“‘Yes, I perceive it; and yet the ports are there.’
“‘We can only take what is visible—no matter what may be there. There are people in the ship; we don’t see them through the planks.’”
This reads like a speech of Dr. Johnson.
We have another account of this same visit to Devonshire from Sir Charles Eastlake, which bears testimony to the hospitality which he received. Miss Pearce, an aunt of Sir Charles, appears to have been his hostess, and her cottage at Calstock the centre of his excursions. A landscape painter, Mr. Ambrose Johns, of great merit, according to Sir Charles, fitted up a small portable painting box, which was of much use to Turner in affording him ready appliances for sketching in oil.
“Turner seemed pleased when the rapidity with which these sketches were done was talked of; for departing from his habitual reserve in the instance of his pencil sketches, he made no difficulty in showing them. On one occasion, when, on his return after a sketching ramble to a country residence belonging to my father, near Plympton, the day’s work was shown, he himself remarked that one of the sketches (and perhaps the best) was done in less than half an hour.... On my inquiring what had become of these sketches, Turner replied that they were worthless, in consequence, as he supposed, of some defects in the preparation of the paper; all the grey tints, he observed, had nearly disappeared. Although I did not implicitly rely on that statement, I do not remember to have seen any of them afterwards.”[34]
Mr. Johns’s devotion was not rewarded till long afterwards, when the great painter sent him a small oil sketch in a letter. Mr. Redding obtained at the time a rough sketch, and these seem to have been the only returns he made for the kindness that was shown to him at Plymouth, though many years afterwards he spoke to Mr. Redding “of the reception he met with on this tour, in a strain that exhibited his possession of a mind not unsusceptible or forgetful of kindness.”
The date of this tour is given by Mr. Redding as probably 1811, and by Eastlake 1813 or 1814. The principal pictorial results of it were Crossing the Brook (exhibited in 1815), and various drawings for Cooke’s Southern Coast, which commenced in 1814. It seems probable that his engagement on this work determined his visit to Cornwall and Devonshire, but this is uncertain, as is also whether he paid more than one visit to the locality.
This tour is also interesting from its being the only occasion on which Turner is known to have visited his kinsfolk. We are enabled to state on the authority of one of his family that he went to Barnstaple and called upon his relations there, and a gentleman, late of the Chancery Bar, has kindly supplied us with the following extract of a memorandum made by him in 1853, from facts sworn to in suits instituted to administer Turner’s estate.
“Price Turner, an uncle of the painter’s, having some idea of educating his son, Thomas Price Turner (now (1853) living at North Street, in the parish of St. Kerrian, Exeter, Professor of Music) as a painter, T. P. T. made, at the request of William Turner, the great artist’s father, two drawings as specimens of his ability, one a view of the city of Exeter, taken from the south side, and the other a view of Rougemont Castle, and sent them by Wm. Turner to his son. Shortly after, he (T. P. T.) received a number of water colour drawings, sketches, &c. Some of these were afterwards sent for again, one of which, a water colour view of Redcliffe Church, Bristol, Thomas Price Turner previously copied, which copy, together with the residue of Turner’s drawings, are still in his cousin’s possession.