Fragments Of An Autobiography Part 24

I first met Browning at my cousins the Bensons. They occupied one of those unique houses in that finest of avenues, Kensington Palace Gardens. Notwithstanding the name, the houses really have gardens, and command an unlimited view over the grounds which extend from Kensington to Hyde Park. Inside the hospitable mansion all that was best in the world of art and literature would a.s.semble, and men and women of note felt so much at home there, that they would just lay down their laurel wreaths and wipe off their war-paint, before they came in, and move about as if they were ordinary mortals. They ate and drank too, as if anxious to show their appreciation of Mrs. Benson's table; she certainly made a point of placing the best of nectar and ambrosia before the G.o.ds, her guests. And the chef saw to it, that the menus should be worded with due regard to historical truth. I recollect one occasion when he had introduced "Cotelettes a la Charles d.i.c.kens" on the programme.

"You had better change that," said Mrs. Benson, "and put 'a la Thackeray'; he is dining with us to-night."

"Oh, madam," protested the chef, "surely you don't mean that; everybody would at once recognise them as 'Cotelettes a la d.i.c.kens.'"

Dinner was usually followed by the most perfect music, for the G.o.ds loved to play to one another, and it needed no pressure to induce a Joachim to open his violin-case, or to lead the pianist of the day straight to the piano. But on one occasion, I forget why, there was some difficulty with Madame Schumann; she had certainly not taken one or two broad hints to the effect that she was wanted. I was, to be sure erroneously, supposed to be devoid of all shyness, and was therefore deputed to get her to the piano. I had known her years ago when, as a girl, she came to Leipsic with her father, and I remember exchanging knowing winks with my sisters behind old Wieck's back, when he held forth about his unique and incomparable method of teaching, as exemplified in his daughters Clara and Marie. He had a queer way of putting it, but he was certainly not far wrong in his estimate of the method and its results.

When I asked Madame Schumann whether she was inclined to play, I was very badly received. She was "particularly disinclined," so I changed the conversation. But presently--quite by chance to be sure--I mentioned her husband's "Carnaval." "There is one part," I said, "which I particularly love: the 'March of the Davidsbundler,' you know. If I could only hear you play just that page or two!"

"Page or two indeed," she said, boiling over with indignation. "Wenn man den Carnaval spielt, spielt man ihn ganz!" (If you play the "Carnival,"

you play it from beginning to end.)

And an instant afterwards she was at the piano, throwing her whole soul into that wonderful piece of tone-painting.

Elizabeth Benson was one of the many gifted members of the Lehmann family; the two eminent painters Henri and Rudolf Lehmann were her brothers; so too Frederick, her husband's partner in the well-known firm of ironmasters, Naylor, Vickers & Co. And he, Mr. Benson, was a shrewd German-American who had ama.s.sed a fortune in business and lived in perfect style. Being a man of culture and refined tastes, he had a remarkably well selected library and had surrounded himself with many choice works of art.

Browning's son--he had but one child--was also a welcome guest at 10 Kensington Palace Gardens. He was equally gifted as a musician and as a painter, so much so, that for a time he seemed inclined to sit down between two stools and await events. This caused his father some anxiety, and it was evidently with a feeling of relief, that he came to tell me one day, that Pen had got up and made his choice of stools in favour of the one marked Painting. The decision was due to Millais. Pen had accompanied him on a visit to Scotland, and whilst Millais was painting his picture of "Scotch Firs," his young friend made a study of the same subject, which gave evidence of so much talent that Millais unhesitatingly advised him to devote himself to art. When Browning came to tell me of the very satisfactory incident, he asked my advice as to the best opportunity for study open to him. In those days, very different from the days we can boast of now, the best advice to give was that he should go abroad. I suggested Antwerp, and further recommended my friend Heyermans as the best teacher I knew. My advice was taken, and it led to so excellent a result that Browning never tired of expressing his grat.i.tude to me for having found the right man and having put his son in the right place. Under the guidance of that right man Pen made rapid progress and soon produced very striking work.

When he began to exhibit, no father could be more anxious about a son's reputation or prouder of his successes, than was Browning. Praise such as came from the lips or pens of Leighton, Millais, and other friends, warmed his heart, confirming, as it did, his belief in Pen's powers. He could be very sensitive too, when full justice was not done to that son, as when his statue of Driope was refused at the Royal Academy. Young Browning, not content with using the brush to give shape to his artistic conceptions, had taken to the sculptor's tools. These he had learned to handle when, after a prolonged stay in Antwerp, he went to Paris and studied sculpture under Rodin, an advantage of which to this day he is particularly proud. This life-size figure of Driope was the outcome of much study and thought, and had been so warmly appreciated on all sides, that it was deemed worthy of being cast in bronze. When it was rejected at the Royal Academy, Browning was indignant, eloquently indignant, and well he might be, for the work was a remarkable one, and as it now stands in the vast Entrance Hall of the Palazzo Rezzonico, many think as I do, that it can challenge comparison with some of the great masterpieces in Venice.

I need scarcely say that the adverse verdict of the rulers at Burlington House did not shake his confidence in Pen or in his first teacher. The poet's grat.i.tude to the latter was expressed in ever-varying forms. He writes to him: "I have to repeat--what I never can be tired of repeating, however inadequately I make my words correspond with my feelings--how deeply grateful I am to you for your instrumentality in the success of my son, which I am sure he will have attributed to the admirable master whose true 'son' in art he is bound to consider himself." When, some years later, Heyermans settled in London, Browning never lost an opportunity of smoothing the artist's path among strangers, in the country which has since become the country of his adoption.

As I may presently allow myself to speak of some of my pictures which Browning liked, it may not be inappropriate to record here that there were others which he disliked. Such were some j.a.panese subjects, which my love of the newly imported art had impelled me to paint. At the time I am speaking of--in the early seventies--the work of the j.a.panese was only just coming to the front; there was no shop to display it in all London or Paris. The first things of the kind I can remember here were some of those cheap paper fans on sale at a very popular little shop in the Brompton Road, Harrod's, now developed into one of London's monster emporiums. In Holland I had previously come across some wonderful specimens of j.a.panese painting and weaving, and when I next saw a unique collection of such work in the Paris Exhibition, my admiration was fairly kindled into enthusiasm. Shortly afterwards the same exhibits found their way into the hands of those syrens with the ivory hammer, known as Christie & Manson's, and on that occasion my savings found _their_ way into the same hands. I was equally fascinated by j.a.panese art at Farmer & Rogers', where I soon made friends with one of their staff, a promising young connoisseur, Mr. Liberty, the same who now rules supreme in Regent Street.

Now Browning wors.h.i.+pped--I thought rather exclusively--at the shrine of old Italian art, and I do not think he ever really appreciated the j.a.panese. Certain it is that he disliked the pictures I painted when my j.a.pano-mania was at its height; notably one ent.i.tled "On the Banks of the Kanagawa," which he condemned, perhaps not without good reason, for I had never been on the banks of that or any other j.a.p river, and my figures, although clad in the beautiful dresses I had bought, were more or less evolved from my inner consciousness. In fact I would not hesitate to say that the picture was bad, were I not afraid of being thought wanting in respect to the august body of Royal Academicians, who gave it a very excellent place on their walls. As their judgment is known to be infallible, Browning, for once in the way, must have been labouring under a misconception.

If so, he but too generously made up for it in later years when, on many occasions, he showed the greatest interest in my work. He became a frequent visitor at the studio, and the hours he spent with me are amongst the happiest in my artistic experience. To him it was a never-failing source of pleasure to visit his artist friends, and with more than one of them did he make himself thoroughly at home. He had the gift of putting everybody at his ease, sometimes exchanging a few pleasant words with the servant who came to answer the door, sometimes chatting with the models; he was quite unconventional, and would just as soon say, "He don't" as "He doesn't." A great friend of his was Jack Turner, a charming specimen of the London waif, a perfect little angel in his tenth year, but an angel, as it unfortunately proved, with a stumble and a fall, in consequence of which he had to do his growing up in a reformatory, and who asks for the price of a gla.s.s of beer when I meet him now. "Good morning, Mr. Browning." "Thank you, Mr. Browning,"

the little angel would say, for he had quickly realised that the name had a good sound, and the poet would stroke his curly hair and press the price of an ounce of sweets into his innocent little hand.

Then there was Laura, a model, who had one of the most sculptural figures I have ever seen. She had come to me in the regular course of business to get work, accompanied by another young girl; her features were not regular, but mobile and expressive, her eyes restless, and her hair rebellious as it hung in brown wavelets over her forehead. Her friend was a contrast--the regular blue-eyed maiden, fair-haired and fair-skinned. I took their names and addresses, putting them down as head models, for, in answer to my question whether they sat for the figure, Laura had replied, "No; certainly not." It was the close of the season, and I had much work to finish before I could leave town. I told my visitors so, and returned to my easel, but they were evidently disinclined to go; they looked around as if fascinated by the artistic surroundings, and after a whispered consultation, they hinted, carefully veiling their words, that they had no insuperable objection to unveiling. It was evident that they were fired with lofty ambitions of "the altogether" kind. (Immortal creation of my friend Du Maurier, that word, _the altogether_, which lulls suspicion and alarm in the breast of the Philistine, and checks the blush that would rise to the cheek of the British matron.) I bluntly told my would-be models that I was working against time, and that for some months to come I should not be able to use them, whether in sections or as a whole. But they were not to be dissuaded, once having made up their minds to qualify for _the altogether_.

Befittingly coy and shy, Laura's friend emerged from the dressing-room, the type of the English maiden, the rosebud of sweet seventeen. The milk of human beauty flowed in her veins, tinting her with creamy whites from head to foot; one only wanted some dove-coloured greys to model her forms, till at the extremities one would put in a few touches of pink madder or of Laque de garance rose doree. It is a beautiful little type, "rosed from top to toe in flush of youth." Greuze could paint it, and others too; but whenever I attempted it, I have found that I was not good at rendering the girlish forms and the strawberry-and-cream colour.

Very different was Laura. She came into the room as if to the manner born, freely and easily. She had seemed rather short of stature and awkward in her movements. Now she was tall and graceful, and so sculptural in form that at first you would scarcely notice her colour.

You could not render her dull bronze-like tints without mixing your light-reds with cobalt blue or with real ultramarine at a guinea an ounce, if you could afford it.

I did not break out into Pygmalionic enthusiasm, but I felt that I must leave all else and study the line that started from the neck, and went straight down to the heel, unimpeded by petty details or any of those non-essentials which just mark the difference between the real in Nature and the ideal in Art. The next day I began a picture of her which has since found its way to America. My friend Legros chancing to look in when she was sitting, so warmly appreciated her that I invited him to come and make studies from her at my studio occasionally; of those I have a very beautiful one drawn for his _bas-relief_ "_La Fontaine_,"

which many will remember having seen at one of the early exhibitions in the Grosvenor Gallery.

Couldn't Browning be indignant when the British matron presumed to misinterpret the artist's glow of enthusiasm! Doubly indignant, when the matron took the shape of a patron or the t.i.tle of a Royal Academician with a vote on the Council of selection, or a hand on the Hanging Committee.

"The impropriety lies in the objection," he would say, "and I have put what I think of it in my Furini."[17]

Browning had a marked predilection for a certain chair in my studio. It is a cross-breed between what the French call a _c.r.a.paud_ and we an easy-chair. In this he was installed one afternoon, when Laura was perched on the model-table, artificially supported, as best she could be, to give me a flying position. I was at work on one of two companion pictures which, for want of a better t.i.tle, I had called "The Cloud-Compeller" and "The Cloud-Dispeller." In the first a deep-toned figure gathers the rolling clouds together; in the second, a brighter child of the skies peeps out from behind them.

"You might take some lines from Sh.e.l.ley's 'Cloud' for those pictures,"

suggested Browning.

"Yes--Sh.e.l.ley's Cloud," I answered. "To be sure--Let me see--Oh yes, it is one of those beautiful poems I know, but can't remember."

"Oh," he began, leaning back in the easy-chair--"Don't you remember?

"'I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers From the seas and the streams; I bring light shades----'"

And once started, he recited the whole poem. Recited is scarcely the word. He simply told us all about "The daughter of the earth and the nursling of the sky," and he conjured up, with the slightest of emphasis, pictures of "the whirlwinds unfurled, the stars that reel and swim," and

"That orbed maiden with white fire laden Whom mortals call the moon."

I went on painting--and listened. Laura kept on flying--and listened.

She was an educated girl, and knew as well as I did that we might consider ourselves privileged listeners.

Laura had had quite a long spell of work, considering that the office of a cloud-compeller is not a sinecure, and she was well ent.i.tled to a rest. Browning said something to that effect as he rose to go, and, adding that she was a brave and conscientious model, he slipped half-a-crown into her hand. When I laid down my palette to go to the door with him, the usual little word-squabble had to be gone through. No argument of mine would ever persuade him that I had a right to see him to the door, but I often did so, heedless of his protest. On the other hand, no argument of his could ever persuade me that _he_ was justified in seeing me to _his_ door, but he always managed to do so, whether I was persuaded or not. He had stairs to go down and up again; I had not, so it was most unfair, but that was Browning all over--always afraid to give trouble, ever ready to take it.

When I got back to the studio, a new picture met my eye. I found Laura giving vent to her feelings in a wild dance of jubilation, the half-crown sparkling above her head as she held it up triumphantly with both hands, whilst cl.u.s.ters of brown hair which had been carefully pinned up out of the way, for I was painting her back, now cascaded over her shoulders and down to her waist, suggesting new and original shapes for fas.h.i.+onable capes or opera-cloaks. When Nature's mantle had once more been pinned up and a drapery subst.i.tuted for it, she settled down in the chair the master had just vacated, and proceeded to discuss the grave question as to what should be done with the half-crown. She scorned my suggestion that she should spend it on a pair of gloves, and then and there decided to have it made into a brooch as a memento of the memorable afternoon.

The next day I received a letter from Browning indicating the particular pa.s.sages from Sh.e.l.ley's poem which he thought would be suitable to my pictures.

That Laura was a queer girl; it was not till months after her first visit to me that I chanced to find out she was a good pianist and had a pretty voice, and only when she had got quite acclimatised in the studio did I elicit the truth about that first visit. She had always put me off with the evasive answer that "a friend" had given her my address, but at last she confided to me that there was no friend in the case.

"We were walking down Sloane Street," she said, "Amy Stewart and I, when we saw your board up with 'The Studio, Cadogan Gardens' on it. Your dog was at the gate wagging his tail, and seemed like asking us in. I patted him, and said to Amy, 'Let's go in for a lark and say we are models.' And she said, 'Yes; you go first.' So we rang the bell and asked for the artist. You said you were busy and hadn't much time to look at us, and you didn't seem to want us--so we stopped." Her father, I then found out, was a well-to-do builder, much absorbed in his business. No, she said, in answer to my question, he was not aware that she was sitting; her mother was, but had never asked for particulars.

Let well alone, I thought, anxious as I was not to lose my model. But not long afterwards I was much startled by Laura's announcement that the sittings must henceforth be given up. She was very sorry, but she was forbidden to come any more.

"What has happened?" I asked in dismay; "your father? your mother?" "Oh no." "Well, do have it out; n.o.body else surely has a right to interfere." "Well, yes," she said; "Father O'Brien has." I saw it all; she was a good Roman Catholic, and her father confessor had become alarmed, and had put in his veto. "Is that all?" I broke in, much relieved. "Well, Laura, you did startle me--thank goodness, it is only a priest; he of all people couldn't have meant it seriously. He wouldn't be so ungrateful after all we artists have done for the Church. Think of the old masters, Laura; you must go to Father O'Brien and remind him of Raphael and all the saints and Madonnas he painted. Why, to be sure, he must know that even the divine Raphael could not have given us their souls without their bodies, and that even he would never have draped his models till he had made a careful study of those respected bodies.

Oh no, there is nothing to be feared from a good priest; you must go at once, Laura, and speak to him."

Whether she went or not, and whether, having duly weighed my argument, Father O'Brien was struck with remorse, I do not know, but certain it is that Laura came, sat, and helped me conquer the difficulties yet to be grappled with in two pictures I had begun from her.

I was travelling from the sunny South back to the cheerless North. It was in January, and I was returning from Italy, where I had spent some months, to my own home and hearth; back to the chimney that I knew would smoke, to the pipes that would probably burst, and the blacks that would certainly fly. Serpentining along the coast of the Riviera, I awoke in the early morning and peeped through the window just by my side in the sleeping-car. Farewell to the sea and to the sparkle on the playful little waves that were gently breaking against the shrub-covered rocks; farewell to the middle distance and to the distance, and generally to anything worthy to be termed a horizon. Presently all that will be replaced by somebody's stone wall opposite my own stone wall, or by a growler or a Piccadilly lamp-post in a fog. And I shall wear a thick overcoat out of doors, and sit peacefully installed at my own writing-table in-doors. And the organ-grinder will come to grind under my windows, and to remind me of the country I love so well--and he will keep on grinding till it is time to get up and conduct him to the nearest police-station.

Then, too, I shall meet my friends, and they will ask me where I have been, and tell me where they have been; and, one and all, they will want to know what I am painting for the Royal Academy, and not have the slightest notion how insulting the question is, particularly if--_il n'y a que la verite qui blesse_--I _have_ been painting _for_ the Royal Academy.

That is what I was thinking as we popped into tunnels and out again into the bright suns.h.i.+ne. Then--I don't know whether I fell asleep or whether I kept awake--but I certainly dreamt the most beautiful pictures ever painted. I could not put them on canvas to save my life, any more than I could put them on paper; but there they were, just across borderland, and I saw them with my own eyes, and not as one usually sees them, cramped by ugly gold mouldings at so much a foot.

There was one creature of extraordinary beauty--a G.o.ddess she must have been--with tresses of molten gold; she had got into a big sh.e.l.l which I had bought in Naples (they call it _terebra_), and, stretching herself full length in it, she had fallen asleep. Then other sh.e.l.ls I had left behind in those stalls that line Santa Lucia came up from the deep, and a little lithe-limbed urchin--I felt sure I had seen him before--ensconced himself in one of them as in an arm-chair; and next--such are dreams--two darling little nieces of mine came toddling along from Tedworth Square, S.W. London, stark naked, and straightway condensed themselves into one meditative water-baby, that loved the sh.e.l.ls as I did, and cuddled them as I couldn't.

Dreams to be sure--fancies, mocking visions of beauty, not to be realised, I know it well, but to the artist life would not be worth living if it were not for the glorious excitement of hunting the will-o'-the-wisp.

So I began what I called the sh.e.l.l-picture shortly after my return to London. Browning was in sympathy with my subject, and often came when I was tackling it. In the afternoons he was a man of leisure, his mornings being devoted to his own work, which he would take up when he had read the _Times_ and answered his letters. After luncheon he very rarely returned to his study. He would go out about two o'clock, perhaps to walk down to the Athenaeum Club, where on Sat.u.r.days he was to be seen very regularly, reading the weekly papers, or he would visit his friends. Amongst those his artist friends were the most favoured, and more than one of them, I am sure, would be better qualified than I am to fill a chapter of reminiscences, headed "Browning at the Studio." He himself often speaks in his letters of the pleasure it gives him to a.s.sociate with them.

"I scribble this," he writes on one occasion, "in case I should be unable to look in to-morrow afternoon--as I will, if I can, however: always enjoying, as I do, the sight of creation by another process than that of the head, with only pen and paper to help. How expeditiously the brush works!"

And another time he says--

"As for the visits to your studio, be a.s.sured they are truly a delight to me, for the old aspirations come thickly back to memory when I see you at work as--who knows but I myself might have worked once? Only it was not to be; but these are consolations--seeing that I am anyhow

"Yours sympathisingly,