Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (653 page)

F. M. H.

P.P.S. I find that I have written these words not in Bloomsbury but in the electoral district of East Saint Pancras. Perhaps it is gloomier in Bloomsbury. I will go and see.

P.P.P.S. It is.

CHAPTER
I

THE INNER CIRCLE

Says Thackeray:

“On his way to the City, Mr. Newcome rode to look at the new house, No. 120, Fitzroy Square, which his brother, the colonel, had taken in conjunction with that Indian friend of his, Mr. Binnie.... The house is vast but, it must be owned, melancholy. Not long since it was a ladies’ school, in an unprosperous condition. The scar left by Madame Latour’s brass plate may still be seen on the tall black door, cheerfully ornamented, in the style of the end of the last century, with a funeral urn in the centre of the entry, and garlands and the skulls of rams at each corner.... The kitchens were gloomy. The stables were gloomy. Great black passages; cracked conservatory; dilapidated bath-room, with melancholy waters moaning and fizzing from the cistern; the great large blank stone staircase — were all so many melancholy features in the general countenance of the house; but the Colonel thought it perfectly cheerful and pleasant, and furnished it in his rough-and-ready way
.
”
— The Newcomes.

And it was in this house of Colonel Newcome’s that my eyes first opened, if not to the light of day, at least to any visual impression that has not since been effaced. I can remember vividly, as a very small boy, shuddering as I stood upon the door-step at the thought that the great stone urn, lichened, soot-stained, and decorated with a great ram’s head by way of handle, elevated only by what looked like a square piece of stone of about the size and shape of a folio book, might fall upon me and crush me entirely out of existence. Such a possible happening, I remember, was a frequent subject of discussion among Madox Brown’s friends.

Ford Madox Brown, the painter of the pictures called
Work
and
The Last of England,
and the first painter in England, if not in the world, to attempt to render light exactly as it appeared to him, was at that time at the height of his powers, of his reputation, and of such prosperity as he enjoyed. His income from his pictures was considerable, and since he was an excellent talker, an admirable host, extraordinarily and indeed unreasonably open-handed, the great, formal, and rather gloomy house had become a meeting-place for almost all the intellectually unconventional of that time. Between 1870 and 1880 the real Pre-Raphaelite Movement was long since at an end: the Æsthetic Movement, which also was nicknamed Pre-Raphaelite, was, however, coming into prominence, and at the very heart of this movement was Madox Brown. As I remember him, with a square, white beard, with a ruddy complexion, and with thick white hair parted in the middle and falling to above the tops of his ears, Madox Brown exactly resembled the king of hearts in a pack of cards. In passion and in emotions — more particularly during one of his fits of gout — he was a hard-swearing, old-fashioned Tory: his reasoning, however, and circumstances made him a revolutionary of the romantic type. I am not sure, even, that toward his later years he would not have called himself an anarchist, and have damned your eyes if you had faintly doubted this obviously extravagant assertion. But he loved the picturesque, as nearly all his friends loved it.

About the inner circle of those who fathered and sponsored the Æsthetic Movement there was absolutely nothing of the languishing. They were, to a man, rather burly, passionate creatures, extraordinarily enthusiastic, extraordinarily romantic, and most impressively quarrelsome. Neither about Rossetti nor about Burne-Jones, neither about William Morris nor P. P. Marshall — and these were the principal upholders of the firm of Morris & Company which gave æstheticism to the Western world — was there any inclination to live upon the smell of the lily. It was the outer ring, the disciples, who developed this laudable ambition for poetic pallor, for clinging garments, and for ascetic countenances. And it was, I believe, Mr. Oscar Wilde who first formulated this poetically vegetarian theory of life in Madox Brown’s studio at Fitzroy Square. No, there was little of the smell of the lily about the leaders of this movement! Thus it was one of Madox Brown’s most pleasing anecdotes — at any rate it was one that he related with the utmost gusto — how William Morris came out on to the landing in the house of the “Firm” in Red Lion Square and roared downstairs:

“Mary, those six eggs were bad. I’ve eaten them, but don’t let it occur again.”

Morris, also, was in the habit of lunching daily off roast beef and plum pudding, no matter at what season of the year, and he liked his puddings large. So that, similarly, upon the landing one day he shouted:

“Mary, do you call that a pudding?”

He was holding upon the end of a fork a plum pudding about the size of an ordinary breakfast cup, and having added some appropriate objurgations, he hurled the edible downstairs on to Red-Lion Mary’s forehead. This anecdote should not be taken to evidence settled brutality on the part of the poet-craftsman. Red-Lion Mary was one of the loyalest supporters of the “Firm” to the end of her days. No, it was just in the full-blooded note of the circle. They liked to swear, and, what is more, they liked to hear each other swear. Thus, another of Madox Brown’s anecdotes went to show how he kept Morris sitting monumentally still, under the pretence that he was drawing his portrait, while Mr. Arthur Hughes tied his long hair into knots for the purpose of enjoying the explosion that was sure to come when the released Topsy — Morris was always Topsy to his friends — ran his hands through his hair. This anecdote always seemed to me to make considerable calls upon one’s faith. Nevertheless, it was one that Madox Brown used most frequently to relate, so that no doubt something of the sort must have occurred.

No, the note of these aesthetes was in no sense ascetic. What they wanted in life was room to expand and to be at ease. Thus I remember, in a sort of golden vision, Rossetti lying upon a sofa in the back studio with lighted candles at his feet and lighted candles at his head, while two extremely beautiful ladies dropped grapes into his mouth. But Rossetti did this, not because he desired to present the beholder with a beautiful vision, but because he liked lying on sofas, he liked grapes, and he particularly liked beautiful ladies. They desired, in fact, all of them, room to expand. And when they could not expand in any other directions they expanded enormously into their letters. And — I don’t know why — they mostly addressed their letters abusing each other to Madox Brown. There would come one short, sharp note, and then answers occupying reams of note-paper. Thus one great painter would write:

“Dear Brown, — Tell Gabriel that if he takes my model Fanny up the river on Sunday I will never speak to him again.”

Gabriel would take the model Fanny up the river on Sunday, and a triangular duel of portentous letters would ensue.

Or again, Swinburne would write:

“Dear Brown, if P — says that I said that Gabriel was in the habit of..., P — lies.”

The accusation against Rossetti being a Gargantuan impossibility which Swinburne, surely the most loyal of friends, could impossibly have made, there ensued a Gargantuan correspondence. Brown writes to P — how, when, and why the accusation was made; he explains how he went round to Jones, who had nothing to do with the matter, and found that Jones had eaten practically nothing for the last fortnight, and how between them they had decided that the best thing that they could do would be to go and tell Rossetti all about it, and of how Rossetti had had a painful interview with Swinburne, and how unhappy everybody was. P — replies to Brown that he had never uttered any such words upon any such occasion: that upon that occasion he was not present, having gone round to Ruskin, who had the toothache, and who read him the first hundred and twenty pages of
Stones of Venice
; that he could not possibly have said anything of the sort about Gabriel, since he knew nothing whatever of Gabriel’s daily habits, having refused to speak to him for the last nine months because of Gabriel’s intolerable habit of backbiting, which he was sure would lead them all to destruction, and so deemed it prudent not to go near him. Gabriel himself then enters the fray, saying that he has discovered that it is not P. at all who made the accusation, but Q., and that the accusation was made not against him, but about O. X., the Academician. If, however, he, P., accuses him, Gabriel, of backbiting, P. must be perfectly aware that this is not the case, he, Gabriel, having only said a few words against P.’s wife’s mother, who is a damned old cat. And so the correspondence continues, Jones and Swinburne and Marshall and William Rossetti and Charles Augustus Howell and a great many more joining in the fray, until at last everybody withdraws all the charges, six months having passed, and Brown invites all the contestants to dinner, Gabriel intending to bring old Plint, the picture-buyer, and to make him, when he has had plenty of wine, buy P.’s picture of the
Lost Shepherd
for two thousand pounds.

These tremendous quarrels, in fact, were all storms in teacups, and although the break-up of the “Firm” did cause a comparatively lasting estrangement between several of the partners, it has always pleased me to remember that at the last private view that Madox Brown held of one of his pictures, every one of the surviving Pre-Raphaelite brothers came to his studio, and every one of the surviving partners of the original firm of Morris & Company.

The arrival of Sir Edward Burne-Jones and his wife brought up a characteristic passion of Madox Brown’s. Sir Edward had persuaded the president of the Royal Academy to accompany them in their visit. They were actuated by the kindly desire to give Madox Brown the idea that thus at the end of his life the Royal Academy wished to extend some sort of official recognition to a painter who had persistently refused for nearly half a century to recognize their existence. Unfortunately it was an autumn day and the twilight had set in very early. Thus not only were the distinguished visitors rather shadowy in the dusk, but the enormous picture itself was entirely indistinguishable. Lady Burne-Jones, with her peculiarly persuasive charm, whispered to me, unheard by Madox Brown, that I should light the studio gas, and I was striking a match, when I was appalled to hear Madox Brown shout, in tones of extreme violence and of apparent alarm:

“Damn and blast, it all, Fordie! Do you want us all blown into the next world?”

And he proceeded to explain to Lady Burne-Jones that there was an escape of gas from a pipe. When she suggested candles or a paraffin lamp, Madox Brown declared with equal violence that he couldn’t think how she could imagine that he could have such infernally dangerous things in the house. The interview thus concluded in a gloom of the most tenebrous, and shortly afterward we went downstairs, where, in the golden glow of a great many candles set against a golden and embossed wall-paper, tea was being served. The fact was that Madox Brown was determined that no “damned academician” should see his picture. Nevertheless, it is satisfactory to me to think that there was among these distinguished and kindly men still so great a feeling of solidarity. They had come, many of them from great distances, to do honour, or at least to be kind, to an old painter who at that time was more entirely forgotten than he has ever been before or since.

The “lily” tradition of the disciples of these men is, I should imagine, almost entirely extinguished. But the other day, at a particularly smart wedding, there turned up one staunch survivor in garments of prismatic hues — a mustard-coloured ulster, a green wide-awake, a blue shirt, a purple tie, and a suit of tweed. This gentleman moved distractedly among groups of correctly attired people. In one hand he bore an extremely minute painting by himself. It was, perhaps, of the size of a visiting-card set in an ocean of white mount. In the other he bore an enormous spray of Madonna lilies. That, I presume, was why he had failed to removed his green hat. He was approached by the hostess, and he told her that he wished to place the picture, his wedding gift, in the most appropriate position that could be found for it. And upon her suggesting that she would attend to the hanging after the ceremony was over, he brushed her aside. Finally he placed the picture upon the ground beneath a tall window, and perched the spray of lilies on top of the frame. He then stood back and, waving his emaciated hands and stroking his brown beard, surveyed the effect of his decoration. The painting, he said, symbolized the consolation that the arts would afford the young couple during their married life, and the lily stood for the purity of the bride. This is how in the ‘seventies and the ‘eighties the outer ring of the æsthetes really behaved. It was as much in their note as were the plum pudding and the roast beef in William Morris’s. The reason for this is not very far to seek. The older men, the Pre-Raphaelites and the members of the “Firm,” had too rough work to do to bother much about the trimmings.

It is a little difficult nowadays to imagine the acridity with which any new artistic movement was opposed when Victoria was Queen of England. Charles Dickens, as I have elsewhere pointed out, called loudly for the immediate imprisonment of Millais and the other Pre-Raphaelites, including my grandfather, who was not a Pre-Raphaelite. Blasphemy was the charge alleged against them, just as it was the charge alleged against the earliest upholders of Wagner’s music in England. This may seem incredible, but I have in my possession three letters from three different members of the public addressed to my father, Dr. Francis Hueffer, a man of great erudition and force of character, who, from the early ‘seventies until his death, was the musical critic of
The Times.
The writers stated that unless Doctor Hueffer abstained from upholding the blasphemous music of the future — and in each case the writer used the word blasphemous — he would be respectively stabbed, ducked in a horse-pond, and beaten to death by hired roughs. Yet to-day I never go to a place of popular entertainment where miscellaneous music is performed for the benefit of the poorest classes without hearing at least the overture to
Tannhäuser.
Nowadays it is difficult to discern any new movement in any of the arts. No doubt there is movement, no doubt we who write and our friends who paint and compose are producing the arts of the future. But we never have the luck to have the word “blasphemous” hurled at us. It would, indeed, be almost inconceivable that such a thing could happen, that the frame of mind should be reconstructed. But to the Pre-Raphaelites this word was blessed in the extreme. For human nature is such — perhaps on account of obstinacy or perhaps on account of feelings of justice — that to persecute an art, as to persecute a religion, is simply to render its practitioners the more stubborn and its advocates in their fewness the more united and the more effective in their union. It was the injustice of the attack upon the Pre-Raphaelites, it was the fury and outcry, that won for them the attention of Mr. Ruskin. And Mr. Ruskin’s attention being aroused, he entered on that splendid and efficient championing of their cause which at last established them in a position of perhaps more immediate importance than, as painters, they exactly merited. As pioneers and as sufferers they can never sufficiently be recommended. Mr. Ruskin, for some cause which my grandfather was used to declare was purely personal, was the only man intimately connected with these movements who had no connection at all with Madox Brown. I do not know why this was, but it is a fact that, although Madox Brown’s pictures were in considerable evidence at all places where the pictures of the Pre-Raphaelites were exhibited, Mr. Ruskin in all his works never once mentioned his name. He never blamed him; he never praised him; he ignored him. And this was at a time when Ruskin must have known that a word from him was sufficient to make the fortune of any painter. It was sufficient, not so much because of Mr. Ruskin’s weight with the general public, as because the small circle of buyers, wealthy and assiduous, who surrounded the painters of the Movement, hung upon Mr. Ruskin’s lips and needed at least his printed sanction for all their purchases.