Mysterious Wisdom (8 page)

At the time, however, it was not his lack of formal learning that dismayed him so much as a sense that his poetic impulses were fading. He felt that he was losing touch with those dreams which the countryside had once stirred, with those visions of shadowy enchantment that his nurse had first fixed. Later, looking back on what he called ‘his soul's journey',
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he wrote: ‘By the time I had practiced for about five years I entirely lost all feeling for art . . . so that I not only learnt nothing . . . but I was nearly disqualified from ever learning to paint.'
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It was just at this moment that John Linnell arrived in his life.

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John Linnell

 

Time was misused until my introduction to Mr Linnell

from
The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer

 

Linnell was thirty and Palmer was seventeen when, in September 1822, they first entered each other's lives. For the next sixty years, their courses would run closely together, at first easily interweaving, but increasingly tangling to create intractable knots.

Linnell, born in 1792 into a London family of respectable but far from wealthy craftsmen, had had a very different upbringing from the cosseted Palmer. Brought up in the dismal backstreets of Bloomsbury, he had been forced to understand from an early age that success, if it came, would be a hard-fought commodity, for his father, having completed an apprenticeship as a carver and gilder, had tried to set up his own business and failed. Facing ruin, he had panicked and fled home, leaving his wife and three children – including four-year-old John – to fend as best they could. He had enlisted as a soldier in the service of the East India Company and would have vanished abroad forever had a cousin not managed to save the situation just in time by dashing down to Plymouth and purchasing his release from the military at the cost of £40.

Returning, Linnell's father had found employment once more as a gilder and regained his mental balance. But for his eldest son the memory would always remain. Linnell would, for the rest of his life, be meticulous about financial matters. He would keep the most precise accounts, recording every transaction in a leather-bound ledger down to the five shillings that he had once bestowed upon a gypsy who had happened to be in his garden as she gave birth. He would clarify the exact terms of any business agreement and, often at risk of offence, insist upon prompt payment from clients.

Linnell, from an early age, loved reading and would devour anything he could lay his hands on – from Dr Johnson's dictionary to the four large folio volumes of Roman history which the family owned and which thrilled him with their battles and their big illustrative plates. But it was his artistic rather than his intellectual talent that first came usefully to the fore. A skilled draughtsman who, as a child, had often decorated kites for his friends, he would frequently trot along to Christie's auction rooms to sketch the sale paintings. His father, spotting a commercial opportunity, set him to copying populist pictures to sell. Linnell was happy to oblige. Even in church, when his hands should have been piously folded, he would be drawing, scratching portraits of the congregation onto the pews with a nail. He would even sketch with his fingers on the empty air. It taught him to see forms in his mind's eye, he later said, fostering the remarkable visual memory which, along with fierce powers of observation, would serve him well as a portraitist.

One day, while furtively sketching a Girtin watercolour at an auction house, he was spotted by the connoisseur William Varley who, struck by the boy's skill, dispatched him promptly to see his brother, John, a landscape painter, who, though his placid vision has long since fallen from fashion, earned a niche in art history as one of his era's most sought-after drawing masters. John Varley, impressed by Linnell's talent, encouraged the adolescent prodigy to go on working as widely and from as many different subjects as he could, and most particularly to draw from nature. He invited him to visit his studio whenever he wanted. It was the beginning of a lasting friendship between Linnell and this ebullient master who would not only put in a fourteen-hour day at the easel but, by way of a break, don a pair of boxing gloves and go a few rounds with his pupils, or, tiring of that, divide his protégés into teams and get them to toss him back and forth between them across a table. This last was to become an increasingly onerous challenge; always a big man, Varley was eventually to top seventeen stone.

Varley was financially hopeless but, resolutely Micawberish, he was generous to a fault and refused to see anything but the bright side of life. He was imprisoned several times for debt; his house was burnt down; he had an ‘idiot son'; but, as he told Linnell, ‘all these troubles are necessary to me. If it were not for my troubles I would burst with joy.'
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Linnell would, over the years, have to come to Varley's aid with increasing frequency, but he never resented it nor forgot the debt that he owed him – not just for help offered in childhood but for continuing support for, when Linnell was first trying to set up himself up as a professional artist, Varley would recommend him to the sort of aristocratic clients who could afford to pay generously to have their portraits done.

With his visits to Varley's house, Linnell found himself moving into artistic circles. He made friends with William Henry Hunt who had only recently signed up as one of Varley's pupils and with whom the ten-year-old Linnell, ‘wondering if I should ever be able to accomplish as much as he had attained to – he was so far in advance of me in general knowledge of Art',
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would go on sketching expeditions. He also took an immediate liking to William Mulready, an Irishman six years his senior who, while studying at the Royal Academy, had been fêted as one of its most promising pupils. When Linnell first met him, he was embarking on a career as a landscapist, although later, turning to genre scenes, depictions of everyday domestic realities, the romanticised twist that he could give to ordinary life would prove very popular to Victorian tastes. Mulready was a complicated character: genial, irascible, sentimental and extravagantly Romantic, he was a professional success but a failure in his private life. At eighteen he married Varley's elder sister, Elizabeth, but after seven years and four sons the relationship ended in separation – he blaming her for unspecified bad conduct; she accusing him of cruelty, pederastic inclinations and unfaithfulness.

Mulready and Linnell became inseparable companions. They would burn up their youthful energy in enthusiastic bouts of boxing, go sculling on the Thames or take off on escapades that could last for several days. Once, returning in the small hours to find themselves locked out, they had had to clamber up the back wall of their lodgings much to the consternation of Mulready's drunken landlady whose habitual malapropisms were a frequent subject of mirth among the two friends. (She called Linnell ‘Cotton' because she thought his real name was Linen and frequently spoke of their fellows as ‘Acadaminions'.) But, most importantly, Linnell and Mulready painted together, the younger learning much from his older companion.

Another visitor to Varley's house, the miniaturist Andrew Robertson, offered Linnell an introduction to the President of the Royal Academy, the American-born Benjamin West, and from then on Linnell would visit West in his Newman Street studio once or twice a week, showing him the drawings that he made from casts and watching him work on his grand historical tableaux. This kindly American was always supportive: it was he who had famously tried to encourage a dismayed Constable after one of his pictures had been rejected for exhibition – ‘Don't be disheartened, young man, we shall hear of you again,' he had said. ‘You must have loved nature very much before you could have painted this.' Many years later, in 1818, he would still remember Linnell, writing a recommendation for him when he applied for permission to copy a Holbein painting at Windsor Castle, praising him in the letter as ‘an ingenious young artist'. It was not the last time a president of the Academy was to help Linnell out. In 1822, he sent up a picture to the summer exhibition which was slightly too small to be hung on the line. Thomas Lawrence, seeing the problem, promptly dispatched the work to his own frame maker so that it could be made bigger and hence hung in the best spot.

On the strength of Linnell's talent, Varley managed to persuade his father to put a stop to the picture copying and let his son come to live in as a pupil instead. It would affect the family's finances in the short run, Varley explained, but in the long term it would prove an investment. He was evidently convincing: Linnell's father even produced £100 in fees. ‘Go to nature for everything',
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was Varley's motto. His pupils wandered the parks and meadows of London with rectangles of millboard and boxes of paints. Linnell applied himself to sketching outdoors with such dedication that, as a naturalist, he could rival Constable.

When his year with Varley was over, Linnell applied to enter the Royal Academy as a probationer and, at the end of 1805, was admitted to the life-drawing class. The youngest pupil, at just thirteen years old, he was affectionately nicknamed ‘the giant' by the diminutive and famously foul-mouthed Henry Fuseli, Keeper of Schools. In 1807 he was awarded the Academy's life-drawing medal, Mulready having won it the previous year. In 1809, exhibiting at the British Institution, he went on to win a fifty-guinea prize. His versatility was extraordinary. In the Academy's annual competition between sculptors and painters, in which each was challenged to tackle the other's discipline, Linnell took first place.

At the Academy, he was tutored in art theory. He attended Turner's last lecture on perspective and was there for the first by Flaxman on sculpture. He pored over the art of the past, studying the brawny designs of Michelangelo in which the physical and spiritual meet with a muscular force, as well as the subtler harmonies of Raphael which he knew from the copperplate reproductions of Giulio di Antonio Bonasone, a fine selection of whose engravings he would one day own. He was deeply indebted to these masters of the Italian Renaissance, but it was the work of their German contemporary, Albrecht Dürer, which he most loved, admiring its unique combination of precision and excess: an appreciation that one day he would pass on to Palmer.

Sometimes, in the evenings, after his day at the Academy was over, he would go to visit Dr John Monro, the physician who had attended George III in his madness. Monro would pay him one shilling and sixpence an hour to make copies from his fine collection of drawings, reproductions which Linnell suspected would sometimes get sold on as originals. He enjoyed the companionship of his fellow students, figures such as David Wilkie and Benjamin Haydon, both of whom were to go on to make names for themselves, but who then were still lads, lunching together on the heavily marinated stews of London beef houses or, when there was no money to spare, larking about in the streets. Sometimes, in summer, they would go down to Millbank to swim in the Thames; or make their way to the house of the hospitable Varley to dine on eggs, bread and butter all washed down with porter and to argue with each other late into the night. And all the time Linnell was reading. He devoured endless volumes: Paley's
Moral Philosophy
and
Natural Theology
, Francis Bacon's essays, Milton's
Paradise Lost
, Homer's
Odyssey
and the Bible along with a profusion of Baptist tracts pressed upon him by Cornelius Varley (one of John's brothers) who by way of supporting argument also persuaded him to go and listen to John Martin, an impassioned but plain-spoken old Baptist pastor. Linnell was impressed by his unflinching conviction and liked to tell the story of how once this old preacher, invited to a grand dinner, had found himself confronted by an array of rich delicacies. ‘There is nothing here that I can eat,' he had informed his hosts who had immediately made enquiries as to what further choice morsels might be brought. ‘Bring me,' Martin had said, ‘an onion and a pot of porter.'

In 1812, Linnell was received into the Baptist faith. From then on, his religious beliefs would infiltrate every aspect of his life. Stringent to the point of severity, he set himself to learning Hebrew and Greek. He did not trust the authorised version of the Bible and, convinced that meanings and truths were getting lost in translation, was determined to read it in its original form.

By then Linnell was giving a few drawing lessons of his own. In 1814 he was elected a member of the Society of Painters in Oil and Watercolour, a professional organisation which would help to promote him as an artist. Through his Baptist connections his first important portrait commissions began to come in, including one of the crumple-faced Martin who had converted him. It was also in chapel circles that he met Charles Heathcote Tatham, an architect who had studied in Italy and acquired a substantial reputation. Tatham began introducing Linnell into aristocratic society where he would pick up the sort of commissions that would launch his career.

Linnell needed to make money. He had fallen in love with Mary Palmer, the daughter of his chapel treasurer (but no relation to Samuel). He was hoping to marry her and yet to do so he would have to be capable of supporting a family. With characteristic resolution, he made a plan and then proceeded to achieve it. He went on a sketching tour of Wales, took on several portrait commissions, repaired pictures for his father, painted the figures in Varley's landscapes and did illustrations for books: some for the commercial artist Augustus Charles Pugin (father of the Gothic architect), others for a new edition of
The Compleat Angler
. Sometimes his life felt hard. He was often alone on his journeys. ‘One day I was compelled to talk to my self to counteract the painful impression of solitariness,'
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recorded the city-bred young man. But whatever he was doing and wherever he was travelling he made the most of it, sketching landscapes for the purposes of future pictures or experimenting successfully with his first portrait miniatures on ivory. His efforts began to pay off. A commission for one member of a family soon led to the next and Linnell's financial future began to look secure. One problem still remained, however, before he could take his wife. Civil marriages were not legal in England and, with typical obstinacy, Linnell refused to undergo what he described as the ‘degrading' and ‘blasphemous' ceremony of the Anglican Church.
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He was only twenty-five, but his principles were fixed and now they led to a long, hard and extremely uncomfortable journey to Scotland where a pair of Nonconformists could be legally conjoined without Church involvement. Linnell, jolting along on the outside of the coach, pulled out his sketchbook whenever they stopped; his fiancée Mary, meanwhile, felt horribly travel sick.