[CHAPTER XXII]
1815: AGED FORTY
'A WONDERFUL YEAR' AND A TURNERIAN LOVE-LETTER
Eighteen hundred and fifteen was a wonderful year in the history of Europe, and it has also been called a wonderful year in the art history of Turner. He sent eight pictures to the Royal Academy, and among them were 'Crossing the Brook,' 'Dido Building Carthage, or the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire,' and 'Bligh Sand near Sheerness.' Some consider 'Crossing the Brook' as the finest Turner, others regard it as rather old-fashioned with its conventional trees and domestic foreground, but all like its English character, the cool beauty of the colour, the white clouds that curl in the grey-blue sky, the wooded hills that rise from the Tamar, dividing Devon and Cornwall, and the miles of faint, fair, distant country. 'Crossing the Brook' was a favourite of Turner's, and so was the magnificent 'Dido Building Carthage.' This classical triumph, a shout of colour, with 'The Sun Rising Through Vapour' flank the two Claudes in the National Gallery, Turner's message of rivalry from the grave. In life he would not part with 'Dido Building Carthage.' Chantrey tried to buy the picture more than once, but found the price rose higher each time.
'Why, what in the world, Turner, are you going to do with the picture?' he asked.
'Be buried in it, to be sure,' growled Turner.
This year, too, we have the record of what has been described as Turner's second attempt at marriage, which I do not think amounts to much more than his first love-affair. At the end of the following letter will be found the offer of marriage; the lady in question was a relation of the Trimmers:—
Queen Anne Street, Tuesday, August 1st, 1815.
'My Dear Sir,—I lament that all hope of the pleasure of seeing you or getting to Heston must for the present probably vanish. My father told me on Saturday last when I was as usual compelled to return to town the same day, that you and Mrs. Trimmer would leave Heston for Suffolk as to-morrow, Wednesday. In the first place I am glad to hear that her health is so far established as to be equal to the journey, and to give me your utmost hope for her benefiting by the sea air being fully realised, 'twill give me great pleasure to hear, and the earlier the better.
'After next Tuesday, if you have a moment's time to spare, a line will reach me at Farnley Hall, near Otley, Yorkshire, and for some time, as Mr. Fawkes talks of keeping me in the north by a trip to the Lakes, and until November; therefore I suspect I am not to see Sandycombe. Sandycombe sounds just now in my ears as an act of folly when I reflect how little I have been able to be there this year and less chance perhaps for the next. In looking forward to a continental excursion, and poor Daddy seems as much plagued with weeds as I am with disappointment—that if Miss——would but waive bashfulness, or in other words make an offer instead of expecting one, the same might change occupiers; but not to trouble you further allow me with most sincere respect to Mrs. Trimmer and family, to consider myself.—Yours most truly obliged,
'J. M. W. Turner.'
The reference to Miss——does not suggest the heart of a burning lover: no, Turner's heart was in his work, and also, just now, in the prospect of a 'continental excursion.'