The discovery of his hiding-place was made by Hannah Danby. Turning over his clothes one day, she found a letter which gave her the clue. In company with another old woman as old as herself, she went to Chelsea, and in a shop obtained information that satisfied her as to the identity of 'Mr. Booth.' She informed Mr. Harpur, one of Turner's executors, who hastened to Chelsea, 'only in time to find Turner sinking.' Dr. Price of Margate, an old acquaintanee, was, besides Mrs. Booth, probably the only other person who shared the secret of his seclusion. When Turner sent for Dr. Price in the last weeks of 1851, he was told that death was near. 'Go downstairs,' he said to the doctor, 'take a glass of sherry and then look at me again.' The doctor did so, but the reply was the same.
Just before his death Mrs. Booth wheeled him to the window to look upon the winter sunset. He died in her arms, old Turner, old woman, his head upon her shoulder, on the 19th of December 1851. So passed the greatest of all landscape painters, weary of men and of orthodox ways, an old man tired of the fret of life, but not tired of nature, an enthusiast to the end in his study of light and its brother colour, and all phenomena, that which is plain to the eyes, and that which hides. Sentiment was in heyday in 1851, and so David Bogue, who made the picture of the 'house where Turner died, sent a ray of sunlight streaming down to the Chelsea room by the river, as if a parent were smiling on a loving and life-loyal child.
The month following Turner's death, pertinacious Pye, as we read in Sir Walter Armstrong's summary of his narrative, had an interview with the owner of the Cremorne Cottage, and was informed that some four or five years before a lady and gentleman proposed to rent the cottage, but as they declined to give names and references, it was arranged that the rent should be paid in advance, and 'the unknown gentleman and lady became installed in the quiet retreat of their choice.' Some time later John Pye paid a second visit to Chelsea, and talked with Mrs. Booth. She appeared, he says, to be about fifty, was 'good-looking, dark, and kindly-mannered, but obviously illiterate.' She told Pye that Turner always called her 'old 'un,' and that she called him 'dear,' and that she first made his acquaintance when he became her lodger near the Custom House at Margate. She had known him for more than twenty years, the last five of which had been spent in the Cremorne Cottage. Did any fires of jealousy break into flame in the bosoms of these two women, his housekeeper mistresses, Mrs. Booth and Hannah Danby, who knew Turner so well, and who met by his deathbed?
The following extracts are from an account of the appearance of Turner's house after his death, given to Thornbury by his 'kind friend Mr. Trimmer':—
'Backwards stretched a large unfurnished room filled with unfinished pictures; then a larger and drearier room yet; lastly, a back room, against the walls of which stood his unfinished productions, large full-length canvases placed carelessly against the wall, the damp of which had taken off the colours altogether, or had damaged them.... Then we went into Turner's sleeping apartment; it is surprising how a person of his means could have lived in such a room; certainly he prized modern luxuries at a very modest rate. I reserved his studio as the finale. Often had I seen him emerge from that hidden recess when shown into his gallery. That august retreat was now thrown open; I entered. On a circular table lay his gloves and neck-handkerchief. In the centre of the table was a raised box with a circle in the centre with side compartments; a good contrivance for an artist, though I had never seen one of the kind before. In the centre were his colours, the great object of my attraction. I remember, on my father's once observing to Turner that nothing was to be done without ultramarine, his saying that cobalt was good enough for him; and cobalt, to be sure, there was, but also several bottles of ultramarine of various depths; and smalts of various intensities, of which I think he made great use.... Grinding colours on a slab was not his practice, and his dry colours were rubbed on the palette with cold-drawn oil. His colours were mixed daily, and he was very particular. If not to his mind, he would say to Mrs. Danby, "Can't you set a palette better than this?" Like Wilson, Turner used gamboge: this was simply pounded and mixed with linseed cold-drawn oil.
'His brushes were of the humblest description, mostly large round hog's tools and some flat.... Mrs. Danby told me that when he had nearly finished a picture, he took it to the end of his long gallery, and put in the last touches. ... I next inspected his travelling-box. Had I been asked to guess his travelling library, I should have said Young's Night Thoughts and Izaac Walton; and there they were, together with some inferior translation of Horace....'
'His painting-room had no skylight. It had been originally the drawing-room, and had a good north light, with two windows.... There was a small deal box on a side table; my father raised the lid to show me its contents; it was covered with a glass, and under it was the cast of the great Turner. Dear old Turner, there he lay, his eyes sunk, his lips fallen in. He reminded me strongly of his old father, whom long years before I had seen trudging to Brentford market from Sandycombe Lodge, to lay in his weekly supplies.'
The Times in the account of Turner's funeral said:—
'Even those who could only sneer and smile at the erratic blaze of his colour, shifting and flickering as the light of the Aurora, lingered minute after minute before the last incomprehensible "Turner" that gleamed on the walls of the Academy, and the first name sought for upon the catalogue by the critic, artist, and amateur, as well as by those who could not understand him when they found him, was his also. Many of the most distinguished of our painters, and many private friends, paid the last tribute of respect to his remains, and followed his hearse yesterday, and a long procession of mourning coaches and private carriages, preceded it to the cathedral.... The coffin bore the simple inscription: "Joseph Mallord Turner, Esq., R.A., died December 19th, 1851, aged 79 years."' As the date of Turner's birth was not given by the Times, it was probably unknown at the time. The date was 1775, and therefore he was seventy-six when he died, not seventy-nine.
The little, enlarged house in Cheyne Walk is not, like the Carlyle house in Cheyne Row, a place of pilgrimage. His shrine is the new Turner Gallery at Millbank. Ten years ago this 'new Turner Wing' of the National Gallery of British Art was a dream: to-day it is a reality. Perhaps, who knows, in ten years' time, on the site of Turner's cottage by the Thames, extending on either side, there may rise that home for 'the maintenance and support of Poor and Decayed Male Artists being born in England and of English parents only and lawful issue,' which he desired, which was explicit in his will, and which we, his countrymen, the heirs of his achievement, have entirely ignored.
