PLATE VIII.—TIVOLI.
(From the oil painting by Turner in the Tate Gallery)
An imaginative classical landscape probably painted as a pendant to the "Arch of Constantine, Rome," which also hangs in the Tate Gallery. It has been suggested that the phantom figures are Tobit and the Angel. The setting suggests the scenery of Tivoli; but when Turner's imagination was fired, he cared little about topographical or historical accuracy.
The Chelsea hiding-place was discovered, but he was sinking when a friend found him. He died on December 18, 1851, at the window, looking upon the river, propped upon his couch. A full, and, I think, with occasional lapses—the lot of all—a happy life, for his work never ceased to be less than absorbing. He died in the light, having run his race to the goal.
The account of that dinner at David Roberts' house, not long before his death, when he tried to propose his host's health, "ran short of words and breath, and dropped down in his chair, with a hearty laugh, starting again, and finishing with a 'hip, hip, hurrah!'" shows that the power to enjoy, and the sense of fun, had not withdrawn from the solitary genius, the "very moral of a master carpenter, with lobster red face, large fluffy hat and enormous umbrella," who wrestled with the sun, read Ovid, and Young's "Night Thoughts," tramped Europe in pursuit of beauty, and who was seen on the old Margate steamer studying the movement of the water, and the boiling foam in the wake of the "Magnet," and making his luncheon off shrimps strewn over an immense red handkerchief spread across his knee—Turner.
[POSTSCRIPT]
TURNER AND TWO OTHERS
Climbing the stairs to the flat, I passed a girl who was toiling upwards.
Pressing the button of the electric bell I watched her ascend the last flight. She paused. I inferred that our destination was the same, noted that she carried a satchel, a thick notebook, and a paper-covered sixpenny reprint. Mildly curious as to the title of the novel, I dissembled, and read "Endeavours after the Christian Life," by James Martineau. Therewith the stone staircase faded away, the stone walls opened to the past, and I saw my youth, and the figure of my father returning one night to the old home, his face illumined, his eyes shining; heard again the earnest words between him and my mother; how he had been at Martineau's valedictory address, how with the teacher's communication telling of deep things of the spirit moving within him he had avoided friends, unable to return suddenly to earth, and how he had walked home as if with wings. Those were the days when the "Endeavours" was a costly, exclusive, and somewhat revolutionary book. A few quick years, and lo! it becomes one of Allenson's sixpenny series, bought by the hundred thousand.
The door of the flat opened, Martineau slept again with his forefathers, the saints of all time, and the girl and I passed into the modest room dedicated to one who was no saint. Yet I do not know. If a saint be he who by his life makes this world for others more wonderful, more beautiful and better worth living in, then Joseph Mallord William Turner was a saint. Which is strange.