dog of an afternoon, and at evening sit with open windows, up to which China roses climb, with my pipe, while the blackbirds and thrushes begin to rustle bedwards in the garden, and the nightingale to have the neighbourhood to herself. We have had such a spring (bating the last ten days) as would have satisfied even you with warmth. And such verdure! white clouds moving over the new fledged tops of oak trees, and acres of grass striving with buttercups. How old to tell of, how new to see! I believe that Leslie’s Life of Constable (a very charming book) has given me a fresh love of Spring. Constable loved it above all seasons: he hated Autumn. When Sir G. Beaumont who was of the old classical taste asked him if he did not find it difficult to place his brown tree in his pictures, ‘Not at all,’ said C., ‘I never put one in at all.’ And when Sir George was crying up the tone of the old masters’ landscapes, and quoting an old violin as the proper tone of colour for a picture, Constable got up, took an old Cremona, and laid it down on the sunshiny grass. You would like the book. In defiance of all this, I have hung my room with pictures, like very old fiddles indeed: but I agree with Sir George and Constable both. I like pictures that are not like nature. I can have nature better than any picture by looking out of my window. Yet I respect the man who tries to paint up to the freshness of earth and sky. Constable did not wholly achieve what he tried
at: and perhaps the old masters chose a soberer scale of things as more within the compass of lead paint. To paint dew with lead!
I also plunge away at my old Handel of nights, and delight in the Allegro and Penseroso, full of pomp and fancy. What a pity Handel could not have written music to some great Masque, such as Ben Jonson or Milton would have written, if they had known of such a musician to write for.
To S. Laurence.
May, 1844.
Dear Laurence,
I hope your business is settled by this time. I have seen praise of your picture in the Athenæum, which quoted also the Chronicle’s good opinion. I am very glad of all this and I hope you will now set to work, and paint away with ease and confidence, forgetting that there is such a hue as bottle-green [166] in the universe (it was tastefully omitted from the rainbow, you see); and, in spite of what Moore says, paint English people in English atmospheres. Your Coningham was rather orange, wasn’t he? But he was very good, I thought. Dress your ladies in cheerful dresses, not quite so vulgar as Chalon’s. . . . I
heard from my sister that you had finished Wilkinson to the perfect content of all: I had charged her particularly not to allow Mrs. W. to intercede for any smirk or alteration whatever.
My Venetian pictures look very grand on my walls, which previously had been papered with a still green (not bottled) on purpose to receive them. On my table is a long necked bottle with three flowers just now in it . . . a tuft of rhododendron, a tuft of scarlet geranium, and a tuft of white gilli-flower. Do you see these in your mind’s eye? I wish you could come down here and refresh your sodden eyes with pure daylight, budding oak trees, and all the changes of sky and cloud. To live to make sonnets about these things, and doat upon them, is worse Cockneyism than rejoicing in the sound of Bow Bells for ever so long: but here one has them whether one will or no: and they are better than Lady Morgan and --- at a rout in Harley Street. Maclise is a handsome and fine fellow, I think: and Landseer is very good natured. I long for my old Alfred portrait here sometimes: but you had better keep it for the present. W. Browne and Spedding are with me, good representatives one of the Vita Contemplativa, the other of the Vita Attiva. Spedding, if you tell him this, will not allow that he has not the elements of Action in him: nor has he not: nor has not the other those of contemplation: but each inclines a different way notwithstanding. I wish you and
Spedding could come down here: though there is little to see, and to eat. When you write you must put Woodbridge after Boulge. This letter of yours went to Bury St. Edmunds, for want of that. I hear Alfred Tennyson is in very good looks: mind and paint him quickly when he comes to town; looking full at you.