"With regard to what you say of yourself in your last letter, I have never had an opportunity of seeing a picture of yours; but I cannot imagine any one to fail in landscape who has the high qualifications for it which you obviously have—a sensitively impressionable nature, a strong, loving admiration for whatever in heaven or earth is beautiful or grand in form, color, or effect. Then you have the faculty of observation, without which a mind, however sensitive to the impressions of nature, will not be able to do anything, will be passive, not active. The mechanical difficulties of our art must be to some extent overcome before our thoughts and intentions can be realized and our impressions conveyed to others. After all, every artist feels that his work is a failure, the success of rendering what he wishes is so exceedingly limited in his mind. I am talking of what you know as well as I do; but my only reason is that you spoke of yourself as failing in landscape, 'probably from want of natural ability,' which I cannot believe. My method of getting memoranda, which you inquire about, is to study as closely as I can; to watch and observe and make notes and drawings, also studies in color, and patient groping after what I wish to learn, are my only methods. I feel unable to enter into details, so much would need be said on the subject. I believe I am much indebted to my long education as a figure-painter for any little ability I may have in rendering the material of nature. I was a figure-painter many years before I touched landscape. Continued study from the antique and painting from the nude in a life-class give, or ought to give, an acquaintance with light and shadow which to a landscape-painter is invaluable—nature affects our feelings so much in landscape by light and shadow. In Edinburgh we had a long gallery with windows from the roof at intervals, and the statues were arranged there; a splendid collection. I shall never forget the exquisite beauty of the middle tint, or overshadowing, which the statues had that were placed between the windows; those which were immediately underneath them were of course in a blaze of light, and we had all gradations of light, middle-tint, and shadow. When I came to study clouds and skies, I recognized the enchantment of effect to be caused by the same old laws of light I had tried to get acquainted with at the Academy. Of course color adds immensely to the difficulty of sky painting, and the amount of groping in the study of gray, blue, etc., is very disheartening. I need not longer weary you, however, on this subject, but shall just again say that I really see no reason why you should not succeed in landscape-painting if such be your wish, and therefore cannot think of you as having failed."
Then, in a subsequent letter, I find this passage:—
"Since receiving your last letter I have read, and with great pleasure, your 'Painter's Camp in the Highlands.' I am stronger than ever in the belief that it is merely from your never having devoted the necessary amount of time to art in the right direction that unqualified success has not been attained by you as an artist. I think it unfortunate that you 'learned painting with a clever landscape-painter.' You probably far excelled him in sympathy with nature, power of observation, and all the gifts especially required for a landscape-painter. What you really needed, study under a figure-painter, or better still at an Academy, would have given you. Landscape nature is too complicated to be a good school to acquire the mastery over the mechanical difficulties in art. I don't agree with you that you ought to have filled your notebooks with memoranda from nature instead of painting pictures at Loch Awe. Your experience there was very valuable. A notebook memorandum from nature is of little or no use for a picture in oil without previous study of similar subjects or effects in the same vehicle. You ask my opinion of your present method of study. I think it excellent, and would make only two suggestions. You might safely discontinue the study of botany and dissection of plants; there is not the slightest fear of a want of truth in your pictures, and the time might be devoted to some more pressing work. Then I think you might paint the human figure with much profit, even to landscape-painting and writing on art."
The reader may have remarked that Mr. Hamerton had frequently painted from a model at Pré-Charmoy, though not from the nude, for he was of opinion that this kind of study was no great help to him at this stage, though it might have been earlier.
A more serious impediment than technical difficulties soon stopped all progress with Mr. Powers' pictures. It was a recurrence of the cerebral excitement, almost in a chronic form. My husband had made a plan for issuing—separately—proofs of the etchings appearing in the "Portfolio;" but he was so ill that he could not hold a pen; and to explain the details of this plan to Mr. Seeley I acted as amanuensis under his dictation. His aunt was very much grieved to hear of this illness, and wrote:—
"Suppose you tried a ten or twenty miles' journey by train, in some direction whence you could return by water or conveyance if necessary. I assure you I can do valiant things with impunity that the very thinking of them would have made me ill about thirteen months ago."
He did not need courage to be preached to him, he had a sufficient store of it; indeed, his nervousness had nothing to do with fear: he used to drive or ride Cocote after she had been running away, upsetting the carriage and breaking the harness, till she was subdued again into docility. Once at Dieppe, in a storm, he had volunteered to steer a lifeboat which was making for a ship in distress, but his services had been refused when it was known that he had a family. He rode fearlessly one of the high, dangerous bicycles of that time, about which Aunt Susan humorously said in one of her letters that "they often prove rather restive, and are given to, or seized with, an inclination to butting the walls, and also of lazily lying down on the road over which they ought to be almost imperceptibly passing along." And during the war he kindly received, fed, and helped several francs-tireurs and stray French soldiers, perfectly aware that he was risking his life in case the Prussians came near; he even conveyed one of them to the Garibaldian outposts in his carriage. Of his own accord he attempted time after time to get the better of this peculiar nervousness, but it had lately increased to such a point that, for a time, when we reached Autun in the carriage and came in sight of the railway bridge, he had to give me the reins, jump down, and go back to wait for my return outside the town; for I could not go with him, having to take our boys to the college. I never knew how I might find him when we met again. Unlike the majority of patients, who make the most of their ailments to excite sympathy, he considerately let me know immediately of the slightest improvement, and kept repeating: "It will soon be over now; don't distress yourself."
I believe that the great excitement and anxiety of the wartime had caused the recurrence of the ailment, and no wonder, for we knew several cases of mental derangement in the small circle of our acquaintances, even amongst peasants, who are far from imaginative or nervous. In Gilbert's case there were only too many reasons for anxiety, besides the uncertainty of his situation. His brother-in-law, M. Pelletier, then Économe of the Lycée at Vendôme, was in the thick of the strife, and his post was not unattended with danger—though the Lycée had become an International Ambulance. It was sometimes hard for him to restrain his indignation before the insolence and partiality of the victors: once, for instance, he appealed to the general in command to obtain for the French wounded an equal portion of the bread given to the Prussians; but he was pushed by the shoulder to an open window, from which the French army could be seen, and the general exclaimed—pointing to the soldiers in the distance: "Vous n'aurez rien, rien! tant que nous ne les aurons pas battus!… allez!…"
Another time M. Pelletier had to go to Château Renaud to fetch several things sorely wanted at the ambulance. It was forbidden by the enemy, under penalty of death, to carry any letters out of the city, which they had declared in a state of siege; but M. Pelletier could not find in his heart to refuse a few from desolate mothers and wives, and these letters were carefully sewn up at night, by his wife, in the lining of his overcoat. Who betrayed him?… No one knows, but just as he was about to descend the stairs, some one rapidly brushed past, whispering hurriedly, "Leave that coat behind." He understood, went back to his apartment, threw the coat to his terrified wife, merely saying "Burn," and had only time to seize another great-coat hanging in the passage and rush to the omnibus waiting with the escort. He was, however, stopped by a Prussian officer, who said: "You sha'n't go—you are carrying letters, and you know that you have put yourself in the way of being shot." The coat was taken from him and the lining cut open. On finding nothing, the officer said, with a dry smile: "You have been warned; but let it be a lesson to you,—you might not escape so easily another time."
My brother Charles, despite his being the only son of a widow and soutien de famille, had been enlisted, and his letters did not always reach their destination, though his regiment was at Chagny, not far from Autun, and for a while Mr. Hamerton had lost all traces of his mother-in-law. Madame Gindriez had gone to Vendôme to be near her younger daughter, Madame Pelletier, in the hope of keeping clear of the bloody conflict, but found herself in the very centre of it after the occupation of Vendôme by Prince Frederick Charles, and was thus shut off from all news of her son. After vainly attempting to get a safe-conduct during the hostilities, she at last succeeded after the armistice, and left the town to go to Tours, where she had friends willing to receive her, and where she expected to hear from her son. The omnibus in which she travelled was escorted by Bismarck's White Cuirassiers, pistol in hand, till it reached Château Renaud. In the night, Madame Gindriez was awakened by loud rappings at her bedroom door, and ordered to give up her room to some Prussian sergeants who had come back from an expedition. She dressed quickly and went to the kitchen—the only place in the hotel free from soldiers—to await the morning as she best could. Her breakfast was served upon a small table, apart from the long one in the centre of the room, which was reserved for the German officers. They were very much elated, it seemed, by the armistice, thinking that it might lead ultimately to a peace, for which they openly expressed their desire, ordering champagne, clinking their glasses together, and politely offering one to Madame Gindriez with the words: "You won't refuse to drink with us à la paix, Madame?" "À la paix, soit," she courageously answered; "mais sans cession de territoire." They did not insist.