Mysterious Wisdom (55 page)

Progress was predictably protracted. ‘It is
my
misfortune to work slowly,' Palmer had once told his friend Hamerton, ‘not from any wish to niggle, but because I cannot otherwise get certain shimmerings of light and mysteries of shadow.'
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This was an artist who ‘would sooner die that put a pinch of incense on the great golden altar of Mediocrity,' his son said, and his ‘ten poor little Vs',
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of which not a line could be put down without premeditation, were more deeply thought out than anything else he had ever done. His father crept painstakingly into the ‘mystic maze'
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of his work. ‘Copper bites into time as greedily as acid into copper,'
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he lamented. But with one of his ‘dear teazing, tickling'
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plates before him and a beloved needle, sharpened three-quarter-wise like a bayonet, in his hand, he did not miss the bright tinctures of his watercolour palette at all. Outline, he had always believed, was the one ‘great difficulty; the only first step and great accomplishment of art'. Once that had been attained, the ‘prey' was caught and the rest was merely ‘cooking and garnishing it'.
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Having lost sight of this purity for so long amid the colourful palettes of Victorian fashion, he returned to his ideal: the ‘aerial gloom'
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of the etcher. He would become so utterly absorbed, he once told Howard Wright, that time and place would vanish. He would step into the world of the picture he was making: into ‘that land never to be reached but always to be striven for'.
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‘Those who have seen him sitting, sable in hand, hour after hour behind the tissue paper, pencilling in varnish silver cloudlets round a moon; or have seen him revelling in the ferocity of the seething mordant with which he sometimes loved to excavate an emphatic passage will not wonder that he achieved only thirteen etchings in his life,' his son said.
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How different his life had become from that of his old mentor. Linnell was by then a fêted Victorian figure. Sitting in his grand library at Redstone, bringing fine brandies and clarets up from his extensive cellar (when the doctors advised him to give up drinking he abandoned the former but stubbornly continued to drink wine into extreme old age), he would entertain the many dealers who came to call. Offered both his ale and theology at table, they preferred the former, he observed, his penetrating stare magnified by the two pairs of spectacles which he wore, one on top of the other, for close work. He was under no illusions. He called these middlemen the ‘DDs', which stood for ‘Dodgy Dealers', and always insisted on taking a deposit even when negotiating with the most reputable of firms. Linnell seldom worked for more than two hours consecutively on any one picture before changing it for another canvas or alternative pastime. He had always considered himself to be above all else a craftsman and he churned out his landscapes like he churned out his batches of bread. At their best they were as muscular as ever: loudly proclaiming the majesty of nature, they appealed to the bold tastes of the era's self-made men.

Palmer, in contrast, lived a secluded life. Much of his time was passed in peaceful musing as the greater proportion of any picture that he did was achieved, his son said, not by manual work but mental concentration. To the industrious Linnell it would have looked like idleness; but Palmer's contemplation was often so profound that even his wife would not venture to disturb it. Furze Hill House would remain silent long into the night while only a mile or two away, at Redstone, Linnell would be presiding over a drawing-room gathering, ‘loudly laying down the law on politics and wrangling over the daily newspapers'.
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The work on his easel upstairs would be forgotten until the next day.

In 1875, Linnell was given his first one-man show; but his eyes were fading. He found it increasingly difficult to authenticate the paintings which dealers brought him and occasionally he made a mistake. Once, he had condemned a picture outright, only on further inspection to discover that it was one of the several Palmers which, thirty years earlier, he had retouched. Problems were beginning to arise with his homemade varnishes and some of his earlier canvases were flaking and cracked. Linnell's health was also deteriorating. Sometimes he complained of giddiness. His memory was failing him and often he found himself confused. He had rheumatism in one hip, wore a hernia truss and had to cup his hand to his ear when anyone spoke. But he still remained stolid in faith, firm in conviction and stalwart in character. When one of his sons, Thomas, a twin who had a limp and a stammer, announced that he was going to marry the serving girl to whom he had proposed while she was cleaning the grate, all the family was affronted except this stubborn patriarch who, never forgetting his own humble origins, was prepared to accept a housemaid as his daughter-in-law.

Holman Hunt, calling at Redstone with his wife, offered among the last descriptions of Linnell. He was greeted at the door, Hunt remembered, by the master of the house with his Bible raised aloft, demanding in stentorian tones to know whether he had mastered his New Testament teachings. ‘He would not allow me to evade the question,' Hunt said. It was as if he had recognised that he was coming towards the end of his life and that there would never again be an opportunity for him ‘to deliver his sacredest message of all to me, and he would not fail, although when he regarded my reply as failing in thoroughness, he had to reproach me, which he did unsparingly'.
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Linnell, Hunt said, was a man who ‘all his life had striven after truth in way and in word'.
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Herbert was less tolerant: he detested his grandfather's ‘raging rancorous homemade religion'
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and, acutely aware of familial strains, regarded the old man as a bullying martinet. He disliked staying at Redstone. Hannah, after the death of her mother, began to spend less time there too. She grew gentler and more loving towards Palmer as she entered old age and gradually, united once more in spirit and affection to the man whom she had married when she was little more than a child, became once more his indefatigable companion, always to be found close beside him, solicitous for his happiness and watchful for his comfort and health.

Forty years earlier, as a young artist in Shoreham, Palmer had dreamt of a wife who would read to him when his eyes were tired; now Hannah spent her evenings doing exactly that, or just peaceably sewing while he sat and wrote letters – often, for the sake of economy, on torn-off half sheets of paper that his correspondents had not used. One day, they were to be found sharing the sort of playful in-joke that, as newlyweds in Italy, they had enjoyed. Mary, their maid, had mentioned something called an ‘anversand'; the pair of them, pricking up their ears ‘with the most conjugal unanimity', set off on a humorous quest to find out how others of their household pronounced the word. Jane, from Redhill, it turned out, had ‘always had a name for “&”: she calls it an ampsisand', while their man-of-all-work informed them that he always heard it called ‘asverasand'.
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Steadfast in their affection for their ‘dear old church of England',
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Palmer and Hannah continued to attend services together on Sundays, two small bundled figures among the poorer members of the congregation, preferring always the humbler place to the prominent pew, though, when a High Church service was introduced, Hannah, more wary than her husband of extravagant ritual, decided to move to an evangelical congregation while Palmer continued to worship at the local church.

Sometimes, in the afternoons, they would go out for country drives. Hiring a cart, they would trundle away until the odious villas had been left far behind them and they were creaking along through the open countryside. Both Palmer and Hannah were apprehensive about horses and Palmer was almost as nervous of the contraptions that they pulled: ‘In all vehicles but a wheelbarrow or a bicycle,' he warned an old friend, ‘it is useful to remember that there are but two or four lynch pins between us and death.'
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But, with the sleepiest and most venerable of ponies in harness and the most soothing of drivers atop the box, they would jog along the lanes or creep up the steep hills enjoying the fine views that unfolded around them and condemning any modern innovations which they came across. Their favourite route lay through Gatton where a line of ancient yews marked out the old pilgrims' way. It was here Herbert said that, from the vantage point of the fly, his father had made his last drawings from nature. They are just a few lines, but they show that he had not lost his affection for trees.

Among the most vivid images of the Palmers in old age is that offered by Hamerton's wife who, preparing a memoir of her late husband,
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recalled a visit that they had once made to Furze Hill. It was only in the late 1870s that the Hamertons, after long correspondence, finally paid a much-anticipated visit. They were disappointed when, arriving at the house, they were told that Palmer was confined to his bed, far too ill to get up and play host to anyone.

The Hamertons were shown into the dining room to be offered refreshment before taking their leave. ‘The room was warmed by a good fire, but darkened by the blinds being down and the curtains drawn,' Mrs Hamerton remembered. ‘The rays of a golden sunset diffused through the apertures a strange and mysterious glow.' This, she wrote, ‘suddenly seemed to surround and envelop an apparition, standing half visible on the threshold of the noiselessly opened door. A remarkably expressive head emerged from the bundle of shawls, which moved forward with feeble and tottering steps – it was Mr Palmer. His wife could not trust her eyes, but as soon as she became convinced of the reality of his presence, she hastened to make him comfortable in an armchair by the fire, and to arrange the shawls over his head, and knees with the most touching solicitude.' Clearly Palmer would still go to some lengths to find the intellectual companionship that he had all his life sought. ‘“I could not resist it,” he pleaded; “I have looked forward to this meeting with so much longing.”'

‘His eyes sparkled, his countenance became animated, and regardless of his wraps, he accompanied his fluent talk with eloquent gestures – to the despair of his wife, who had enough to do in replacing caps and rugs,' Mrs Hamerton said. ‘He put all his soul and energy (and now there was no lack of it) into his speech.' His conversation kindled the enthusiasm of his listeners who were charmed by his liveliness and riveted by his anecdotes of Turner and Blake. But he was attentive too, Mrs Hamerton remembered, and would listen ‘with so vivid an interest and sympathy that his mere looks were an encouragement. My husband was afraid of detaining him, but he declared he felt quite well and strong – “the visiting angels had put to flight the lurking enemy”.'

Palmer felt so revived in the course of the visit that he even felt hungry and so, ‘nothing loth,' his guests recorded, ‘we sat down to an excellent tea with delicious butter and new-laid eggs, with the impression of sharing the life of elves, and of being entertained by a genie at the head of the table and served by a kind fairy. This feeling originated no doubt in the small stature of Mr and Mrs Palmer; in the strange effect of light under which our host first appeared to us, and lastly in the noiseless promptitude with which the repast was spread on the table, whilst the darkness of the room gave way to brightness, just as happens in fairy tales.'
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