But Thicknesse was not to be bought off. He took charge of the studio, looked after the visitors, explaining this and that, telling how he had discovered the artist and rescued him from obscurity, giving scraps of his history, and presenting little impromptu lectures on art as he had found it.
The fussy Thicknesse used to be funny to Mr. and Mrs. Gainsborough, but now he had developed into a nuisance. To escape him, they resolved to turn the pretty compliment of King George into a genuine request. They packed up and moved to London.
The fifty pounds a year at Bath had seemed a great responsibility, but when Gainsborough took Schomberg House in Pall Mall at three hundred pounds, he boasts of his bargain. About this time "Scheming Jack" turns up asking for a small loan to perfect a promising scheme. The gracious brother replies that although his own expenses are more than a thousand pounds a year, he is glad to accommodate him, and hopes the scheme will prosper—which of course he knew it would not, for success is a matter of red corpuscle.
Almost immediately on reaching London the Royal Academy recognized Gainsborough's presence by electing him a member of its Council. However, he never attended a single meeting. He did not need the Academy. Royalty stood in line at his studio-doors, and he took his pick of sitters. He painted five different portraits of the King, various pictures of his children, did the rascally heir-apparent ideally, and made a picture of Queen Charlotte that Goldsmith said "looked like a sensible woman."
He painted portraits of his lovely wife, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Burke, Walpole, the dictator of Strawberry Hill, and immortalized the hats worn by the smashing, dashing Duchess of Devonshire. One of these pictures of Her Grace comes very close to us Americans, as it was cut from the frame one dark, foggy night in London, sealed up in the false bottom of a trunk and brought to New York. Here it lay for more than twenty years, when Colonel Patricius Sheedy, connoisseur and critic, arranged for its delivery to the heirs of the original owners on payment of some such trifle as twenty-five thousand dollars. This superb picture, with its romantic past, was not destined to traverse the Atlantic again; for thanks to the generosity of J. Pierpont Morgan, it has now found a permanent home at Harvard College.
It is only a little way back from civilization to savagery. We live in a wonderful time: the last twenty-five years have seen changes that mark epochs in the onward and upward march. To mention but two, we might name the almost complete evolution of our definition as to what constitutes "Christianity"; and in material things, the use of electricity, which has worked such a revolution as even Jules Verne never conjured forth.
Americans are somewhat given to calling our country "The Land of the Free"—as if there were no other. But the individual in England today has greater freedom of speech and action than the individual has in America. In every large city of America there is an extent of petty officialism and dictation that the English people would not for a day endure. Our policemen, following their Donnybrook proclivities, are all armed with clubs, and allowing prenatal influences to lead, they unlimber the motto, "Wherever you see a head, hit it," on slight excuse. In Central Park, New York, for instance, the citizen who "talks back" would speedily be clubbed into silence—but try that thing in Hyde Park, London, if you please, and see what would follow! But, thank heaven, we are working out our salvation all the time—things are getting better, and it is the "dissatisfied" who are making them go. Were we satisfied, there would be no progress. During the sixty-one years of Gainsborough's life, wondrous changes were made in the world of thought and feeling. And the good natured but sturdy quality of such as he was the one strong factor that worked for freedom. Gainsborough was never a tuft-hunter: he toadied to no man, and his swinging independence refused to see any special difference between himself and the sleek, titled nobility. He asked no favors of the Academy, no quarter from his rivals, no grants from royalty. This dissenting attitude probably cost him the mate of the knighthood which went to Sir Joshua, but behold the paradox! he was usually closer to the throne than those who lay in wait for honors. Gainsborough sought for nothing—he did his work, preserved the right mental attitude, and all good things came to him.
It is a curious thing to note that while England was undergoing a renaissance of art, and realizing a burst of freedom, Italy, that land so long prolific in greatness, produced not a single artist who rose above the dull and commonplace. Has Nature only just so much genius at her disposal?
The reign of the Georges worked a blessed, bloodless revolution for the people of England. They reigned better than they knew. Gainsborough saw the power of the monarch transferred to the people, and the King become the wooden figurehead of the ship, instead of its Captain. So, thanks to the weakness of George the Third and the short-sighted policy of Lord North, America achieved her independence about the same time that England did hers.
Theological freedom and political freedom go hand in hand, for our conception of Deity is always a pale reflection of our chief ruler. Did not Thackeray say that the people of England regarded Jehovah as an infinite George the Fourth?