“Roused from his long contented cot he went
Where oft he laboured, and the . . . . bent,
To form the snares for lobsters armed in mail;
But men, more cunning, over this prevail,
Lured by a few sea-snail and whelks, a prey
That they could gather on their watery way,
Caught in a wicker cage not two feet wide,
While the whole ocean’s open to their pride.”
But now these “failures,” for failures they were, however fine the art qualities they possessed, became chronic, and the rule rather than the exception; and this is to us the greatest tragedy in the whole of his career—the spectacle of a great painter, the very slave of his genius, compelled to paint this and paint that at its bidding without being able to distinguish between what was great and what was little, what sublime and what ridiculous, almost as mighty as Milton and Shelley one moment, and as poor as Blackmore or Robert Montgomery the next. He appears to us in these last days like a great ship, rudderless, but still grand and with all sails set, at the mercy of the wind, which played with it a little while and then cast it on the rocks.
Rudderless, masterless, was he also as a man. We are very loth to believe the terrible picture of moral degradation supplied by the “best authority” to Mr. Thornbury, and quoted in the first chapter of this volume; but there is no doubt that he lived by no means a reputable life in his old age. As to how he met with Mrs. Booth, at whose little house by the side of the Thames, near Cremorne, he lived for some time before his death, we have not cared to inquire, nor do we intend to repeat the usual stories about it; nor will we venture an opinion as to how often he took too much to drink or what was his favourite stimulant, or what other excesses he committed. His whole faculties had been absorbed in his art; and when this failed him—when he became broken in health and failing in sight—he had no store of wise reflection to employ his mind, no harmless pursuits to follow, no refined tastes to amuse him, nor, as far as we know, had he any hope of any future rectification of the unevennesses of this world. Some of his friends he had lost by death, many were still living and ready to cheer his last years if he would have had them, but he would not. His secretiveness and love of solitude clung to him to the last.
He did not, however, lose his love of art and his desire of acquiring knowledge relating to it. It was in these last years, 1847-49, that he paid several visits to the studio of Mr. Mayall, the celebrated photographic artist, passing himself off as a Master in Chancery, and taking very great interest in the development of the new process which had not then got beyond the daguerreotype. To the interesting account of these visits printed by Mr. Thornbury,[47] we are enabled by Mr. Mayall’s kindness to add that at a time when his finances were at a very low ebb in consequence of litigation about patent rights, Turner unasked, brought him a roll of bank-notes, to the amount of £300, and gave it him on the understanding that he was to repay him if he could. This, Mr. Mayall was able to do very soon, but that does not lessen the generosity of Turner’s act.
Notwithstanding, however, such bright glimpses as this, his last years must have been sad and dull, and his greatest source of happiness was probably the knowledge that whatever critics might say of his later works, there were a few men like Mr. Munro, Mr. Griffiths, the Ruskins, father and son, who appreciated them, and that his earlier pictures not only kept up their fame but rose in price. Though in decline, his fame was as great as almost he could have wished. Two offers of £100,000 he is said to have refused for the contents of Queen Anne Street; £5,000 for his two Carthages. The greatest of all his triumphs was perhaps when he was waited upon by Mr. Griffiths, with an offer from a distinguished Committee, among whom were Sir Robert Peel, Lord Hardinge, and others, to buy these pictures for the nation. This is the greatest instance of his self-sacrifice, which is well attested; for he refused to part with them because he had willed them to the nation. He might have got the money and his wish also, but he refused. The recollection of this, though it occurred some years before he died, should have afforded him some pleasant reflections.
It had been long known that Turner had another home than that in Queen Anne Street, and he had shown considerable ingenuity in concealing it, for he used to go out of an evening to dinner with his friends when he so willed, and met them at the Academy and other places. Almost to the last he could be merry and sociable at such gatherings, and there is a very pleasant account of a dinner in 1850 at David Roberts’ house, given in a note to Ballantyne’s life of that artist, at which Turner was. It is a memorandum by an artist from the country, and describes Turner’s manner as—
“Very agreeable, his quick bright eye sparkled, and his whole countenance showed a desire to please. He was constantly making or trying to make jokes; his dress, though rather old-fashioned, was far from being shabby.” Turner’s health was proposed by an Irish gentleman who had attended his lectures on perspective, on which he complimented the artist. “Turner made a short reply in a jocular way, and concluded by saying, rather sarcastically, that he was glad this honourable gentleman had profited so much by his lectures as thoroughly to understand perspective, for it was more than he did.” Turner afterwards, in Roberts’ absence, took the chair, and, at Stanfield’s request, proposed Roberts’ health, which he did, speaking hurriedly, “but soon ran short of words and breath, and dropped down on his chair with a hearty laugh, starting up again and finishing with a ‘hip, hip, hurrah!’.... Turner was the last who left, and Roberts accompanied him along the street to hail a cab.... At this time Turner was indulging in the singular freak of living, under the name of Mr. Booth, in a small lodging on the banks of the Thames.... This, though now cleared up, was a mystery to his friends then, and Roberts was anxious to unravel it. When the cab drove up he assisted Turner to his seat, shut the door, and asked where he should tell cabby to take him; but Turner was not to be caught, and, with a knowing wink, replied, ‘Tell him to drive to Oxford Street, and then I’ll direct him where to go.’”