About this time he took what seemed a foolish step, looking alone to the progress of his art. He married. Sir Joshua, the President of the Royal Academy, who had not given him the gold medal, met him in the street one day and stopped him. “Ha! Flaxman,” he said, “I have heard that you have married. I tell you you are ruined for an artist. You cannot now go to Rome to study the great sculptors of antiquity.”
Young Flaxman went home downcast. Not to go to Rome! Not to realise his boyhood’s golden dreams and his life’s ambition!
He told his wife what had happened. She met him with the brave reply, “You will e’en go to Rome and I will accompany you. We must work and economise.”
And now for the next five weary years this brave young couple put their shoulders to the wheel. She kept house and he worked—harder than ever—for Wedgwood chiefly—toiling for long hours, but upheld all the time by the thought of the goal to which he was straining. That journey to Rome!—the very thought of it made all hardship easy. He turned out much beautiful work for Wedgwood at this time. Groups of children—romping, skipping, playing “blind man’s buff.”
Nothing that meant making money came amiss to him. He even collected what was known as “watch rates” for the parish of St. Anne’s, and might have been seen going about with an ink-bottle in his buttonhole.
Often the desires of our heart tarry long in coming to us. This was among the times of hardest work and trial in all Flaxman’s life, and he came out of it well. At the end of the five years the needed money was collected!
And now, while the great event of his life was drawing near, his boyhood had left him, and he was entering on the work of the man. Already he had gained some fame in London. The newspapers took notice of his going.
“We understand that Flaxman the sculptor is about to leave his modest mansion in Wardour Street for Rome.”
And now a very feast of delight awaited him. With his arrival in Rome, what wonders opened to his view, what grandeur and sublimity in the examples of ancient art! What skill and magnificence and luxuriance he saw in the churches, what wealth of creation on their walls and windows and cupolas, what sculpture, what painting! It was as if an enchanted world had suddenly spread itself out before his eyes.
Gradually it came to be known that Flaxman had arrived, and there gathered about him men of taste and culture—rich men many of them—men of position. But the great sculptor’s ways were just the simple ones of old. He was not easily affected by the great of the world. He was always his manly simple self to rich and poor alike. He adopted no more luxurious ways of living with his days of prosperity. He prized money little, just as a something in exchange for which he could get food and clothing, or with which he might help the poor and suffering. The fine character of the boy seemed to have expanded into fuller beauty in the man.