'June 25.--Dined with Hunt. I give myself credit for not worrying him to death at this news. He was quiet for some time, but knowing it must come, and putting on an air of indifference, he said, "Terrible battle this, Haydon." "A glorious one, Hunt." "Oh yes, certainly," and to it we went. Yet Hunt took a just and liberal view of the situation. As for Hazlitt, it is not to be believed how the destruction of Napoleon affected him; he seemed prostrated in mind and body; he walked about unwashed, unshaved, hardly sober by day, and always intoxicated by night, literally, without exaggeration, for weeks, until at length, wakening as it were from his stupor, he at once left off all stimulating liquors, and never touched them after.'
It is in this year that we find the first mention in the Journal of Wordsworth, who, throughout his life, was one of Haydon's most faithful friends and appreciative admirers. On April 13, the artist records: 'I had a cast made yesterday of Wordsworth's face. He bore it like a philosopher.... We afterwards called on Hunt, and as Hunt had previously attacked him, and now has reformed his opinions, the meeting was interesting. Hunt paid him the highest compliments, and told him that as he grew wiser and got older, he found his respect for his powers, and enthusiasm for his genius, increase.... I afterwards sauntered with him to Hampstead, with great delight. Never did any man so beguile the time as Wordsworth. His purity of heart, his kindness, his soundness of principle, his information, his knowledge, and the intense and eager feelings with which he pours forth all he knows, affect, interest, and enchant one. I do not know any one I would be so inclined to worship as a purified being.'
The new picture was not far advanced before the painter was once again at the end of his resources, though not of his courage. Fifty guineas were advanced to him by Sir George Beaumont, who had now commissioned a picture at two hundred guineas, and Mr. (after Sir George) Phillips, of Manchester, gave him a commission of £500 for a sacred work, paying one hundred guineas down. But these advances melted rapidly away in the expenses attendant on the painting of so ambitious a work as the 'Entry into Jerusalem.' Towards the close of the year Haydon's health began to suffer from his excessive application, his sight weakened, and he was often unable to paint for months at a time. Under these afflictions, he was consoled by receiving permission to take casts of the Elgin Marbles, the authenticity of which treasures had recently been attacked by the art-critic, Knight Payne, who declared that they were not Greek at all, but Roman, of the time of Hadrian. Such was the effect of Payne Knight's opinion that the Marbles went down in the public estimation, the Government hesitated to buy them for the nation, and they were left neglected in a damp shed. Haydon was furious at this insult to the objects of his idolatry, whose merits he had been preaching in season and out of season since the day that he first set eyes upon the Theseus and the Ilissus. At this critical moment he found himself supported by a new and powerful champion in the person of Canova, who had just arrived in England. Canova at once admitted that the style of the Marbles was superior to that of all other known marbles, and declared that they were well worth coming from Rome to see. 'Canova's visit was a victory for me,' writes Haydon, who had received the sculptor at his studio, and introduced him to some of the artistic lions of London. 'What became now of all the sneers at my senseless insanity about the Marbles? I, unknown, with no station or rank, might have talked myself dumb; but for Canova, the great artist of Europe, to repeat word for word what I had been saying for seven years! His opinion could not be gainsaid.'
If our troubles are apt to come not in single file, but in 'whole battalions,' our triumphs also occasionally arrive in squadrons, or such at least was Haydon's experience. Hard upon Canova's departure came a letter from Wordsworth, enclosing three sonnets, the last of which had, he avowed, been inspired by a letter of Haydon's on the struggles and hardships of the artist's life. This is now the familiar sonnet beginning,
'High is our calling, Friend,'
and concluding:
'Great is the glory, for the strife is hard.'
'Now, reader,' writes the delighted recipient, 'was not this glorious? And you, young student, when you are pressed down by want in the midst of a great work, remember what followed Haydon's perseverance. The freedom of his native town, the visit of Canova, and the sonnet of Wordsworth, and if that do not cheer you up, and make you go on, you are past all hope.... It had, indeed, been a wonderful year for me. The Academicians were silenced. All classes were so enthusiastic and so delighted that, though I had lost seven months with weak eyes, and had only accomplished The Penitent Girl, The Mother, The Centurion and the Samaritan Woman, yet they were considered so decidedly in advance of all I had yet done, that my painting-room was crowd by rank, beauty, and fashion, and the picture was literally taken up as an honour to the nation.'
But, alas! neither the sonnets of poets nor the homage of the great would pay for models and colours, or put bread into the artist's mouth. Haydon could only live by renewed borrowing, for which method of support he endeavours, without much success, to excuse himself. Once in the clutches of professional money-lenders, he confesses that 'the fine edge of honour was dulled. Though my honourable discharge of what I borrowed justified my borrowing again, yet it is a fallacious relief, because you must stop sooner or later; if you are punctual, and if you can pay in the long-run, why incur the debt at all? Too proud to do small, modest things, that I might obtain fair means of subsistence as I proceeded with my great work, I thought it no degradation to borrow, to risk the insult of refusal, and be bated down like the meanest dealer. Then I was liberal in my art; I spared no expense for casts and prints, and did great things for the art by means of them.... Ought I, after such efforts as I had made, to have been left in this position by the Directors of the British Gallery or the Government?'
The year 1816 was distinguished in Haydon's life as the epoch of his first, or, more accurately, his last serious love-affair. He was of a susceptible temperament, and seems to have been a favourite with women, whom he inspired with his own strong belief in himself; but he demanded much of the woman who was to be his wife, and hitherto he had not found one who seemed worthy of that exalted position. He had long been acquainted with Maria Foote, the actress, for whom he entertained a qualified admiration, and by her he was taken one day to a friend's house where, 'In one instant, the loveliest face that was ever created since God made Eve, smiled gently at my approach. The effect of her beauty was instantaneous. On the sofa lay a dying man and a boy about two years old. We shortly took leave. I never spoke a word, and after seeing M---- home, I returned to the house, and stood outside, in hopes that she would appear at the window. I went home, and for the first time in my life was really, heartily, thoroughly, passionately in love. I hated my pictures. I hated the Elgin Marbles. I hated books. I could not eat, or sleep, or think, or write, or talk. I got up early, examined the premises and street, and gave a man half-a-crown to let me sit concealed, and watch for her coming out. Day after day I grew more and more enraptured, till resistance was relinquished with a glorious defiance of restraint. Her conduct to her dying husband, her gentle reproof of my impassioned air, riveted my being. But I must not anticipate. Sufficient for the present, O reader, is it to tell thee that B. R. Haydon is, and for ever will be, in love with that woman, and that she is his wife.'