'Very agreeable, his quick bright eye sparkled, and his whole countenance showed a desire to please. He was constantly making, or trying to make jokes; his dress, though rather old-fashioned, was far from being shabby. Turner's health was proposed by an Irish gentleman who had attended his lectures on perspective, on which he complimented the artist. Turner made a short reply in a jocular way, and concluded by saying, rather sarcastically, that he was glad this honourable gentleman had profited so much by his lectures as thoroughly to understand perspective, for it was more than he did. Turner afterwards, in Roberts's absence, took the chair, and, at Stanfield's request, proposed Roberts's health, which he did, speaking hurriedly, but soon ran short of words and breath, and dropped down on his chair with a hearty laugh, starting up again and finishing with a "hip, hip, hurrah!"... Turner was the last who left, and Roberts accompanied him along the street to hail a cab.... When the cab drove up, he assisted Turner to his seat, shut the door, and asked where he should tell cabby to take him; but Turner was not to be caught, and, with a knowing wink, replied, "Tell him to drive to Oxford Street, and then I'll direct him where to go."'
Sir Martin Shee died this year, and it is said that Turner was aggrieved that he was not offered the Presidentship of the Royal Academy. It is difficult to realise Turner in that office this year or in any year of his life. He was not made for official duties, but to make beautiful and wonderful things.
[CHAPTER LV]
1851: AGED SEVENTY-SIX
THE MYSTERY OF THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE REVEALED TO HIS FRIENDS: AND HIS DEATH
I leaned against the parapet of the Embankment in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and gazed at the row of cosy little houses on the other side of the road that face the Thames. The house where Turner died, I had been told, is now 119 Cheyne Walk. My eyes sought 119, but found it not. The numbers passed from 118 to 120. Then I crossed the road to discover that Nos. 118 and 119 have been converted into one house. Peering, I discerned, almost hidden by Virginia creeper, a tablet saying that here Turner died.
So this was the house. Somewhere near here 'Puggy Booth,' as he was known to the street boys, 'Admiral Booth' to the tradesmen, moored his boat. The story was current in Chelsea that he was an Admiral in reduced circumstances, and Turner was not the man to illumine a mystery, or end a joke.
We learn from Thornbury that up to the period of his final illness, he would often rise at daybreak, leave his bed with some blanket or dressing-gown carelessly thrown over him, and ascend to the railed-in roof to watch the sunrise, and see the colour flush the morning sky.