of brewers, immediately wrote to assure
Signor that Messrs. Hanbury, Trueman, and Co.
would be proud to send him, at any time, the
finest specimen they could select of both carman
and horses.

Accordingly in Little Holland House garden
the picture was painted, a special arrangement
of temporary roofing being set up round the

1 In his criticism Mr. Ruskin admits that this picture " belongs to the
inevitable expression in each period of the character of its own faith."

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

canvases upon which he made the necessary
studies.

He had just completed the " Ariadne in
Naxos," and speaks of it as the most complete
picture he had ever painted. It was bought by
Mr. Rickards, but became better known in
London when, after his death, it came into the
possession of Lord Davey, who so generously
lent it to many exhibitions. A still better known
design was on his easel, and had been so for
some time : this was the first version of " Love
and Death " ; l it had been exhibited at the
Dudley Gallery in 1870, and at Manchester in
1874. On its return to his studio it was almost
repainted, and completed in July of this year.
He liked to send his pictures to exhibitions
before their final completion, and said he did
so purposely, as he thought he might learn
something by seeing them placed in what he
usually found to be unfavourable conditions.
In Manchester the picture had been greatly cared
for, some of his friends being most anxious that
it should be acquired for that town by public
subscription. In writing of this a friend had
called it " Love Restraining Death," and he
replies : " I hope it is not so called in the
catalogue. Love is not restraining Death, for
it cannot do so ; I wish to suggest the passionate
though unavailing struggle to avert the inevit-
able.

1 The canvas of this first picture measures 69 inches by 29 inches, and is
now in the Art Gallery of Bristol.

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

" You know my great desire to use such
talents as I may have, and such experience in
art as I have been able to acquire, with the
object of proving that art, like music and poetry,
may suggest the noblest and tenderest thoughts,
inspiring and awakening, if only for a time, the
highest sensibilities of our nature. If an in-
dividual feels, for five minutes, the best part of
his nature called into activity, he has been a
gainer ; and in this way I hope to deserve well
of my fellow human beings. Such designs as
' Love and Death ' and the ' Angel of Death,' with
certain others, I hope to be able to paint and
present to public institutions at Manchester or
elsewhere ; wherever, in fact, I might feel they
would best perform their mission." At this
time he also writes : " I have about twelve to
fifteen very large pictures which it will be a great
point of conscience to paint, and I can only hope
to succeed by giving up the rest of my life to
them. When I get to work in my new studio
I shall be better able to judge. You may be
sure if I cannot undertake all you desire it will
not be for want of will but want of power."

284

CHAPTER IX

285

Art is a language. The habitual use of it
will create the impulse and power to express
ideas and thoughts. That Art which simply
says, " This is a flower" even though describing
accurately enough its form and line, is inferior
to the Art which, while showing these, becomes
an interpretation of the poetry of Nature.

G. F. WATTS.

286

CHAPTER IX

Some few years previous to this date (1875),
among the large canvases standing about in the
studio was one upon which had been made the
sketch of a life-sized horse, with its rider, a
mailed figure, standing by the bridle. The
knight had been painted from the convenient
model always at hand, even at 4 a.m. ; and as a
portrait it recalls very truly what Signor was in
1870. Despairing of ever carrying the whole
design further, he now had the canvas cut down,
the casque and plume of peacock's feathers were
added, and the picture of the knight passed into
the possession of Mr. Rickards, who named it
the " Eve of Peace."

Although this picture, as a portrait, conveys
the impression of a man of action, physically
stronger and bigger, and therefore does not
give the almost ethereal impression produced
by the painter's own aspect, it is otherwise very
much as he looked when I first saw him in
1870.

My people had been introduced to him in
1867. They were in London during May and

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

June, and Mrs. Cameron, who had been photo-
graphing my two elder sisters at Freshwater,
was urgent that they should be seen by her
" divine artist."

The letters describing their visit to Little
Holland House are connected, in my mind, with
twilight and scent of lovely May evenings in
the Inverness-shire highlands. The birch in
tiny leaf and the bog-myrtle we brushed through
made the air sweet when, after schoolroom tea,
my cousins, my younger sister and I, with our
respective governesses, all set out for a walk to
meet the postman, due between eight and nine
in the evening. I heard that Mrs. Prinsep,
though an invalid at the time, had received
them with her usual generous welcome. One
of my sisters sat beside her, and in her impulsive
way Mrs. Prinsep called to the painter, who was
present, to join in her expressions of admiration.
She drew his attention to her golden hair, which
she called "an aureole," much to the discomfiture
of her young visitor. My sister never forgot
the restrained and quiet rejoinder, which in-
stantly set her at her ease, " I am not going to
pay compliments. Young ladies do not like it."

As the next two years were, for us, chiefly
spent on the Continent, there was no opportunity
of being again at Little Holland House. It
was therefore not till 1870 that I first went
under its thatched porch, and waited in the
room of the blue ceiling till summoned to the
studio, to pass with a beating heart through a

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GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

red baize-covered door. There we read with
some feeling of awe a large label — " I must
beg not to be disturbed till after two o'clock "
— before it was pushed back, to swing again
heavily behind us ; the studio door opened, and
Signor came forward to meet us. By that date
we had become intimate with the great pictures
in the Dresden Gallery, going to it nearly every
day for nine months. We had spent days in
Venice and Florence, and a winter at Rome.
Now at all modern exhibitions I acknowledged
to myself that George Frederic Watts was the
painter of painters for me.

In 1870 the beard was only slightly touched
with grey, his hair quite brown, very fine in
quality, and brushed back from the forehead.
I do not recollect that I saw the picture of the
knight with bowed head now called the " Eve
of Peace." I remember the painter much more
distinctly than his work ; but he nevertheless
so distinctly suggested to me the days of chivalry
that I believe I should not have been surprised
if, on another visit, I had found him all clad in
shining armour.

From this time forward I received the
greatest kindness and help from him. His
patience with amateur work, his appreciation
of anything that was a natural expression in
any art, is so well known that nothing further
need be said. I was one of the many who
brought their efforts to show him, and who,
coming to learn something to enable them to
vol. 1 289 u

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

draw better, went away feeling they had also
learnt how to live better.

But again to take up the story, five years
later, from which an excursion backwards has
been made.

The last entry of rent for " a part of Little
Holland House ' shows that it was paid up
to August 31, 1875. He had then been able
to build what was always known as the Iron
House, or sometimes as the " Tin-pot " : a studio
in one corner of the new ground, where much
could be stored till the studios in the new
house were completed. There was provision
made on the original plan for an extra studio,
upon which Mr. Burne-Jones's name is written
as owner ; a pleasant proposition, made between
the two friends, but which was never realised.
Though two large canvases stood there for
many years, with certain designs upon them
by the hand of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, he
never painted there ; and the canvases were at
last claimed, and the partition between the two
studios, which had already been moved back
some twenty feet, was finally removed altogether,
and in the end only the two doors, side by
side, remained to show what had been intended.

It was now that his old friend, Mrs. Charles
Wylie, dismayed at the thought of the destruc-
tion of all the frescoes at Little Holland House,
asked him if she might try to remove them
from the walls. There was much correspond-
ence between them, he being reluctant to allow

290

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

her to undertake such a labour of love. But
as she insisted he consented ; and so, with two
workmen under her, she saved a great many
of these.

These decorations made a sort of frieze round
the room known as the upper dining-room, and
were also in the corridor of the old house.
They were packed in cases which naturally
were very cumbersome and had to be stored for
two or three years by a builder. On the death
of this man, they were sent to Mr. Watts in
Melbury Road. Later he gave them to Mrs.
Barrington, who has preserved them on the
walls of her house.

Mrs. Wylie had a considerable knowledge
of the methods employed by the old masters,
and possessed a fine artistic gift that, unfor-
tunately, her parents had not allowed her to
cultivate ; otherwise she would certainly have
made her mark. Her married life did not
leave her much opportunity for study, but a
copy she made for Signor of a portion of
Titian's " Bacchus and Ariadne," he liked to
keep constantly before his eyes ; and Sir
Frederick Burton, who, as Director of the
National Gallery, had seen so many fail in
their attempts to copy the picture, was amazed
when he first saw this copy and considered that
she had entirely mastered the quality of Titian's
colour. Signor liked to have her advice, and
often sought her help for the preparation of
canvases ; and she sometimes laid in work for

291

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

him in monochrome. She was a kind friend at
the time of the removal from the old house to
the new ; seeing that the pictures were removed
carefully, and later that they were preserved
from damp ; and to her he writes from the
Briary, September 22, 1875: —

" I cannot come up to town as soon as I
expected, being, besides other matters, again
immersed in drains, which I find equally un-
salubrious and expensive. I shall, however,
come as soon as I can, for I greatly wish to
see what has been done. I cannot thank you
enough for all the trouble you have taken ; do
pray let me know something about the expense.
I mean what it has actually cost you, for I
cannot think that you have been able to avoid
spending money. At least let me return this,
without delay ; this is most necessary to my
comfort. You do not tell me anything about
the extra studio, the walls of which I hope are
up by this time. I am very anxious to have
some detailed account."

And again, a month later, he says : —
" I have left off thanking you for the trouble
you so kindly take, and have taken. I will
ask you, if not inconvenient, to pay Tupper for
me ; if you will send me the account I will
send you a cheque. There are lots of things
you have paid for me ; do not let me get into
nasty little debts. I am so indolent about these
things that I am likely to find myself in certain
difficulties, if you allow me to go on forgetting.

292

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

We go on having wet weather here, and I am
beginning to be very anxious about the things
in the ' Tin-pot ' : please let me know if Conrad
is taking any active steps. I told him to give
you the key of the sculpture studio gallery. —
Yours most sincerely, G. F. Watts."

The saving of the frescoes having cost Mrs.
Wylie so much time and labour, Signor begged
her to accept them for her own studio ; but she,
knowing his ways, thought this was as usual
the too generous return he liked to make for
anything done for him, and refused to accept
the gift.

While at work at the old house, where during
its destruction she had to be every day, she was
called to see a charred beam in the upper dining-
room, and told me that a few more days of heat
from the kitchen fire, and the beam must have
been alight, — and the house with all its contents
in danger of being burnt to the ground.

The new Little Holland House, for he
transferred the name, was the first house built in
the Melbury Road. Mr. Cockerell, knowing of
the trouble at the Briary, took care there should
be no recurrence of it here, from mistakes or
carelessness on the builder's part. The work was
thoroughly well done ; and in November some
rooms were practically ready for his use ; but
that autumn and winter were spent by him at the
Briary.

Freshwater, even in winter, was never a

2 93

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

dull place. Interesting people came and went,
attracted by Farringford. Then life seemed to
hum like some big wheel round the Cameron
household, so that it was impossible for the place
to become sleepy.

One amusing Cameron episode Signor liked
to tell to his friends. A drive had been arranged
by Mrs. Cameron, who wished to take the Poet
Laureate, Mr. Prinsep, and Signor to see a newly
built house, and the view from it which she
admired. However, on arrival they found the
house was let to a German Count, who had no
wish to be invaded by strangers. But Mrs.
Cameron was not to be repulsed, she pleaded
with her usual eloquence, and at last they found
themselves in the presence of the Count. To
him she then introduced Mr. Tennyson as " the
greatest living poet," Mr. Prinsep as " our
greatest Indian Legislator," and Signor as " the
greatest living painter." But here the Count
had had enough, and felt that he must thus
protest : " I subscribe not to that opinion, also in
Germany very good painters we have."

It was not uncommon for Mrs. Cameron, after
taking a house by storm — camera in hand — to
succeed in captivating the owners entirely, and
making them life-long friends. This was the
case, I believe, with the Empress Frederic, when
she was Crown Princess of Germany.

Then the coming and going between the
Briary and Farringford was constant. A walk
down the broad green glade and up the pathway

294

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

through the " careless ordered garden ' being
a matter of some ten minutes' time from door
to door, walks over the downs with the Poet
Laureate, and his son Hallam, took the place
of rides ; for Signor's little mare, the friend of
so many years, was failing in her old age from
the feet upwards. She was turned out in the
paddock, and during one of her master's absences
in London showed such signs of feebleness that
before his return, and to avoid for him the pain
of giving the distinct order for this himself, she
was mercifully helped out of life. Writing to
Mr. Rickards on January 24, 1876, he speaks
of this loss : —

" You mention my intention of painting my
old and much valued thoroughbred mare ; few
things have shocked and grieved me more than
finding when I came here in the Autumn, her
place vacant, and being told it had been found
necessary to put her out of the world ; a friend
of twenty years, who had never in any sort of
manner deceived me, or refused to make any
effort I required, or failed in the attempt !
Many a delightful day we have spent together,
the most delightful days of my life. If I had
painted her as I fully intended to do this last
Autumn, I do not think I should have parted
with the picture, but as it is one of the many
things that might have been, there is nothing
more to be said about it."

Many old friends were attracted to Freshwater
at this time, and Mrs. Nassau Senior had taken a

2 95

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

house at no great distance, her life of active work
brought to a full stop by illness ; — her friends
could not but be aware that she was slipping
gradually from them. Signor had but lately
painted the portrait of her only child, her son
Walter ; and this note, the last of a discussion as
to whether he or Miss Synnot — a friend of hers
— was to have the pleasure of giving it to her,
is characteristic both of the painter and of Mrs.
Nassau Senior.

" Colwall Bay Cottage,
"z%tk July 1875.

" My dear Signor — When I told Miss Synnot
that you positively refused to take any money for
the portrait of Walter, she was quite unhappy.
She said that she wanted to think that the most
precious thing I could have was her gift to me.

" I wanted her to take back the cheque, and she
would not ; she said that I was to spend it in
some present for you which would be of real use,
or else she should never feel that she had
given me Walter's picture ; so I told her that
£100 did not represent more than a quarter of
what a portrait by you really was, in market
value. So we agreed that I would give you
something that would be useful, as her share of
the gift ; and that for all the rest I should remain
in dear Signor's debt.

" I do not feel oppressed by being in your debt
because I truly love you, and I know that you
truly love me, and between real friends debts do
not weigh heavily.

296

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

" After this explanation you will see that I
cannot pretend to give anything to the Artists'
orphan fund. It would not be honest. I make
no money now I am ill, and I cost a good deal,
and I have no right to appear to be generous
when I have no money to give away. But
there is an object which I have much at heart,
and to which I should have given, had I been in
a position to do so. I send you a prospectus of
it. If you will not make use of Miss Synnot's
money for anything but charity, at least use it
for that, dear Signor ; and if you give jTio for
the People's Play Ground, I shall not feel so
regretful, as I now do, that I am too ill to make
money to give away. What would make me
happy, and would please Miss Synnot, would be
that you should draw the money, and lodge it in
your banker's hands, and draw it for charities, if
you won't use it for necessaries. Though the
cheque has such an old date, it is quite right,
for Miss Synnot desired, that whenever it was
presented it should be honoured. So I enclose
it, dear kind Signor, and a great many good
objects will, I know, be the better for it, and
I can quite feel that it is better so spent than
in Persian carpets and couches and chairs,
which is what I had thought of, for your new
studio.

" I am dreadfully sorry that you have gone
away, dear Signor, I was so pleased to think of
the possibility of your coming in at any time to
have a chat. But I shall be here till the middle

297

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

of September, so I trust that I shall see you
again. — Good-bye, dearest Signor, I am ever
yours afftly., J. C. S."

In August and September of this year, as
my father 1 had taken a house at Freshwater, I
had the opportunity of seeing something of
Signor. Later in this year I stayed at the
Briary, but now I sometimes went to find him
at work in the new studio, and on what were
great occasions for me, he came to find me at
work, trying to paint a portrait of my sister
Ethel.

The Briary in its setting of great elm trees
had altogether lost any look of crude newness,
both from without and within. With the old
furniture, and with the household gods from
Little Holland House, which Mrs. Prinsep
knew so well how to place, the new walls
framing these had ceased to look new. Mr.
Prinsep, now an invalid, was the centre of
solicitude from devoted belongings. At luncheon,
Mrs. Prinsep, at the head of her table, reigned
over her large family party, looking like the
wife of a Venetian Doge, transplanted into the
nineteenth century, Mr. Prinsep seated beside
her. On his other side was the beautiful young
widow — their niece, Mrs. Herbert Duckworth
— her hand often resting lovingly on his shoulder.
Then the beautiful young wife and her husband,
May and Andrew Hichens — not yet married a

1 Charles Edward Fraser-Tytler.
298

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

year ; and her sister Anne Prinsep, my particular
friend of all the party, as she had often stayed
with us in Scotland. And there was Signor,
with a child on each side, as he could not
be parcelled out to the greater number who
clamoured to sit by him also. This was the
group I remember round that hospitable table.

Afterwards in the big studio, with its
serene sense of noble thought, one recalls the
painter's light movements to and fro, always
intent on work, and yet bearing so courteously
with an interruption.

One afternoon in the drawing-room, as some
visitors who had driven over to call rose to say
good-bye, they turned to him and asked if they
might see the studio. Something in the manner
of asking seemed to imply politeness rather than
interest, but courteously assenting, he opened
the door for them to pass out, drew back behind
it to hide a distinct shudder, caught my look of
sympathy, and answered it half smiling, while
I was uplifted with pride at being trusted with
the secret of his feeling. Awake and in the
studio with daylight, he was accomplishing an
astonishing amount of work ; three portraits
were painted in one fortnight. I see him now,
in my memory, looking so tired, so spiritual,
but indefatigable.

Miss Ellice Hopkins writes her impressions
of a visit to the Briary at this time.

" At a very unassuming looking house at
the foot of the Downs lived another of the

299

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Immortals, our great painter, who always went
by the name of the ' Divine Watts.' Mrs.
Cameron took us to see his studio, and to be
introduced to him. We found a slightly built
man with a fine head, most courteous in manner,
and with the simplicity and humility of the
immortal child that so often dwells at the heart
of true genius. There was something pathetic
to me in the occasional poise of the head, the
face slightly lifted, as we see in the blind, as if
in dumb beseeching to the fountain of Eternal
Beauty for more power to think his thoughts
after Him. There is always in his work a
window left open to the infinite, the unattainable
ideal."

It was now that Mr. and Mrs. Cameron's
friends were astonished to hear that they were
planning to exchange their home in Freshwater
for one in Ceylon. Once it had been proposed
there was not much hesitation or delay. Mr.
Cameron longed to return to the island he had
loved ; and though for years he had not been
outside his own garden, and, as a recluse and an
invalid, was never seen by his friends but in a
picturesque dressing-gown, over the blue and
crimson of which his white locks flowed — he
suddenly borrowed a coat from his son Hardinge,
and walked down to the seashore, where he had
not been for twelve years. Mrs. Cameron was
as willing as her husband to embark upon a
voyage that would take her where already four
sons had made their homes. The striking of

300

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

the tents for the Cameron household was full
of characteristic unusualness — Mrs. Cameron
providing for every contingency possible, to the
point of unconscious humour. The house was
soon in a state of turmoil, their rooms piled up
with packing-cases, while telegrams poured in
and out, and friends came in crowds to say their
farewell. All Freshwater was wailing ! rich
and poor. I was not present at the last act,
but heard that crowds of friends gathered at
Southampton to see them off, who as they
returned saw railway porters also going back
from the ship-side, carrying under their arms
the large white mounting boards with which
her photographs were always enriched. She
had said, " I have no money left, but take this
instead as a remembrance," as she bestowed a
fine representation of Carlyle or of the " quite
divine " Madonna Mary 1 — no mean tip.

During some weeks in October and November
Signor was staying in Grosvenor Street with his
friends Mr. and Mrs. Charles Macnamara, laid
up, and in the hands of his surgeon and doctor,
Thomas Bond, for some surgical treatment. He
returned in November to the Briary, to spend
the winter there, in better health than he had
known for some time.

The first completed version of his picture,
then called "The Titans," now known as "Chaos,"
was being exhibited at Manchester. Of this he

o
1 Mary Hjllyer, who sat for the greater number of Mrs. Cameron's
most successful photographs, her maid-servant, well remembered for her
beauty, and for the entire absence of any self-consciousness.

301

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

writes to Mr. Rickards from Grosvenor Street,
October 1 1, 1875 : —

" Many thanks for sending me the Manchester
City News. I am sorry to see, by the remarks
of the critic, that the arrangement of the exhibi-
tion seems to be less satisfactory than that of
last year ; it seems impossible that any real
principle can be carried out in a modern
exhibition.

"The bad effect of these exhibitions is evident
in the remarks of the writer when speaking of
my picture, ' The Titans ' (not a good name).
I don't quarrel with the critic for not liking the
picture, indeed his notice is not unfavourable ;
but all criticisms upon pictures, whose aim is
not immediately apparent, prove that such aims
have no sort of interest in exhibition rooms ;
indeed they cannot interest when the expectation
of the spectators is to be amused or interested at
the first glance.

" When pictures formed part of the decora-
tion of noble walls, an impressive effect would
probably suggest to the intelligent spectator that
some motive might exist, which, though not
clear at the first glance, might be worth study-
ing. It does not seem to occur to the critic
that such might be the case in a modern work.
Mr. Burne -Jones is more than right in not
exhibiting, and I shall follow his example in the
case of all but my lighter productions. If you
come across the critic, tell him, with my compli-
ments, not to suppose there can be no meaning

302

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

in a thing because he may not perceive it at the
first glance. Probably there would not be much
meaning apparent to him in Beethoven's so-
called Moonlight Sonata, especially on hearing
it for the first or second time. I think I warned
Mr. Johnson that it was not in the least likely
to be in any degree intelligible, but I trust to
time.

" I hope you are getting on well, I mean with
regard to sight. I am still a prisoner to my
room."

The reference to Mr. Rickards's eyesight is
the first indication to be found in the letters
that a serious calamity was to fall upon this kind
and generous man, and true lover of art. The
trouble proved to be cataract, and almost total
blindness followed before relief came through
a successful operation ; meanwhile his cousin,
Miss Chesworth, continued the correspondence.
Vicariously through her and his friends he con-
tinued to enjoy his collection of pictures, and
even to add to it.

The later autumn and winter were spent by
Signor at the Briary, where he worked as hard
as usual, but could also be merry with the
children there. He was indeed looked upon as
their property. They persuaded him to come
and have romps with them, which meant much
chasing and running, for he loved to see young
things move about with the swiftness of birds ;
and that the little Blanche, now growing tall,
could vault over a five-barred gate as easily as

3°3

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

a boy, " and be a regular tomboy " when she
liked, very much delighted him.

Mrs. Prinsep's grandchildren were also with
her, so there was much merry distraction for
him with these little people ; children could
always make him gay. There was a Christmas
tree and a ceremony afterwards, when the
tree was replanted by him. It rooted again
and nourished, a matter in which he took a
keen interest ; and he found it alive and of
good growth when he went to look for it in
1 891. Trees were to him much like personal
friends.

Upon the old site and garden of Little
Holland House was now building, and to be
built, a row of substantial houses ; but, before
the change took place, Mr. Rickards had
thoughtfully sent a young artist to make water-
colour sketches of the old house, and at Christ-
mas he sent these as a present to Signor. 1

By the beginning of February 1876 he had
established himself at Little Holland House the
second (6 Melbury Road). That Signor might
be well taken care of, Mrs. Prinsep installed her
own housekeeper, Emma Graver, and she and her
mother at once took charge at 6 Melbury Road.
For the sake of his health Mrs. Prinsep knew
that food, however plain, must be well prepared,
and knew also that in this matter, as well as for
all the other comforts of his daily life, Signor

1 From the copy of these made by Andrew Hichens and given to me
by Mrs. Hichens, and partly from photographs, the drawings of the old
house, used as illustrations in this book, have been made.

3°4

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

would be safe under Emma's care. From the
new home he writes to Mr. Rickards : —

" I am afraid, in consequence of my various
misfortunes, want of health in the autumn, the
singularly bad weather all the winter, and the
trouble attending upon my leaving Little Holland
House, you will find very little done, a fact very
grievous to me."

In the spring of this year Mr. Gladstone sat
for the second time, or, indeed, began a series
of sittings, extending over several years. This
portrait was commissioned by Dean Liddell for
Christchurch, the Dean being very anxious that
Signor should be the painter. A little note to
Mr. Gladstone, appointing the first sitting on
May 12, 1876, runs thus : —

" Dear Mr. Gladstone — Tuesday will suit
me better than Monday. I shall look forward
to seeing you at twelve. New Little Holland
House, in which you will find me, is about a
hundred yards beyond the old place, and is the
only house finished on the new road. — Yours
very sincerely, G. F. Watts."

The sittings could only be given at long
intervals of time, and went on till 1879. Light
is thrown on the difficulty of achieving a good
result by the final words of a letter from Signor
in 1878 : "Postscript: Not a word to be spoken
from the beginning to the end." Also from
one of Mr. Gladstone's a year later, in which he

VOL. I 305 X

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

says, " I think it is but fair also to promise that
you shall be undistracted by my yielding to the
temptations which the chance of a talk with
you always offers."

Mr. Gladstone, as he said later, was sitting
when the stress of work was unusually severe ;
the appointments therefore could only be made
occasionally and with some interval between
each. Then, as the artist was more than usually
anxious to paint the man, body, soul, and spirit,
the portrait proved to be a matter of extreme
difficulty. He was dissatisfied himself, after
painting two portraits ; and as he found the
subscribers were so also, he begged to with-
draw, and Sir William Richmond painted Mr.
Gladstone. No one was more appreciative of
the success of this likeness than Signor himself;
and he wrote warmly to congratulate the Dean,
who replied : " I could not refrain from sending
your most generous letter to Mr. Gladstone.
He fully sympathises with me and is sorry, very
sorry for the conditions that made it impossible
for him to give the time you required ; he adds
slyly, that it was you who inveigled him into
the conversations which caused so much dis-
traction to you. To this no doubt you will
plead guilty."

Oxford possesses, in the Bodleian, the portrait
of Dean Stanley, of Lord Lothian, and of the
Rev. Henry Coxe, librarian, all usually con-
sidered as belonging to the first rank of Mr.
Watts's portraiture. In the Dining-Hall of

306

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Christchurch, there are also the portraits of
Dean Liddell and of Professor Jowett, both by
his hand. He was now painting the small
version of the " Court of Death " for Mr.
Rickards, and it seems at this date to have
been always called the "Angel of Death."
Mr. Rickards had seen the large picture which
was then in progress and desired to have a
small replica, and this was being worked
upon during many years. Meanwhile he had
suggested two changes in the design ; and Signor
replies : —

" I will think over the introduction of the
cross. Perhaps you wonder that I should have
any sort of hesitation, but in these suggestive
pictures such as ' Time and Death,' ' Love
and Death,' and the 'Angel of Death,' I have
a strong idea that they should appeal purely to
human sympathies, without reference to creed
or dogma of any kind. In one sense they are
lowered by this view, but in another they are
more universal in their appeal. I don't know
whether you will quite follow me in this — I
divide my painted poems into three classes ;
some are religious, some are purely philosophical,
and some are simply poetical. I believe you
will see my reasons if you think the matter well
out, though they may not recommend them-
selves to your judgment — at least at first." And
a few weeks later, replying to a remark made
by Mr. Rickards, he says further of this
picture : —

3°7

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

" The suggestion that even the germ of life
is in the lap of Death, I regard as the most
poetic idea in the picture, the key-note of the
whole. You say it produces disagreeable im-
pressions ! This proves that the picture is not
one for a drawing-room — the fastidiousness of
modern taste being taken into account. It is
a work of great gravity of character, and — as
with a dramatic poem or an epic — it cannot be
made up wholly of delightful fancies. But this
being as I said before a small copy only, the
original not being affected, I will emasculate the
design so as to make it less complete, but more
what the modern — I will not say unthinking
— mind requires in art."

Needless to say, Mr. Rickards withdrew his
objections, and begged Signor to paint what
he felt he must paint.

During this summer he was very unwell,
and his doctor ordered him to Harrogate. From
want of health, life for him was always a struggle,
and he often deplored the loss of time spent " in
being ill and getting well ; time lost, indeed,"
as he put it, " that never could be made up
again." But now his doctor was firm, and he
was, as he writes, " ordered off to Harrogate,
which no doubt will be detestable." " Blanche
and a young lady, May's sister, go with me,
and will make it as pleasant as circumstances
permit. I hope to be away a very short time
and get to work with renewed vigour. This
going to a watering-place is very hateful to me,

308

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

but there is no help for it. I do not know
whether or not Blanche has sent the verses on
the late Little Holland House, suggested to
Mr. Prinsep by the pictures you have so kindly
given me ; she shall write to you from
Harrogate."

3°9

CHAPTER X

3>i

I HAVE done little more than desire the good thing,
and seek to know nothing about the mysteries of
our being, but I like to think that even unuttered
aspirations may have a material force.

G. F. WATIS.

312

CHAPTER X

On Signor's return he found that Mrs. Tennant
and her daughters were at Freshwater, and
Dorothy and Evelene l soon became to him
especial friends. They were constantly at the
Briary, and he painted them there and in
London, where the portraits were finished.
" When Evelene sits to you again," her sister
wrote to Signor, " I have a most delightful
book to read to you."

Miss Tennant was working seriously at art,
and wrote when she heard he was returning to
the Briary for the winter : " I am so afraid of
relapsing into what I was before I knew you,
and seeing you once in the week even made
me work doubly hard afterwards." To her
persuasions in no small measure was due the
writing of his first article in the Nineteenth
Century^ to which he gave as title " The
Present Conditions of Art." In many letters
she had urged him to write out " what would
be so valuable to future and present art."
One day she brought her friend M. Coquelin

1 Who later became Lady Stanley and Mrs. F. W. Myers.

313

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

to see him, and he afterwards spent some time
with her in the gallery ; and she wrote later
to Signor, to describe the great actor's views
on art. After mentioning Coquelin's admira-
tion for certain portraits, landscapes, and for the
" Love and Death," she says : " In common with
his nation he can only be appealed to — can only
be touched — by reality in what he has seen,
rather than what he may have felt, and he
vehemently protests against art being an ex-
pression of very elevated and abstract thought.
He thinks that you should stand before a picture,
and that it should tell you the clearest, simplest
story, and that it should appeal to you by its
style and execution — by its being masterly.
That Velasquez, Rembrandt, Holbein, Titian
did not stir you by the subject or by the ideas
embodied in the painting, but because they were
supreme masters of pencil, brush-effects, and
composition. These, dear Signor, are what I
gather to be the views of French artists, and
though not altogether ours, are, as you say,
interesting to know." To which Signor
replies : —

" Tuesday, L. H. H.,
" 1880.

" Thanks, dear Dolly, for your letter ; it tells
me what I wanted to know, and I confess it
impresses me with a mournful feeling to find,
what I thought was true, that the brilliant and
acute French intellect regards the art of painting
and sculpture as a thing of passing interest — as

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

embroidery on the intellectual needs and yearn-
ings of our nature. Of course, its appeal being
through the medium of the eye, the eye should
be satisfied with the beauty of form and colour
and execution — and this would be enough for
what I call the passing interest ; but a great
picture should be a thing to live with, to
respond to varying moods, and especially should
have the power to awaken the highest of our
subtle mental and intellectual sensibilities. To
my mind it is nearer in its operation, on these
sensibilities, to music than to anything else ;
but it must not only have the power to touch
and awaken, it must have also the power to
sustain the awakened and elevated spirit in that
pure atmosphere that we only breathe in our
happiest and least earthly moments. This can
never be achieved by technical merits alone,
never except by the artist throwing his whole
and best self into his work. Such work may
say little to the hasty observer, and the hasty
observer is the ordinary amateur of art. But
the few who linger to take in something more,
in the course of time become a many — it is to
such I would speak — but I am scribbling a lot
at random, and have not time to put my thoughts
into definite shapes, and these into still more
definite words, but we will talk the matter over
when I come to see you. — Always most affection-
ately yours, Signor."

The editor of the Nineteenth Century now

315

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

added his entreaties to those made by Miss
Tennant to Signor. It was she who suggested
to Mr. Knowles that such an article would be
in place in the Nineteenth Century. He was
delighted with the suggestion, and immediately
acted upon it, and during the summer of 1879
the article on the " Present Conditions of Art "
was written. There was, however, the in-
evitable delay in revising proofs, and because
of the hesitation Signor felt as to its worthiness ;
and Mr. Knowles writes on December 16, 1879 :
" I am anxiously awaiting the final return of
your finally corrected proof, with your final
changes." The paper appeared in the February
number, and Miss Tennant was satisfied, and
writes to him : " I do so want to see you again,
I have so much to talk to you about. I always
felt certain that if you took to writing you
would do much good, and surprise the public
who think that a painter cannot be anything
but a painter. Your article in the Nineteenth
Century has created a great sensation. Perhaps
you heard what Mr. Lowe said, that it was the
finest piece of English he had read in these times.
I do hope, dear Signor, you are well and vigorous.
With you, the only thing wanting is a full con-
sciousness of worth, a realising of what you are,
and what you have done for others. Now, will
you not write upon your theory of curves ? '

The theory of curves, that Miss Tennant asks
him to write about, he liked to demonstrate by
pointing out the bounding line of Greek form

316

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

either upon the cast of the Theseus or that of
the Ilissus, both of which always stood upon the
mantelpiece of his studio. Every part of the
outline of these figures he saw to be fractions
of very vast circles. In the flatness of the
curving outline of these Pheidian sculptures he
therefore perceived a suggestion of immensity.
If, in other sculptures, the development of
muscle was emphasised by a certain roundness
intended to be impressive, he perceived that on
the contrary the form became less majestic, the
curve being part of a circle on a very much
smaller scale. " The circle," he wrote, " is the
only perfect form, equal in all its parts and
complete. All lines bounding any form what-
ever will, if absolutely followed to the end,
resolve themselves into circles ; hence it will
result that the impression of magnitude in
complex forms (the human form for example)
will depend upon the sweep of the line com-
posing the parts of the form. Lines with a
visible sweep suggest vitality, movement, and
direction. Circles imply centres. All creation is
full of circles which resolve into each other. The
divine Intelligence must be the centre of all."

" As a principle of form in nature," he con-
tinued, " all lines curve towards their object.
This is a very important fact, and must be borne
in mind in the study of the human figure.
Knowledge of that kind becomes a plan of
construction in which everything takes its
proper place without difficulty."

3 X 7

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

The decoration of the Town Hall of
Manchester was now under consideration, and
some of his admirers were anxious that he
should undertake to fill the spaces left for fresco ;
but his health would not permit, and he had in
hand the colossal statue upon which he was at
work with hammer and chisel throughout all
the fine days in summer. Then fifteen big
canvases were being worked upon, and the
truth that the natural limits of time were closing
around him was ever present to his mind.

" If I were younger," he writes, " I should
not hesitate a moment, the more especially as I
think mural decoration ought to be painted in
situ, but my health is unsatisfactory, and I have
my hands full, as you know, of large subjects,
and certainly I did not contemplate moving from
my studio. Still, if the matter took the shape
of a duty — if I thought I could aid the cause of
art — I should not consider I had a right to
refuse from any consideration short of necessity,
health, or something of the kind. With regard
to material, waterglass I do not like, or think
successful ; the wax process I am not acquainted
with, but it is probable that it could be well
adapted."

Such opportunity as this afforded should have
been his many years before ; it came too late now,
and he could not seriously consider undertaking
so huge a work, but he talked the matter over
with Mr. Alfred Waterhouse — the architect of
the Town Hall.

318

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

He allowed his mind to exercise itself on
an arrangement of designs — an assemblage of
symbolic pictures — to show the happiness that
might result if the higher human aspirations
could be realised ; and beside these the degrada-
tion consequent upon disobedience to divine
laws. " Time, Death, and Judgment," and the
" Court of Death " were to have had their place
in this scheme, and also — a subject conceived
yet never designed — of Adam and Eve in Paradise,
surrounded by angels, symbols of those virtues
which would make human conditions perfect,
and constitute happiness. It was but an after-
glow from his former hope that soon faded into
grey reality again ; and some months later, when
the work had been placed in the hands of Ford
Maddox Brown, Signor wrote : " Manchester
seems to be inspired with great ideas just now.
I saw in one of the papers a project on the tapis,
to connect the town with the sea, by means of a
canal. This would be an undertaking worthy
of a great town and, I should think, be of pro-
digious importance. If the rich men of all
classes in England would combine to do great
things, as far as great things may be done with
money, instead of having for object the unworthy
one of dying rich, how much better for their
fame and the real greatness of the country."

During the winter Mrs. Nassau Senior had
been much with her mother (Mrs. Hughes) at
the house she had taken for her daughter at
Colwell Bay ; and the intercourse was constant

3*9

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

between her and the households at the Briary
and Farringford. For many years her brother,
a widower with four children, had lived with her
and her husband and son. She adored children
and undertook this extra care with joy ; and now
for nearly a year one of the nephews, Gerard
Hughes, who had shown considerable talent for
art, had been coming to draw under Signor's
guidance. The first letter referring to this is of
interest, as it shows how little his general view
upon a student's first practice of art had changed
in the many years between this date and the time
when Mr. Roddam Stanhope was first at work
with him.

" My dear Jeanie — I send you back little
Gerard's drawing ; it is most interesting as dis-
playing qualities of eye and hand, which may
develop into a Fred Walker. Nothing is wanting
but that knowledge which practice and study can
supply. I shall be most happy to give all the
aid in my power. He has been drawing here
for an hour, or an hour and a half, these last two
or three days. Though I am not able to be in
the studio, I think the kind of work I have set
him to do will exercise his eyes, hand, and
judgment. It is drawing bits of drapery.
Every variety of line and angle will be found in
a crumpled bit of cloth, and studied upon the
principles I gave you an idea of, form, I think,
the best means of education of eye and hand that
can be found ; not so interesting perhaps as

320

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

drawing the human figure, but that will come,
perhaps, in a little time. I thought the casts I
alluded to belonged to you ; all my things in
London are now in such confusion that I don't
know what I have ; but for the moment nothing
more is necessary than what we have at hand.
Do not let the boy's general education be
neglected. I am confident that with judicious
teaching his artistic studies for the moment
need not have more than an hour or an hour
and a half devoted to them. What I set him to
do requires very great and fatiguing attention, and
had better not be continued too long at a time.
Of course as he goes on he will be able to give
more time to the study, and if his father likes,
the boy can come and be in my studio altogether,
giving me what assistance he can in return for
teaching, after the manner of the ancient practice.
But this is an idea for the future. I am sorry
you should take any trouble about the Sonata, it
would be so easy for me to send for it. You do
not say anything about yourself; is that a good
or a bad sign ? — Yours affectionately,

" SlGNOR."

In one of the last letters that passed between
the two friends on this subject, he says : " You
must not talk about wonderful kindness with
regard to Gerard ; all I can do is to go in two
or three times, in the course of the morning, and
look over his work, find fault, and explain some
principles. As he is working in the next room
vol. i 321 y

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

to me, this is not a very wonderful exercise of
generosity."

Mrs. Nassau Senior left Colwell early in
February of this year (1877), believing she had
made great way towards recovery ; but these
hopes were not to be realised. Shortly after
her return home she had a serious relapse
from which she did not rally, and she died
on March 24.

Of this great loss he writes to Mr. Rickards
without any over-estimation of what that loss
proved to be to him during the nearly thirty
years of life that remained for him. " I have
lost a friend who could never be replaced," are
his words, " even if I had a long life before me ;
one in whom I had unbounded confidence, never
shaken in the course of a friendship very rare
during twenty-six years — Mrs. Nassau Senior,
who I daresay you will remember talking about
with me. She had been called by a friend of
yours ' that woman.' * I think when you read
the biography of ' that woman ' — for it is one
that will be written — that very few canonised
saints so well deserved such glorification. For
all that makes human nature admirable, lovable,
and estimable, she had very few equals indeed,

1 For the reason that from 1873 she had held the post of Inspector of
Workhouses, the first woman to be appointed by Government to such a
position. Her special charge was to ascertain the condition of women,
children, and infants in the workhouse. She worked with a zeal that was
worthy of a great nature, paying visits in the earliest hours of the morning
to see if the children slept in well-ventilated rooms. The prejudiced mind
thought that by accepting this post Mrs. Nassau Senior had degraded her
sex.

322

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

and I am certain no superiors ; and it is not too
much to say that children yet unborn will have
cause to rue this comparatively early death."

The summer of 1877 had, for people who
loved art, an event which few can fail to look
back upon otherwise than as a landmark, an
event they are glad that Memory keeps fresh
for them — in May this year the doors of the
Grosvenor Gallery stood open for the first time.
The public — not of the number of Sir Coutts and
Lady Lindsay's invited acquaintance at special
times, for this was their private venture — paid
its shilling at the top of a broad flight of stairs,
and there found the first and largest of the
galleries. This room, well proportioned and
well lit, had on the walls — with spaces of back-
ground restfully dividing group from group — a
series of modern pictures never before so seen.

The individual taste and thought evident all
about gave the pleasant sense of its being a
privilege to be there. That was the first sensa-
tion. Afterwards came the consciousness that
the work of some English painters of the day
was being revealed to the public for the first
time. And why ? Because in the setting of
this well-conceived building each was being
allowed to deliver his message consecutively,
and the visitor was not called upon to listen to
him between other and conflicting voices, or to
hear from him nothing but a broken sentence.
The works of each artist, grouped together and
divided by blank spaces, allowed the spectator's

3 2 3

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

eye and mind to be absorbed entirely by
what that painter had to give them ; conse-
quently this message was both understood and
remembered.

Though indisputably the painter whose
pictures made the chief interest of this ex-
hibition was Edward Burne-Jones, those who
had cared to search the Academy walls, season
after season, for the work of George Frederic
Watts, usually to find a portrait here and a
portrait there, stood before the end of the West
Gallery wall, and hailed their master as made
known now for the first time to a larger public.
For them " Love and Death " dominated the
whole room. For some, through the door of
their house of life the grey messenger had
but lately passed ; to the door of the home of
some that figure was drawing very near ; and
as such personal response to the chord he had
struck came to be known to Signor, as it did
sooner or later, he felt he had not failed in
the aim of his life. It was not too much to
say that now to a larger public, beyond the
circle of his friends, the mind of the painter
was speaking for the first time, going into the
intimate, into the most sacred hours of life.

After 1877, it was common for him to
receive letters from strangers, some of these
giving neither signature nor address, but thank-
ing the painter with the sort of thanks he
liked best to receive, for the transformation
made — generally at the darkest hour of life —

3 2 4

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

through some thought suggested by one of his
pictures.

With the question of the tone of the crimson
damask upon the walls, and the enrichment of
other parts of the gallery, which met with such
severe criticism from Mr. Ruskin, Signor did
not greatly concern himself. He believed that
the background for rich and low-toned pictures
could hardly be too strong in colour, and he
preferred a rich crimson to any other ; he had
also long held an opposite opinion to Mr.
Ruskin in the matter of seeing the work by
each man kept together as much as possible.

The three portraits that Sir Coutts chose
to exhibit as examples of Signor's work were
the portrait of Lady (Coutts) Lindsay, of Mr.
Burne-Jones, and of Mrs. Percy Wyndham, and
in his letter of thanks to her he says : —

" A thousand thanks for so liberally lending
me the picture. I do not know that I should
have asked for it of my own suggestion, for, as
you know, I am not fond of exhibiting at all ;
but the picture is certainly one of the best, and
I hope it will look well for the sake of my
friends more than my own. I have always
regretted having finished it, for if it had still
been on my hands, I should most likely have
seen you, which now it seems I never do ; but
not the less you will believe that your friend-
ship is very precious to me."

To this friend (who never failed him) he
also writes : " I have so few pleasures that I

3 2 5

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

can ill afford to lose the best of all — the friend-
ship of some people."

Of the exhibition he had written a forecast
to Mr. Rickards : " I think the exhibition will
be a great success. Burne-Jones will be very
strong, and when you have seen his works I
do not think you will care much for mine. In
fact I expect him to extinguish almost all the
painters of the day, so you may prepare yourself
for being knocked off your legs. The pictures
go in to-morrow." He had written, in replying
to an inquiry from Mr. Rickards : " I know
nothing about the arrangements, nor have I
had anything whatever to do with the enterprise,
though you seem to give me credit for having
been a power in the matter.''

That summer at his new home in Melbury
Road he was chiefly at work upon the new
" Hugh Lupus " ; and he writes to a friend : —

" You are quite right, I am working too
hard, and could not continue to do so, but the
decline of the year necessarily shortens my
working time. I am now no longer able to
get to work at four, but I am obliged to work
all the available hours ; nor must you suppose
I do not put all possible concentration into each.
I do not look forward to a future of repose, for
I do not desire an existence when power of
work is gone ! But no one ought to grumble
at work, even if less interesting than the pursuit
of art ; I do not believe in any real enjoyment
outside work, or interest belonging to it."

326

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Signor spent that winter at the Briary. Mr.
Prinsep's health was giving some anxiety, and
though on the whole unchanged — certainly in
vigour of mind — there are evidences in the
letters that he was often laid up. His son Val
was in India, painting the picture of the great
Durbar held by Lord Lytton on the Imperial
Proclamation, naturally a visit in which the
father was greatly interested. Val returned in
January, but not long after his arrival Mr.
Prinsep became seriously ill, and on February
1 1 he died. " A man of very heroic character,
and extraordinary gifts and acquirements," as
Signor — his friend and companion of nearly
thirty years — wrote at the time of this great
loss. He had with much certainty believed
that Mr. Prinsep's grand physique would insure
for him a great age, and many years in the
peace-surrounded home he had purposely and at
considerable sacrifice made for him. And that
" Sweet-Briary " — as Miss Mary Boyle dubbed
it — in the inevitable changes that followed
Mr. Prinsep's death, practically ceased to be a
home for Mrs. Prinsep, or for Signor himself,
was somewhat pathetic. But life to him was
a trust not to be wasted in morbid grief; the
more he suffered, the more earnestly did he set
his hand to his work. He was more or less laid
up for a month after Mr. Prinsep's death, but
he managed to finish the large picture of
"Time, Death, and Judgment," for exhibition
at the Grosvenor Gallery, where it was shown

3 2 7

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

with " Mischief," " Ophelia," and the small
" Sir Galahad," " Britomart " and five portraits
being in the Academy.

In August he reports to Mr. Rickards : " I
have nothing to tell you about myself. I have,
as you know, a number of compositions on hand,
old acquaintances of yours, which I am bringing
on at the same time. This I think the best
plan ; I have nothing finished to show, but I
insure a certain amount of completion in several
important cases, and it also enables me to work
longer, the change from one to another being
a kind of relaxation. All the summer I have
steadily used up all the daylight, and to tell the
truth am beginning to feel a little tired ; but I
hope to hold out for another month, and then
change my quarters, carrying some work to
Brighton. In spite of all my labour, autumn
finds me with much less done than I anticipated.
My great equestrian statue is apparently not
advanced; the difficulty of making every point of
view equally good has necessitated constant atten-
tion ; but it had better not be done at all than
done in an unsatisfactory manner that the world
does not want.

" I have sent some pictures to Manchester,
but I really do not know what. When the
pictures came out of the Royal Academy and
Grosvenor Gallery, having been applied to by
agents from Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and
other places — really having no time to spare — I
left the matter almost entirely in the hands of

328

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

Mr. Smith ; l the consequence is that a letter has
come to me from Leeds asking if I would sell
the picture there, and I have no idea what it is."

The building in Melbury Road went on
during 1876-77. Mr. Thornycroft built his
two houses under one roof on one side of Little
Holland House which was afterwards numbered
6 in the road, and Mr. Marcus Stone on the
other side. It became, what Mrs. Thornycroft
liked to call it, " Melbury Village " ; detached
houses, mostly built from good designs, standing
in gardens of some size.

It was now that Mr. and Mrs. Barrington
came to live in the next house to Little Holland
House, and for some years were very constant
visitors there.

I met Mrs. Barrington for the first time very
shortly before our marriage. I never saw her
after September 1890. She and I never really
knew each other. I have this winter (191 1 —
1 91 2) for the first time seen and read her pub-
lished recollections of my husband, and have thus
been made aware that she did not really know
him.

A house at Brighton had been decided upon
by Mrs. Prinsep, as it suited in many ways better
than the Isle of Wight. Her son Val could so
easily run down to her from London ; and the
dryness and brightness of the winter climate she
thought would be better for Signor, who was

1 The head of the firm of carvers and gilders (who were also fine art
agents), and who gave Signor service for sixty years.

3 2 9

GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS

likely to spend many of the shorter days away
from London. It also solved difficulties of
education for Blanche and the three grand-
children, now entirely with Mrs. Prinsep ;
therefore, by the autumn of 1876, she had
settled at 24 Lewes Crescent, and a room suit-
able as a studio was prepared.

The change from Kensington to Brighton
proved to be what Signor liked. He was always
the boon companion of the young people.
Blanche, now growing into a tall graceful girl,
was to his great delight still quite a child ; and
it was a happiness to him to feel how entirely
she and the little Laura and Rachel 1 gave him
their confidence. They told him of their little
sorrows, as well as of their pleasures ; and he was
often able to steer the small craft through troubled
waters. Once from the group of children about
him the little Laura looked up suddenly to say,
" Aren't we happy chaps ? " — a little saying that
later Signor would sometimes quote, and one that
it was always good to hear.

1 Afterwards Lady Troubridge and Countess of Dudley.

END OF VOL. I

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.

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