Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century

by George Paston

Towards the end of 1811 the new picture, which represents Macbeth stepping between the sleeping grooms to murder the king, was finished, and sent to the British Gallery. It was well hung, and was praised by the critics, but Sir George declined to take it, though he offered to pay Haydon a hundred pounds for his trouble, or to give him a commission for a picture on a smaller scale. Haydon petulantly refused both offers, and thus after three years' work, and incurring debts to the amount of six hundred pounds, he found himself penniless, with his picture returned on his hands. This disappointment was only the natural result of his own impracticable temperament, but to Haydon's exaggerative sense the whole world seemed joined in a conspiracy against him. 'Exasperated by the neglect of my family,' he writes, 'tormented by the consciousness of debt, cut to the heart by the cruelty of Sir George, and enraged at the insults of the Academy, I became furious.' His fury, unfortunately, found vent in an attack upon the Academy and its methods, through the medium of the Examiner, which was the recognised vehicle of all attacks upon authority. The onslaught seems to have been justified, though whether it was judicious is another question. The ideals of English artists during the early years of the nineteenth century had sunk very low, and the standard of public taste was several degrees lower. Portrait-painting was the only lucrative branch of art, and the Academy was almost entirely in the hands of the portrait-painters, who gave little encouragement to works of imagination. The burden of the patron, which had been removed from literature, still rested upon painting, and the Academicians found it more to their interest to foster the ignorance than to educate the taste of the patron.

Over the signature of 'An English Student,' Haydon not only exposed the inefficiency of the Academy, but advocated numerous reforms, chief among them being an improved method of election, the establishment of schools of design, a reduction in the power of the Council, and an annual grant of public money for purposes of art. In these days, when the Academicians are no longer regarded as a sacred body, it is hard to realise the commotion that these letters made in art circles, whether professional or amateur. The identity of the 'English Student' was soon discovered, and 'from that moment,' writes Haydon, 'the destiny of my life was changed. My picture was caricatured, my name detested, my peace harassed. I was looked at like a monster, abused like a plague, and avoided like a maniac.' There is probably some characteristic exaggeration in this statement, but considering the power wielded at this time by the Academy and its supporters, Haydon would undoubtedly have done better, from a worldly point of view, to keep clear of these controversies. The prudent and sensible Wilkie was much distressed at his friend's ebullition of temper, and earnestly advised him to follow up the reputation his brush had gained for him, and leave the pen alone. 'In moments of depression,' wrote Haydon, many years later, 'I often wished I had followed Wilkie's advice, but then I should never have acquired that grand and isolated reputation, solitary and unsupported, which, while it encumbers the individual, inspires him with vigour proportioned to the load.'

On April 3, 1812, Haydon records in his journal: 'My canvas came home for Solomon, twelve feet ten inches by ten feet ten inches--a grand size. God in heaven, grant me strength of body and vigour of mind to cover it with excellence. Amen--on my knees.' His design was to paint a series of great ideal works, that should stand comparison with the productions of the old masters, and he had chosen the somewhat stereotyped subject of the Judgment of Solomon, because Raphael and Rubens had both tried it, and he intended to tell the story better! He was now, at the beginning of this ambitious project, entirely without means. His father had died, and left him nothing, and his 'Macbeth' had not won the £300 premium at the British Gallery. His aristocratic friends had temporarily deserted him, but the Hunts assisted him with the ready liberality of the impecunious. John lent him small sums of money, while Leigh offered him a plate at his table till Solomon was finished, and initiated him into the mysteries of drawing and discounting bills.

Haydon already owed his landlord two hundred pounds, but that seemed to him no reason for moving into cheaper rooms. He called the man up, and represented to him that he was about to paint a great masterpiece, which would take him two years, during which period he would earn nothing, and be unable to pay any rent. The landlord, surely a unique specimen of his order, deliberated rather ruefully over the prospect set before him, rubbed his chin, and muttered: 'I should not like ye to go--it's hard for both of us; but what I say is, you always paid me when you could, and why should you not again when you are able?... Well, sir, here's my hand; I'll give you two years more, and if this does not sell--why then, sir, we'll consider what is to be done.'

Thus a roof was provided, but there was still dinner to be thought of, since, if a man works, he must also eat. 'I went to the house [John o' Groat's] where I had always dined,' writes Haydon, 'intending to dine without paying for that day. I thought the servants did not offer me the same attention. I thought I perceived the company examine me--I thought the meat was worse. My heart sank, as I said falteringly, "I will pay you to-morrow." The girl smiled, and seemed interested. As I was escaping with a sort of lurking horror, she said, "Mr. Haydon, my master wishes to see you." "My God," thought I, "it is to tell me he can't trust!" In I walked like a culprit. "Sir, I beg your pardon, but I see by the papers you have been ill-used; I hope you won't be angry--I mean no offence; but I just wish to say, as you have dined here many years and always paid, if it would be a convenience during your present work to dine here till it is done--so that you may not be obliged to spend your money here when you may want it--I was going to say that you need be under no apprehension--hem! for a dinner."' This handsome offer was condescendingly accepted, and the good man seemed quite relieved.

While Solomon was slowly progressing at the expense of the landlord and the eating-house keeper, Haydon spent his leisure in literary rather than artistic circles. At Leigh Hunt's he met, and became intimate with Charles Lamb, Keats, Hazlitt, and John Scott. In January 1813 he writes: 'Spent the evening with Leigh Hunt at West End. His society is always delightful. I do not know a purer, more virtuous partner, or a more witty and enlivening man. We talked of his approaching imprisonment. He said it would be a great pleasure if he were certain to be sent to Newgate, because he should be in the midst of his friends.' Hazlitt won our hero's liking by praising his 'Macbeth.' 'Thence began a friendship,' Haydon tells us, 'for that interesting man, that singular mixture of friend and fiend, radical and critic, metaphysician, poet, and painter, on whose word no one could rely, on whose heart no one could calculate, and some of whose deductions he himself would try to explain in vain.... Mortified at his own failure [in painting] he resolved that as he had not succeeded, no one else should, and he spent the whole of his after-life in damping the ardour, chilling the hopes, and dimming the prospects of patrons and painters, so that after I once admitted him, I had nothing but forebodings of failure to bear up against, croakings about the climate, and sneers at the taste of the public.'

By the beginning of 1814 Solomon was approaching completion, but the artist had been reduced to living for a fortnight on potatoes. He had now been nearly four years without a commission, and three without any help from home, so that it is not surprising to learn that he felt completely broken down in body and mind, or that his debts amounted to £1100. A frame was procured on credit, and, failing any more suitable place of exhibition, the picture was sent to the Water-colour Society. At the private view, the Princess of Wales and other eminent critics pronounced against the Solomon, but as soon as the public were admitted, the tune changed, and John Bull vowed it was the finest work of art ever produced in England. If posterity has not indorsed this judgment, the Solomon is at least regarded, by competent critics, as Haydon's most successful work. 'Before the doors had been open half an hour,' writes Haydon, 'a gentleman opened his pocket-book, and showed me a £500 note. "Will you take it?" My heart beat--my agonies of want pressed, but it was too little. I trembled out, "I cannot." The gentleman invited me to dine, and when we were sitting over our wine, agreed to give me my price. His lady said, "But, my dear, where am I to put my piano?" and the bargain was at an end!' On the third day Sir George Beaumont and Mr. Holwell Carr came to the Exhibition, having been deputed to buy the picture for the British Gallery. While they were discussing its merits, one of the officials went over, and put 'sold' on the frame, whereupon the artist says he thought he should have fainted. The work had been bought at the price asked, £700, by two Plymouth bankers, Sir William Elford (the friend and correspondent of Miss Mitford) and Mr. Tingecombe.

Poor Haydon now thought that his fortune was secure. He paid away £500 to landlord and tradesmen in the first week, and though this did not settle half his debts, it restored his credit. The balance was spent in a trip to Paris with Wilkie, Paris being then (May 1814) the most interesting place on earth. All the nations of Europe were gathered together there, and the Louvre was in its glory. So absorbed and fascinated was Haydon by the actual life of the city, that he finds little to say about the works of art there collected. Yet his first visit was to the Louvre, and he describes with what impetuosity he bounded up the steps, three at a time, and how he scolded Wilkie for trotting up with his usual deliberation. 'I might just as well have scolded the column,' he observes. 'I soon left him at some Jan Steen, while I never stopped until I stood before the "Transfiguration." My first feeling was disappointment. It looked small, harsh and hard. This, of course, is always the way when you have fed your imagination for years on a work you know only by prints. Even the "Pietro Martyre" was smaller than I thought to find it; yet after the difference between reality and anticipation had worn away, these great works amply repaid the study of them, and grew up to the fancy, or rather the fancy grew up to them.... It will hardly be believed by artists that we often forgot the great works in the Louvre in the scenes around us, and found Russians and Bashkirs from Tartary more attractive than the "Transfiguration"; but so it was, and I do not think we were very wrong either. Why stay poring over pictures when we were on the most remarkable scene in the history of the earth.'

On his return to London, Haydon was gratified by the news that his friend and fellow-townsman, George Eastlake, had proposed and carried a motion that he should be presented with the freedom of his native city, as a testimony of respect for his extraordinary merit as a historical painter. Furthermore, the Directors of the British Gallery sent him a hundred guineas as a token of their admiration for his latest work. But no commission followed, either from a private patron or public body. However, the artist, nothing daunted, ordered a larger canvas, and set vigorously to work on a representation of 'Christ's Entry into Jerusalem,' a picture which occupied him, with intervals of illness and idleness, for nearly six years.

The year 1815 was too full of stir and excitement for a man like Haydon, who was always keenly interested in public affairs, to devote himself to steady work. The news of Waterloo almost turned his brain. On June 23 he notes: 'I read the Gazette [with the account of Waterloo] the last thing before going to bed. I dreamt of it, and was fighting all night; I got up in a steam of feeling, and read the Gazette again, ordered a Courier for a month, and read all the papers till I was faint.... 'Have not the efforts of the nation,' I asked myself, 'been gigantic?' To such glories she only wants to add the glories of my noble art to make her the grandest nation in the world, and these she shall have if God spare my life....