Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2091 page)

But so serious had the pecuniary pressure of his position now become, that he looked in vain for even the inconsiderable means necessary to accomplish this saving progress towards prosperity and fame. To procure any immediate assistance by his professional exertions in London was impossible, and to leave his mother and brother to struggle with their difficulties (the instant settlement of some of which had now become imperative), and depart for Hastings under all obstacles, was equally impracticable. At length, emboldened by this positive absence of pecuniary resources, he resolved, though at the risk of losing a valuable patron and generous friend, to state his case, and apply for an advance of money (on the strength, I believe, of a picture he was commissioned to paint for him) to Sir Thomas Heathcote.

The name of this good and generous man will be found in Mr. Collins’s Diary for 1812, coupled with an offer of advancing a sum of money to him, during the time of trouble and confusion consequent upon his father’s death. On this occasion, therefore, it will be readily imagined that the painter’s application was not made in vain with the kindest expressions of sympathy and interest, Sir Thomas Heathcote responded to it, by the remittance of the sum desired.

The following passages in a letter from Mr. Collins to his liberal patron, account in a manly and candid spirit, for the disorder which was now prevailing in his affairs; and which, it is to be remembered, was produced by no careless extravagance on the part either of his family, or himself.

“To SIR T. F. HEATHCOTE, BART.

“New Cavendish-street, 1816.

“Dear Sir, * * * A part of the amount I requested of you, was necessary to prevent the seizure of my goods for taxes; and the remainder to pay a note of hand, (which, being overdue, left me at the mercy of a stranger who held it), and to procure a few pounds to enable me to obtain some studies I wished to make at Hastings.

“That you should be surprised ‘at the pecuniary distress of a person of such apparently prudent habits,’ I can readily conceive, for I am pointed out as one who has been extremely fortunate — and as far as popularity may be considered fortunate, I must confess myself peculiarly so; but I am sorely mortified to add, that it is only in report that I am in affluent circumstances; for allow me, sir, to assure you, that in some cases, the whole produce of a twelvemonth’s study and its attendant expenses, has been rewarded by about a hundred guineas. The impossibility of living upon this sum, with the absolute determination I had set out with, to neglect no circumstance that could in any way tend to my improvement in Art, has produced difficulties not frequently paralleled.

“From these difficulties I had the fairest prospect of being relieved by the apparent increase of the importance of Art, and consequently its greater encouragement; but the unpropitious state of the times has produced a sensation, calculated to damp the hopes of those whose existence depends upon, what are termed, superfluities. Should I have power to struggle until these temporary evils are removed, I trust that, with industry and economy, I shall be enabled to devote my future years, undisturbed by pecuniary evils, to a pursuit (in that case) replete with happiness.

“In pursuance of our plan of economy, my mother purposes letting half the house we now occupy; which will reduce our annual expenditure for our greatest comforts, to the sum of sixty guineas. That I might accede to this proposal, I have, at a trifling expense, converted our attic into a most complete and desirable study.

“The pleasing way in which you desire an explanation of the causes of my difficulties, must plead my excuse for a letter necessarily egotistic. But, the interest you take in my success has produced an inclination to convince you that I really feel your kind condescension.

“I remain, dear Sir, “Your obliged and obedient servant,

“WILLIAM COLLINS.”

With his departure for Hastings, which took place immediately, the first epoch in my father’s life as a painter closes naturally with the first preparation for a change in his style. I have endeavoured, up to this portion of the narrative, to exhibit what may be correctly termed, looking to his after efforts — his early progress in the Art — to trace the pictorial faculty, as it originated in his mind, from self-bias, instruction and example — to follow it in its gradual development, during and after his academical studies — to display it, as fortified by steady industry, as dignified by regular improvement and honourable ambition, and as displaying itself in productions, drawn from sources of interest, eloquent in their simple homeliness to all. Arrived now at another period, another division begins in the Biography, as in the life that it commemorates — a division which is to describe the success of higher efforts, undertaken not only at the promptings of the noble selfishness of ambition, not only with the intention of attaining purer originality of pictorial design and stronger distinctiveness of pictorial illustration, but also for the sake of relieving the anxiety and meriting the gratitude of others, and of widening the influences of genius, to fit them the better, in the first instance, for the protection of home.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

1816-1820.

Sojourn at Hastings in the autumn of 1816 — Letters to Mrs. Collins, Mr. F. Collins, and Sir Thomas Heathcote — Domestic and professional life in London — Sir David Wilkie and Mr. F. Collins — Mr. Leslie, R.A. — Anecdotes of the painter’s dog “Prinny” — Pictures of 1817 — Mr. Gary’s criticism on the sea-piece called “Sunrise” — Effect of the new coast scenes on the public — Journey to Paris with the late Washington Allston, A.R.A., and Mr. Leslie, R.A. — Journal of 1817 — Recurrence of pecuniary difficulties second application to, and timely loan from, Sir Thomas Heathcote — Pictures of 1818 — Sea-piece purchased by the Prince Regent Sir George Beaumont Lord Liverpool — Increase of employment — Visit to the Duke of Newcastle’s country seat, Clumber Park — Visit to Sir George Beaumont, at the Cumberland Lakes — Anecdote of Southey Tour to Edinburgh with Sir Francis and Lady Chantrey — The late Mr. Marshall, of Leeds — Remarks — Sketches — Letter to Lady Beaumont — Notice of, and letters to and from Washington Allston, and S. T. Coleridge — Commission from Sir J. F. Leicester, bart. — Correspondence with that gentleman — Description of the picture painted for him — Pictures of 1819 — Extracts from Journal — Tour to Devonshire — Letters to Mrs. Collins — Elected Royal Academician in 1820.

HAD Hastings in 1816, been what Hastings is in 1848, the fashionable loiterers who now throng that once unassuming little “watering-place,” would have felt no small astonishment when they set their listless feet on the beach, yawned at the library window, or cantered drowsily along the sea-ward rides, in beholding, at all hours, from earliest morning to latest evening, and in all places, from the deck of the fishing boat, to the base of the cliff, the same solitary figure, laden, day after day, with the same sketching materials, and drawing object after object, through all difficulties and disappointments, with the same deep abstraction and the same unwearied industry. Such a sight would have moved their curiosity, perhaps excited their interest, could they have known the object with which those sketches were made, or have foreboded the pleasure and instruction which, in their after combination they were so shortly to convey.

But, in those days, the visitors to Hastings were comparatively few, and the streets of the little watering-place had not yet expanded into splendid terraces, or spacious drives. Saving in the presence of a few local idlers, my father remained undisturbed by spectators, and unapplauded by friends. Conscious of the responsibility that now weighed upon him, of the serious chances that awaited the result of his new studies, he practised the most rigid economy, and laboured with the most unfailing care. The character, dress, implements, and employments of the fisherman, every peculiarity in the expression of his weather-beaten countenance, in the “fit” of his huge leathern boots, in the “rig” of his stout boat, was as faithfully transcribed by the hand, as his manners, feelings and pleasures were watched by the mind of the observant painter. Nor were the features of the sea-landscape forgotten in their turn. They were studied under all their characteristics, — in the glow of the morning sunshine, and the gloom of the evening shower. The cliffs were copied in their distant grace, and in their foreground grandeur; the beach was portrayed now as it shone, dry and brilliant, in the midday sun; now as it glistened, watery and transparent, from the moisture of the retiring wave. The ocean was transcribed in its calm, as the clouds breathed their shadows over its cool surface, and caught in its momentary action, as it dashed upon the beach, or rocked the fishing-boat on its distant waters: and the sky, in the variableness of its moods, in its fleeting and magical arrangement of clouds, in its spacious form and fathomless atmosphere, more difficult of pictorial expression than all the rest, was yet, like the rest, studied and mirrored on the faithful paper which was soon to be the rich storehouse of the artist’s future wants. Studies such as these, interrupted only by the intervals of his scanty and simple meals and his needful rest in his humble lodging, he persevered in for six weeks, nursing his aspirations secretly in his own mind, and building his hopes where he found his pleasures, in the aspect of Nature and the capabilities of Art.

The subjoined are, unhappily, the only letters written by him during his sojourn at Hastings. His correspondence will, throughout his biography, be found to be in quantity the reverse of what it is in quality. Cheerful, graphic, and unconstrained as are most of his letters as compositions, they were all written with great labour and hesitation, from the nervous fastidiousness about the commonest words and expressions which invariably possessed him whenever he took up the pen, and which made epistolary employment so much a task and so little a pleasure to him, that he avoided it on all ordinary occasions with undisguised alacrity and delight.

“To MRS. COLLINS.

“Hastings, 1816.

“Dear Mother, — The inconvenience occasioned by my folly in not taking your advice with respect to the boxes, namely, to send them by a porter before seven, is not worth paper, any further than as it may serve as a lesson. However, I give myself credit for starting when I did; for, although I ran almost all the way, the coach was coming out of the inn-yard when I reached it. But the impossibility of remedying an evil is its best cure, and the fineness of the day, and the beauty of the road removed all unpleasant notions. A person who sat on the coach with me, and who I expected was no joker, after about an hour’s ride, turned out exactly the reverse, and more than this, an acquaintance — Mr. Collard, who has enabled me to look smart, by lending me a cravat, marked, too, with his initials,
‘W. C.’
I have a thousand other little things to say, but as I am under the necessity of writing by daylight,
my mind is on the beach,
and my only inducement to attempt this employment at such an hour is in the hope that you may receive my letter a day earlier than writing by candlelight would admit of.

“The packages came safe last night, and I am very comfortably situated in lodgings, (which are had with difficulty, poor,
dear
things) as under. — Frank’s handwriting is much improved, and negligently neat.

“Your affectionate son,

“WILLIAM COLLINS. “At Mrs. Nash’s, All Saints’-street, Hastings.”

The following letter to his brother, not only illustrates the painter’s constant anxiety for the welfare and pleasure of others, but exhibits some amusing and creditable details of his conscientious principles of economy under the straitened circumstances that now oppressed his household:

“To MR. F. COLLINS.

“Hastings, 1816.

“Dear Frank, — Your letter, with two halves of five-pound notes, came safely. My plan of coasting home I had entirely abandoned, before I received your opinion on that head. I now purpose quitting this place by the Wednesday’s coach, should nothing arise to prevent it. Now, as London is so dull, and if there should be every prospect of a fine day on Monday, (there is no Sunday coach,) you might come down and return with me, if mother thought proper.

You would then have one clear day to dip in the sea, and stock yourself with some entirely new ideas. The whole amount of the expense would be the coach, provided you put two biscuits in your pocket, which would answer as a lunch; and I would have dinner for you, which would not increase
my
expenditure above
tenpence.
You could sleep with me, but as my lodging is out on Wednesday, it would be encroaching on a new week to stay any longer than Wednesday morning. I shall be at the place where the coach stops for you, should you be able to come. Write me nothing about it unless you have other business,
for a letter costs a dinner.
* *