Читать книгу The Autobiographical Works of Wilkie Collins - Уилки Коллинз - Страница 11

JOURNAL OF 1816.

“January 1st, 1816. — Went with Willis to the Elgin Marbles, observed the simple attitudes of some of the figures to be peculiarly adapted to a new style of portrait. Then to Westminster Abbey, where I heard the organ playing, etc., and saw the bad monuments of some modern sculptors. I must write notes in my book before the thing criticised, mentioning the name, etc.; for I have seen most of the objects in this place often enough, but having forgotten them, I lost my time looking at them again, and coming, most likely, to the same conclusion, again to be forgotten, unless I keep a book for the purpose of entering everything I think worthy of remark.

“ * Some time since I praised, from charitable and opposition motives, a certain picture, certainly much more than it deserved. I was told the other day, by an inferior artist, that he could not much value the opinion of one who had so much deceived him.

“ * Feeling the thing, and being able to express it, makes the difference between amateur and painter — some persons put their ideas better than others. Has a man who cannot put them so clearly as to be understood, the ideas at all? Can he distinctly see it — could he not describe it, if he did?

“ * April 13th. — Chatted with a visitor till twelve, when I posted this dreary ledger, on a dreary, black-looking April day, with one sixpence in my pocket, seven hundred pounds in debt, shabby clothes, a fine house, a large stock of my own handyworks, a certainty (as much, at least, a certainty, as anything short of ‘a bird in the hand’ can be) of about a couple of hundreds, and a determination unshaken — and, please God, not to be shook by anything of becoming a great painter, than which, I know no greater name. Although I have not at this moment a single commission of any kind whatever, I have property considerably more than adequate to discharge the debt above-mentioned — I mean property that would, even in these worst of times, sell for such a sum. Therefore, should my present views prove abortive, I shall not lose my independence — which whilst I have, I want no more.

“ * July 5th — How comes it that after all my struggles, I am at this moment so poor in purse? Those of my friends able to push me, are not inclined; and those inclined, not able. Now, as it is impossible to rise in the world, without connection — connection I must have. Therefore, I will paint some high personage, for the next Exhibition. (Why not the Princess Charlotte?) For my own comfort, I must paint this, as well as everything else I touch, in a superior style. I have no reason to be dissatisfied with the public judgment on my works, although, from various causes, I am not rewarded agreeably to, or consistent with, their acknowledgment of my deserts. As I have great reason to believe that their approbation of any particular picture (although not the one that I consider the best, at the time) is the criterion, I shall certainly bow to it. In the particular instance of the Cromer scene, I feel now that their selection is marked by judgment: the faults, however, of the ‘Spring,’ I hope to be able to remedy in my future productions — for which purpose, I will note those objections which have been made by others, and follow them with a critique of my own. * “

Hopeful as the painter’s anticipations still continued, untiring as were his efforts to extricate himself from his gathering embarrassments, they did not bring with them the success and security that he desired. The autumn was approaching, his exertions were the main support of his family, he had attempted to render them more advantageous by removing to a convenient and well situated dwelling; and now, to his dismay, he found, as the season advanced, that his income grew more and more insufficient to supply even the daily demands — economical though they were — of his new scale of expenditure; and that, unless some sudden change took place in his fortunes, his affairs were threatened — after all his industry, and all his successes — by no less a visitation than absolute ruin.

A calamity so severe and disheartening as this would have overwhelmed a man of inferior mental powers, — it stimulated the subject of this biography, however, to fresh effort, to stronger determination, to more vigorous hope. Gradually and surely, year by year and thought by thought, his old boyish anxiety to draw the sea at Brighton, had been expanding within him into a higher and finer aim; and, as he now looked the hard necessities of his position in the face, as he remembered the approval bestowed on the Cromer sea-piece, and as he saw that he must grasp at wider popularity, or sink at once into penury and failure, his mind opened at once to a knowledge of its resources, and to a discovery of all that it had hitherto left unstudied and unachieved on the English coast. That which, under happier circumstances, might have been a gradual process, became, under the pressing influence of necessity, a sudden operation — a thorough conviction that inexhaustible Nature presented, in the scenery and population of the shores of England, a fund of untried and original material for the capacities of Art. Thus has it ever been with genius. Thus, as the child of chance and the creation of sudden accident, does that mysterious gift vindicate its unearthly origin. The inferior faculties and accomplishments of the mind are under human control, are linked visibly to the chariot of journeying Time; but, genius owns no mastery, bows to no application, lives for no season. In one unregarded moment it springs into being, on the mute, obedient soil of the human mind! To the veriest trifles, the merest chances, is the world indebted for the most eloquent appeals of mortal intellect that have been addressed to it. A boyish frolic, or a momentary want, a heartless insult, or a careless jest, is the Prometheus that steals from its native heaven this hidden fire, this creating spirit that kindles in the poet’s verses, and glows in the painter’s forms.

Whatever intellectual rank Mr. Collins’s sea-pieces may be considered to hold, as original and popular works of Art, it is not to be doubted that from them his highest celebrity as a painter first arose; and it is not less certain, that the immediate awakening of his mind to the conviction of the real extent of its capacities, and the discovery of the direction which those capacities for the future should take, was coeval with the sudden responsibilities forced upon him by his embarrassments at this period. Once conceived, his purpose was immediately settled. He determined to quit London and London friends; to proceed to Hastings; and there to make, on new principles, a series of studies on the coast, which should enable him to exhibit such thoroughly original works as would obtain for him an honourable celebrity, relieve his family and himself from the difficulties which oppressed them, and procure him the satisfaction of having restored the prosperity of his household, by the honest exertions of his own genius.

But so serious had the pecuniary pressure of his position now become, that he looked in vain for even the inconsiderable means necessary to accomplish this saving progress towards prosperity and fame. To procure any immediate assistance by his professional exertions in London was impossible, and to leave his mother and brother to struggle with their difficulties (the instant settlement of some of which had now become imperative), and depart for Hastings under all obstacles, was equally impracticable. At length, emboldened by this positive absence of pecuniary resources, he resolved, though at the risk of losing a valuable patron and generous friend, to state his case, and apply for an advance of money (on the strength, I believe, of a picture he was commissioned to paint for him) to Sir Thomas Heathcote.

The name of this good and generous man will be found in Mr. Collins’s Diary for 1812, coupled with an offer of advancing a sum of money to him, during the time of trouble and confusion consequent upon his father’s death. On this occasion, therefore, it will be readily imagined that the painter’s application was not made in vain with the kindest expressions of sympathy and interest, Sir Thomas Heathcote responded to it, by the remittance of the sum desired.

The following passages in a letter from Mr. Collins to his liberal patron, account in a manly and candid spirit, for the disorder which was now prevailing in his affairs; and which, it is to be remembered, was produced by no careless extravagance on the part either of his family, or himself.

“To SIR T. F. HEATHCOTE, BART.

“New Cavendish-street, 1816.

“Dear Sir, * A part of the amount I requested of you, was necessary to prevent the seizure of my goods for taxes; and the remainder to pay a note of hand, (which, being overdue, left me at the mercy of a stranger who held it), and to procure a few pounds to enable me to obtain some studies I wished to make at Hastings.

“That you should be surprised ‘at the pecuniary distress of a person of such apparently prudent habits,’ I can readily conceive, for I am pointed out as one who has been extremely fortunate — and as far as popularity may be considered fortunate, I must confess myself peculiarly so; but I am sorely mortified to add, that it is only in report that I am in affluent circumstances; for allow me, sir, to assure you, that in some cases, the whole produce of a twelvemonth’s study and its attendant expenses, has been rewarded by about a hundred guineas. The impossibility of living upon this sum, with the absolute determination I had set out with, to neglect no circumstance that could in any way tend to my improvement in Art, has produced difficulties not frequently paralleled.

“From these difficulties I had the fairest prospect of being relieved by the apparent increase of the importance of Art, and consequently its greater encouragement; but the unpropitious state of the times has produced a sensation, calculated to damp the hopes of those whose existence depends upon, what are termed, superfluities. Should I have power to struggle until these temporary evils are removed, I trust that, with industry and economy, I shall be enabled to devote my future years, undisturbed by pecuniary evils, to a pursuit (in that case) replete with happiness.

“In pursuance of our plan of economy, my mother purposes letting half the house we now occupy; which will reduce our annual expenditure for our greatest comforts, to the sum of sixty guineas. That I might accede to this proposal, I have, at a trifling expense, converted our attic into a most complete and desirable study.

“The pleasing way in which you desire an explanation of the causes of my difficulties, must plead my excuse for a letter necessarily egotistic. But, the interest you take in my success has produced an inclination to convince you that I really feel your kind condescension.

“I remain, dear Sir, “Your obliged and obedient servant,

“WILLIAM COLLINS.”

With his departure for Hastings, which took place immediately, the first epoch in my father’s life as a painter closes naturally with the first preparation for a change in his style. I have endeavoured, up to this portion of the narrative, to exhibit what may be correctly termed, looking to his after efforts — his early progress in the Art — to trace the pictorial faculty, as it originated in his mind, from self-bias, instruction and example — to follow it in its gradual development, during and after his academical studies — to display it, as fortified by steady industry, as dignified by regular improvement and honourable ambition, and as displaying itself in productions, drawn from sources of interest, eloquent in their simple homeliness to all. Arrived now at another period, another division begins in the Biography, as in the life that it commemorates — a division which is to describe the success of higher efforts, undertaken not only at the promptings of the noble selfishness of ambition, not only with the intention of attaining purer originality of pictorial design and stronger distinctiveness of pictorial illustration, but also for the sake of relieving the anxiety and meriting the gratitude of others, and of widening the influences of genius, to fit them the better, in the first instance, for the protection of home.