The curious treatment he had received from the Society of Arts made much stir, however, and brought the young painter friends and patrons. Probably the next best thing to securing the friendship of the future President of the Academy was the reputation of having incurred his enmity. 'The Death of Wolfe' was purchased by Mr. Rowland Stephenson, the banker, who presented it to Governor Varelst, by whom it was placed in the Council-Chamber at Calcutta. Romney moved from the city to the Mews-gate, Charing Cross, probably to be nearer the exhibition in Spring Gardens, and the Artists' Academy in St. Martin's Lane. At this time, it may be noted, Dance and Mortimer were living in Covent Garden, while Hogarth and Reynolds had set up their easels in Leicester Fields. Romney now raised his prices for portraits to five guineas, and saved money sufficient to enable him to pay a long-dreamt-of visit to Paris. He was absent six weeks; and on his return took chambers in Gray's Inn, where he painted several portraits of Members of the legal profession, including Sir Joseph Yates, one of the judges of the Court of the King's Bench. In Gray's Inn, too, he painted his picture of the 'Death of King Edmund,' which, in 1765, obtained a prize of fifty guineas from the Society of Arts. For this work, however, he was unable to find a purchaser. In 1767 his circumstances had so far improved that he felt himself justified in moving to a house in Great Newport Street, within a few doors of Reynolds, where he remained until his visit to Italy, in 1773. Meanwhile his friends were loud in their laudation of the prodigy who, in historical works, they declared, promised to rival the great masters, and in portraiture threatened to wrest the palm from Reynolds himself. He now raised his prices again, charging twelve guineas for a three-quarter portrait, and found no lack of sitters at the increased rate. Whether or not he sought for academic honours is not clear; certain it is they were not conferred upon him: and he invariably chose to send his pictures to the rooms of the Chartered Society, in Spring Gardens, rather than to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy. Artists, in every way his inferiors, were welcomed to the ranks of 'the forty;' but to Romney never were granted even the poorer dignities of associateship. This neglect of him he always ascribed to the sinister influence of Reynolds and his followers, among whom, in this instance, must be numbered Fuseli, who was much given to sneering at Romney as 'a coat and waistcoat painter,' and who, in his edition of Pilkington, says, pertly, 'Romney was made for his times, and his times for him.' Allan Cunningham suggests, what is probably true, that Romney was a man likely to take a sort of morbid pleasure in his isolation, and in the odium which would necessarily devolve upon the Academy by its neglect of an artist of his eminence. His name has gone to swell the list of painters of mark who have ventured to defy the influence and opposition of the Academy, and have single-handed fought their way to success notwithstanding.
In 1771, through the introduction of Cumberland, Mrs. Yates, the actress, sat to Romney for a picture of the 'Tragic Muse.' Of course, this work was completely eclipsed by Reynolds's 'Tragic Muse,' painted some thirteen years later. Notwithstanding the demerits of the President's picture, the plagiarism of the pose and draperies from Michael Angelo's Joel in the Capella Sistina, the incongruities of the theatrical state-chair in the clouds, the gold lace, plaited hair, imperial tiara and strings of pearls,—still the majestic beauty of his model, her classical features, broad brow, grand form and superb eyes, enabled him to surpass immeasurably the effort of his younger and less favoured rival. Mrs. Yates, though an accomplished actress, was far from possessing the personal gifts of the Kembles' sister. To Romney's studio Cumberland also brought Garrick, with some hope that the great actor might interest himself in favour of the painter. But Garrick was too closely allied with Sir Joshua; he was wilfully blinded to the merits of Romney. He criticised with most impertinent candour the works he found in the studio, pausing before a large family group of portraits and with an affected imitation of the attitude of the chief figure, saying, 'Upon my word, Mr. Romney, this is a very regular, well-ordered family; and this is a very bright-rubbed mahogany table, at which that motherly, good lady is sitting; and this worthy good gentleman in the scarlet waistcoat is doubtless a very excellent subject—to the state, I mean (if all these are his children)—but not for your art, Mr. Romney, if you mean to pursue it with that success which I hope will attend you!' His 'pasteboard Majesty of Drury Lane,' in truth, knew nothing of the painter's art; and from any other than Romney would have incurred, as he well merited, most unceremonious ejection from the studio. He was safe enough with Romney, however, as he probably well knew. The painter, deeply mortified, silently turned the family picture with its face to the wall. He was extremely sensitive: a curious diffidence mingled with his conviction of his own cleverness. He was readily disconcerted: at a laugh, a jest, a few words of satiric criticism, he lost faith in himself, interest in his works; the subject which had promised so much pleasure now seemed to him fruitful only in pain and disappointment; he would seek at once a new occupation, and add another to a growing pile of canvases which the ridicule and captiousness of others, and his own weakness and caprice, had combined to leave for ever incomplete. Perhaps it was by way of balm for the wound he had unwittingly inflicted, by bringing Garrick to the studio, that Cumberland published in the Public Advertiser his verses upon the painters of the day, with especial mention of Romney and his picture of 'Contemplation,' which work, the poet says in a note, 'the few who attended the unfashionable exhibition in Spring Gardens may possibly recollect.' Already the success of the Royal Academy was telling disastrously upon the 'Society of Artists of Great Britain' to which Romney had attached himself.
In 1773, our painter, in his thirty-ninth year, and in receipt of an income of some twelve hundred pounds, derived solely from his profession, set sail for Italy, bearing with him letters of introduction from the Dukes of Gloucester and Richmond to the Pope, and accompanied by his close friend, Humphrey, the miniature-painter. His Holiness gave gracious permission to the artist to erect scaffolds in the Vatican, the better to make copies of the Raphaels which decorate the palace.
Among the pictures executed during Romney's Italian tour was a portrait of the eccentric Wortley Montagu (Lady Mary's son), who had assumed the manners and attire of a Turk, and who, shortly after his sitting to the painter, died from a bone sticking in his throat. Another work which he brought back with him to England was a daring attempt to represent 'Providence brooding over chaos.' In later years, when Lord George Gordon and his mob were sacking the Roman Catholic chapels throughout London, and plundering the houses of all suspected of sympathy with the Latin Church, Romney became alarmed lest his picture should attract the attention of the rioters, and, regarded by them as an evidence of idolatrous devotion, lead to the destruction of his house and property. The canvas was at once removed out of sight. At the sale of his works, on the death of the painter, his son changed the name of the picture to 'Jupiter Pluvius,' under which more marketable guise it soon found a purchaser.
On the 7th of June 1775, Romney arrived again in England: his return being celebrated by glowing strains from Cumberland's ready muse. As Gibbon said of the poetic praises of the painter's friends—'If they did not contribute much to his professional prosperity, they might be justly called an elegant advertisement of his merit.' Sitters of all ranks now crowded to his studio. If his absence from England had done nothing else for him, it had wonderfully enhanced his reputation. But persons of taste and quality were of opinion that his visit to Italy had wrought marvels. They pretended to see a striking improvement, not merely in the mechanical, but also in the mental part of his work; his conceptive powers were found to be strengthened and enriched, and his method of painting benefited beyond measure by his Italian studies; he was no longer cold, and harsh, and heavy; all was now warmth and light, tenderness and beauty. It was at this time that Reynolds began to speak of Romney as 'the man in Cavendish Square.' He had established himself in the spacious mansion which the death of Cotes, the Royal Academician, had left vacant, and which, it may be noted, after the expiry of Romney's tenancy, was occupied by Sir Martin Archer Shee. Not without considerable anxiety, however, did Romney enter upon possession of his new abode. He was seized with an irrepressible misgiving that he was embarking upon a career of far greater expense than his success had warranted, or than the emoluments of his profession would enable him to maintain. 'In his singular constitution,' his biographer Hayley here finds occasion to observe, 'there was so much nervous timidity united to great bodily strength and to enterprising and indefatigable ambition, that he used to tremble, when he walked every morning in his new habitation, with a painful apprehension of not finding business sufficient to support him. These fears were only early flutterings of that hypochondriacal disorder which preyed in secret on his comfort during many years, and which, though apparently subdued by the cheering exhortations of frendship and great professional prosperity, failed not to show itself more formidably when he was exhausted by labour in the decline of life.' His trepidation was quite groundless, however. He had no lack of patrons or employment; the Duke of Richmond gave him generous encouragement and support, sat for his own picture, in profile, and commissioned portraits of Admiral Keppel, Mr. Burke, the Honourable Mrs. Damer, Lord John Cavendish, Lord George Lennox, and others. The painter's income soon sprung up to between three and four thousand a year, produced by portraits only. In 1776 he was seriously ill from a violent cold caught by standing in the rain, amongst the crowd outside Drury Lane Theatre, waiting to witness Garrick's farewell performance. He was cured, however, by Sir Richard Jebb, the eminent physician, who prescribed a bottle of Madeira to his patient, and attended him from that time forward in every illness, but generously declined to accept a fee for his services.
And the Mary Abbott whom George Romney had married years before and left behind at Kendal, with his son and daughter and thirty pounds, while he sought his fortune alone in London—the wife, his union with whom was to be as 'a spur to his application'—was she to be denied the sight of her husband's success, a share in his prosperity, a place in his house in Cavendish Square? It is hard to understand the utter unmanliness and heartlessness of Romney's conduct in this respect. There is no word of accusation against her—- no hint affecting her character—no question as to her being in any way unworthy of his love and trust, and of her rightful position by his side. His separation from her, in the first instance, was, under all the circumstances of the case, no doubt justifiable; and it is hardly possible to believe that his original withdrawal from Kendal was in pursuance of a plan of deliberate abandonment of his family. But for the protraction of this separation, after the first necessity for it had passed away, there would seem to be absolutely no excuse. His son, the Rev. John Romney, with a laudable desire to serve his father's memory, urges, as some faint apology for the painter's cruelty, that his affairs were at all times less prosperous than they seemed; that his brothers were a heavy burden upon him and drained him of his savings; that his professional journeys to Paris and Rome consumed all the money he could raise; and that thus a 'succession of untoward circumstances threw impediments in the way of good intent, till time and absence became impediments also.'
In truth, Romney appears to have been always curiously timid and reticent; to have suffered from excessive moral cowardice. On his first arrival in London and association with the young painters of the day, he began to feel some shame at his early imprudence, and some alarm lest it should present any hindrance to his professional advancement. He had given 'hostages to fortune,' and dreaded the result. He was thus persistently silent on the subject; and, as time went on, it became more and more difficult for him to avow the marriage he had from the first made so much a matter of mystery. And then, too, the prosperous unions of other artists, his contemporaries, excited his jealousy and increased his apprehensions. He began to think it indispensable to the success of a painter that he should marry well. Nathaniel Dance had been united to Mrs. Drummer, known as 'the Yorkshire fortune,' with eighteen thousand a year. John Astley had secured the hand of Lady Duckenfield, with an income of almost equal value. Then, from his literary and poetic friends he was little likely to receive encouragement to act justly in such a matter. Laurence Sterne was no especially good exemplar of conjugal fidelity. Mr. Hayley and the rest indulged in extremely poetic views concerning the privileges and prerogatives of genius; were opposed to trammels and scruples of any kind in such respect; and poured round the painter dense showers of versified adulation, so infused with ideality and Platonism that the simple rules of right and wrong were quite washed away by the harmonious and transcendental torrent. Romney, weak, vain, selfish, suffered himself to be led down paths which, however flowery and pleasant, were yet mean and contemptible enough, and listening to the twanging of Hayley's lyre, turned a deaf ear to the pining of the poor woman fading away, alone and deserted in the north—the Mary Abbott whom he had vowed in his youth until death should them part to love, honour, and cherish. For some thirty years the husband and wife never set eyes upon each other—were absolutely separated.
He had now as much work as he could possibly execute. He was often at his easel for thirteen hours a day, beginning at eight in the morning, lighting his lamp when the daylight had gone, and toiling on sometimes until midnight. He had five, and occasionally six, sitters a day. He generally completed a three-quarter portrait in three or four sittings, and could accomplish this easily, provided no hands were introduced into the picture. The sittings varied in duration from three-quarters of an hour to an hour and a half each. His only time now for ideal or historical art was in the interval between the departure and arrival of his sitters, or when they failed to keep their engagements with him; but he would regard such disappointments with pleasure, having always at hand a spare canvas upon which he could employ himself with some fancy subject. Of course, this close application was not without injurious effect upon him in the end. 'My health,' he wrote, at a later period of his life, 'is not at all constant. My nerves give way, and I have no time to go in quest of pleasure to prevent a decline of health. My hands are full, and I shall be forced to refuse new faces at last, to be enabled to finish the numbers I have in an unfinished state. I shall regret the necessity of forbearing to take new faces; there is a delight in novelty greater than in the profit gained by sending them home finished. But it must be done.' His annual retirement for a month's holiday to Hayley's house at Eartham was of little real service to his health. He was compelled the while to attitudinize incessantly as a genius. Hayley, in globose language, was always entreating his guest to moderate his intense spirit of application, conjuring him to rest from his excess of labour 'in the name of those immortal powers the Beautiful and the Sublime,' etc., while he was at the same time urging the painter to new and greater toils, teasing the jaded man with endless suggestions, bewildering him with a jabber of sham sentimentality and hazy æstheticism. 'Whenever Romney was my guest,' writes Hayley, 'I was glad to put aside my own immediate occupation for the pleasure of searching for and presenting to him a copious choice of such subjects as might happily exercise his powers.' Poor Romney was permitted no rest. Hayley was for ever in close attendance gratifying his own inordinate vanity at the painter's cost. He produced four representations of Serena, the heroine of Hayley's Triumphs of Temper. He painted a scene from the Tempest for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, which project Romney always claimed to have originated, and Hayley was in the studio sitting for Prospero. At Hayley's house a small coterie of poetasters, male and female, assembled for purposes of mutual glorification in the most windbag sort of verse, and were glad to buy portraits and sketches from the painter with such small coin as sonnets and stanzas, and poetic epistles. Romney executes a likeness of Mrs. Hayley, and is rewarded with eighty-eight glowing lines by her husband, who calls to his aid Eolus, Orion, Boreas, Auster, Zephyr, Eurus, Famine, and Ceres for the better decoration of his verse. He paints a portrait of Miss Seward, and the lady's gratitude gushes forth in eulogy of
....the pleasures of the Hayleyan board, Where, as his pencil, Romney's soul sublime Glows with bold lines, original and strong, etc.
'Beloved and honoured Titiano!' she wrote, some years later; 'how that name recalls the happy, happy hours I passed with you at Eartham; when by the title 'Muse' you summoned me to the morning walk!' Amongst the drossy twaddle which passed current as poetry at Eartham, a sonnet in Romney's honour by a true poet—William Cowper—may be counted as pure gold.