“Wilkie was not quick in perceiving a joke, although he was always anxious to do so, and to recollect humorous stories, of which he was exceedingly fond. As instances, I recollect once when we were staying at Mr. Wells’s, at Redleaf, one morning at breakfast a very small puppy was running about under the table. ‘Dear me,’ said a lady, ‘how this creature teases me!’ I took it up and put it into my breast-pocket. Mr. Wells said, ‘That is a pretty nosegay.’—‘Yes,’ said I, ‘it is a dog-rose.’ Wilkie’s attention, sitting opposite, was called to his friend’s pun: but all in vain,—he could not be persuaded to see anything in it. I recollect trying once to explain to him, with the same want of success, Hogarth’s joke in putting the sign of the woman without a head, (‘The Good Woman’) under the window from whence the quarrelsome wife is throwing the dinner into the street.
“Chantrey and Wilkie were dining alone with me, when the former, in his great kindness for Wilkie, ventured, as he said, to take him to task for his constant use of the word ‘relly’ (really) when listening to any conversation in which he was interested. ‘Now, for instance,’ said Chantrey, ‘suppose I was giving you an account of any interesting matter, you would constantly say, ‘Relly!’ ‘Relly!’ exclaimed Wilkie immediately, with a look of the most perfect astonishment.”
WILKIE’S ARREST AT CALAIS.
When returning from a short Continental tour in 1816, Wilkie became involved in a difficulty at Calais similar to that of Hogarth at the same place, as indicated by our great moral painter in his print of “Oh, the Roast Beef of Old England.” Wilkie, while busily engaged in making a sketch of the gate, was accosted by an officer of police, and taken before the mayor, who told the artist he could not be permitted to make drawings of any of the fortifitions, and courteously dismissed him. The observation was made in England that Wilkie sought his arrest on this occasion, wishing to re-enact the Hogarth incident: but his well-known unobtrusive manners and unaffected modesty completely vindicate him from such an accusation.
The following naïve account of the arrest of Sir David Wilkie is told by him in a letter to his friend and travelling companion, Abraham Raimbach, the celebrated engraver of many of the artist’s pictures:—
“On travelling through France the most singular occurrence was that of my being arrested at Calais, in the act of completing a sketch of the celebrated gate of Hogarth. A young Englishman, who had come from Lille with me, had agreed to remain with me while I was making the drawing; and as I had first obtained leave from the officer of the guard, I expected no sort of interruption. After I had been at work, however, about an hour, with a great crowd about me, a gendarme came to me, and with an imperious tone, said, ‘Par quelle autorité faites-vous cela, monsieur?’ I pointed to the officer on guard, and told him that he had given me leave. ‘Ce n’est rien—c’est défendu, monsieur. Il faut que vous preniez votre livre et m’accompagniez à l’Hôtel de Ville.’ This, of course, I agreed to most willingly, and beckoning my friend to go too, I went along with him, with all the people staring at us. At the Hôtel de Ville we were requested to go to the mayor, and as we were marching along to his house, the gendarme said, ‘Voila le maire,—arrêtons.’ We stopped till the mayor came up, and learning from us what was the matter, he dismissed the gendarme, took us back to his house, and told me, that as there were a number of people there, as in other places, who, on seeing a foreigner making a drawing of a fortified place, would naturally suppose it to be from a hostile intention, and finding it done en plein jour, would be apt to blame the magistrates for allowing it; he said it was necessary, therefore, that I should not go on with my drawing, although, from examining it, he was satisfied that I only did it for amusement, and therefore regretted the interruption.”—Memoirs of Abraham Raimbach, edited by his son, M. T. S. Raimbach, M.A.
HIS OPINION OF MICHAEL ANGELO AND RAPHAEL.
“The labours of Michael Angelo and Raphael have since been the chief object of my study,—by far the most intellectual. They make other works appear limited, and though high in all that is great, are still an example,—and a noble example too,—of how the accessories of a work may be treated with most advantage. No style can be so pure as to be above learning from them, nor so low and humble as not to gain even in its own way by their contemplation. They have that without which the Venus and the Apollo would lose their value, and with which the mean forms of Ostade and Rembrandt become instructive and sublime,—namely, expression and sentiment. To some of the younger artists here, however, I find they are a stumbling-block; things to be admired but not imitated, and less to be copied than any flat, empty piece of Venetian colouring that comes in their way. The effect of these works upon the unlearned public at large deserves attention. Frescoes, when old, get dull and dry, and cannot be repaired or refreshed like oil; their impression, therefore, upon the common eye is not striking, and many people acknowledge this who, show them a new print from Raphael or Michael Angelo, would be delighted. Vividness is perhaps necessary to make any work generally impressive; and suppose these fresh as they were at first, and as I have seen some recent frescoes, I believe they would be the most beautiful things imaginable,—popular beyond a doubt, as it is on record they were so.”—Memoirs of Abraham Raimbach.
