The Center of the World

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SHE WAS NO DOUBT
the most wicked of women. They were the most wicked of pictures. I knew Ruskin was right and that they ought to be consigned to the fire.

“Wornum,” he said, “I have been entrusted with the memory of England’s greatest painter. These images are the products of a diseased mind. We must destroy them. If we do not, the world will not remember Turner as the transcendent genius of his age.”

He instructed the boy to gather some old lumber and kindle a fire in the brickyard behind the gallery. Ruskin said that he himself could not bear to see these sketches burnt, although he knew it was his duty. He was quite distraught and asked me, as a special favor to him, if he could excuse himself and if I would place the offending material in the flames.

Ruskin withdrew and one by one I let the sheets fall into the fire. Most were drawings on paper, some were oil sketches on canvas. A mournful black smoke rose into the sky.

I was not sad to see most of this material go. I had been to Paris when I was young, and, being no better than most young men, I had seen material of this sort for sale on the banks of the Seine. Most of what I burnt was no better than that.

But there was a set of notebooks that gave me pause. They seemed a study for a painting of some evil queen of antiquity. Ruskin said she was Jezebel. I did not say so, but I believe she was Helen. She was more beautiful than I can say. More wicked too, no doubt.

One by one I placed the sheets from the notebook on the fire and watched her disappear in the flames. It was as if I had cast her into hell myself.

After the last piece was burnt and the fire extinguished I went inside. Ruskin offered me a glass of sherry which I gratefully accepted. There was a look of suffering on his face. I had done him, he said, a great service. I said it was nothing, but my looks must have given the lie to my protestation.

I am sure we did what was needful. But I think of her often during the day and by night she haunts my brain.

 
IN ORDER THAT
I should feel the pangs of hell most fiercely, Providence, in its wisdom, has decreed that I should taste heaven before I die. This is, to be sure, a peculiarly English heaven, but it is hard to conceive of a French or Italian one half so comfortable or so pleasing.

The presiding genius of the place is, of course, Lord Egremont, of whom you have heard much. He is a most remarkable personage. I have spent only a few minutes in his company, yet I have felt the nature of the man in my bones. It is difficult to explain or account for. He exudes a sense of mastery so complete that he need not exert it. He is all kindness and welcome, but one knows by a kind of instinct that he is quick to anger and that his wrath, when unleashed, is most terrible. He takes, I think, a silent delight in knowing that all those around him live in fear, although, in spite of that, he appears a delightful old gentleman of the gruff old-fashioned school.

He is almost eighty, yet as active as a healthy man of fifty. Every morning after breakfast he buttons on his leather gaiters and goes out to inspect some part of his vast agricultural enterprise. It is curious to stand in one of the drawing rooms here and look out upon the park and see this English Maecenas making his way across the great lawn, his favorite brown spaniels following close behind. Behind the hounds comes a boy leading his horse, and other functionaries and factotums all waiting on his merest nod or grunt.

One’s only obligation while a guest here, as near as I can make out, is to be agreeable and not to get in Lord Egremont’s way. Those guests who delight in the hunt join His Lordship when he rides; those more peaceably inclined are given the freedom of the house and the grounds. There is much to do. One can play billiards in the Marble Room, find a comfortable chair in the library, or go to the North Gallery, which contains what many say is the finest collection of pictures in all England. One can also retire, as I have done, to one’s own room. I have never before spent the night in a room so grand. There are high ceilings with curious carvings, crimson walls hung with paintings that would find pride of place in the drawing rooms of most noble houses, and various pieces of antique furniture. My bed, for example, could comfortably sleep six (although you know, dear David, that only a certain one, in addition to myself, would make my Paradise complete!). I almost fear that I am in danger of smothering when I lie down, such is the profusion of soft blankets and feather beds. There is a remarkable portrait of Lady Mary Villiers—by Van Dyck, no less—glowering over
me, and despite her fierce expression I have taken it into my head that she will keep me safe from all harm.

Some time toward the late afternoon His Lordship returns, wet through and through and either cursing like a fishmonger or dispensing smiles all round, depending on what he has learned. He then disappears into his chambers and, as a general rule, is not seen again until about seven, when we all dine.

Dinner is the only time that all the guests and hangers-on are gathered together. His Lordship and Mrs. Spencer (more of her shortly) preside over an agreeable motley of about twenty people. The only sour notes in the composition are Mr. Wyndham, Egremont’s heir and bastard, and his wife. He is fat and bilious; she is thin and shrill. Both are much given to disapproving expressions of piety and contempt. Wyndham seems to resent every forkful that his father’s guests consume as some diminishment of his patrimony. One half suspects that he eats as much as he does because he knows that every morsel he devours will not be given to another.

But those two aside, it is a splendid company. There is Mr. Romney and his beautiful lady; Mr. Sockett, an agreeable divine; and Mr. Gedding, the member for Pulborough. Gedding and His Lordship have different views on certain agricultural matters which I do not profess to understand and get quite heated about them. Then there are the artists: Jones (whose sea scene you much admired when we saw it in London), Simmons, and the great Turner. Turner is an unprepossessing figure. Much below the average height (which seems somehow queer when you consider how grand and mighty his
paintings are), he is a barrel-chested man with a large hooked nose, which is often red. He wears a suit of shabby and much mended black, and were it not for his dirty hands and the paint under his fingernails one would take him for a clergyman in reduced circumstances. His eyes, however, are wonderfully acute and he seems to see into the very heart of things. He says little and has a queer gruff way of speaking into his soup, but what he does say is worth attending to.