I have either been introduced to, conversed with, or been well acquainted at one time or another with Sir John Millais, Holman Hunt, the Rossettis, Frith, Whistler, Poynter, Du Maurier, Charles Keene, Boughton, Hodges, Tenniel (who set my motive of “Ping-Wing,” as I may say, to music in a cartoon in Punch), the Hon. John Collier, Rivière, Walter Crane, and of course many more—or less—here and there in the club, or at receptions. Could I have then foreseen or imagined that I should ever become—albeit in a very humble grade—an artist myself, and that my works on design and the minor arts would form the principal portion of my writings and of my life’s work, I should assuredly have made a greater specialty of such society. But at this time I could hardly draw, save in very humble fashion indeed, and little dreamed that I should execute for expensive works illustrations which
would be praised by my critics, as strangely happened to my “Gypsy Sorcery.” But we never know what may befall us.
“Oh, little did my mother think,
The day she cradled me,
The lands that I should travel in,
Or the sights that I should see;
Or gae rovin’ about wi’ gypsy carles,
And sic like companie.”
As the Noctes varies it. For it actually came to pass that a very well-known man of letters, while he, with the refined politeness characteristic of his style, spoke of mine as “rigmarole,” still praised my pictures.
In April we went to Leamington to pay a visit to a Mr. Field, where we also met his brother, my old friend Leonard Field, whom I had known in Paris in 1848. During this, journey we visited Kenilworth, the town and castle of Warwick, Stratford-on-Avon, and all therewith connected. At the Easter spring-tide, when primroses first flush by running waters, and there are many long bright sunny days in the land, while birdes’ songs do ripple in the aire, it is good roaming or resting in such a country, among old castles, towers, and hamlets quaint and grey. To him who can think and feel, it is like the reading of marvellously pleasant old books, some in Elizabethan type, some in earlier black letter, and hearing as we read sweet music and far-distant chimes. And apropos of this, I would remark that while I was at Princeton an idea fixed itself so firmly in my mind that to this day I live on it and act on it. It is this:—There is a certain stage to be reached in reading and reflection, especially if it be aided by broad æsthetic culture and science, when every landscape, event, or human being is or may be to us exactly the same as a book. For everything in this world which can be understood and felt can be described, and whatever can be described may be written and printed. For ordinary people, no ideas are distinct or concentrated or “literary” till they are in black and white; but the scholar or artist in
words puts thoughts into as clear a form in his own mind. Having deeply meditated on this idea for forty years, and been constantly occupied in realising it, I can say truly that I often compose or think books or monographs which, though not translated into type, are as absolutely literature to me as if they were. There is so much more in this than will at first strike most readers, that I can not help dwelling on it. It once happened to me in Philadelphia, in 1850, to pass all the year—in fact, nearly two years—“in dusky city pent,” and during all that time I never got a glimpse of the country. As a director of the Art Union, I was continually studying pictures, landscapes by great artists, and the like. The second year, when I went up into Pennsylvania, I found that I had strangely developed what practically amounted to a kind of pseudophia. Every fragment of rural scenery, every rustic “bit,” every group of shrubs or weeds, everything, in fact, which recalled pictures, or which could itself be pictured, appeared to me to be a picture perfectly executed. This lasted as a vivid or real perception for about a week, but the memory of it has been in my mind ever since. It was not so much the beautiful in all Nature which I saw, as that in Nature which was within the power of the skilled artist to execute. In like manner the practised reflector and writer reads books in everything to a degree which no other person can understand. Wordsworth attained this stage, and the object of the “Excursion” is to teach it.
In the “Letters of James Smetham” there is a passage to the effect that he felt extremely happy among English hedgerows, and found inexhaustible delight in English birds, trees, flowers, hills, and brooks, but could not appreciate his little back-garden with a copper-beech, a weeping-ash, nailed-up rose trees, and twisting creepers. After I had made a habit, till it became a passion, of seeking decorative motives, strange and novel curves—in short, began to detect the transcendent alphabet or written language of beauty and mystery in every plant whatever (of which the alphabet may
be found in the works of Hulme), I found in every growth of every kind, yes, in every weed, enough to fill my soul with both art and poetry; I may say specially in weeds, since in them the wildest and most graceful motives are more abundant than in garden flowers. Unto me now anything that grows is, in simple truth, more than what any landscape once was. This began in youth in much reading of, and long reflection on, the signatures, correspondences, and mystical fancies of the Paracelsian writers—especially of Gaffarel, of whom I have a Latin version by me as I write—and of late years I have carried its inspiration into decorative art. I have said so much of this because, as this is an autobiography, I cannot omit from it something which, unseen in actions, still forms a predominant motive in my life. It is something which, while it perfectly embraces all landscaping or picture-making or dainty delicate cataloguing in poetry, à la Morris at times, or like the Squyre of Lowe Degre, in detail, also involves a far more earnest feeling, and one which combines thought or religion with emotion, just as a melody which we associate with a beautiful poem is worth more to us than one which we do not. Burne Jones is a higher example of this.
During this season we met at Mrs. Inwood Jones’—who was a niece of Lady Morgan and had many interesting souvenirs of her aunt—several people of note, among whom was Mme. Taglioni, now a very agreeable and graceful though naturally elderly lady. I was charmed with her many reminiscences of well-known characters, and as I had seen her as well as Ellsler and all the great ballerine many times, we had many conferences. Somebody said to her one day, “So you know Mr. Leland?” “Yes,” replied Taglioni in jest, “he was one of my old lovers.” This was reported to me, when I said, “I wish she had told me that thirty years sooner.” In 1846 Taglioni owned three palaces in Venice, one of them the Ca’ d’oro, and in 1872 she was giving lessons in London. At Mrs. Frank Hill’s I made the acquaintance of the marvellously
clever Eugene Schuyler, and at Mr. Smalley’s of the equally amazingly cheeky and gifted “Joaquin” Miller. Somewhere else I met several times another curious celebrity whom I had known in America, the Chevalier Wykoff. Though he was almost the type and proverb of an adventurer, I confess that I always liked him. He was gentlemanly and kind in his manner, and agreeable and intelligent in conversation. Though he had been Fanny Ellsler’s agent or secretary, and written those two curiously cool works, “Souvenirs of a Roving Diplomatist” (he had been employed by Palmerston) and “My Courtship and its Consequences” (in reference to his having been imprisoned in Italy for attempting to carry off an elderly heiress), he was also the author of a really admirable work on the political system of the United States, which any man may read to advantage. A century ago or more he would have been a great man in his way. He knew everybody. I believe that as General Tevis formed his bold ideal of life from much reading of condottieri or military adventurers, and Robert Hunt from Cooper’s novels, so Wykoff got his inspiration for a career from studying and admiring the diplomatic parvenus of Queen Anne’s time. These Bohémiens de la haute volée, who drew their first motives from study, are by far more interesting and tolerable than those of an illiterate type.