CHAPTER XIX.
1853.
London again.—Accurate habits in employment of time.—Studies with Mr. Pettitt.—Some account of my new master.—His method of technical teaching.—Simplicity of his philosophy of art.—Incidents of his life.—Rapid progress under Pettitt's direction.
On August 8, 1853, the writer of this book, who had promised and vowed never to visit London again, went there to see the Royal Academy Exhibition, and of course found it closed. If any one could have seen me before the closed doors, knowing that I had come all the way from Lancashire in the expectation of finding them open, he might have derived some innocent mirth from my disappointment.
The Royal Academy being no longer accessible, I turned into the National Gallery, and at once began to take notes in a pocket-book. This seems to have been my habit at that time. I took notes about everything—about painting, architecture, and even the Royal Mews. The notes are copious and wordy. Though destitute of literary merit, they certainly serve their purpose, for they recall things vividly enough, even in detail. Nothing of any importance is omitted.
Although notes of that kind are unreadable, they are very useful afterwards for reference, and my time could scarcely have been better spent. I find I gave five hundred words to the description of Turner's "Building of Carthage," and other pictures are treated with equal liberality. I carried the same laborious system of note-making even into exhibitions. In later life one learns the art of doing such work more briefly.
Having purchased a few prints for study, I returned to Lancashire and resumed my strict division of time. Four hours a day were given to practical drawing, but not invariably the entry is sometimes three or two only. When art lost an hour, literature gained it, either in study or practical writing. I was curiously accurate in my accounts of time, and knew to half-an-hour what was spent on this pursuit or that. Here is an extract in evidence of this tendency:—
"Thursday, August 13, 1853. Determined to-day to study the copper Albert Dürer 80 hours, having given 83 to the wood-cuts. I have already given the copper 101/2 hours, so that I have 691/2 to devote to it yet. I shall also give 40 hours to Kreutzer's violin studies, and have already practised them 24, which leaves 16. I shall now commence a course of poetical reading, beginning with 50 hours of Chaucer, and as I gave him 11/2 last night it leaves me exactly 481/2."
This is carrying exactness to excess, and it is not given as an example to be followed, but it had the advantage of letting me know how my time expenditure was running. In this way it became clear that if I intended to be an artist the time given to practical work was insufficient. As no painter of eminence would take a pupil I bethought me of Mr. Pettitt, who had given me lessons at Keswick. He consented to take me, but said that he had left the north of England for London. In the Lake District he had been earning a small income; in London he earned twice as much, but his expenses increased in proportion. The change, however, was a disappointment to me, as it would have been more profitable to study from nature under my master's direction, than to copy pictures in a London studio.
My new London life began at the end of December, 1853. It has always been, in my case, an effort little short of heroic to go and stay in a town at all. My dislike to towns increases in exact mathematical proportion to their size. The notion of going to London to study landscape-painting seemed against nature. The negotiations with Mr. Pettitt had been begun with the hope of a return to Derwentwater.