“The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the Poet’s dream.”
But it would have been better for him, and, we think, for his art also, if he could have said:—
“Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone
Housed in a dream, at distance from the kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for ’tis surely blind.”[32]
It was not from any scorn of the conventions of society that he disregarded them, for there is no trace of any feeling of this sort in his pictures or his reported conversations, and in his will he required that the “Poor and Decayed Male Artists,” for whom he intended to found a charitable institution (“Turner’s Gift”), should be “of lawful issue.” One reason why he never married may have been his shyness and consciousness of his want of address and personal attraction. Mr. Cyrus Redding, from whom we have one of the brightest and best glimpses of Turner as a man, says:—
“He was aware that he could not hope to gain credit in the world out of his profession. I believe that his own ordinary person was, in his clear-mindedness, somewhat considered in estimating his career in life. He was once at a party where there were several beautiful women. One of them struck him much with her charms and captivating appearance; and he said to a friend, in a moment of unguarded admiration, ‘If she would marry me, I would give her a hundred thousand.’”
This, and the increasing absorption in his art of all of himself that could be so absorbed; his desire to economize both his time and his money; his innate hatred of interference with his liberty; his aversion from undertaking any obligation, the consequences of which he could not calculate—all tended to keep him from matrimony, and to make him content with the most unromantic amours.
That he in 1811 or thereabouts could be hospitable and a good companion away from home, is shown by Mr. Redding in his pleasant volume, from which we have just quoted. He met Turner on what appears to have been his first visit to the county to which his family belonged—Devonshire. He met him first, Mr. Redding thinks, at the house of Mr. Collier (the father of Sir Robert Collier), an eminent merchant of Plymouth, and accompanied him on many excursions. On one of these Turner actually gave a picnic “in excellent taste” at a seat on the summit of the hill, overlooking the Sound and Cawsand Bay.
“Cold meats, shell fish, and good wines were provided on that delightful and unrivalled spot. Our host was agreeable, but terse, blunt, and almost epigrammatic at times. Never given to waste his words, nor remarkably choice in their arrangement, they were always in their right place, and admirably effective.”[33]
This last sentence sounds somewhat paradoxical, but for that reason is probably all the more accurately descriptive of Turner’s art in words. Further on, when defending the great painter, we get a portrait of him as a “plain figure” with “somewhat bandy legs,” and “dingy complexion.” On another excursion, Redding spent a night at a small country inn with Turner, about three miles from Tavistock, as the artist had a great desire to see the country round at sunrise. The rest of the party, Mr. Collier and two friends, who had spent the day with them on the shores of the Tamar with a scanty supply of provisions, preferred to pass the night at Tavistock.
“Turner was content with bread and cheese and beer, tolerably good, for dinner and supper in one. I contrived to feast somewhat less simply on bacon and eggs, through an afterthought inspiration. In the little sanded room we conversed by the light of an attenuated candle, and some aid from the moon, until nearly midnight, when Turner laid his head upon the table, and was soon sound asleep. I placed two or three chairs in a line, and followed his example at full recumbency. In this way three or four hours’ rest were (sic) obtained, and we were both fresh enough to go out, as soon as the sun was up, to explore the scenery in the neighbourhood, and get a humble breakfast, before our friends rejoined us from Tavistock. It was in that early morning Turner made a sketch of the picture (Crossing the Brook)to which I have alluded, and which he invited me to his gallery to see.”