We went to the Museum and stood before "Buttermere Lake, with a part of Cromach Water, Cumberland—a Shower." You were silent. What a catastrophe—after my dithyrambs about the flame of Turner and his slow soar to light, that I should show you, as your first Turner, that work of his early stoking period, painted at twenty-two, before he learned the method of oil painting and the ways of the sun. The lake has almost gone, the trees have blackened, only the rainbow dimly lingers. The flame of Turner? The chrysalis husk of Turner!
That poor "Buttermere Lake" is still the only picture by Turner that you have ever seen. And now that you are far from here, walking and digging in Sparta, and sailing in insecure little crafts to the Islands, I hold it a duty to write you in detachments this interminable letter explaining as well as I can what I mean by the Flame of Turner. Your sister will read the letters to you, ill-starred student, who, at the beginning of your art career, must not use your eyes for twelve months on penalty of blindness.
When, after the last visit to the oculist, you hurried from the lawyer's office in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where I witnessed your Will, I did not tell you that a few yards away rests a glorious Turner, "Van Tromp's Barge entering the Texel" and sailing in golden pomp eternally through the Soane Museum. I saw it on my way to your lawyer's office. The picture is alone and I was alone with what Turner loved—a sportive sea, an arching sky, gold overhead, gold on the water, and a ship sailing home golden-hulled beneath golden sails, with flags flying at the mast, and a cunning wraith of indigo cloud sweeping down the sky to give the glamour value. You did not see the golden Van Tromp. I had not the heart to show it to you.
PLATE III.—NORHAM CASTLE.
(From the oil painting by Turner in the Tate Gallery)
One of the most beautiful of the impressionistic Turners that were removed from the cellars of the National Gallery early in 1906, cleaned, and hung in the Turner Room at Millbank. Once, when passing Norham Castle, Turner took off his hat to the ruins. His companion inquired the reason. "I made a drawing or painting of Norham Castle several years since," answered Turner. "It took; and from that day to this I have had as much to do as my hands could execute."
Now you are far from Turner. I can follow your track to Olympia, and along the path by the wood, above the excavations, to a rough sign-post, where I stood two years ago and read the words "To Arcadia!" Somewhere beyond Arcadia you are, and some day these letters will fall, one by one, into your hands.