VIII.
The obsequies of the departed President were of an imposing kind. His remains were removed from his house in Russell Square to Somerset House. There the body was received by the Council and officers of the Academy, and deposited in the model-room, which was hung with black cloth and lighted with wax candles in silver sconces. At the head of the coffin was raised a large hatchment of the armorial bearings of the deceased; and the pall over the coffin bore escutcheons of his arms, wrought in silk. The members of the Council and the family having retired, the body lay in state—the old servant of the President watching through the night the remains of his master.
The body was interred in St. Paul's Cathedral, in the 'Painters' Corner' of the south crypt, near the coffins of the former Presidents, Reynolds and West. The Earl of Aberdeen, Earl Gower, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Dover, Sir George Murray, the Right Honourable J.W. Croker, Mr. Hart Davis, and Earl Clanwilliam were pall-bearers. Etty, who followed with the other academicians, writes: 'Since the days of Nelson there has not been so marked a funeral. The only fine day we have had for a long time was that day. When the melancholy pageant had entered the great western door, and was half way up the body of the church, the solemn sound of the organ and the anthem swelled on the ear, and vibrated to every heart. It was deeply touching.... The organ echoed through the aisles. The sinking sun shed his parting beams through the west window—and we left him alone. Hail, and farewell!'
The produce of the sale by auction of his collection of art works and treasures, etc., was between fifteen and sixteen thousand pounds. The estate of the dead man was only just equal to the demands upon it, however. His popularity ought to have brought him wealth, but, strange to say, he was always embarrassed. Yet he did not gamble, was never dissipated, never viciously extravagant; but he kept no accounts, was prodigal in kindness to his brother-artists, and in responding to the many appeals to his charity. Perhaps, too, he rather affected an aristocratic indifference to money. He spent much time in gratuitous drawing and painting for presents to his friends. It is probable that his death was hastened by his incessant work, to meet the demands made upon him for money. Washington Irving saw him a few days before his death, and relates that 'he seemed uneasy and restless, his eyes were wandering, he was as pale as marble, the stamp of death seemed on him. He told me he felt ill, but he wished to bear himself up.' In one of his letters the painter wrote: 'I am chained to the oar, but painting was never less inviting to me—business never more oppressive to me than at this moment.' Still he could play his courtier part in society, and was always graceful and winning. Haydon, who never loved a portrait-painter much, yet says of Lawrence, that he was 'amiable, kind, generous, and forgiving.' Further on he adds: 'He had smiled so often and so long, that at last his smile had the appearance of being set in enamel.' But then, Mr. Haydon prided himself on his coarseness, defiance, and hatred of conventionality, deeming these fitting attributes of the high artist.
It is only as a portrait-painter that Sir Thomas can now be esteemed; and, as a portrait-painter, his reputation has much declined of late years. His drawing was often very incorrect, and his execution slovenly. His colour was hectic and gaudy; and in composition he possessed little skill. He was a master of expression, however. His heads are wonderfully animated, and he invested his sitters with an air of high life peculiar to himself. Conscious and a little affected they might be, but certainly, through his art, they proclaimed themselves people of quality and distinction. His attempts in another line of art were few and not successful. His 'Homer reciting his Poems' was chiefly remarkable for its resemblance to Mr. Westall's manner, and for containing a well-drawn figure of Jackson the pugilist. Of his 'Satan calling up the Legions,' Anthony Pasquin cruelly wrote, that 'it conveyed an idea of a mad German sugar-baker dancing naked in a conflagration of his own treacle.' Over an attempt at a Prospero and Miranda, he subsequently painted on the same canvas a portrait of Kemble as Rolla.
And was he a male coquette? 'No,' answers a lady —and it is a question that requires a lady's answer—'he had no plan of conquest.... But it cannot be too strongly stated that his manners were likely to mislead without his intending it. He could not write a common answer to a dinner invitation without its assuming the tone of a billet-doux. The very commonest conversation was held in that soft low whisper, and with that tone of deference and interest which are so unusual, and so calculated to please. I am myself persuaded that he never intentionally gave pain.'
Perhaps he was not capable of very deep feeling, and liked to test the effects of his fine eyes. He wooed the two daughters of Mrs. Siddons, never being quite clear in his own mind which he really loved. He tired of the one and was dismissed by the other, or so rumour told the story; however, his friendly relations with the family do not appear to have ceased. One of the sisters died. 'From the day of her death to that of his own,' writes a biographer, 'he wore mourning, and always used black sealing-wax. Uncontrollable fits of melancholy came over him, and he mentioned not her name but to his most confidential friend, and then always with tenderness and respect.' It would have been more desirable, perhaps, that he should have exhibited a little more feeling during the lifetime of the lady; but perhaps marriage was not in the programme of Hoppner's courtly rival, of the painter 'that began where Reynolds left off,' as the sinking Sir Joshua is reported to have declared of him, rather too flatteringly.