I am afraid you were disappointed last night at finding no picture by the Shannon. [93] Mayhap you
had asked Mr C[hurchyard] to come and give his judgment upon it over toasted cheese. But the truth is, the picture has just been varnished with mastick varnish, which is apt to chill with the cold at this season of the year: and so I thought it best to keep it by me till its conveyance should be safer. I hope that on Monday you will get it. But I must tell you that, besides the reason of the varnish, I have had a sneaking desire to keep the picture by me, and not to lose it from my eyes just yet. I am in love with it. I washed it myself very carefully with only sweet salad oil: perfectly innocuous as you may imagine: and that, with the new lining, and the varnishing, has at least made the difference between a dirty and a clean beauty. And now, whoever it may be painted by, I pronounce it a very beautiful picture: tender, graceful, full of repose. I sit looking at it in my room and like it more and more. All this is independent of its paternity. But if I am asked about that, I should only answer on my own judgment (not a good one in such a matter, as I have told you) that it is decidedly by Gainsborough, and in his best way of conception. My argument would be of the Johnsonian kind: if it is not by G., who the devil is it by? There are some perhaps feeble touches here and there in the tree in the centre, though not in those autumnal leaves that shoot into the sky to the right: but who painted that clump of thick solemn trees to the left of the picture:—the light of evening rising like a low fire between their boles? The cattle too
in the water, how they stand! The picture must be an original of somebody’s: and if not of Gainsborough’s—whose? It is better painted far than the Market Cart in the National Gallery: but not better, only equal (in a sketchy way) to the beautiful evening Watering Place.
Now I have raised your expectations too high. But when you have looked at the picture some time, you will agree with me. I say all this in sober honesty, for upon my word, whether it be by Gainsborough or not, it is a kind of pang to me to part from the picture: I believe I should like it all the better for its being a little fatherless bastard which I have picked up in the streets, and made clean and comfortable. Yet, if your friend tells you it is by G. I shall be glad you should possess it. Any how, never part with it but to me.
I must tell you my friend Laurence still persists it is not by Gainsborough: but I have thrown him quite overboard. Oh the comfort of independent self confidence! Said Laurence also observed that Gainsborough was the Goldsmith of Painters: which is perhaps true. I should like to know if he would know an original of Goldsmith, if I read something to him. He is a nice fellow this Laurence by the way.
Our prospect of going down to Suffolk this year is much on the wane: the Doctor has desired that Lusia should remain in town. Though I should like much to see you and others, yet I am on the whole
glad that my sisters should stay here, where they are likely to be better off. I shall stay with them, as I am of use. I may however run down one day to give you a look. I wish you would enquire and let me know how Mr. Jenney [96] is: he was not well when my Father was in Suffolk. Only don’t ask himself: he hates that. And now farewell. This is a long letter: but look at it by way of notice when the picture comes to you. If it does not come on Monday don’t be angry: but it probably will.
Brighton, Dec. 29, 1841.
My dear Barton,
The account you give of my old Squire ‘that he is in a poorish way’ does not satisfy me: and I want you to ask Mr. Jones the surgeon, whom you know, and who used to attend on the Squire,—to ask him, I say, how that Squire is. He has been ill for the last two or three winters, and may not be worse now than before. He is one of our oldest friends: and though he and I have not very much in common, he is a part of my country of England, and involved in the very idea of the quiet fields of Suffolk. He is the owner of old Bredfield House in which I was born—and the seeing him cross the stiles between Hasketon and Bredfield, and riding with his hounds over the lawn, is among the scenes in that novel called The Past which dwell most in my memory. What is the difference between what has been, and