PLATE XXXVII
SCENE ON THE FRENCH COAST
GENERALLY KNOWN AS “FLINT CASTLE: SMUGGLERS”
ETCHING, WASHED WITH SEPIA. ABOUT 1807
more emphatic statement. The dance and sweep of the foliage, the bending bridge, the falling bank, require steadying by a bolder assertion of the straight horizontal line of the distant hills. The soft and rounded undulations of the tree-tops, running right across the upper part of the drawing, give a somewhat featureless though amiable character to it; in the etching, greater prominence is given to the harsher lines of the rigid white wall of the distant cottage and its sloping roof, as well as to the supports and planks of the rustic bridge. In this way, without altering the position of a single part of the design, or introducing any new matter, the whole is transformed; instead of a mere collection of parts, related to each other by a kind of chance or indifferent contiguity, we have now a definite whole, fused through and through into conceptual and emotional unity. The objects before our eyes have ceased to be merely indifferent and external facts; they have now become elements or members of a richly coloured whole of thought and feeling.
The careful and rather timid-looking drawing described as ‘Flint Castle’ (Plate [XXXVI.]), is certainly another of the designs made at the cheerful Knockholt cottage. On the margin of this drawing the artist has scribbled some verses, which I suppose one of the merry party had discovered in a book or magazine,[19] and which they were all delighted with. Probably the discoverer was Mrs. Wells, for the young ladies were too young to care much for books, and the only scrap of information we possess about their mother seems to suggest that she was something of a bluestocking, and what is now sometimes called a ‘féministe.’ Among the sketches in one of Turner’s pocket-books there is the following jotting:—‘There is not a quality or endowment, faculty or ability which is not in a superior degree possest by women.—Vide Mrs. Wells, Knockholt, Oct.’ The poem itself is not strictly germane to our present study, but as there lingers about it a faint echo of those scenes of ‘fun and merriment’ which one of Turner’s young playmates recalled in after years, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of transcribing it.
‘A Row of Poplars in disgrace
Because they would not stop their pace
Or grew unnecessarily tall,
Their Master came and topped them all.