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BROTHERS IN ART
STUDIES IN
WILLIAM HOLMAN-HUNT, O.M., D.C.L.
AND
JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, Bart., D.C.L., P.R.A.
BROTHERS IN ART
STUDIES IN
WILLIAM HOLMAN-HUNT, O.M., D.C.L
AND
JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, Bart., D.C.L.. P.RA.
WITH VERSE INTERPRETATIONS
ILLUSTRATED WITH
TWENTY-ONE REPRODUCTIONS
IN PHOTOGRAVURE
London THE EPWORTH PRESS
J. ALFRED SHARP
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THE
HEFS IN ART
STUJES IN
.M HOLMA'-IIUNT, O.M., D.C.L
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,RETT MILKIS, Bart., D.C.L., P.R.A.
I
UTH VERSE INIKI'RETATIONS
H. W. SHREWSBURY
AUTOR OF
"Visions of .>i Artist," etc.
ILL' WITH
TWENTY-; ! RODUCTIONS
IN PHOjGRAVURE
i
THE EPWCRTH PRESS
J. ALFRD SHARP
ERRATA.
Page io. — ' Christ in the House of His Parents ' is reproduced by permission of Messrs. W. A. Mansell & Co. from their photograph of an engraving.
Page 68. — For Shotover read Thames Ditton.
Page hi. — For Maiden read Kingston.
Page 154. — 'Christ in the House of His Parents,' lent by the owner, Mrs. Beer, is at present exhibited at the National Gallery of British Art, and not in the 15irniingham Art Gallerv.
BROTHERS IN ART
STUDIES IN
WILLIAM HOLMAN-HUNT, O.M., D.C.L
AND
JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, Bart., D.C.L., RR.A.
WITH VERSE INTERPRETATIONS
BY
H. W. SHREWSBURY
author of " Visions of an Artist," etc.
ILLUSTRATED WITH
TWENTY-ONE REPRODUCTIONS
IN PHOTOGRAVURE
TLon6on THE EPWORTH PRESS
J. ALFRED SHARP
;\
First Edition, 1920
JUL 1 7 1967
JOHN LEWIS PATON, ESQ., M.A.,
high master of the Manchester Grammar School,
this book is dedicated as a tribute
of esteem from one of many parents
who owe to him an immense debt
of gratitude
PREFACE
Originality,' an epigrammatic author has said, ' is the art of judicious selection.' To that extent this book is original. It is the story of two artists whose friend- ship began in boyhood and lasted through hfe. Their united labours, in face of the utmost opposition and discouragement, resulted in a new departure in the history of British Art, and profoundly influenced a few contemporary workers and, in ever-growing numbers, the artists of subsequent generations. The world recognizes to-day as masterpieces paintings that, when first exhibited, were assailed with abuse and ridicule. The story of William Holman-Hunt and John Everett Millais is told with great wealth of detail in Holman- Hunt's most fascinating volumes, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and in the Life and Letters of Sir fohn Everett Millais by his son, J. G. Millais. Other books, pamphlets, and Press articles yield further information. A second edition of Pre-Raphaelitism, edited by Mrs. Hohnan-Hunt and published by Messrs. Chapman & Hall in 1913, contains much additional matter of the greatest interest, and is enriched by por- traits of the many celebrated men and women with whom the artist came into touch. These noble volumes should find a place in the library of every lover of the art and literature of the nineteenth century. To these sources I refer those who desire to master the full story
7
8 PREFACE
of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, a subject of absorb- ing interest. But since there are many who have no idea, or distorted ideas, of the story, and little leisure or opportunity for studying it, my aim is to interweave the life-history of the two artists so closely associated in life-long comradeship, to trace the evolution of some of their most famous paintings, and grouping in pairs pictures which present some affinity or contrast of thought, to interweave the life-work, not less than the life-story, of these brothers in art.
I am indebted to Mrs. Hohnan-Hunt for her sympathetic help, and to the owners of copyrights for their permission, acknowledged opposite the hst of illustrations, to re- produce the pictures in this volume.
The poem written for each picture is intended to give in brief compass the key-note to its interpretation.
H. W. Shrewsbury.
September lo, 1920.
CONTENTS
CHAP. I.
II. III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII. VIII.
IX. X.
XI.
BROTHERS IN ART : THE LIFE-STORY OF W. HOL- MAN-HUNT, O.M., D.C.L., AND SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BART., D.C.L., P.R.A.
DEATH VERSUS DISHONOUR .... ' Claudio and Isabella.' ' The Huguenot.'
LOVE'S HAZARDS
' The Two Gentlemen of Verona.' ' Ophelia.'
HEEDLESS YOUTH AND ALERT OLD AGE . ' The Hireling Shepherd.' ' The North- West Passage.'
PERIL AND RESCUE
' Strayed Sheep.' ' The Knight-Errant.'
PERSUASION VERSUS COERCION .
' The Light of the World.' ' St. Bartholomew's Day.
VICTIMS
' The Scapegoat.' ' The Blind Girl.'
THE BOYHOOD OF JESUS ....
' The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple.' ' Christ in the House of His Parents.'
FOREBODINGS
' The Shadow of Death.' ' The Vale of Rest.'
THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS .... ' The Triumph of the Innocents.' ' The Martyr of the Solway Firth.'
THE BEYOND 187
' Sorrow.' ' Speak, speak ! '
15 61
73
87
99
127
143
157
171
Copyrights exist in the pictures {see opposite) or in photographs of them. Permission to publish the reproductions in this volume is hereby grate- fully acknowledged as follows :
To Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons and the Corporation of Man- chester for ' The Shadow of Death ' and ' The Hireling Shepherd,' by Holman-Hunt :
To the National Gallery and the Corporation of Liverpool for ' The Triumph of the Innocents,' by Holman-Hunt ;
To the Corporation of Liverpool for ' The Martyr of the Solway Firth,' by Millais ;
To the Art Gallery Committee of the Corporation of Birmingham
for ' The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple ' and ' The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' by Holman-Hunt, and ' The Blind Girl,' by Millais ;
To Mrs. Craik for ' Strayed Sheep ' and ' Sorrow,' by Holman- Hunt ;
To Messrs. W. A. Mansell & Co. for ' Claudio and Isabella,' ' The Light of the World,' and ' The Scapegoat,' by Holman-Hunt ; and for the Uffizi Gallery portrait of Sir J. E. Millais, and Millais' s 'Huguenot,' ' The North-West Passage,' ' The Knight-Errant,' ' St. Bartholomew's Day ' and ' Speak, speak I ' ;
To Mr. Frederick Hollyer for his portrait of Holman-Hunt, and for ' Ophelia ' and ' The Vale of Rest,' by Millais
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. PORTRAITS OF THE ARTISTS ....
2. ' CLAUDIO AND ISABELLA ' (Holman-Hunt)
3. ' THE HUGUENOT ' (Millais) ....
4. ' THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA ' (Holman
Hunt) .........
5. ' OPHELIA ' (Millais)
6. ' THE HIRELING SHEPHERD ' (Holman-Hunt) .
7. ' THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE ' (Millais) .
8. ' STRAYED SHEEP ' (Holman-Hunt)
9. ' THE KNIGHT-ERRANT ' (Millais)
10. * THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD ' (Holman-Hunt) .
11. 'MERCY: ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY' (Millais)
12. ' THE SCAPEGOAT ' (Holman-Hunt)
13. ' THE BLIND GIRL ' (Millais) ....
14. ' THE FINDING OF THE SAVIOUR IN THE TEMPLE
(Holman-Hunt) .......
15. ' CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF HIS PARENTS
(Millais) ........
16. ' THE SHADOW OF DEATH ' (Holman-Hunt)
17. ' THE VALE OF REST ' (Millais) ....
18. ' THE TRIUMPH OF THE INNOCENTS ' (Holman
Hunt) ........
19. ' THE MARTYR OF THE SOLWAY FIRTH ' (Millais)
20. • SORROW ' (Holman-Hunt)
21. ' SPEAK, SPEAK ! ' (Millais) ....
page
13
59 65
71 77
85 91
97 103
109
119
125 135
141
149 155 163
169
177 185 I9X
WILLIAM HOLMAN-HUNT, O.M., D.C.L. SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, D.C.L., P.R.A.
Brothers in art, in more than art close brothers, Kin souls, inspired by one consuming passion To break the tyrant bonds of age-long fashion,
The reign of rigid rule that, ruthless, smothers All naturalness and simple sense of beauty Beneath dogmatic formulae of duty.
How the world poured, on that now distant morning. When your work challenged at its first unveiling Art's cherished canons — truculently railing —
How the world poured on you its wrath and scorning ! And strove, but vainly strove, to have you branded As derelicts on false ideals stranded.
But ye toiled on,, despising mere convention.
Castor and Pollux of your firmament.
In loving labour each to each anent. Toiled on, to win at first but grudging mention,
And then to shine, your message understood.
Twin stars of an immortal brotherhood.
13
CHAPTER I
BROTHERS IN ART:
The Life-Story of W. Holman-Hunt and Sir John Everett Millais
Artists of acknowledged powers, with pictures ex- hibited in the Royal Academy when their painters were still boys only ; high ideals of art at that early age, ideals contrary to the accepted canons of the day and bitterly opposed ; close comradeship in toil, so close that they even worked upon each other's paintings ; years of uphill struggling to win a victory for their principles, and years of terrible poverty ; undaunted courage and unwavering perseverance; tardy recogni- tion and ultimate triumph over all obstacles, — this sums up in brief one of the most remarkable stories in the history of ancient or modem art.
WiUiam Holman-Hunt was bom on April 2, 1827, at Wood Street, Cheapside. His father was the manager of a warehouse. The family history dated back to an ancestor who fought under Cromwell, passed over at the Restoration to the Continent, served the Protestant cause, and returned with the army of WiUiam HI. The family property had meanwhile been alienated, and the soldier turned trader. William Hunt possessed artistic feehng to a maurked degree. He was ready with
15
l6 BROTHERS IN ART
his pencil, something of a colourist, and he filled scrap- books with sketches and pictures, about which he had many a story to tell. But his business instincts came first. Art might well occupy odd moments as a hobby, but art as a profession he held in abhorrence. He did not fail to notice as a dangerous tendency that even in babyhood his child found in a pencil the toy of toys. Almost from the time of his christening at St. Giles, Cripplegate, the scene of Cromwell's marriage and Milton's burial, he found his chief joy in making pencil markings, and at the age of four his supreme delight was to watch his father colour theatrical prints for him, and he begged and received a gift of paints and a brush. They became liis idols. His first great childish trouble was the loss of this brush. He made another with a bit of chip and a lock of his own hair, and, fondlj^ hoping that the substitute would not be noticed, presented it with a ' Thank you. Father,' and trembled at the frown it occcLsioned and the puzzled exclamation, ' What's this ! ' The episode ended in laughter and embraces, but it strengthened the father's purpose to give the lad a thorough business training and to curb any undue fondness for the brush and paints. The attempt led to a struggle that lasted through boyhood, and ended in the boy's triumph. For from his fifth year, in intervals of play, pencil and paper were always in use to copy prints or record impressions. The removal of the ware- house to Dyers Court, Aldermanbury, at the back of the Guildhall, and the sending of the lad here and there all over the city with the porter, gave him an acquaint- ance with many quaint comers, and provided much material for his imagination to act upon. A great
BROTHERS IN ART 17
prize fell to him in the discovery of a bundle of pencils, a piece of cartridge paper, and a print of Britannia. This he set himself to copy, laying the paper upon the OEik counter in his favourite comer of the warehouse. ' Is this little boy a part of your stock-in-trade ? ' in- quired a Manchester buyer who found him thus employed. The father grimly rephed that such occupation was not conducive to business, but that it had the merit of keeping the boy quiet for hours.
At seven years of age he went with his father to call upon an artist who was painting for him a picture of Heme Bay, The child stared in deUght and wonder at two large canvases, one of which represented the burning of the Houses of Parliament. He begged to be allowed to remain to watch the artist. Through a window upon the stairs he looked on with breathless interest until darkness fell, and in the warehouse he reproduced so far as memory served, and grieving that he had no glory of colour, pencil sketches of the artist's pictures. These indications of the bent of the boy's mind were disconcerting. He was sent early to a board- ing-school. Drawing materials were allowed, but with the strict warning that drawing was for recreation only — proper for that ; but a miserable thing if it went farther. The lad's eagerness only deepened.
At twelve his father put the plain question, ' What do you want to be ? ' The answer was as prompt as it was decided, ' I'm determined to be a painter.' It was received in ominous silence. There seemed to be only one course — to put the lad into a business situation that would allow no spare moments for the indulgence of his leanings towards art. But at a hint of this he
B
i8 BROTHERS IN ART
forestalled his father's purpose and engaged himself as copying-clerk to an estate agent. Most fortunately he found more than the needed leisure in this employ- ment. His employer proved to be an amateur artist. He gave the lad most welcome encouragement, and pleaded with the father to remove his ban. His arguments prevailed. Reluctantly and with grave forebodings the father consented to the young artist's desire to the extent of allowing him to take his own course. The lad was not only a bom artist, he had a passion for music also ; but he abandoned the violin to secure the greater tolerance for his pursuit of art.
The way was now open. The first use Holman-Hunt made of his Uberty was to visit the National Gallery. That was a day of glowing expectations. His first examination of the pictures puzzled him. ' I want to see,' he said to the oiSicial, ' the really grand paintings of the great masters.' The official, not less puzzled, replied, ' Here they are around you,' and pointed to ' Bacchus and Ariadne ' as one of the finest specimens existing of the finest colourist in the world. ' Can't you see its beauty, sir ? ' ' Not much, I must confess,' was the astounding answer. ' It is as brown as my grandmother's painted tea-tray.' In that moment, though as yet the lad knew it not, the first step was taken towards a new departure in British Art.
Alas ! dark clouds again threatened the young artist's budding hopes. His father's fears revived. Liberty to visit the National Gallery was curtailed. Once again a place was sought for him in a strict business house, where all his aspirations would be quenched, and once again the boy's indomitable spirit (he was only
BROTHERS IN ART 19
sixteen) led him to anticipate his father's action by securing for himself an engagement at the London agency of Richard Cobden's Manchester business. Here he painted the panels of the room in which he worked with enlarged pictures in oil from illustrations to Dickens and Shakespeare, and he painted also original designs upon millboard. His odd moments were devoted to books on art, and his Sundays to nature-study. There were no free Saturday afternoons at that period, no Bank hohdays. Once only in four years he had a whole afternoon for himself, and he spent it at the Royal Academy Exhibition.
The young painter's brush released him from the exasperating fetters of business Ufe. He painted the portrait of an old Jewess, an orange-seller, and pinned it up in the office to dry. It was a striking likeness. His master was highly amused, and brought friends in to show it to them. They begged to have it to show to others. The lad consented — only his father must not see it. But his father heard of it. The result was serious remonstrance and a prolonged struggle. Removal to a stricter place was threatened ; harder conditions of work were imposed. The young artist gave notice to leave, and absolutely refused an offer of increased salary. To his father he protested that, though he was justified in controlling a boy of twelve and a half, that right was hardly justified at sixteen and a half ; that if he were kept at business tiU twenty-one his chance of becoming an artist would be greatly lessened ; and, in short, that his mind was made up and he would meet any further opposition by enlisting in the army. His insistence won the day. His father secured for him
20 BROTHERS IN ART
permission to draw in the Sculpture Department of the British Museum, and he secured for himself a room for painting in the City. Commissions promised by enthusiastic admirers of his portrait of the old orange- seller were not given. Others were given, but the work done was not paid for. He made a scanty and precarious living by doing all manner of odd jobs. Three days in the week he spent in drawing at the British Museum and two days at the National Gallery. A farther step in advance was taken when, at his father's request. Sir Richard Westmacott procured his admission to the Academy Schools, and supplied a card of admission to the lectures. Thus in his seventeenth year Holman- Hunt set his foot on the first rung of the ladder that led to ultimate success. But his next experience was discouraging. Twice he sent in drawings for admission as a probationer to the Royal Academy, and each time he failed. The second failure renewed all his father's misgivings. Could not the lad recognize that his time and energy were being wasted ? He pleaded for another six months, and then, if he failed again, he would give in. But, beheving that his work called for greater care, he redoubled his efforts. This was the critical period in his career. He required sympathy and a helping hand. Both were forthcoming. The needed friend was not found in a professor or patron, but in a boy of fifteen, a boy in a black velvet tunic and belt, ^vith shining bright brown hair curling over a white turned-down collar. His name was already familiar. Holman-Hunt had heard of him three years before, and just recently he had seen him receive the Academy Antique Medal. This boy, passing through the British Museum Sculpture
BROTHERS IN ART 21
Gallery, paused a moment to examine Holman-Hunt's work. Later in the same day Holman-Hunt went into the Elgin room to glance at the boy's work. He turned round. ' I say, aren't you the fellow doing that good work in No. XHI room ? You ought to be at the Academy.' A comparison of ages and a talk about methods of work followed. 'Send that drawing in,' said the newly made friend, ' and don't you be down in the mouth.' It was wonderfully cheering ! The rejected candidate's third attempt succeeded, and he gained a student's place at the Academy. Thus began the friendship between William HoLman-Hunt and John Everett MiUais.
The early life of MiUais had run a very different course. He was bom at Southampton on June 8, 1829, His father, John WiUiam Millais, was the descendant of an old Norman family long resident in Jersey. He was himself a capable artist and an excellent musician. He had married a young widow, Mrs. Hodgkinson. It was a case of love at first sight and hfe-long comrade- ship. John Everett v/as the youngest son. When he was four years old the family returned to Jersey. MiUais, Uke Hohnan-Hunt, showed a precocious talent for drawing in babyhood. He would lie for hours on the floor contentedly at work with pencil and paper, covering sheet after sheet with aU sorts of figures. At a very early age he was a keen naturalist, drawing, whilst stiU an infant, birds, butterflies, anything. But, unlike Hohnan-Hunt, he was steadily encouraged in this by his parents. His mother, his best friend, undertook the chief part of his education, especiaUy in history, poetry, and literature, adding to these knowledge of
22 BROTHERS IN ART
costume and armour. As a schoolboy he was a failure. When thrashed he bit his master's hand, and he was sent back to his mother's training. He was amenable to love but not to law, and under the influence of a wise and gracious mother he developed the sunny disposition that characterized him through life.
His natural genius matured rapidly. It was fostered by Phihp Raoul Lempriere, the Seigneur of Rosel Manor. \Mien six years old the family went for two years to Dinan, in Brittany. At this early age the child made, covertly, a sketch of a big drum-major. Two officers surprised him in the act. They took the sketch and showed it in the barracks as the work of a boy of six. In response to bets that it was not, they brought in the boy, and he made there and then a still better sketch of the Colonel smoking a cigar. On return- ing to Jersey he received instruction from the best drawing-master in the island. He soon had to confess that he could teach liim nothing more, and recom- mended his father to take him to London. The advice was acted upon, and the boy was introduced to Sir Martin Archer-Shee, President of the Royal Academy. To G. F. Watts's father he had given as his verdict, ' I can see no reason wh}' your son should take up thp pro- fession of art.' To Millais's father he said, ' Better make him a chimney-sweep than an artist.' But when the boy's drawings were shown, especially when there and then he sketched for the President the fight of Hector with Achilles, the great Academician was amazed, and reversed his judgement. It now became a plain duty to fit the boy for his manifest vocation. Permission was secured for him to sketch in the British Museum.
BROTHERS IN ART 23
In the winter of 1838, when still only nine years of age, he entered the preparatory school, at Bloomsbury, of Henry Sass, a noted portrait-painter. Here he nearly came to an untimely end. A big bully, jealous of the boy's success, hung him, head downward, out of a window, his feet tied to the iron window-guard. Happily, he was seen and rescued in time. The bully failed utterly as an artist. In later years, as a professional model, he posed frequently for Millais. Eventually the model took to drink, and came to a bad end.
At nine and a half Millais won his first medal — the silver medal of the Society of Arts — for a large draw- ing of the Battle of Bannockbum. H.R.H. the Duke of Sussex distributed the prizes. The Secretary called for ' Mr. John Everett MiUais.' The boy of nine and a half, and small for his age, dressed in white plaid tunic, black belt and buckle, short white friUed trousers, white socks, patent leather shoes, white frilled collar, and bright necktie, his head covered with golden curls, came forward. The Duke glanced over the boy's head expectantly awaiting the coming of the recipient ; and it had to be explained to hun that ' Mr. John Everett Millais ' was standing just below, patiently waiting for his medal. We were ' mad on art,' said his brother Wilham. ' We knew every picture in the National Gallery by heart.' The brothers made for themselves a toy National Gallery out of a large deal box, repro- ducing the pictures on pieces of paper, in size from a visiting-card to an envelope.
At ten MiUais was admitted as a student to the Royal Academy, the youngest student that had ever entered. In the next six years he carried off every possible honour,
24 BROTHERS IN ART
including the silver medal for drawing from the antique, at the presentation of which Holman-Hunt saw him for the first time, and at seventeen the gold medal for an oil painting of 'The Benjamites Seizing their Brides.' The acquaintance struck up between the two boy- painters rapidly deepened into a firm friendship. In experience, physique, temperament, each was com- plementary to the other. Holman-Hunt had fought from earliest years against incessant discouragement. He was strong and hardy, but by natural disposition introspective. Millais was radiantly optimistic, for, though frail in body, from his earliest years he had known nothing but lo\dng encouragement. These very differences strengthened the bonds of comradeship, and their friendship became still closer when they found that in one thing — their ideals of art — they held views in common. For these boys were thinkers. Akeady they were experiencing the same dissatisfaction with the art of the day, the outcome of centuries of con- ventionalism, and were feeling their way to modes of painting more in harmony with the teaching of nature. Careful study of sculptures and paintings by many masters had led Holman-Hunt to ponder deeply on the history and philosophy of art. He was asking himself whether he could accept the verdict of the world about the old masters, and what position the British School held, a School ' which had been in its course so pre- eminently endowed with genius in individuals, but which had proved itself unable to hand on its teaching, and from the first had been impatient of submitting to that course of strict and childlike training which in earlier history had always preceded the greatest art '
BROTHERS IN ART 25
A weighty conclusion this for a boy of seventeen to arrive at ! From visitors to the British Museum he had gained much useful information and many secrets of the craft, but he had not found yet the ' perfect guide.' He desired ' the power of undying appeal to the hearts of hving men,' and he foimd that the favourite art of the day * left the inner self untouched.' There were notable painters — Landseer, Etty, Leslie, Colhns, Turner, Harvey, Herbert. Their work compelled admiration for many excellent features, yet, alas ! as the perfect guide there was always the inevitable ' but.'
Early in their intimacy Millais invited his friend to his home at 83 Gower Street. It was a strangely touch- ing sight he looked upon in the studio — the mother sitting there with her work-basket, the father with his violin, and both deeply interested in their son's work. To the lad who had only met with discouragement at home this seemed enviable indeed, and he came again and again to bask in the warmth of this gracious home- circle. But in his own family opposition was break- ing down. For his sake his father moved to a house in Holbom, a large house in the upper part of which a room was available for a studio. His attitude had become more sympathetic, but financial difficulties crippled his power to help.
Hohnan-Hunt now painted portraits only when com- missioned. To produce pictures seemed hopeless. The cost of materials, models, and frames was too great for his slender resources. His one important picture, a subject from Woodstock, remained unsold. He was able at this time to return Millais's kindness by rescuing him from a bully at the Academy Schools. Millais
26 BROTHERS IN ART
himself took a subtler revenge later by painting the bully as the churlish brother kicking the dog in his picture ' Lorenzo and Isabella.' Increasing intimacy led Holman-Hunt to confide the great questions that had occupied his thought to Millais. He found, if not ready acquiescence, at least an open mind and a readi- ness to examine dogmas generally accepted and apparently beyond criticism.
A visit to Ewell, where an uncle and aunt of Holman- Hunt occupied the Rectory Farm, led to two pleasant results. Millais frequently visited Captain Lempriere, who lived in the neighbourhood. The friends met in this charming Surrey village and exchanged views on many subjects, and the rector of the village commissioned Holman-Hunt to make a painting of the old church. This commission and the purchase of his Woodstock picture for £20 he felt he could apply to painting some- thing more in accord with his desire. His previous subjects had been determined by consideration for the outlay upon models and accessories and the question of mere ' saleabihty.' Wliilst deciding upon a subject, a fellow student procured for him from Cardinal Wise- man the loan for twenty-four hours only of Ruskin's Modern Painters. He sat up all night to read it. It seemed to have been written expressly for him, and passages in the book touched him deeply. At the same time he came upon another treasure. From a box of books on a second-hand bookstall he picked out a battered Keats, a fourpenny worth of pure joy. This he shared with Millais, whose enthusiasm kmdled more slowly.
The coming of Millais to his friend's studio swept away
BROTHERS IN ART 27
any lingering reserve, and thenceforth the friends could speak on the subjects they had most at heart with per- fect frankness. They now agreed to take subjects from Keats for their next paintings, Holman-Hunt choosing ' The Eve of St. Agnes ' (which Millais also took up some years later) and ' The Pot of Basil,' and his friend ' Lorenzo and Isabella.' A long talk in Millais's studio arising out of Holman-Hunt 's difficulty as to the treatment of the figure of Christ in a contemplated picture of ' Christ and the two Maries ' (a picture com- menced then, at seventeen, and completed when the painter had turned seventy) led to the enunciation of ideas forming in his mind which he declared to be ' nothing less than irreverent, heretical, and revolu- tionary,' and he explained why, winding up by declar- ing Millais equally revolutionary (he was painting then 'Cymon and Iphigenia '). ' You've made living persons, not tinted images.' ' I know,' was the retort, ' but the more attentively I look at Nature the more I detect in it unexpected delights. It's so infinitely better than anything I could compose that I can't help following it, whatever the consequences may be.'
Here already was Pre-Raphaelitism ! Old conven- tions— faces and limbs aU of one pattern ; an S-shaped design for the grouping of the figures in a picture ; com- position of the several parts in pyramidal form ; the highest light upon the principal figure, and one comer left in shadow — all swept aside.
The Academy' Exhibition was drawing near. Holman- Hunt's days were given to portrait-painting to earn a living He worked far into and often all through the night to finish his picture ' The Eve of St. Agnes.'
28 BROTHERS IN ART
In the closing days he took it to MiUais's studio, where Millais was working upon his ' Cymon and Iphigenia.' The friends toiled hard through the night hours, and for the rest of change Holman-Hunt painted draperies for Millais, whilst Millais worked upon the figures in Holman-Hunt's picture. At the Academy Exhibition of 1847, ' Cymon and Iphigenia,' to the chagrin of the two friends, was rejected, and ' The Eve of St. Agnes,' though accepted, given an indifferent place. Dante Gabriel Rossetti praised the picture as the best in the Exhibition. No one had painted any subject from Keats before. Up to now Rossetti and Holman-Hunt had only been on ' nodding terms.' Their common enthusiasm for Keats brought them into closer relation- ship. Rossetti visited Holman-Hunt's studio, and weary of his own master, Ford Madox Brown, who kept him for ever ' painting glass bottles,' begged to be taken as a pupil. This, not without misgivings, for it involved much inconvenience, was agreed to, and Rossetti joined Holman-Hunt at his studio as painting-pupil and com- panion in August, 1S48.
The sale of ' The Eve of St. Agnes ' for ^^70 provided the young painter, twenty only, with funds to make a serious start in life, and he took up next his picture 'Rienzi.' His purpose was to paint an out-of-doors picture in full sunshine direct on to the canvas, and to let every detail be seen. Upon this new experiment in painting Holman-Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti agreed. Express- ing to Academy students their judgement upon Raphael's cartoons, they did full justice to their claim to honour, but they condemned ' The Transfiguration ' for ' its grandiose disregard of the simplicity of truth, the pompous
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posturing of the Apostles, and the unspiritual attitudiniz- ing of the Saviour.' They regarded these features as a step towards the decadence of Itahan art. ' Then,' exclaimed the students, ' you are Pre-RaphaeUtes.' This designation was accepted. In Holman-Hunt's studio the question of the extension of their numbers was discussed. It was agreed to add Woolner, the sculptor, WiUiam Rossetti, a writer rather than an artist, James Collinson, a genre painter, and F. G. Stephens, who later forsook painting for art criticism. These, with Holman-Hunt, Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, formed a band of seven. They had already been dubbed Pre-RaphaeHtes, Gabriel suggested the addition of the word ' Brotherhood,' and thus the little company became the ' Pre-Raphaehte Brotherhood,' for which the mystic letters P.R.B. stood, an abbreviation that a little later aroused first the utmost curiosity, and then a storm of fury. Holman-Hunt became the prior of the brotherhood and WiUiam Rossetti its scribe.
At that same meeting MiUais produced a book of engravings of frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Few of those present had seen before the complete set. ' The innocent spirit,' says Holman-Himt, ' which had directed the intention of the painter was traced point after point with the determination that a kindred sim- plicity should regulate our own ambition, and we insisted that the naive traits of frank expression and unaffected grace v/ere what had made Itahan art so essentially vigorous and progressive, until the showy followers of Michael Angelo had grafted their Dead Sea fruit on to the vital tree just when it was bearing its choicest autumnal ripeness for the reawakened world.' Turning
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from print to print, the little group of seven in Holman-Hunt's studio noted carefully that the Campo Santo designs were ' remarkable for incident derived from the attentive observation of inexhaustible Nature.'
Those few lines give clearly and briefly the pith of Pre-RaphaeUtism. It casts no slur upon the great master. It does not condemn him and those who came after him merely to exalt those who went before. Holman-Hunt was careful in explaining that Pre- Raphaelitism, which he did profess, was a very different thing from Pre-Raphaelism which he did not profess, and that he regarded Raphael in his prime as an artist ' of most independent and daring course as to con\'en- tions.' There was no failure in his career, but the prodigahty of his productions and the training of many assistants compelled him to lay down rules and manners of work. His followers accentuated his poses into postures. They caricatured the turns of his heads and the lines of his limbs, and their servile travesty of this prince of painters is RaphaeUtism ; it is Raphaehsm run mad. These traditions, passed on through the Bolognese Academy, and introduced into the founda- tion of aU later schools, became lethal. They stifled the breath of design. ' The name Pre-Raphaelite accordingly excludes the influence of such corrupters of perfection, even though Raphael, by reason of some of his works, be on the list, while it accepts that of his more sincere forerunners.'
The Brotherhood met monthly at each other's studios. A journal, under the name of The Germ, was started, but it only ran to four issues. It was agreed that the letters P.R.B. should be put by the members of the
BROTHERS IN ART 31
Brotherhood upon their pictures, but the meaning was to be kept strictly secret. Unhappily Dante Rossetti let the secret out ; and a rancorous article appeared in the Press. The intense curiosity excited when the pictures of Holman-Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti were seen bearing the mystic letters turned to raging fury when their significance was revealed. Here was an attack upon the sacred traditions of the Academy, an audacious affront put by boys upon grey-bearded artists ! Rossetti withdrew when the storm broke, the other members of the Brotherhood melted away, but for years Holman-Himt and Millais suffered cruelly from the prejudice and hostihty excited against them, and the more so that they had no quarrel with the Academy, and no desire except to promote the highest principles in art. Stephens, one of the seven, by a series of bitter articles which did him no harm, involved the two painters in such obloquy that for a time it almost doomed their work, brought them to the verge of despair, and quite destroyed their hope of opening up a new school of British art. The Brotherhood, as a tangible society, came to nothing, but the principles which guided the two artists, and guided them to the end, won recognition Httle by httle. At the close of their hfe their triumph was complete, and the artists who had been influenced by their work were to be num- bered by scores. If they had not created a new school of artists, they had set their stamp upon British art at large.
The next few years were full of continuous hard work and of many privations. For economy's sake Holman- Hunt gave up meat. He was ready to go to great
32 BROTHERS IN ART
lengths in self-denial, but upon one thing he would not economize — his painting materials. They must be the very best procurable, and at any time he would sacrifice a dinner for pigments. The Academy Exhibition of 1849 was memorable. The two artists both exhibited. Holman-Hunt's ' Rienzi ' was hung as a pendant to Millais's ' Lorenzo and Isabella.' Gabriel Rossetti's ' Girlhood of the Virgin Mary ' should have been there also, but to gain a week he sent it to the Hyde Park GaUery. This not only gave a week longer for com- pleting the picture, but, since this Gallery opened before the Academy, his picture was before the public a week earlier. The three pictures were each marked with the wonder-provoking monogram P.R.B. Rossetti's picture sold for eighty guineas, Millais's for one himdred and fifty. Holman-Hunt's was left on his hands. This was disappointing, for he had urgent need of money to continue his work. His landlord gave him notice to quit and seized his belongings. He was reduced to sore straits, but through the influence of Augustus W. Egg a purchaser was found for ' Rienzi,' and the hundred guineas given reUeved the immediate pressure. The Athenaeum praised Rossetti and somewhat severely handled the other two artists. On the whole, criticism was mildly unfavourable. But the storm had not yet broken.
The autumn of 1849 Holman-Hunt spent with Rossetti in France and Belgium, a hoHday of varied and delight- ful experiences. Returning, he took a studio in Chelsea. Millais came back from a visit to Oxford and completed a picture suggested by a sermon heard there, ' Christ Wounded in the House of His Friends.' Holman-Hunt
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saw great possibilities in it. He himself was intent upon his next Academy picture, ' Christians Escaping from Persecuting Druids.' Whilst these were in hand the storm burst. A newspaper paragraph revealed the secret of the mystic letters P.R.B., and the exasperation caused in art circles was intense. At the ensuing ex- hibitions no language was too strong for denunciation of the work of these upstart painters. Rossetti, the culprit who let the secret out, found praise turned to condemnation. His ' Annunciation/ shown at Port- land Place Gallery, received such fierce criticism that he never exhibited in pubhc again. At the Academy Holman-Hunt and Millais fared still worse. Millais's picture was contemptuously called ' The Carpenter's Shop.' The Athenaeum damned Holman-Hunt's with the very faintest praise, and saw in Millais's 'an eccentricity both lamentable and revolting.' The entire Press, with the exception of the Spectator, denounced. Adjectives such as 'iniquitous,' 'infamous,' 'blas- phemous,' were freely used. Charles Dickens, through a leading article in Household Words, poured ridicule too mahcious to quote upon Millais's work. Holman- Hunt stole quietly amongst the crowds at the Academy Exhibition, hoping to hear some favourable judgement, but pubhc opinion ran the same way. With a glance at the pictures, and a contemptuous 'One of those pre- posterous Pre-Raphaehte works,' the pubhc swept by. Rossetti's picture, ' The Annunciation,' did not seU, though he lowered the price from ;^5o to £^0. (In 1886 the same picture was purchased for the National GaUery for £800.) Holman-Hunt was not more fortunate, but he received a commission to copy for £15 another
c
34 BROTHERS IN ART
artist's picture. Millais was in the same plight, to his great chagrin, for he also was badly in need of money, but shortly after, though his picture was the most abused of the three, he received an offer of £300 for it.
Holman-Hunt's ^^15 was soon exhausted, and he was then absolutely penniless, without even a coin to buy a stamp. In utter distress that day, throwing himself back in his chair and thrusting his hands between the seat and the back, he touched something hard and drew forth a half-cro\^^l. It was treasure indeed ! After many disheartening experiences he was able by the kindness of Augustus W. Egg to commence ' Claudio and Isabella,' and this opened the way for further work It is needless to detail the reception given to the artists' work year by year. (From now onward the expression ' the artists ' signifies Holman-Hunt and Millais.) It is the same story of reiterated vituperation The public in the first instance perceived the greatness of their achievements and flocked to the galleries to admire their work. Later, much later, Academicians and art critics did them tardy justice. Ruskin helped to turn the tide by his vigorous letters to The Times. He ex- pressed his behef that the artists would, ' as they gamed experience, lay in our England the foundations of a school of art nobler than the world has seen for three hundred years.' This was indeed a ray of sunshine, and though the only one, coming from such a source its effect was great. Macaulay and Charles Kingsley, in addition to Dickens, were bitterly sarcastic, and Job's comforters were not wanting to express sym- pathy with so bold an experiment — and failure. There were many dark days to be lived through. Successive
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pictures at the Academy were flouted ; sitters for portraits fell away ; orders for book illustrations were revoked ; students, with few exceptions, took the same tone ; anon5mious abuse poured in by post. Meanwhile debt was increasing daily, for artists' expenses in studios, models, and materials are heavy, and their work was threatened with stoppage.
But the artists held on with indomitable pluck. ' We were challenging the whole profession with a daring innovation, and it had aroused an alliance of half the art world against our cause. We were intending to stand or fall by the determination to cut away all con- ventions not endorsed by further appeal to unsophisticated Nature.'
A joint letter of thanks from the artists to Ruskin, written from Millais's home in Gower Street, brought Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin there, and they carried off the young men to spend a week at their house in Camber- well. The artists and Ruskin did not by any means agree in all their views, but they became none the less excellent friends. During this week an amusing incident happened. A notable phrenologist in the Strand was attracting much attention. He had declared Tenny- son to possess powers that should make him the greatest poet of the age. Ruskin suspected that Tennyson had unconsciously revealed himself, and begged Millais to go, offering to pay the fee. Somewhat reluctantly Millais consented. The phrenologist's room was abundantly adorned with busts and portraits of celebrities, to which he called his sitter's attention. Millais mani- fested sublime ignorance. Who might this bloke be, and that old Johnny? After examination the phrenologist
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congratulated him upon his excellent practical qualities, but cautioned him that he would fail in poetry, literature, painting, sculpture, or architecture, that he had no organ of form, none of colour, and that he was deficient in ideality. Refusing his name and address, Millais called the next day for the paper setting forth his characteristics. This pocketed, he acceded to the phrenologist's desire that he would inscribe the book of cUents. Accordingly he wrote ' John Everett Millais, 83 Gower Street.' ' What ! ' said the phrenologist, ' son of the great artist ? ' No. ' Brother ? ' No, the painter himself. The return of the paper was demanded, that this extraordinary exception to the rules of ' our art ' might just be noted upon it. ' I wouldn't part with it for a thousand pounds,' said Millais, and walked out.
Lack of money and the consequent impossibihty of continuing his career as an artist now led Holman-Hunt to contemplate seriously emigration and a fresh start in life as a farmer. Millais would not hear of it. His own circumstances had become easier. He pressed a loan upon his friend. His parents also urged it. Accept- ance tided over an acute crisis. A year later the loan was repaid, and from this time Holman-Hunt forged steadily ahead, though not without many anxieties, to richly deserved success.
In 185 1 the artists found admirable spots two miles apart for backgrounds to pictures they were engaged upon, ' The HireUng Shepherd ' and ' OpheUa,' on the banks of a stream at Cuddington, near Ewell, in Surrey. They lodged first in Surbiton and afterwards at Wor- cester Park Farm. It was an idyllic period, the
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morning and evening walks to and from the river-side ; the discussion of numberless interesting topics ; the progress of each other's work, daily watched ; occasional visits to or from friends ; the open-air hfe amidst the beauty of Surrey scenery, and the general sense of freedom. Charles CoUins was with them, and William Rossetti and Madox Brown visited them. Also at this time came the turning of the tide that led on to fortune, for after a period of anxious suspense there arrived one day, in welcome contrast to the almost daily receipt of newspapers and anonymous letters fiUed with abuse, the glad tidings that Hohnan-Hunt's ' Two Gentlemen of Verona ' had been awarded the £50 prize for the best picture sent to the Liverpool Exhibition.
At this time also they discovered that they had arrived independently at the same method of painting, the method that gave such brilliance to their work — a first coat of white paint mixed with a Httle amber or copal varnish laid on the canvas ; upon the hard surface thus obtained the outhne of the part of the picture under treatment sketched ; on the morning of painting a coat of fresh white paint, from which all superfluous oil had been removed, and to which a drop or two of varnish were added ; this spread thinly tiU the sketched-in out- lines showed through, and the colours then laid upon the wet ground.
Fresh pictures also were commenced during this retreat. A passage of Scripture suggested to Holman- Hunt the ' Light of the World,' and after days given to 'The Hireling Shepherd' he spent his nights during moonlight to painting the background, working in the open from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., and that during winter
38 BROTHERS IN ART
months when the ground was frozen hard. To Millais a bit of old, Hchen-covered brick wall became the start- ing-point of a picture which developed into ' The Huguenot.'
But let it not be supposed that the work of the artists, though their whole soul was in their work, was accom- plished without strenuous effort and occasional moods of most terrible depression. ' Agonize,' said oiu: Lord to His disciples, ' to enter in by the narrow door.' These men agonized. James Collins, during a moonlight walk from Kingston Station to Worcester Park Farm, con- fided to Holman-Hunt his utter discouragement. The reply he drew forth from the man so seemingly above such feelings must have surprised him. ' I have many times in my studio come to such a pass of humiliation that I have felt that there was not one thing I had thought I could do thoroughly in which I was not altogether incapable.' He added, ' Let us do battle, but do not let the fighting be that of a fatalist who thinks heaven is against him.' And Millais, the sunny-tempered, optimistic Millais, once said in reply to a remark by Sir Noel Paton that he surely could never feel dissatis- faction, ' Ah, my dear friend, that is all you know ! Why, there are times when I am so crushed and humiliated by my sense of incapacity, that I Hterally skulk about the house, ashamed to be seen by my own servants.'
' The Hireling Shepherd,' ' Ophelia,' and ' The Huguenot ' appeared in the 1852 Academy Exhibition. Critics still sneered, but the attention of the public was arrested, and ' The Huguenot ' produced a sensation. In the summer Holman-Hunt went to Hastings to paint his ' Strayed Sheep ' on the cliffs at Fairlight. Edward
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Lear, author and artist, went with him. They took rooms at Clivedale Farm. Millais, who had gone to Hayes, in Kent, for a background to his ' Proscribed Royalist,' came for a week-end, and was so charmed with the place that he returned two years later to paint there his ' L'Enfant du Regiment ' and ' The Bhnd Girl.' On a morning when sea-mists stopped work Holman-Hunt spread his rug and settled down to read. A visitor, with easel and portfoho, passing by forced an unwelcome conversation. He boasted his acquaint- ance with celebrated artists. Hunt and Millais? Oh, yes, he knew them quite well ; they were charlatans who, far from painting from Nature, did all their work in their studios, painted trees in their landscapes from a single leaf or piece of bark, and fields from a single blade of grass. But did he know them personally ? Oh, yes, personally, and they were thorough charlatans ; and he went on his way blissfully ignorant that to one of these ' charlatans ' he had lied without stint.
A similar experience befell Millais years later. The lady next to him at a dinner-party, the talk turning on the year's pictures, said, ' Isn't Millais too dreadful this year ? ' Then, seeing the look of horror on the face of the hostess, ' Oh, do tell me what I've done ! I must have done or said something terrible.' Millais laughed. ' Well, you really have, you know,' and he pointed to himself.
At the George Inn, Hayes, whilst Millais was there, the sign-post blew down. He and his brother William, in their pity for the landlord's distress, painted another, but their very practical sympathy called forth little gratitude, for ' it was not the same thing,' the landlord
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bitterly complained. Near the inn were some big trees on Coney Hall Hill. One of these provided the model for the giant oak in the foreground of ' The Proscribed Royalist.' It is still known as 'Millais's Oak.' A lady passing whilst he was engaged upon the picture ex- claimed to her sister, ' How beautiful ! And how mother would like to see it.' The artist turned and offered to take it to the house. The invalid mother was greatly dehghted, but the family did not know until the picture was exhibited who the painter was.
At the close of 1852 Holman-Hunt was elected one of the original members of the CosmopoHtan Club. It met in a room in Charles Street that had been used previously as a studio by G. F. Watts, and one large wall had been covered by him with a fresco from Boccaccio's Demon Lover. Here the first meeting between Holman-Hunt and Thackeray took place, and here he met Layard, who, hearing of his projected visit to Syria, gave him valuable letters of introduction. \\Tien the ' Light of the World ' was nearing completion the artist began ' The Awakened Conscience.' The subject was suggested by the words of Proverbs, 'As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, so is he that sings songs to a weary heart.' The painter desired ' to show how the still small voice speaks to a human soul in the turmoil of life,' and to make the picture ' a material interpretation of the idea in the " Light of the World." '
At the 1853 Academy ' Claudio and Isabella ' was well placed and had many admirers. Holman-Hunt received an offer of three hundred guineas, but he had under- taken this picture for Augustus Egg, who gave him a commission at twenty-five guineas when the artist's hopes
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had sunk to zero, and, in spite of his patron's desire that he should accept the larger offer, he absolutely refused. Millais's ' Order of Release ' was also ex- hibited. So great was the crush to see it that for the first time in the history of the Academy a policeman was necessary to move on the crowds. Pubhc interest was fully aroused, and critics began to waver. From this time onward every exhibition showed the widen- ing influence of Pre-Raphaehte principles in the increasing number of artists who went direct to Nature for inspira- tion. But the battle was still far from won. Much hostile and damaging criticism had yet to be faced.
In June Millais went with the Ruskins to Scotland. He painted a portrait of Ruskin, perhaps the best, at a turn of the Uttle river Finlass, near Callander. It was a time of great enjoyment — dining on the rocks when fine ; painting and reading by day ; mountain- cKmbing in the long evenings, Mrs. Ruskin accompany- ing ; taking lessons in architecture from Ruskin and designing a window under his guidance ; interesting hours in the quaint kirk, where sleepy worshippers used horn snuff-mulls and bone spoons to keep them awake, coUie dogs joined in the singing, and the precentor met the suggestion that an organ might be useful with the indignant retort : ' Ah, man, would ye have us take to the devil's band ? '
In 1850 Millais had been elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, but the appointment had been quashed on the ground of his youth. He was elected again in November of this year. It was supposed, but wTongly, that on election he would abandon his P.R. principles. Meanwhile Holman-Hunt was preparing to carry out
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the great purpose of his life. It had originated when, as a boy, he heard lessons read from the New Testament. To Augustus Egg he said, ' My desire is very strong to use my powers to make more tangible Jesus Christ's history and teaching. Art has often illustrated the theme, but it has surrounded it with many enervating fables, and perverted the heroic drama with feeble interpretation. We have reason to believe that the Father of all demands that every generation should contribute its quota of knowledge and wisdom to attain the final purpose ; and however small my mite may be, I wish to do my poor part, and in pursuing this aim I ought not surely to serve art less perfectly.' One thing troubled him. Walter Deverell, his old friend, was ill and in poor circumstances. Holman- Hunt wrote to Millais in Scotland and the artists agreed to purchase one of Deverell's unsold pictures for ninety guineas, halving the cost. It was one of Holman-Hunt's last acts, before leaving, to pay this visit of comfort. Thomas Seddon proposed to join in the Eastern tour, and went on ahead to Cairo. About £700 was Holman-Hunt's capital for the venture. Mr. Combe, of Oxford, undertook to act as banker for him. Millais came from Scotland to say good-bye. A fine day was wanted to complete ' The Awakened Con- science.' It came at last. The picture was finished at four o'clock, a cab was engaged for a round of fare- well calls, and the artists went together to the station. There was no time for dinner. Millais seized what he could at the buffet and tossed the package into the carriage as the night-mail moved out of the station. ' What a leave-taking it was with him in my heart when
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the train started ! Did other men have such a sacred friendship as that we had formed ? ' Such was Hohnan- Hunt's feeling. He left England in February, 1854. The comradeship was kept up by intimate correspond- ence throughout the period of his absence.
Millais on his part was in no cheerful mood. ' Now that Himt is going,' he wrote, ' I don't know what will become of me.' Though elected to the Academy, he had his greatest fight yet before him. Leading R.A.'s were bitterly prejudiced ; Deverell, a firm friend, lay dying ; Holman-Hunt gone ; Gabriel Rossetti had turned his back upon the Brotherhood, and the P.R.B. as a body of associated workers had come to an end. He gave himself to hard work, and found time amidst it all to spend hours at the bedside of Deverell reading to his dying friend. In the autumn he returned to Scotland and met J. D. Luard, an officer in the Army. He abandoned the military profession for art, and shared Millais's studio in Langham Chambers almost to the time of his death in i860. To the Paris Exhibition of the following year Millais sent ' Ophelia,' ' The Order of Release,' and other pictures. ' The Light of the World ' was also exhibited, and works by Andsell, Martin, Mulready, Noel Paton, Frith, Landseer, and others. These created a deep impression, and revealed an un- suspected trend in British art. Of the awards given, thirty-four fell to British artists. The influence of Pre-Raphaelite principles was very marked, and the Exhibition became a veritable triumph for them.
This same year a fire in London in which two lives were lost suggested to Millais the subject of his picture ' The Rescue.' He considered that soldiers and sailors
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had been immortalized by artists a thousand times, but firemen never at all, and resolved to celebrate their heroism. Gabriel Rossetti praised the picture highly. The Hanging Committee at the Academy skied it, but gave way before the artist's indignant remonstrances. The verdict of the general public was one of enthusiastic approval. At this period Millais made many notable friends. Leighton, Thackeray, Wilkie CoUins, Anthony Trollope, and Leech were amongst them.
A curious experience befell Millais and Leech on a fishing-tour in Scotland. The squire of Cowdray Hall invited them to dine and sleep at his house. It was so fuU that the only bedrooms available were in a wing reputed to be haunted by a terrible ghost. The fisher- men made light of that and after a dinner seasoned with ghost-stories retired to their tapestried chambers and great old-fashioned beds. In the middle of the night a great horror fell upon Millais. He felt himself shaken as if by some invisible giant (the ghost's supposed manner). He jumped out of bed and went to see how Leech was faring. Leech was in the corridor, half dead with fright. A similar thing had happened to him. In the corridor the friends remained for the rest of the night. To curious inquirers in the morning they declared they had seen no ghost. In the afternoon the squire came in, excited by the news in the evening paper he brought. There had been a severe earthquake during the night and serious damage done to a village near by. How extraordinary that no one in the house had felt it ! Then the guests acknowledged their fright, and, for once at least, a ghost was adequately explained.
In July, 1855, Millais married. His wife, Euphemia
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Chalmers Gray, eldest daughter of George Gray, of Bowerswell, Perth, had been married seven years before to Ruskin. It had proved an unfortunate union from the first. Ruskin had twice been disappointed in love, his health was undermined, and he felt for the lady, who was a distant relative, nothing but cousinly affection. But he allowed himself to be overpersuaded by the importunity of his mother, who was convinced that the marriage would be for his good. All the parties acted as they supposed for the best, and least of all could the young girl be blamed who, in complete ignorance of Ruskin 's feelings, naturally expected that her whole- hearted affection would be reciprocated. On his own admission Ruskin married without love, and the arduous labours of a hterary man entirely absorbed in his work were not calculated to stimulate deeper feeHng. For the young wife perfect courtesy with imperfect affec- tion created an impossible situation. She returned to her father's house, and the Courts, in an undefended suit, pronounced the marriage null and void. Millais, with chivalrous thoughtfulness, deferred taking action for a year, but on the anniversary of the lady's return to her home he married her at that home. Forty-one years of happy life followed. Mrs. Millais undertook the chief bulk of her husband's correspondence and interviewed the many callers whose trivial objects wasted his valuable time. Her historical knowledge was of great service in the selection and treatment of subjects, and her musical gifts cheered his few leisure hours. After a prolonged honeymoon Millais and his wife settled down at Annat Lodge, near BowersweU, a ' typical old house with a cedared garden,' and in the
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late autumn the painter was hard at work again, find- ing recreation in occasional days given to shooting. ' Autumn Leaves ' was painted this year, the first of a series of landscape of exquisite charm. Although Millais is best known by his figure-studies, his representa- tions of the many moods of Nature in ' Autumn Leaves/ 'Chill October,' 'Fringe of the Moor,' 'The Deserted Garden,' ' Lingering Autumn,' ' Dew-drenched Furze,' and other paintings stamp his work as that of a man into whose soul the loveliness of Nature had entered, and whose masterly technique enabled him to transfer to canvas that which his soul discerned.
The storv' of Holman-Hunt's first \isit to the Holy Land, 1S54-1S56, is omitted here. It enters largely into the history of his Eastern pictures described in the following chapters. The full account should be read in Holman-Hunt's own words in the pages of Pre- Raphaelites and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The title of the book gives no hint of the treasure it contains — ^its vivid word-painting, the word-painting of an artist, its charming humour, its wealth of anecdote, and its sidehghts upon Oriental manners and superstitions.
In February, 1856, Holman-Hunt was back in England, bringing few pictures indeed, but great ones, notably ' The Scapegoat,' and the as yet unfinished ' Finding of the Sa\'iour in the Temple.' Millais came from Scot- land for the Academy, and the friends met again with great joy. It was a year of very varied experiences.
' The Scapegoat ' and Millais's ' Blind Girl ' were exhibited. Again the warm appreciation of the pubHc contrasted with the half-contemptuous notices in the Press. Holman-Hunt found his time largely taken up
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by his father's legal difficulties and the education in art of his sister. He met for the first time Leighton, Tenny- son, Browning, and G. F. Watts. The invitation to visit Watts's studio at Little Holland House led to the spending of many happy hours there. Watts returned the visit and expressed his appreciation of his brother artist's work. ' He had the cathoUcity of interest for other work than his own that all true artists retain.' The Academy had not the same cathoHcity. Holman- Hunt's apphcation for membership was rejected. It made a considerable difference to the artist's sale of his work, but notwithstanding he received four hundred and fifty guineas for ' The Scapegoat.' It was a meagre enough sum in view of the time, toil, expense, and peril involved in painting the picture, but it was the beginning of brighter days. Yet considering that Holman-Hunt's work had been exhibited annually, with two exceptions, from 1S45, and that his paintings had attracted as much attention as any, he may well have felt that his claim for admission was a strong one. He consoled himself with the reflection that later generations would decide and allowed no bitterness of feeling to spoil his fife or his work. Later generations did decide, and their decision crowned the artist with und\dng fame. The record of a day's routine in the artist's Hfe is interesting. In his studio at nine o'clock, painting till dusk, after dinner, attendance at the Life School or making book illustrations, and lastly the continuous labour of the day pushed far into the night hours to deal with an extensive correspondence and housekeeping duties, a very difterent experience to the easy life commonly supposed to be led by artists.
48 BROTHERS IN ART
The death of Holman-Hunt's father at this time was a further blow. Upon his deathbed he expressed his thorough satisfaction with the independent course his son had taken. ' I watched him until his life ebbed away, and he sank in peaceful spirit into his last sleep.' All these circumstances resulted in a passing mood of deep discouragement, so deep that once again the question of relinquishing art altogether arose. An in\'itation to visit Tennyson at Farringford proved a valuable tonic. ' The opportunity of being alone with him was precious, and I valued it as a sacred privilege. The hohday brought balm and health to me, and I went back to my work with renewed zest.'
In the meantime Millais's path, although he had been received by the Academy, was far from being a smooth one. There had, indeed, come to him one joy that his friend knew nothing of as yet : his letters reveal him as a proud and fond father. He wrote to Holman- Hunt, ' I wish you would come and see me now and then, and let my boy pull your beard.' And again, ' I find my baby robs me of a great deal of my time, as I am constantly in the nursery watching its progress and its ever-changing expression.' But outside the home there was much to cause anxiety. Opposition was coming to a head. The Press was prejudiced ; members of the Royal Academy sought to prevent his pictures being shown to advantage ; Ruskin's criticism had turned from praise to blajne, and the adverse judge- ment of so great a critic influenced purchasers. The Times was abusive, and the Academy, with one or two exceptions, hostile.
Returning to Bowerswell in the autumn of 1858
BROTHERS IN ART 49
Millais commenced in October ' The Vale of Rest.' He had been working for some time weekdays and Sundays with little progress. Mrs. Millais disapproved. This winter he had an immensity of work in hand, but there was no Sunday toil, and to this his wife attributed his success. The following year his affairs reached a crisis. Buyers held aloof, his financial position was desperate, ruin threatened. At the 1859 Academy he exhibited ' The Vale of Rest,' ' Apple Blossoms,' and ' The Love of James I of Scotland.' Ruskin's dictum was — ' Hopelessly fallen.' But Thackeray and Watts gave high praise, and the public were deUghted. Millais determined to hold out and put a high price upon his work. In May the tide turned. A dealer bought ' The Vale of Rest ' ; commissions began to flow in. Best of all perhaps was Watts's confident prophecy about the pictures — ' They will Live for ever, and will soon find their proper place.' Another twelve months and he was able to write to his wife, ' Keep yourself quite happy, for we have every reason to be thankful this year.' His 'Black Brunswicker' had taken the public by storm, and from this time forward he passed from success to success, and the only adverse criticism was that which he passed upon himself. For it was a sore point with him that the pubhc esteemed most highly that which he knew was not his noblest work. But, he reasoned, an artist must live, and to Uve he must take some account of the class of work in demand at the moment. And very charming were his studies of graceful httle maidens, for which his own children posed. If the pubhc liked httle girls in mob caps, little girls in mob caps they should have. But it was in
D
50 BROTHERS IN ART
work of a more serious character that he delighted, and at the close of his hfe he was intent upon carrying out his highest ideals. Between himself and his brother artist much good-humoured argument passed on the question of demand and supply, for Holman-Hunt was uncompromising. But nothing disturbed their friendly relations, and each took the keenest interest in the work of the other.
At the same time that the tide turned for Millais it turned for Holman-Hunt also. Mr. Combe, of the Oxford University Press, during a visit from the artist in 1859, urged the completion of ' The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple,' and offered a loan of £300 for the purpose. This made it possible for him to concentrate all his attention upon the picture. It was finished in April, and, instead of being exhibited at the Academy, was submitted to the pubHc in i860. Visitors came in crowds, from eight hundred to a thousand daily. The Prince Consort was one of them. By the Queen's com- mand the picture was taken to Windsor for Her Majesty's inspection and returned with a gracious message of appreciation. In the face of this general approval the fact that the editor of The Times refused to insert a notice, and that one critic denounced the picture as ' blasphem- ous ' and ' only a representation of a parcel of modem Turks in a cafe,' mattered httle. Millais wrote to his wife, ' Hunt's exhibition is a tremendous success. The public are much taken with the miniature-hke finish and the rehgious character of the subject. The Royal Academy are tremendously jealous of the success of the picture.'
The path to fame now opened out ; and many interesting
BROTHERS IN ART 51
experiences came to the artist — breakfast with Gladstone at Carlton House Terrace ; a walking-tour through Corn- wall and Devon in the autumn of i860 with Tennyson, Palgrave, Woolner, and Val Prinsep ; a visit to Gad's Hill for the marriage of Charles Collins to Dickens's daughter ; a meeting with Garibaldi at breakfast by the invitation of the Duchess of Argyll. At the International Exhibition of 1862 the pictures of Holman-Hunt and Millais, the sculptures of Woolner, and the designs in furniture and utensils of William Morris, Madox Brown, and Rossetti were exhibited. The Pre-Raphaehte prin- ciples which had governed the work of the brothers in art were triimiphantly vindicated. Those principles continued to be misunderstood in many quarters, but the work of the artists had a secure place in the world of art. The days of contumely and poverty and continual struggle against bitter opposition, of unreasonable prejudice and most discouraging circumstances had passed. Holman-Hunt went forward in serene assurance of victory, disdainful of Academic honours, to pursue the bent of his own genius. For Millais work poured in on all sides. He was in constant touch with the leading celebrities of the day, patronized by royalty, and ever more popular with the public.
On December 28, 1865, Holman-Hunt married. The following year the way seemed open for return- ing to Jerusalem to continue his work there. In August he started for the East with his bride. One night was to have been spent at Florence, but communication with Egypt was suspended, and the one night extended to a year. A studio was taken, and the artist began his ' Isabella and the Pot of Basil.'
52 BROTHERS IN ART
With what feelings he completed this can be imagined. An idyllic year ended under the cloud of a great sorrow, and in September, 1867, Holman-Hunt returned to England with his exquisite painting of baffled love and his motherless baby boy. Not until 1869 was he able to return to the East. He passed through Venice, where he met Ruskin and studied the paintings of the great masters in his company. Referring to the artist's observations on a change of tone in Ruskin's writings, Ruskin acknowledged that he had been led ' to regard the whole story of a divine revelation as a mere wilderness of poetic dreaming ... no Eternal Father . . . man without other helper than himself, and that this con- clusion brought him great unhappiness.' Ten years later, in London, Ruskin went with Holman-Hunt to his Chelsea studio to inspect his painting, ' The Triumph of the Innocents,' and remarked that he valued it for ' its emphatic teaching of the immortality of the soul.' The painter was naturally surprised and recalled the Venice conversation. Ruskin, in reply, averred that his views had been changed by ' the imanswerable evidence of spirituaUsm ' ; that he found beneath ' much vulgar fraud and stupidity ' sufficient proof of ' personal Hfe, indepen- dent of the body ' ; and that this proved he ' had no further interest in the pursuit of spirituaUsm.'
From Venice Holman-Hunt went by Rome, Naples, and Alexandria to Jaffa, and arrived in Jerusalem after a fourteen years' absence. He obtained a house known as Dar Berruk Dar, in an elevated part of the city, and there and at Bethlehem and at Nazareth he painted ' The Shadow of Death.' During intervals of interruption he worked upon ' The Triumph of the Innocents.'
BROTHERS IN ART 53
On his return to London it was difficult to find a studio large enough for ' The Shadow of Death.' Millais lent his for the purpose during his autumn hoHday. Here and elsewhere the artist spent some months over various amendments. The picture was bought by Messrs. Agnew and exhibited throughout the country. It aroused everywhere the greatest interest. The industrial classes of the North in particular were deeply touched by it.
During these years Millais was busily engaged in ever increasing work. In addition to his great paintings he made illustrations in black and white for various pubUsh- ing-houses ; a series of drawings representing the Parables of our Lord ; and repUcas of these in water-colours for a stained-glass window, which he presented to Kinnoul Church, the burial-place of the Gray family. AU the backgrounds for the latter were drawn from Nature at or around Bowerswell. He made also many repUcas in water-colours of his oil-paintings. In 1861 he bought a house in South Kensington, and used this as his town residence from 1862 to 1878, when he built a large house at Palace Gate. His ' Jephthah,' exhibited in 1867, was the first of his paintings to command a very large price. It is impossible within the brief compass of this chapter to speak of the hosts of friends he made and the brilliance of his career in the world of art and in the world of social life. The fascinating story is told at large in the biography written by his son.
From 1866 to 1880 the artists saw Httle of each other. Holman-Hunt was mostly abroad. But the firm, re- ciprocal friendship was kept up by continuous correspon- dence. The fame of each was dear to the other, and
54 BROTHERS IN ART
Holman-Hiint never failed to stir up his friend to put forth all his powers for the honour of British art when any great exhibition at home or abroad drew near.
In 1870 Millais's father died, full of pride and joy that his fondest hopes in his son had been reahzed. The new Galleries in Piccadilly were opened this year. Millais contributed ' The Boyhood of Raleigh,' ' A Widow's Mite,' ' The Flood,' and ' A Knight-Errant,' and in October he carried out his long-cherished desire to paint landscape, with what success has been already told. The porter of the station near which ' Chill October ' was painted took great interest in the progress of the picture ' we made doon by the watter-side.' When he heard that it had been sold for a thousand pounds his amazed comment was, 'Weel, it's a vena funny thing, but a wudna hae gi'en half-a-croon for it mysel'.'
In November, 1875, Holman-Hunt married again, and immediately afterwards started upon his third visit to the Holy Land, Husband and \\ife travelled by Venice down the Adriatic (the painting ' The Ship ' was the outcome of this voyage), and by Alexandria and Jaffa to Jerusalem. The next few years were devoted to portraits and other works. These were exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery.
For Millais, also, these were years of sunshine mingled with deep shadows. The death of his old friends Dickens and Landseer, the loss of his son, and his own failing health caused at times great depression, but the fine spirit of the artist bore up bravely. Honours now poured in upon him — in 1880 the Oxford D.C.L., in 1882 French and German distinctions. In 1883 he accepted a
BROTHERS IN ART 55
baronetcy. His love of social life and of outdoor sports, the fishing and shooting and hunting by means of which he had successfully combated delicate health in youth, made the offer as welcome to him cLS it was distasteful to Watts, who received a similar offer at the same time. In 1885 Millais's picture 'Bubbles' called forth some sharp criticism. Marie Corelli, in her Sorrows of Satan, severely condemned this prostitution of art to commerce, as she accounted it, but she apologized handsomely upon receiving the artist's statement of the facts. The Illustrated London News had bought the picture and sold it again, with copyright, to Pears. When Pears's manager called with specimens of the picture used as an advertisement MiUais was furious, but the excellence of the coloured reproductions somewhat modified his anger.
In 1886 his collected works were exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery. To the pubUc it was a wonderful display ; to the artist himself a saddening one. With the modesty of true genius he felt that he had not fulfilled in maturity the promise of youth.
There was another wonderful display at the same Gallery the following year, when Holman-Himt's available works were brought together at the invitation of the Fine Arts Society. The exhibition was an immense success. In the few weeks that it was open 35,500 persons passed the turnstile. The long combat of the brothers in art for recognition was not only won for themselves, they had cleared a path which enabled Leighton and Watts and other artists to exercise independence of thought and style. The conflict led also to a Royal Commission, and some of the Academicians decided to invite men 'unfairly opposed to enter amongst them.'
56 BROTHERS IN ART
Hence Watts was approached and persuaded to become £Ln associate, with the pledge of being made a full member upon the first vacancy.
In 1889 Hohnan-Hunt was at work upon ' The Lady of Shalott,' a very masterpiece in colour, and in subject a most eloquent sermon. The same year he began ' May Morning on Magdalen Tower, Oxford.' On May-day he. ascended the tower to make observations and sketches. A few days later he settled to work, and for weeks moimted the tower each morning at four o'clock to watch the first rays of the sun. , The work was done on a small canvas and repeated on a larger canvas in a studio provided in the new buildings of the college.
In 1892 Mr. and Mrs. Holman-Hunt visited Italy, Greece, Egypt, and PaJestme. The picture of ' The Miracle of the Holy Fire ' was painted during this visit. Then the artist packed up what few things moth and thieves had left of his furniture and bade a last farewell to the holy places.
For Millais these years were marked by his painting for the third and last time the portrait of Gladstone ; by the burning down of liis house at Stobhall ; by j\Irs. Miilais's failing eyesight, which deprived the artist of her help ; and by a recurrence of his old throat trouble. The speciahsts spoke hopefully, but the artist had a presentiment that it was the beginning of the end. Sir Frederick Leighton died in January, 1896. On February 20 Millais was elected to succeed him as President of the Royal Academy. Congratulations poured in on every side, Holman-Hunt spoke of his surpassing fitness for the position. Alas 1 it was only held for a few months. In May he received the Prince
BROTHERS IN ART 57
of Wales at the Academy, but was too ill to keep pace with him, and the Prince insisted on his going home. He left, never to return to the place the very benches of which, he used to say, were dear to him. He Ungered on for nearly three months, and on August 13, 1896, passed from unconsciousness into the ' Vale of Rest.' By his special request his old friend and brother artist was one of the pall-bearers when he was laid to rest in St. Paul's Cathedral.
This is Holman-Hunt's tribute to Millais's memory in a letter written to J. G. Millais : ' After fifty-two yeajs of unbroken friendship the earthly bond has separated. It would be a real loss to the world if your father's manly straightforwardness and his fearless sense of honour should ever cease to be remembered. There are men who never challenge criticism because they have no sense of individual independence. My old friend was different, and he justified all his courses by loyalty and consistency as well as courage — the courage of a true conscience. As a painter of subtle perfection, while his works last they wiU prove the supreme character of his genius.'
Holman-Hunt's work now drew towards its close. Leighton and Millais and Watts had passed away. With the completion of his 'Lady of Shalott,' begun in 1886, and finished in 1905, his active hfe as a painter ended. He received in 1905 the Oxford D.C.L. and from King Edward VII the Order of Merit. For five years he enjoyed a peaceful eventide, a prolonged summer- day's twilight ; full of the glow and colour of a perfect sunset. Much of his time was spent at Sonning-on- Thames, where he had built a cottage. There old
58 BROTHERS IN ART
friends who visited him, touched by his youthfulness of heart, forgot their years. It was here that his strength failed. Taken back to the London he had loved from boyhood, he passed away at i8 Melbur}^ Road, Kensing- ton, without pain or effort, on September 7, 1910, and was borne to the same grand old Cathedral to which he had helped to bear his brother in art fourteen years before.
58
BROTHERS I ART
lal
friends who visited him, touced by his' of heart, forgot their years. It 'as here thai failed. Taken back to the Lcdon he had boyhood, he passed away at ic^Melbury Ro: ton, without pain or effort, orSeptember 7 was borne to the same grand ci Cathedral i had helped to bear his broth: in art foui before.
i
In
m
lined to 3r himself |)ugh back elied upon a living, ■enough to I his ability, his studio, Imself with resources, an offer Lespeare or days upon la ' was one, [hese designs ^ffecta-
\\
'CLAUDIO AND ISABELLA'
(holman-hunt)
O hapless messenger ! She brought
The bribe of lust : His pardon by defilement bought,
This they discussed ; For honour pleaded she, and he
Pleaded for Uf e ; The precious moments big with destiny Sped by in strife, A strife of words, but bitterer strife within. Could he require, could she refuse the sin? Could he buy Hberty with shame, could she Doom him, to spare her own virginity? His reason deemed the sacrifice worth while. Her heart no specious reasoning might beguile ; To save his body — ah ! she knew full well 'Twould be to sink her very soul to hell ; And yet — and yet, even her soul to save How dare she send a brother to the grave ? Who shall decide which gave the stronger claim. His forfeit life or her abiding shame ? Love, be the arbiter whose judgement ran of yore — ' I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more.'
59
CHAPTER II
DEATH VERSUS DISHONOUR ' Claudio and Isabella '
When a boy of nineteen Holman-Hunt determined to be independent, and to carve out a pathway for himself as an artist. He rented a room, a poor enough back room in Cleveland Street, for a studio, and relied upon promised commissions for portraits to make a living. Alas ! the promises were not kept. Time enough to fulfil them when the young artist had proved his ability. In the meantime the cost of living, the rent of his studio, and the expenses incurred in providing himself with materials and models, had drained his resources. He bethought him in his extremity of an offer of fifty guineas for a picture from Shakespeare or Tennyson. He worked hard for several days upon three designs, of which ' Claudio and Isabella ' was one, and sat up a whole night to finish them. These designs when submitted were repudiated as ' hideous affecta- tions.' In despair he took them to his friend Augustus W. Egg, an Academician of some standing. Egg pro- nounced them excellent, and then and there com- missioned him to paint ' Claudio and Isabella ' for twenty- five guineas, and, to meet the pressing need of his young
6z
62 BROTHERS IN ART
friend, he gave him a cheque at the same time. An old coach-panel prepared by the artist was ready to hand. He obtained permission to paint for the background of his picture a room in the Lollard Prison at Lambeth Palace, and engaged a man to carry his materials. So shabby was the painter that the man was taken for the master. The Lambeth chamber became Claudio's prison, and the porter, used as a model, was transformed into Claudio. The picture, having been sufficiently advanced at Lambeth, was completed at home and exhibited at the 1853 Academy. It was well placed and had many admirers. The artist was offered three hundred guineas for it. Egg urged him to accept them, relinquish- ing his own claim. He refused the generous offer. Egg's it was, and his it should be at the price agreed upon.
The conception of this picture is not less extraordinary than its execution. A young painter of twenty-three, with the whole of Shakespeare's plays to select a sub- ject from, decides upon Measure for Measure, one of the least likely to appeal to a young man's imagination, and with an unerring instinct picks out the central incident in the drama. Claudio has wronged JuUet and is condemned to death under an old law unearthed by the Duke of Vienna's deputy Angelo. There is one faint hope — that Claudio's sister Isabella may be able to excite the pity of the austere guardian of the city's morals. Her appeal, without touching his sympathy, kindled his desire. Claudio may Uve if the nun will sacrifice herself. She brings, ashamed to bring it, the shameful message of the cruel alternative. Her brother will never consent to the outrageous proposal ! But
DEATH VERSUS DISHONOUR 63
there is a weak strain in Claudio. Already his self- mastery has broken down. His beloved Juliet is the victim of his ungoverned impulses, and now, after a feeble protest, the thought at the bottom of his mind reveals itself, first by obscure suggestions and then in passionate pleading. It is the moment of vacillating hesitation before the plainly expressed thought calls forth Isabella's hot scorn and anguish that the artist has caught. The shamefulness of the thought lurks in the averted eyes ; the half-opened mouth is about to body it in speech ; the hand plucking at the chain indicates a readiness to accept any sacrifice to get rid of these shackles ; and the whole attitude bespeaks a hope that his sister might offer that which craven fear was impelling him to urge. And upon the nun's face is a look of growing recognition of the baseness of Claudio's point of view, of pained surprise that he could hesitate for one moment in his choice, and of womanly appeal to his better nature. Then from those opened hps burst forth the words, ' Death is a fearful thing,' calling forth the instant retort, ' And shamed life a hateful.' Claudio was not the stuff martyrs are made of ; Isabella was ready to lay down her Hfe, even under torture, for her brother, but resolute to preserve her own honour. Death versus dishonour, which ? Ah ! surely, in such circumstances, dishonour might be glory, was the man's specious plea. It was not only maidenly purity that rose in revolt. With far- reaching womanly insight Isabella realized that not one hfe but two hves were at stake. The man's selfish- ness was blind to that which the woman's instinct took account of. She had to set a brother's death over against
64 BROTHERS IN ART
the possibility of a child's disgrace, and maternal pro- tectiveness flashed out to strengthen maidenly purity.
It is commonly held that in the httle things of Hfe a woman's code of honour is less keen than man's. Perhaps it is so. Certainly centuries of subjugation have driven women to forge and to use subtle weapons of protection that only in these days of approximate indepen- dence they are laying aside ; but in those great ethical principles upon which the rise and fall of nations and the onward progress of the race depend woman's in- stinct has been sound, and the world owes an immense debt of gratitude to its staunch and clear-sighted Isabellas.
The character of Claudio, drawn with so sure a touch by Shakespeare, has been reproduced with the utmost fidelity by the artist. It would have been possible to have felt a certain admiration for this man had he looked the nun straight in the face and said unabashed, ' The world needs my sword more than your virtue ; go and sin.' The conceit would have been colossal, the deter- mination diabolically grand. But this averted gaze, this cringing attitude, speak only of cowardly shrink- ing and pitiful self-love, the outcome of a nature warped by luxury and indulgence. And because the picture so strikingly suggests this moral Dr. Paton, of Nottingham, has had a reproduction of it specially prepared, for presentation to boys' clubs and young men's institutes. For the future of the British race depends upon the young manhood of Great Britain taking to heart this lesson in honour given in the days of his own early manhood by an artist who was himself the soul of honour.
' THE HUGUENOT '
(millais)
'Only a handkerchief, just for one day !
No word to be spoken.
No pledge to be broken.
Just this silent token, Dear heart, I pray thee, O sweetheart, I pray.
Tremblingly tying it, once more the cry —
' O wear it, O wear it.
For my dear sake bear it.
But what ? Thou wouldst tear it Off from thine arm ! Then at morn must thou die !
Could he deny her, so wondrously fair?
Her body so slender.
Her glances so tender.
And he her defender ? Surely for her sake this badge he might bear !
Dread was that moment, that pause to decide
'Twixt living and dying,
'Twixt honour and lying.
An inward voice crying ' Be true to thy conscience, whatever betide.'
* "Only a handkerchief ! " Useless this strife !
Alas ! to seek ease on
Such terms would be treason
To God and to reason, Better grim death than a dishonoured life.'
65
DEATH VERSUS DISHONOUR 67
* The Huguenot '
The evolution of this picture is peculiarly interesting. Its starting-point was an old lichen-covered garden wall at Worcester Park Farm near Cheam, in Surrey, just the object to arrest an artist's attention, its lines of masonry softened by Time's fingers, its surface covered in brilliant patches with the greys and yellows of the clinging plants, its cracks and crannies the sheltering-place of shy wild flowers, its drooping canopy of ivy reaching down towards an upgrowth of nasturtiums and Canterbury-bells. It was a thing in itself to paint for the sheer beauty of it, and it occurred to Millais that this was an ideal spot for the tender caresses and whispered confidences of lovers. He proposed therefore to paint a gracious representation of ' love's sweet young dream,' as described in Tennyson's line ' Two lovers whispering by a garden wall,' against this exquisite background. He and Holman- Hunt were spending together the autumn and winter months of 1851 in the ' Garden of England.' Both the artists were young — the one twenty-four, the other twenty- two ; the brains of both were teeming with thoughts and noble ideals, and both were intent upon transferring to canvas a faithful record of Nature's charms. Holman- Hunt was engaged upon his ' Hirehng Shepherd ' ; Millais had almost completed ' Ophelia.' It was too late to begin another large subject, and he decided to give the remaining time of their stay to the garden wall. The young artists talked freely about their work and aims.
68 BROTHERS IN ART
Holman-Hiint had expressed an opinion that ' pictures should never deal with the meetings of lovers if they are only lovers.' This touched closely the subject Millais had taken in hand. During a walk to Shotover he raised the point. His friend explained that to his thinking lovers should not be ' pryed upon ' by painters ; that such pictures, if badly done, were despicable ; if well done, out of place ; and that the only justification of that class of subjects would be the absence of merely personal feeling on the part of the dramatis personae and their obsession ' by generous thought of a larger world.' Millais grasped the distinction at once, but his design was finished and the background for it largely advanced. A Uttle later Holman-Hunt, Millais, and Collins were to- gether, the day's work done. Millais was bantering Collins on his High-Churchism, Holman-Hunt was deeply absorbed in making a sketch to illustrate Rev. iii. 20. Millais stepped across to look over. ' But what is this small sketch at the side ? ' Holman-Hunt explained that it was the outcome of their talk about lovers in pictures — a small design representing the daughter of a Lancastrian nobleman on her father's castle walls, her enemy lover by her, booted and spurred, a rope-ladder fixed to the castellated parapet, and the girl's mind dis- tracted between inchnation and duty. ' Capital idea ! ' said Millais. ' We'll utiHze it for the picture.' Yes, but there were no ramparts at hand, no distant view. ' Well, then I'll make him a cavaher and her a Puritan maiden meeting by stealth in a garden.' But that was too worn a theme. Millais reflected for a moment, then, ' I've got it ! The Huguenots ! All good Catholics had to wear a badge.' He wrote to his mother to look up details at
DEATH VERSUS DISHONOUR 69
the British Museum, and, having these, made a new design and retained the ivied brick wall as a background.
The picture produced an immense sensation when it was exhibited at the Academy of 1852. The British pubUc was more than satisfied. Three subsequent paint- ings completed a series of four, ' The Huguenot,' ' The Proscribed Royalist,' ' The Order of Release,' ' The Black Brunswicker,' each portraying some beautiful aspect of woman's loving devotion.
It is the particular charm of this picture that it tells so much and yet leaves so much to the imagination. It represents an incident on the eve of St, Bartholomew's day — not an incident actually related, but such an incident as must have occurred. On August 22, 1572, Admiral CoHgny, the King's adviser and leader of the Protestant party in France, was attacked in the streets of Paris. The city was filled with Huguenots who had gathered for the approaching wedding of Henry of Navarre and Marguerite de Valois. Following the attempted assassina- tion armed bands of Huguenot noblemen rode through the streets shouting ' Down with the Guisards.' The fears of Charles IX were wrought upon by the Queen-Mother and her party. His throne was declared to be in danger, and he was induced to issue an order for the destruction of the Admiral ; ' and kill,' he added, ' every Huguenot at the same time.' The Due de Guise took prompt measures. An order was issued that when the great bell of the Palais de Justice sounded at dawn on St. Bartholomew's day, August 24, every good CathoUc must bind a strip of white linen round his arm and place a fair white cross in his cap. All who were not thus marked were subject to indiscriminate slaughter. On that
70 BROTHERS IN ART
day Admiral Coligny perished, and by nightfall the Seine was choked with the corpses of some four thousand massacred Huguenots.
Millais's painting depicts the parting of two lovers on the eve of that dread day. The man is a Huguenot, the woman a Catholic. Murder is in the air. Who can say what wiU happen within twenty-four hours ? She pleads with her lover to accept the badge ; she seeks to knot it round his arm. Terror and wistful tenderness are in her eyes, but he, whilst pressing her head to his breast and gazing into her eyes with a look of ineffable sadness and affection, is loosening the Imen strip, the badge of a hated rehgion that he will die rather than accept, the badge of hfe-long principles forsworn under the pressure of fear. Again it is death versus dishonour. But there is a difference. In this case it is the woman who, imder the constraint of love, not for herself but for her lover, would have him sweep aside his scruples and give out- ward recognition at least to that form of religion which she herself firmly beheved to be the only true form, and it is the man who puts honour not only before death but before that which is stronger than death — before love. MiUais, not less than Hohnan-Hunt, was a man of the strictest honour, and from different angles the two young artists have recognized and portrayed with startling vividness the same great fundamental truth. ' What shaU it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul ? '
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA ' (holman-hunt)
So foul a crime how can a man forgive.
Or how, forgiv'n, a faithless friend outUve ?
The bonds of sacred comradeship betrayed,
A woman's gracious tenderness repaid
With falsest treachery, can these things be ?
They pass the bounds of possibihty,
Yet through our very human frailties shine
A pity and compassion all divine.
And hfe is shaped to great ends from above
When anger and revenge give place to love.
71
CHAPTER III
LOVE'S HAZARDS ' The Two Gentlemen of Verona '
To Shakespeare Holman-Hunt devoted his youth ; his later years were mainly given to illustrating great themes drawn from the Bible. Before his day there were no great pictures of Shakespeare's subjects. A most fruit- ful field for the artist had been passed by. The picture of ' Claudio and Isabella ' completed, the artist turned again to the same source and focused his attention upon The Two Gentlemen of Verona ; and again with a quick eye for the most dramatic episode he seized upon the great reconciliation scene at the close of the play. This episode demanded for its setting forest scenery. Holman-Hunt went to Sevenoaks in Kent, and found precisely what he required in the wide spaces and lovely glades of Knole Park. Dante Gabriel Rossetti accompanied him, in- tending to paint a background for one of his own pictures, but the October winds blew the leaves about, disturbing his work, and in disgust he abandoned his picture and con- tented himself with watching the progress of his friend's. The amount of work accompUshed during those bleak October days can be judged from the wealth of detail in the picture — the trunks of the beeches, their mossy
73
74 BROTHERS IN ART
roots, the mast upon the ground, the grass and the fungi, the whole Ht up by brilliant sunshine, giving beautiful effects of light and shadow. So much accomplished the artist returned to town and sought for models. W. P. Frith lent him armour — ' the waistcoat and trousers ' the servant-girl at his lodgings called it. Miss Siddal, later Mrs. Dante G. Rossetti, posed for Sylvia, two young barristers for Valentine and Proteus, and ' a very excellent young lassie ' for JuUa. Madox Brown saw the completed painting in the artist's studio and gave it unqualified praise, but when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1851 it provoked a hurricane of furious criticism. The entire press condemned it, with the exception of the Spectator. Macaulay and Charles Kingsley were savage in their denunciation, but Ruskin, in a letter to The Times, bestowed warm commendation with the quaint reservation that neither Proteus nor any one else would have fallen in love with Sylvia's face. The artist acknow- ledged that he had not done his model justice, and later he rectified this detail. The storm of hostile criticism was disheartening. The picture came back unsold. But at the next Liverpool Academy it was awarded the annual prize of fifty pounds as the best picture of the year. At the end of 185 1 it was purchased by a Belfast gentleman for £168, and in 1887 it was sold at Christie's for £1,000. It is now in Birmingham Art Gallery, and accounted a national treasure.
Famiharity with the story of the'^^play is necessary to a full appreciation of the picture. Valentine goes from Verona to the Court of Milan. His bosom friend, Proteus, follows him with vows of steadfast loyalty to his betrothed Julia. At Milan Valentine falls in love with the duke's
LOVE'S HAZARDS 75
daughter Sylvia, who returns his affection. The Duke is bent on marrying her to the wealthy and fooUsh old Thurio. Proteus, arriving, promptly loses his heart to Sylvia, and plots successfully to have Valentine banished. Juha, disguised as a page for her better protection, follows Proteus to Milan, and there learns his faithlessness. The banished Valentine is seized by outlaws and made their captain. Sylvia, escaping from her home, sets out to find him. She is intercepted in the forest and rescued by Proteus, whose rejected advances provoke him to offer violence. At this moment Valentine appears and upbraids Proteus with his treachery. Proteus makes full confession and entreats pardon, and Valentine, in excessive magnanimity, nearly spoils everything again by renouncing his claim to Sylvia in favour of Proteus, the ' page,' Julia, Ustening to his words in consternation. This is the moment de- picted : Valentine's dignified reproach beginning, ' Now I dare not say I have one friend ahve,' and the passionate sorrow of the repentant Proteus kneeling at his feet, ' My shame and guilt confound me. Forgive me, Valentine.'
Love's hazards are many, arising most frequently from man's fickleness, at other times from the clashing of opposed interests or other circumstances. Occasionally they end in comedy, usually in tragedy, but rarely in such a denouement as this play presents — a very riot of all-round forgiveness and the renewal of broken ties. The extraordinary suddenness of the repentance of Proteus is not altogether convincing, and the overdone magnanimity of Valentine must have been not a little disconcerting to Sylvia and Juha, but the main current of the play's teaching is unmistakable —
76 BROTHERS IN ART
that these tangles in life can only be unravelled by genuine contrition on the one side and full and generous forgiveness on the other. With admirable insight and masterly skill the artist has grasped the supreme incident of the play and given it adequate treatment.
Stephens in 1887 criticized the picture adversely on the ground that it presented the ' curious anachronism ' that the swords of Valentine and Proteus were of Charles I make and the embroidered material of the costumes of Louis XIV design and manufacture. The artist, in a detailed and unanswerable reply, showed, on the evidence of early pictures and sculptures, that the type of swords painted fell well within the period of the play, and that the embroidery of the costumes, so far from being of Louis XIV design and manufacture, was due to his own handiwork. From such carping criticism it is pleasant to turn to Madox Brown's judgement, ' Your picture seems to me without fault, and beautiful to its minutest detail,' and to Ruskin's praise of its marvellous truth in detail, its splendour in colour and the nobiUty of its general conception.
' Claudio and Isabella ' and ' The Two Gentlemen of Verona ' are the only subjects Holman-Himt derived from Shakespeare. Great as these themes are, greater themes still fired his imagination, and from this time forward he used his marvellous gifts for the most part in painting pictures that had some deep allegorical significance, or in depicting the Man of GaUlee, not according to the conventions of ecclesiastical art, but as He must have appeared in His own country and to His own countrymen.
• OPHELIA '
(millais)
Oh, happier might thy lot have been.
Dear, witless maid, Cast by the breaking of the ' envious sliver,'
In silvered, richly flowered brocade Upon the bosom of this limpid river ;
Thy part outplayed Had made of thee thy country's queen.
Is it, in truth, by thy design
Thou Hest here ? Or, all distraught, thy heedless footsteps slipping.
Did this still pool become thy bier ? Thou shouldst have been in merry dances tripping.
But one sad year Has shattered those sweet dreams of thine.
The willows droop above thy head ;
Upon a bough A robin whistles, o'er thee gaily swinging,
But, slowly sinking, thou, ah ! thou Some strange, sweet, melancholy dirge art singing.
Sleep maiden now. And blue forget-me-nots and roses red
Shall deck a crystal casket for the dead.
77
LOVE'S HAZARDS 79
* Ophelia '
Hamlet is not cheerful reading. The play begins with one murder and ends with five and the supposed suicide of Ophelia. The incident of Opheha's death is in no sense a pivot of the drama. It occupies a quite sub- ordinate place as one link in the chain of mischances that had its origin in the hesitancy of Hamlet to act upon tlie information conveyed by the ghost of his father. Neither has the incident any particular value from an ethical or didactic point of view. The unhappy maiden, deprived of reason by the double blow of her father's death at her lover's hand and her lover's banish- ment from the realm, wanders about distraught, sing- ing snatches of songs which it may be hoped she never would have sung in her right mind, and at last, either by accident or of dehberate purpose, falls into the river.
In aU this there is nothing of moral value. It is impos- sible to imagine Hoknan-Hunt finding in this incident a subject for his brush. His temperament would have led him rather to select the chamber scene, in which Hamlet, supposing the guilty king to be behind the tapestry, unintentionally slays Polonius ; or the part- ing scene between Polonius and Laertes ; or the incident, key to the whole play, of the meeting between Hamlet and the ghost of his father. But the pathos and picturesqueness of Ophelia's passing from life would appeal naturally to Millais, and his keen sense for beauty
8o BROTHERS IN ART
would be touched by the lines — the most beautiful lines in the play — which tell the story :
There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,
WTien down her weedy trophies, and herself.
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide.
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up ;
WTiich time she chanted snatches of old tunes.
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element : but long it could not be,
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
OpheUa is not one of the strong characters in Shakes- peare's wonderful portrait-gallery of womanhood, but there is something infinitely pathetic in the spectacle of this heart-broken girl, her brain touched by sorrow, floating down the stream singing her last swan-song till she sank beneath the water. Millais has caught all the pity and pathos of it and invested the incident with a rare beauty. This is not drowTiing, but the floating of a gentle spirit to a haven of eternal rest. It was a moot point whether the distraught damsel cast away her hfe or was the victim of an accident. The picture seems to suggest the latter. ' Her death was doubtful,' said the priests, and therefore they would have denied her burial rites, but, under pressure, 'her obsequies have been as far enlarged as we have warrantise.' To look upon this serene face is to endorse the words of Laertes :
Lay her in the earth ; And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring ! I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering angel shall my sister be When thou liest howling.
LOVE'S HAZARDS 8i
For Ophelia it was love's hazard to be betrothed to a man of the highest intellectual gifts and the best inten- tions, whose irresoluteness of purpose and delay in action involved himself and those dearest to him in disaster. But at least death is made beautiful for her ; no emaciation of disease, no paraphernalia of the sick- chamber ; the tender green of the overhanging willows for canopy, flowering rush, and dog-rose, and river daisy, and meadow-sweet to deck her couch, and a limpid strecim to enclose her fair form as in a casket of crystal. ?j
This picture was commenced in the summer of 1851 on the banks of a Uttle Surrey stream, where it flows by Cuddington, between Surbiton and Ewell. This place had been discovered by Holman-Hunt and Millais a few weeks earUer during a day's exploration. The artists almost despaired of finding their ideal back- grounds, when suddenly at a bend of the stream, they came upon this spot. ' Could anything be more per- fect ? ' Millais exclaimed. Willow-herb in full flower crowned the farther bank, irises rose up by the water edge, a profusion of wild flowers lay on the surface and scented the meadow-land, and the clear stream flowed tranquiUy between grassy banks under a canopy of foHage. Here Millais set up his easel. Two imles away up-stream Holman-Hunt worked upon his ' Hirehng Shepherd.' The artists walked each morning from their lodgings, first at Surbiton and afterwards at Worcester Park Farm, to a stile which gave access to the meadows and the stream. There they parted for their day's work and met again in the evening. They rose at six o'clock, were
F
82 BROTHERS IN ART
at work at eight, and returned at seven, finding delightful opportunities in their goings to and fro to discuss their aims and hopes. Occasionally they visited each other's pitch to obser^'^e the progress of their pictures.
Their work was not without hindrances. Two swans greatly interfered \sdth Millais, destroying at times every water-weed within reach on the precise spot he was painting ; flies were a perpetual nuisance ; a bull roamed the fields ; inquisitive haymakers swarmed round the artists with bold requests for baksheesh, and a farmer threatened them with a summons for trespass- ing upon his land. But right through the autumn months into the keen frosts of December the artists worked on, and then returned to their studios to paint there the figures in their pictures. Miss Siddal, who had posed for Sylvia in Holman-Hunt's ' Two Gentle- men of Verona,' posed for Ophelia in MiUais's picture, a much more arduous undertaking. It was a bitterly cold December that year. The model lay in a large bath filled with water warmed by lamps. So absorbed was the artist in his work that on one occasion the lamps went out, unnoticed, and the model re- mained in the water till numb with cold. A severe chill followed. The artist was threatened with an action for £50 damages, and compromised matters by paying the doctor's bill. Happily the lady quickly recovered.
In the picture as first painted a water-rat appeared, introduced to give an idea of the lonely peacefukiess of the spot. It did that, but it suggested other ideas also, and on C. R. Leslie's advice the artist erased this
LOVE'S HAZARDS 83
feature. The robin on the branch, in the top left-hand comer of the picture, pouring forth his joyous song, contrasts strangely and beautifully with the slowly sinking maiden chanting her death dirge. For Ophelia's dress Millais bought in an old clothes' shop ' a splendid lady's ancient dress, flowered over in silver embroidery.' It was old and dirty, but it cost four pounds, no trifle to the young and struggling artist. So absolutely true to Nature is the painting of flowers and weeds that a professor of botany, unable to take his pupils into the country and lecture there upon the objects before them, took them to the Guildhall where ' Ophelia ' was being exhibited, and found the flowers and plants in the picture as instructive as Nature herself. This picture is an admirable example of Pre-Raphaelite methods in those earher days — a faithful observation and interpretation of Nature subordinated to the poetic conception of the artist. ' We were never " Realists," ' says Holman-Hunt. ' In agreeing to use the utmost elaboration in painting our first pictures, we never meant more than to insist that the practice was essential for training the eye and hand of the young artist ; we should not have admitted that the relinquishment of this habit of work by a matured painter would make him an apostate Pre-Raphaelite. I am the freer to say this as I have retained later than did either of my companions the restrained handhng of a student.'
' Ophelia ' was exhibited at the Academy of 1852, and * received with whispering respect,' the brother in art gladly records, ' even with enthusiasm.' ' The Huguenot ' and ' The Hireling Shepherd ' were exhibited
84 BROTHERS IN ART
the same year. The picture was sold for three hundred guineas, and finally acquired for the National Gallery of British Art.
'THE HIRELING SHEPHERD'
(holman-hunt)
What hast thou caught, shepherd, what hast thou caught ? Knowest thou not that these minutes of leisure. These sweet stolen moments of dalliance and pleasure, To the sheep thou shouldst care for, with peril are fraught ?
They are feeding, unheeded, on apples and com.
The sheep for the feeding of which thou hast wages. But the moth thou hast taken thy notice engages,
And the maiden wastes with thee the hours of the mom.
Perceivest thou, shepherd, what token such bear ?
Between wings of purple a bare skull is grinning ;
For the mad quest of pleasure is but the beginning, And the end of the quest is a slough of despair.
' Tis the hawk-moth, the death's-head, ah ! shepherd, beware ;
The symbol of pleasure, of ease, and of beauty
Divorced from fidelity, scorning at duty. And the imprint of death will be always found there.
Back to thy sheep, shepherd, back to thy sheep ; Will the gayest moth captured afford compensation In the day of approval or sharp condemnation
For a single lamb lost, thou wast trusted to keep?
85
CHAPTER IV HEEDLESS YOUTH AND ALERT OLD AGE
Heedless Youth : ' The Hireling Shepherd '
This picture, commenced at the same time and in the same place as Millais's ' OpheUa,' and exhibited amongst the Academy paintings of the same year, 1852, is not a pastoral fantasy but an allegory. During the artist's stay at Worcester Park Farm, the old house near Cheam with its magnificent avenue of elms, a mansion built by Charles II for one of his favourites, there had been ample leisure on wet days and during the long dark evenings for reading. Holman-Hunt had been greatly interested in The Camp and the Caravan, sent to him from Oxford by Mr. Combe. The book revived the longings of his boy- hood to visit the Holy Land and paint pictures from sacred story on the very ground where the scenes were enacted. Millais also caught the enthusiasm, and for a time seriously contemplated visiting Palestine with his friend, but eventually abandoned the idea. It is probable, therefore, that when HoLman-Hunt began upon this canvas he would have in mind the words of St. John's Gospel, ' He that is not a shepherd but an hireling.' He must have longed for a Syrian shep- herd as model, and for a Syrian landscape, but as this was impossible at the time he has given the parable
87
88 BROTHERS IN ART
an English setting, with Surrey comland and orchard and thatched cottages for landscape, and English peasants and sheep for figures. And for this he had warrant, if warrant were needed, in Edgar's nonsense-lines from King Lear, Act iii., Scene 6 :
Sleepest, or wakest thou, jolly shepherd ?
Thy sheep be in the corn ; And for one blast of thy miniken mouth
Thy sheep shall take no harm.
Certainly the shepherd of the picture is a ' jolly shepherd,' though by no means a drowsy one. He is very much awake to a form of diversion in which all regard to the welfare of the sheep is abandoned. They are doing themselves mischief feeding on the com and apples, and no blast of the horn is likely to disturb them. The shepherd is a hireUng, without personal interest in the flock, and without conscience enough to guard them in his master's interest. Shakespeare's adjective de- scriptive of the shepherd's mouth gives the key-note to his character and to the significance of the picture. The word is variously spelt. In the ' Universal ' edition of Shakespeare by the editor of the Chandos Classics it appears as ' miniken ' ; in other editions as ' minnikin.' Chambers's Twentieth-CenUiry Dictionary gives the word ' minikin ' a diminutive from the old Dutch minne, love, with the meaning, as a noun, of ' httle darhng,' and as an adjective ' small.' Bayley's Seventeenth-Century Dictionary has ' minnekin,' from the Saxon for a nun, and the significance ' a nice dame, a mincing lass, a proud minks.' From whichever source Shakespeare's word is derived, it is fairly clear that a ' minnikin mouth ' as applied to a
HEEDLESS YOUTH 89
man is hardly a complimentary expression. It con- veys a suggestion of weakness, and it suits well the figure of the picture — a man wasting the midday hours in dalliance instead of giving attention to his duties.
But there is something further. The shepherd has caught and is holding out to his companion, who on her part seems Httle disposed to study natural history, a fine specimen of a moth. It is a variety of the hawk-moth, vivid in colouring and distinguished by a peculiar marking closely resembling a death's-head. Is this merely a pretty toy offered by the shepherd to his companion, or is there some covert significance in this detail ? At least it suggests the fact that all pleasure procured at the ex- pense of duty and aU talent exercised without regard to righteousness are stamped with the insignia of decay. In this particular instance the shepherd's joyous flirtation threatened mischief to the flock. Even the shepherdess is obhvious of the fact that the very lamb Ipng in her lap is munching an apple.
At the time when this picture was painted controversy was stiU raging hotly around the Oxford Movement. Only a few years before Newman, in his notorious Tract No. 90, had attempted to prove that the Thirty-nine Articles were not incompatible with certain Roman Catholic dogmas, and W. G. Ward had attacked the Articles themselves. In 1844 and the following years several distinguished clergymen, including Manning and Newman, had seceded to Rome. Holman-Hunt had come into close touch with this ferment in the religious world during his recent visits to Oxford where he found himself at the very centre of the High Church party. Changes made in breaking down what he considered ' the beadledom of Church
90 BROTHERS IN ART
service ' he entirely approved, but certain indications seemed to him ' ominous of impending priestcraft.' A httle later the artist found some of his fiercest opponents amongst the High Church party, and that not on the ground of his departure from the con- ventions of art, but because his pictures failed to harmonize with their dogmas. It is possible to surmise, therefore, that the death's-head moth in this picture may contain, by way of allegory, some allusion to the controversy of the period. Whether or no, there was then, as there is now, a grave danger of the shepherds of the nation proving themselves to be only hirehng shepherds by caring more for the death's-head moth of ornate ritual and priestly vestments than for the proper sustenance of their flocks.
But the picture suggests a still wider lesson. In art and music and hterature — those three great guardians of humanity — if there be any turning aside from the noblest service the sheep are neglected, whilst the shep- herds charm foolish souls with death's-head moths. A debased hterature bears the badge of corruption. The finest artistic talent may be so employed that the artist's gifts are worse than wasted. Even music that should be attuned only to heavenly harmonies may become an ac- companiment to a dansc macabre. If these shepherds of the flock are but hirehng shepherds, keen on the wage to be secured, but careless as to the interests to be guarded, infinite mischief must needs be the result.
' The Hirehng Shepherd ' was exhibited in 1852. Weeks passed, and there was no sign of a purchaser. Then came an offer of three hundred guineas. The picture was finally acquired by the Manchester Art Gallery.
'THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE'
(millais)
The mariner takes his rest, but not
The leisure of slothful ease. For his brain is ever at work to plot
A passage through Arctic seas, Though his quarter-deck now be a homely cot
In the grip of the keen salt breeze.
His daughter of glorious triumphs reads
Gained under the midnight sun. But the old sea-dog is for greater deeds.
For a conquest not yet won ; And Britain could do it, should do it, he pleads ;
By Britain it must be done.
And if every Briton were staunch as he.
To the Empire's flag as true. As dauntless in spirit and quick to see
What a kingdom may dare and do. Great Britain the realm of realms might be
The whole of the wide world through.
91
ALERT OLD AGE 93
* The North- West Passage '
This picture belongs to the middle period of Millais's career. It is placed here because it presents a group of ideas in exact antithesis to those suggested by ' The HireUng Shepherd.' That picture represents heedless youth ; this depicts alert old age. The old sea-captain has lost nothing of the enthusiasm of earher days. His infiiTnities limit him to his home, but in imagination he still roams the world. His telescope lies close to hand, for the ships that pass from time to time are more to him than all the panorama of hfe on land. His sight has become feeble, but his daughter supplies the remedy. Her clear young eyes do duty for him. So homely and so touchingly simple is the picture that at the first glance it might almost seem to be a beautiful illustration of decKning age on the one hand and daughterly affection and devotion on the other. But it is much more than that. The important figure is the old sea-dog, with his still piercing glance, his firm mouth, and expression of intent interest. The point of the picture is not what the daughter is doing, but what he is thinking, for the ever- active brain is wrestling with some problem. The old foho volume upon the girl's lap is not her choice, but his, and its contents may be surmised from the chart spread out upon the table. She is reading some thrilling story of discoveries in uncharted seas; of repeated attempts made, and repeated failures experienced ; of death bravely faced, and hardships bravely endured. But the reading
94 BROTHERS IN ART
has not driven the old man's thought to the long-passed days. Oh, there must be stirring enough memories rising up in his mind, but his thought is in the future. There is a mystery of the North yet to be solved. There is a passage, a short cut, to the far East yet to be discovered. It was the common desire of the day that to England should fall the glory of resolving that riddle of the North. ' It might be done, and England ought to do it ' — that is the old man's thought. Had he been younger he would have been the first to volunteer for any expedition, how- ever hazardous and uncertain. But if that cannot be, he will not sink down into luxurious ease. If any thought, any words of his can help, they will not be withheld. ' England ought.' Duty first. Never for a moment did the idea cross the mind of the young shepherd, intent on his pretty girl and his death's-head moth, ' England ex- pects every man to do his duty.' Never for a moment will that ideal be lost sight of by this old seasoned and disciplined sailor. ' It might be done, and it ought to be done ' — that is the spirit that makes a great nation. Not a quixotic pursuit of mad and impossible ambitions, but a cool, reasoned judgement of what comes within the range of the practicable, and then no yielding under plea of difficulty and danger, but, once the duty recognized, persistent and unflinching effort to accomplish it.
And if that spirit is good for nations it is not less so for individuals. It might be, it ought to be, it shall be — that is the Une of thought that, for man or woman, boy or girl, leads on to success. It is the spirit that has made Great Britain what she is, and the salt that alone can save the national life from corruption. There are too many
ALERT OLD AGE 95
hireling shepherds about, ready on the slightest pretext, or without any, to leave the work lying to hand for idle pleasure. The death's-head moth is everywhere apparent. A restless spirit is abroad. Duty is shunned as of sour visage, and Pleasure is exercising her utmost fascination. If the fruits of victory are to be safely gathered in, and the nation's greatness re-established, youth will have to take its cue from this old sea-captain, and, studying earnestly what ought to be, resolve firmly that that shall be.
The exhibition of ' The North-West Passage ' at the Royal Academy in 1874 immediately arrested pubhc attention. It was the most popular of all Millais's work at the time. Sir George Nares, who commanded the 1879 North Pole Expedition, wrote to the artist to say that he found the influence of the picture upon the spirit of the nation quite remarkable. Happily, the picture is in the National Gallery of British Art, a perpetual plea for duty and courage.
The artist was pecuHarly fortunate in securing Captain Trelawny as model for the old man in his picture. He was a remarkable character — ' JoUy old pirate,' his friends called him. His early Hfe was spent in the Mediterranean. He was taken prisoner by Greek pirates, married a daughter of their chief, and spent his honeymoon in a cave. Byron and Shelley were amongst his intimate friends. The artist had frequently met him. They were both at Leech's funeral, and equally overcome with grief. ' We must be friends,' said the captain, but he was very un- willing to carry friendship so far as to pose for the artist, and refused many requests. Mrs. Millais at last secured him, but only by agreeing to a curious bargain. He was
96 BROTHERS IN ART
interested in a company for the promotion of Turkish baths. For six Turkish baths taken by her he would give six sittings to her husband. The bargain was struck, tally of the baths required, and sitting for bath duly given. The Captain was a strict abstainer, and protested against the glass of grog placed by him at the sittings. It was removed accordingly and painted in subsequently. When he saw the picture in the Academy he was furious, and considered himself insulted, but later was content to transfer the blame to the artist's wife, for 'the Scots,' said he, 'are a nation of sots.'
As first painted two of the artist's children were in- troduced into the picture turning a globe. Eventually the artist decided that this feature marred the simphcity of the composition. That part of the canvas was therefore cut away, a new piece inserted, and the Union Jack painted instead.
The discovery of the North-West Passage did not, after all, fall to British seamanship. Thirty-one years after the painting of this picture Captain Amundsen, a Norwegian, completed the navigation of the passage in the Gjoa, and reached Fort Egbert, in Alaska, in December, 1905. Three years later a still more notable triumph fell to America, when on April 6, 1909, Commander Peary planted the Stars and Stripes at the North Pole. But although these achievements do not stand to the credit of Great Britain, the spirit of the old sea captain is not dead. The pluck and endurance of British seamen of all ranks have been abundantly shown in the great war years of 1914 to 1919. There have been no ' hireling shepherds ' in the British Navy and Mercantile Marine.
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' STRAYED SHEEP '
(holman-hunt)
In peril ! in peril ! though brilliant the day, Though tender the turf of the headland and sweet. Where the breath of the ocean disperses the heat. And the succulent pastures are soft to the feet ;
In peril ! in peril ! the sheep are astray,
And they know not, how should they? the danger at hand.
The curve of the cliffs and the He of the land.
But the fault is the farmer's neglect to repair Some sinister gap in the broken-down hedge. Or a waj.'farer's failure to close and to wedge The gate of approach to so luring a ledge,
WTiere the sweet-scented herbage is bait for the snare ;
Oh, blue are the heavens, and blue is the deep.
But tragic the fate of the wandering sheep !
97
' STRAYED SHEEP '
(holman-hunt)
In peril ! in peril ! though brilliant the day, Though tender the turf of the headland and sweet, \\liere the breath of the ocean disperses the heat, And the succulent pastures are soft to the feet ;
In peril ! in peril ! the sheep are astray.
And they know not, how should they ? the danger at hand.
The curve of the cUffs and the lie of the land.
But the fault is the farmer's neglect to repair Some sinister gap in the broken-down hedge. Or a wayfarer's failure to close and to wedge The gate of approach to so luring a ledge.
Where the sweet-scented herbage is bait for the snare ;
Oh, blue are the heavens, and blue is the deep.
But tragic the fate of the wandering sheep !
97
CHAPTER V PERIL AND RESCUE
Peril : ' Strayed Sheep '
Charles Maude, of Bath, on seeing Holman-Hunt's * Hireling Shepherd ' at the 1852 Academy Exhibition, greatly desired to purchase it, but not being able to give the price — three hundred guineas — he arranged with the artist to paint for seventy guineas a rephca of the group of sheep in the picture. On consideration Holman-Hunt preferred to paint instead an original study. After commencing this he found it necessary to enlarge the canvas, and the time occupied in painting the picture so increased the cost that out-of-pocket expenses exceeded the amount of the commission. Whilst recognizing, therefore, Mr. Maude's claim, he asked to be allowed to sell the picture and to make for him the rephca from the ' Hireling Shepherd,' first agreed upon. The reply was an offer of one hundred and twenty guineas, cheerfully made and cheerfully accepted. The picture is now in the possession of Mrs. George LiUie Craik.
For a background Hohnan-Hunt selected the Fairhght Cliffs near Hastings. Rooms were taken at CUvedale Farm. Edward Lear, author of The Book of Nonsense, desiring direction in his own work, accompanied the artist, and proved a dehghtful companion. His extensive
99
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travels in Calabria, Albania, and Greece had furnished him with hundreds of sketches and a rich fund of stories, and in view of Holman-Hunt's contemplated visit to the Holy Land Lear's hints on joume^dng in the East were of pecuhar interest and value.
The painting of the picture on FairUght Cliffs was greatly interfered with by bad weather. Equinoctial gales, rain, and fog caused the loss of many days, ' Poor old, weather-beaten canvas,' Charles Collins affectionately called it. Its success was indisputable. In 1853 it was awarded the £60 prize at Birmingham. Thomas Carlyle saw the picture in the artist's Chelsea studio and highly commended it. Mrs. Carlyle, in a letter to Holman- Hunt, remarked with characteristic dry humour on the value of her husband's praise — Mr. Carlyle being notorious for never praising except in negations — ' not a bad picture,' 'a picture not without a certain merit, &c., &c.' The painting has sometimes passed imder the title ' Fairlight Downs,' but eventually it became known as the ' Strayed Sheep.'
The question arises : Is this only an exquisite pastoral sketch, a beautiful blending of sky and sea and cliffs, with a distant view of Beachy Head, and an errant group of sheep \londerfuIly portrayed in every attitude of bewilderment and fear ; is it this — a pecuharly choice nature-study and nothing more — or has the picture some underlying significance ? WTien it is remembered that the original intention was to paint a group of sheep, and that the surroundings therefore, splendid as they are, form a subsidiarj'^ feature, and further that this group of sheep was suggested by the sheep in ' The HireUng Shepherd ' picture — a picture with an obvious allegorical
PERIL loi
meaning — the suggestion is not remote that in this picture also there may be a certain allegorical element. Whether or not that was in the artist's mind, the picture certainly offers food for thought. Here are strayed sheep, one lame and lying on its side, and all in peril. They are not under the shepherd's immediate supervision. They have been left to graze on the downs, and they have wandered into this dangerous position into which they could not have come but for carelessness on somebody's part. Either they have made their way through a gap in the hedge or they have passed through a gate thought- lessly left open. In ' The Hirehng Shepherd ' the sheep are in peril through the carelessness of their keeper, who whiles away his time, heedless that his sheep are browsing upon com and apples ; here the sheep are in peril of laming themselves amongst these rocks or falhng over these precipitous cliffs through the neghgence of the transgressor who has broken down the hedge, of the farmer who has failed to repair it, or of the wayfarer who has left a gate open. The peril is of a different nature, but not less real, and the responsibility for any mischief ensuing rests upon somebody's wrongdoing or folly, for sheep will stray if they can stray.
Men and women in the mass resemble sheep in this fatal tendency to wander into perilous places, and it is criminal foUy to neglect to erect, or to break down, the necessary defensive barriers. It may be objected — and in fact when the erection of barriers is proposed it in- variably is objected — that men cannot be made righteous by laws. There is an element of truth in the saying, but a far larger element of misconception. It is amazing to what lengths we are prepared to go to recover sheep that
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have fallen over the cliffs when the simple closing of a gate would have safeguarded the entire flock, and still more amazing to witness with what deliberate intent hedges are broken down, regardless of the consequences which must needs follow.
In those great problems of modem civilization which every year become more urgent, the problems of temper- ance and social purity, this two-fold foUy is abundantly evident. We spend our thousands, nay, our millions, upon our workhouses, our lunatic asylums, our courts of justice, our police force, our hospitals, making heroic efforts to deal with the stray sheep of the community, when at a stroke, by the adequate control of the liquor traf&c the foohsh ones might be saved from themselves and the community from the burden of rescuing and caring for them, and most frequently from the disaster of losing them altogether. Slowly the consciousness of this stupendous folly is dawning, and the policy of ' pre- vention is better than cure ' begins to look more reasonable.
But if it is criminal folly to leave wide open the gates that lead to perilous places, what shaU be said about the absolute wickedness of breaking down those hedges which are barriers between social purity and social lawlessness ?
The lesson of Holman-Hunt's picture is. Close the gates and make good the hedges. Guard the sheep, so prone to stray, from these perilous places. But if the danger to the sheep stirs no compunction, surely the peril to the lambs of the flock might arouse the consideration and compassion of the most thoughtless.
' THE KNIGHT-ERRANT '
(millais)
A noble dame once on a time,
In the old days of darksome deeds, When men held as the creed of creeds
That might is right, and many a crime
Was thereby wrought ; a noble dame
Was waylaid, robbed and stripped, and bound Fast to a tree, and helpless found
By her worst foe, who that way came.
' Sir Knight,' she cried, ' a wretched fate Dehvers me into thy hands, I pray thee loose me from these bands,
Nor take advantage of my state.'
' Lady,' quoth he, ' thy nakedness.
Thy piteous state and disarray.
And thy defencelessness this day Are more to thee than costliest dress.
' Thy weakness is become thy might.
My loyal service here and now
I plight thee in a solemn vow Upon my honour as a knight.'
Therewith he drew his keen-edged sword
And, glance averted, lest his eyes
Should covet such a noble prize, With one stroke severed every cord. 103
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Her limbs, benumbed when first unbound, He chafed as with a woman's touch, And of her raiment gathering such
As still lay scattered on the ground.
He garbed her in the scant attire. Then placed her on his gallant steed, And in the greatness of her need
Forgot the strength of his desire ;
Nor by a glance did he encroach, But brought the dame without delay To her own gates, then went his way,
A knight sans peur et sans reproche.
RESCUE 105
* The Knight-Errant '
This picture was first exhibited in the new galleries of the Royal Academy in Piccadilly in the year 1870. It is Millais's one and only painting from the nude. It found no purchaser on this account, and remained for four years in the artist's possession. In 1874 a dealer bought it, and having received this hall-mark of approval, the picture at once gained favour with the public and was acknowledged to be one of the finest examples of the painter's art. It was finally purchased by Sir Henry Tate and presented to the Tate Gallery.
Applying Holman-Hunt's dictum as to the representa- tion of lovers, that to portray lovers whose occupation is only lovemaking is unjustifiable, a piece of pictorial espionage, but that the representation of lovers at some great crisis in Ufe is not only justifiable but artistically noble, this picture has its true raison d'etre. Judged by this canon, the picture of a sohtary bather on the edge of a secluded pool would be an infringement of good taste. Emphasis would be placed upon nudity and the sug- gestion of prying inquisitiveness inevitable. In this picture the emphasis is placed upon the pitiable pUght of the woman and the chivalry of her dehverer, and other ideas fall into the background. Nudity is not the in- spiration of the subject but its contingency. This dis- tinction, deduced from Holman-Hunt's dictum, is of value in determining the tendency of art towards good or evil.
The figures in this picture were painted from models.
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and the woodland scenery is a transcript of the beauties of Wortley Chase. The exquisite delicacy of the tnise en scene is unmistakable. A crescent moon floods the glade with hght, gleams on the flesh of the victim, and is reflected from the shining armour of the knight. The subject is purely imagmative. It will be vam to search historical records for any special order of knight-errant. Any knight who went forth in quest of adventure came under this appellation. The stories of such adventures are to be sought, not in historical episodes, but in the glowing, romantic Uterature of the twelfth and thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The nearest approach to an order of knight-errantry will be found in the institution of the Order of the Glorious Virgin Mary in France in the year 1233. The knights of this Order were young men of high birth, who, under the title ' Les Freres Joyeux,' banded together for the redress of injuries and the preservation of pubHc safety. They undertook vows of obedience and conjugal chastity, and pledged themselves to the defence of widows and orphans. It can well be imagined that in mediaeval ages, when public security was at the lowest ebb and bands of lawless robbers roamed through every country, such an incident as this would be of not in- frequent occurrence. This lady has been set upon, robbed, stripped, and left bound to a tree, and sad would her fate have been but for the opportune arrival of this wandering knight. It has not been without peril to himself that he effects this rescue. An armed man prone upon the ground testifies that his trusty blade has wrought sterner deeds than the severing of these cords.
Since the picture is an miaginative one, the hberty has been taken of exercising imagination in the accompanying
RESCUE 107
poem. For the highest chivalry is that which is ready not only to rescue the helpless and distressed, but ready to render such service when there are strong underlying motives for withholding it. The leading feature of the picture is the self-restraint of the knightly rescuer. As first painted, the lady faced the spectator. Millais's son remembers seeing the picture thus as it hung in his father's drawmg-room at Cromwell Place. But it oc- curred to the artist that the head turned aside would be more consistent with a woman's natural shrinking, and he repainted the face as it is now. In keeping with this averted glance of womanly modesty is the averted glance, the steadfast upward gaze, of true knightliness.
There is a bewitching glamour about these old romantic stories. We are apt to think that, in our prosaic days, the age of chivalry has passed. The very reverse is the real truth. For there is another side to knighthood. Speaking generally, these magnificent beings with glitter- ing armour and high-mettled chargers had a very strict code of honour as regarded their superiors or equals, and a strict code of gallantry towards fair and noble women, but towards their inferiors, men or women, no such knightly conduct was extended or expected. Their chivalry in one direction was counterbalanced by their brutality in others. High regard for the poor and help- less, for the busy millions of the world's toilers, for totter- ing old age and for the nation's childhood, is a modem development of the chivalrous spirit. And never has the world witnessed such chivalry, in the sense of com- radeship, sacrifice, consideration for the broken, charity even towards enemies, as that evoked by the terrible experi- ences of the last few years. And more than that, the
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newest and most conspicuous development of the principle of knight-errantry is exemplified to-day in woman's life. One illustration will suffice. It can be matched by countless others. During the war small-pox in its most virulent form broke out in Serbia. A suspected case occurred at Salonika. The victim was an enemy, a Turkish prisoner. A young nurse volimteered to imder- take the case. Alone she nursed the sick man in a small hut many miles from the city. Food and water were taken to a spot a mile distant from the hut, and fetched by the nurse. For a month, single-handed, she held to her post through days of arduous toil and nights of wearying vigil. Then came a day when at the spot to which the rations were brought a note was found, a terse note from the young nurse : ' Patient out of danger. Am stricken and sending him here. Isolate for convalescence. No hope for me. Useless to risk valuable hfe.' And in that lonely hut, miles away from her friends, where she had nursed her sick enemy back to Ufe, the young heroine died. The long annals of romantic chivalry have no instance of knight-errantry to equal that.
The days of mail-clad knights, with their emblazoned shields and picturesque adventures, have passed, and with them many of the tyrannies and injustices of an oppressive feudalism ; but the spirit of chivalry survives, and it strikes deeper and reaches farther than ever it did in the world's most romantic period.
' THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD '
(holman-hunt)
Behind this barred door — darkness ;
Darkness of strange bewilderment and doubt Deeper than midnight gloom without, Darkness of dull despair and sin, A shackled soul shut up within,
A shackled soul in darkness.
Or, peradventure — brilliance ;
The dazzling splendour of immense success.
Achieved ambitions numberless.
Feasting and Hghts and sportive din,
A madly merry soul within, A merry soul and brilUance.
Or, peradventure — sorrow ;
Sorrow and loneHness, the precious springs
Of hfe's so sweet imaginings
Dried at their very origin,
A stricken soul shut up within, A stricken soul in sorrow.
Before this door One passing by Knocks, waits, and Ustens to the cry Of sobbing sorrow from within, Of boisterous mirth or frantic sin ; The radiant halo round His head. The bright beams by His lantern shed,
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Proclaim His glorious Sovereignty :
Light of the whole wide world is He.
A diadem adorns His brow,
A circlet once of thorns, but now
A golden cro\vn ; deep in His eyes
A look of pitying surprise
That grief or joy should be content
To dwell in this poor tenement,
Behind this weed-encumbered door.
Imprisoned thus for evermore,
\Mien one stands here to lead the soul
Through midnight darkness to its goal.
Behind this door — Humanity ; And aU the problems of the present age. The ripening of man's heritage, Or thwarting of his destiny. Find here their master-key — shaU He, The Light of aU the ages, be
Henceforth thy Guide — Humanity ?
CHAPTER VI
PERSUASION VERSUS COERCION
Persuasion : ' The Light of the World '
In the happy after-dinner hour of a late autumn even- ing in 185 1 the artists were in their sitting-room at Worcester Park Farm, They were spending their days painting their pictures, ' The Hirehng Shepherd ' and 'Ophelia/ by the Uttle stream that rises at Ewell, in Surrey. Holman-Hunt's absorption in a sketch he was making excited Millais's curiosity. In reply to the question ' WTiatever are you doing ? ' he explained that he was illustrating the text, ' Behold I stand at the door and knock ' ; that he proposed to make it a night scene, to give point to the lantern carried by Christ as the bearer of hght to the sinner within, and to have a door choked up with weeds to show that it had not been opened for a long time, and in the back- ground an orchard. From this pencilled sketch sprang the now world-famous picture.
A little later, with this idea in his mind, the artist started on a dark night to meet Charles CoUins at the Maiden railway-station. The path led past a long- abandoned hut, formerly used by gunpowder workers. Holman-Hmit, desiring to see how it looked at night by the rays of the lantern he carried, made his way through the long grass to it. On the riverside a locked door was overgrown with ivy, and the step
112 BROTHERS IN ART
choked with weeds. ' I stood,' he says, ' and dwelt upon the desolation of the scene, and pictured in mind the darkness of that inner chamber, barred up by man and Nature ahke.' Here was precisely the desolate habitation required for the picture. Proceeding on his way, the artist recalled a curious incident that occurred four years earlier. He had arrived on a pitch-dark night by the last train at Ewell station. The station- master, carrj-ing a lantern, walked home with him to his uncle's house, the Rectory Farm at Ewell. Under some heavy trees a ' mysterious midnight roamer ' met them. He had ' the semblance of a stately, tall man wrapped in white drapery round the head and down to the feet.' He stopped within a few paces, gazed solemnly, said nothing, turned aside, and ' paced majestically forward.' ' A ghost ! ' exclaimed the station- master. The artist asked for the lantern that he might pursue it, but the stationmaster had seen ' more than enough ' and absolutely refused. At the point where the road entered the village two men declared they had been there ten minutes but nobody had passed. Repeated inquiries during following days elicited nothing. The mystery was never solved. But the memory of the incident suggested the figure for the picture. A canvas was obtained and the picture commenced at once. It was pamted on moonUght nights in the old farm orchard. Happily, though winter was at hand, the leaves and fruit had not all disappeared. For protec- tion from the cold the artist had a httle hut made of hurdles and sat with his feet in a sack of straw, working from 9 p.m. till five o'clock in the morning, on the first occasion frightening, and frightened by, the village
PERSUASION 113
policeman, each taking the other for the ghost of the haunted avenue of ehns. The work was continued on moonUght nights to nearly the end of December, a December of hard frosts. Millais's diary gives glimpses of the artist at work. November 7, 1851 : ' Twelve o'clock. Have this moment left him in a straw hut cheerfully working by a lantern from some contorted apple-tree trunks, washed with the phosphor hght of a perfect moon.' And again, in a letter to Mr. Combe, November 17 : ' Hunt nightly working out of doors in an orchard painting moonUght.' The picture was finished at the artist's studio in Chelsea. A metal- worker made the lantern in brass from the artist's design. For the head of Christ the artist used whatever features of his friends served his purpose. Amongst others, Christina Rossetti sat to him. The ' gravity and sweet- ness of her expression ' were particularly valuable, and he worked direct on to the canvas from her face.
Thomas Carlyle and his wife came to see the finished picture in the artist's studio. After approving other works, the Chelsea sage turned to ' The Light of the World.' His criticism was uncompromising : ' You call that thing, I ween, a picture of Jesus Christ.' Then followed a diatribe in which the philosopher dubbed the picture ' a mere papistical fancy,' and condemned all portraits of Christ by great painters with the excep- tion of Albert Diirer's, which received modified commendation.
The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1854. Press criticisms reached the artist at Jerusalem in June. ' A most eccentric and mysterious picture. . . . Altogether this picture is a failure,' the Athenaeum
H
114 BROTHERS IN ART
declared. The Times dismissed it in a few contemptuous words. Other journals followed suit. But Ruskin pronounced it ' one of the very noblest works of sacred art ever produced in this or any other age,' not only for the beauty of its symbolism but for the marvel of its technique. The picture was bought by Mr. Combe of Oxford for four hundred guineas, and upon his death it was presented by his widow to Keble College. At an exhibition of the artist's works in Bond Street in 1887 ' The Light of the World ' was found to be badly damaged. For eleven years it had been over hot-air pipes, which had been frizzHng the painting. Happily the artist was able to repair the whole of the mischief, but it cost him four or five weeks' labour to do this. Fearing for the safety of the picture, he painted a replica, life-size. This he had on hand for several years. It was bought by the Rt. Hon. Charles Booth and presented to St. Paul's Cathedral. This version can be distinguished from the Keble College painting by a crescent, symbol of the Mohammedan faith, introduced into the lantern — the artist's suggestion that some hght streamed upon the world's darkness through the religion of Islam, a view that has also been finely expressed in Haweis's 'Light of the Ages.' For the truly catholic spirit of the artist recognized the fact that God reveals Him- self in many ways, and that the great Light-Bearer will not despise the illumination of truth through whatever perforation it shines from the lamp of truth which is His alone.
The history of this picture notably illustrates the wisdom of leaving to time's verdict all sincere and patient work. The judgement of the Press in 1854
PERSUASION 115
has been completely set aside. Whether regard be paid to the beautiful and simple symboUsm of the paint- ing or to the masterly treatment of the subject and the marvellous execution in every detail, it stands to-day as one of the world's great pictures, and its appeal to the reUgious instinct is beyond question. And when it is remembered that the artist was only twenty-six when he painted it, the greatness of his triumph is further enhanced. In the matter of technique only Ruskin's shrewd criticism is worth noting : ' Examine the ivy,' he says ; ' there wiU not be found in it a single clear outhne. All is the most exquisite mystery of colour becoming reaUty at its due distance. Examine the gems on the robe ; not one wiU be made out in form, yet there is not one of all those minute points of green colour but it has two or three distinctly varied shades of green in it, giving it mysterious value and lustre.'
Turning from the mere skill of the artist's hand to the revelation of the artist's thought, ' The Light of the World ' offers wide scope for the play of the imagina- tion. Different temperaments will read more or less into the picture in addition to what the artist intended to convey. Ruskin himself, for instance, saw in the white robe the power of the Spirit symbohzed ; in the rayed crown of gold, interwoven with a Hving crown of thorns, the leaves for the healing of the nations ; in the illumination shed by halo and lantern, the two-fold Ught of peace and of conscience, the hght of the latter red and fierce, falling only on closed door and weeds and a fallen apple, 'marking that the entire awaken- ing of the conscience is due not merely to committed but to hereditary sin,' and that the Hght from the halo
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is that of ' the hope of salvation.' Simpler and more convincing is the artist's own interpretation of his picture : ' The closed door the obstinately shut mind ; the weeds the cumber of daily neglect, the accumulated hindrances of sloth ; the orchard the garden of delect- able fruit for the dainty feast of the soul ; the music of the still small voice the summons to the sluggard to become a zealous labourer under the divine Master ; the bat, flitting about only in darkness, a natural symbol of ignorance ; the kingly and priestly dress of Christ the sign of His reign over the body and the soul.' Also, the artist explains, a night scene is represented to illustrate the saying, ' Thy word is a lamp unto my feet,' and to enforce the caution to sleeping souls, ' The night is far spent, the day is at hand,' and he adds the significant warning, ' The symboHsm was designed to elucidate, not to mystify, truth.'
Does this picture indicate a request for admission, or is this a summons ? Is it the desire of the kingly visitor to enter into this mean abode, or is this a call to the occupant to come forth ? Holrnan-Hunt's own explanation seems to favour the latter idea, and to confine his illustration to the words, ' Behold I stand at the door and knock.' If so, that would give additional point to his discountenancing of Millais's proposal to paint a companion picture on the further words, ' I will come in and sup with him.' Viewed in this light, the picture represents an isolated soul shut in with its sins, or its gaiety or its sorrow, and the plea of the Christ that it should open this long-closed door, and, forsaking the poor tenement, find without the ' delectable fruit for the soul's dainty feast ' and travel with Christ through
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the darkness, guided by the lamp of truth, to the glory of His own abode.
A yet wider application may be given to the picture — the widest of all. It can be interpreted as Christ standing before the door of Humanity ; of Humanity locked in with its passions and bhndness and griefs and sins ; humanity hving its poor cramped hfe, yet with such infinite possibilities. And these weeds become then those false dogmas of the Church ; those unchristian ideals that have arrogantly assumed divine sanction, and which have made it not easier, but immeasurably more difficult for humanity to open this door and go forth to its Lord. To-day, as never before, the Christ is knocking at the world's door — this poor, miserable, bloodstained hovel of a world. If only there were a response, if only the Christ-spirit entered into all nations, what a world this might be ! What a large, free, glorious, triumphant hfe for humanity !
There is the further lesson, suggested by the text, and emphasized in the picture, that Christ's triumph is a victory of persuasion. ' Behold I stand at the door and knock.' The face of the kingly visitor expresses tender- ness, pity, concern, and the attitude is that of one listening intently for some response. For this is not a door to be forced from without, but to be opened from within. Appeal there is, ' the music of the still smaU voice, the summons to the sluggard,' but no violence. ReHgion has no worth and no driving-power that has been accepted under compulsion. The knock, the summons, the mes- sage to mind and heart, this and no more, and if there be no answer, the passing on of the Gracious Friend and perhaps no return visit ; for His own words of sorrowing
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pity over the city He loved were : ' If thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace ! but now they are hid from thine eyes,' followed by the intimation that the visitation of mercy having met with no response, the next visitation would be one of judgement — not the tender plea of the merciful king, but the trenches and battering-rams, and overpowering assault of a bitter foe. There is no darkness so black, for individual or for nation, as that which ensues when the rejected Light- Bearer passes on, carrying the lamp of truth with Him. But the responsibihty for this is with man. The divine method is one of scrupulous respect for the human will, the summons from without, the opening of the door from within, and that opening of the door an absolutely voluntary act. In this great picture of Holman-Hunt's that solemn fact is writ large.
In July 19 19 it became necessary to repair some damage to the frame of the Keble College version of 'The Light of the World.' The Warden of the College, Professor Walter Lock, discovered then that upon the edge of the picture the artist had painted the words, ' Me quoque non praetermisso, Domine.' The Professor points out that the grammatical construction makes it possible to interpret the words either as a prayer or as a thanksgiving, — ' Not forgetting me, O Lord,' or • Not having forgotten me.' The words may have been added when the picture was first painted, or when the canvas was restored by the artist in 1887. It was not intended that they should be seen. The fortunate accident that brought them to light reveals the devout spirit of the artist and gives deeper significance to the message of his picture.
' MERCY : ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY '
(millais)
Da^^^l ! The dawn of the day of blood. From the steeples of churches the clanging bells boom, Their long, quivering tones sound a message of doom ; This day shall thy foes. Holy Mother Church, fall, ' Kill, kill,' is the order, ' Yea, slaughter them all ' ; And the soldiery shot them and hacked them,
and trampled them down in the mire and the mud.
' Come ! ' Grim call of the holy priest. The soldier responding, with unbuckled sword. Goes forth to destroy the accursed of the Lord ; Sweet womanhood mercy with judgement would blend — ' Hands off, woman ! Death by the sword be their end. They shall perish this day from the face of the earth
from the mightiest unto the least.'
Night ! Silence, and darkness, and blood. Still and stark in the streets lie the piles of the slain. The corpses of Huguenots choke up the Seine, A holocaust smaller had never sufficed For the good of the Church and Thy honour, O Christ ; So — for Thy honour ! — they shot them and hacked them
and trampled them down in the mire and the mud.
"9
COERCION 121
• Mercy : St. Bartholomew's Day '
There is a curious undesigned coincidence between this picture and Holman-Hunt's ' Light of the World.' Each has a door, and a figure standing at the door. The coincidence ends there. Everything else is in sharp contrast. The figure at the closed door in the one picture' stands for divine compassion, the hooded figure in this picture for hellish bigotry. Persuasion is the dominant note in the one case, compulsion in the other, and com- pulsion of so terrible and hideous a nature that the nun, though of the same faith as the other two actors in this drama, strives to detain the armed man from going forth on his mission of massacre. The attempt is in vain. In ' The Huguenot ' the sturdy Protestant gently loosens the distinguishing badge of the CathoUc faith his lover would attach to his arm ; in this picture the Catholic soldier, around whose left arm the white Unen strip is securely knotted, forcibly removes the merciful nun's restraining hand. His convictions are unalterable. Death to the heretics, conversion or assassination — let them choose ; and he sets out prepared ruthlessly to thrust that sharp sword into the body of man or woman found without the distinguishing badge of the CathoUc faith.
That day, August 24, 1572, and the succeeding days, during which the carnage spread from town to town, gave to the world a lurid illustration of the awful cruelty which even a Christian Church is capable of when once the principle of coercion in rehgion is admitted. Tenible
122 BROTHERS IN ART
indeed was the slaughter. The streets of Paris were red with blood, and by night the river was choked with corpses. The massacre began when the bells rang out at dawn. Doors were forced open ; men, women, and children poured into the streets and fled shrieking from their murderers. Chains everywhere placed across the streets made escape impossible. Some sought the river. The boats usually moored there had been taken to the other side, and hundreds of Huguenots were brought to bay and slaughtered or driven into the river to drown. Those who remained in their houses were sought out and murdered, and the bodies were flung out of the windows. Such are the deeds to which the monk summons this CathoUc soldier, deeds from which he will not be held back even by the piteous entreaty of a nun and the restraining hands of womanly compassion.
It has been said of course that this massacre was the outcome not of rehgious but of political feeling. It is true that the Catholics and the Huguenots were opposed parties in the State, but it is not less true that religious fanaticism and bigotry were made use of as tools and suppUed the dri\ing-power for canying out the policy of extermination. It was the exempHfication on a large scale, and by methods that were comparatively humane, of the doctrine of the Inquisition, that the Church is justified, for the salvation of their souls, in handing over the bodies of heretics to the civil authority for destruction.
In the early stages of its development this persecuting spirit was not found in the Christian Church. Perhaps it suffered too much from persecution to inflict it. The Apostolic Fathers were indeed very jealous of any devia- tion from orthodox doctrine or of the growth of any new
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ideas, but they did not exercise severity upon the persons of those they considered in error. They combated false doctrine by appeals to reason and loyalty, and if argu- ments failed, the extremxC measure was the removal of the offender from the community, lest the contagion of heresy should spread. But with the alliance of the Church and the State in the fourth century a new policy was inaugurated. The arm of the law was invoked to enforce the decrees of ecclesiastical councils, and as the Church departed more and more widely from the simplicity in doctrine and ritual of the apostohc and sub-apostolic days, it became more rigorous in its measures to suppress all lapses from ' the faith.' In the fourth and fifth centuries active opposition to the Arians resulted in bloodshed ; in the ninth century the sword of the State was employed with merciless persistence by the Empress Theodora against the PauUcians, a reforming and anti- ecclesiastic sect in S3^ria and Armenia ; and from the beginning of the twelfth century onwards, persecution was the recognized method of the Church for preserving, by imprisonment, torture, the sword, and the stake, the purity of CathoHc doctrine.
How fanatical and entirely unreasoning the persecuting spirit was may be judged from this incident. On the eve of the wholesale massacre of the Albigenses at Beziers during a crusade undertaken against the heretics in 1209 by Simon de Montfort at the instigation of Pope Innocent III, an inquiry was made how the CathoHc inhabitants of the place should be distinguished. A Cistercian abbot repHed, ' Kill them all. God wiU know His own.' The advice was carried out, and some seven thousand men and women of various persuasions were destroyed.
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The world may be won by the gracious Messenger who knocks at the door of the heart, and waits for the loosening of its bolts in response to His ' Come unto Me,' but never can the cause of truth be advanced by the poUcy of St. Bartholomew's Day, or by the spirit underlying that poUcy. The soldier and the monk, in their mistaken zeal, are the emissaries of the devil ; the compassionate tenderness of the nun is the true embodiment of the spirit of Christianity.
This picture was painted in 1886 and exhibited at the Royal Academy the year following. It gave the artist much trouble. ' Sometimes,' he said, ' I was happy over it, oftener wretched. People pass it by and go to a httle child picture, and cry " How sweet ! " Always the way with any attempt at something serious.' To-day the picture is in the National Gallery of British Art, an en- during protest against the spirit of intolerance. The Marchioness of Granby and the artist's daughter Sophie posed for the nun, his son Geoffroy for the soldier, and the Rev. Richard Lear for the monk.
f
' THE SCAPEGOAT '
«
(holman-hunt)
Cursed and driven forth, O hapless victim ; cursed — Cursed and driven forth to this forsaken land Of torrid rock and salt and burning sand.
Of desolation and of torturing thirst.
To wander on until the scarlet thread
Bound to thy horns fade into ghostly white, Like to the bleaching bones that day and night
Proclaim this spot a region of the dead.
Em-blem art thou of Him who bore the blame Of this world's guilt, upon whose guiltless head The awful punishment unmerited
Of all the sins of all the ages came :
Emblem of that long persecuted Church
That found no rest throughout Rome's wide domain. But suffering, through centuries of pain,
Challenged the world her purity to smirch :
Emblem of every man, of every brave And dauntless woman strong to bear The world's unjust reproaches, strong to dare
Exile, and in the wilderness a grave.
O thou poor hapless victim, shall we not
Pity thee, love thee in thy desolation?
Shall we not love and pity man or nation Cursed and driven forth to share thy bitter lot?
xas
CHAPTER VII VICTIMS
' The Scapegoat '
The first-fruits of Holnian-Hunt's long cherished desire to visit the Holy Land and paint sacred story in the very places where it was enacted resulted in the commencement of the picture ' The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple.' But the difficulty of discovering and retaining suitable models proved so formidable that for a while he gave up the work and turned to another subject. Probably his careful study of Scripture and Rabbinical hterature for the first picture suggested the second. The descrip- tion of the release of the scapegoat as narrated in Leviticus xvi. arrested his attention. Writing to Millais on November lo, 1854, describing the subject and his intention to paint the picture on the shore of the Dead Sea, Holman-Hunt concludes, ' If I can contend with the difficulties and finish the picture at Gosdoom, it cannot fail to be interesting, if only as a representation of one of the most remarkable spots in the world ; and I am sanguine that it may be further a means of leading any reflecting Jews to see a reference to the Messiah as He was, and not (as they understand) a temporal king.' It occurred to the artist in the first instance that the subject was one peculiarly adapted to Landseer's genius
127
128 BROTHERS IN ART
and he seriously thought of suggesting it to him, but on further consideration he recognized that the opportunity of painting the picture with its natural Syrian back- ground was of great worth, and he decided to undertake it himself. As an artist he grasped the pictorial value of the subject ; as a Bible student higher considerations moved him.
The undertaking involved so much difficulty and peril that only the indomitable pluck and perseverance of the painter brought it to a successful issue. A pre- liminary joinmey was made to the shores of the Dead Sea to find the most suitable spot for his work. This proved to be close to the Western shore, at the southern extremity of the lake, near to a mountain, the greater part of which was pure salt, known as Oosdoom, the name identifying, perhaps the site of the Sodom of Abraham's day. After much inquiry a goatherd was found willing to sell a white goat from his flock to be used as a model. The artist now waited till the approach of the Day of Atonement brought the precise period of the year required for painting the background. In November, 1854, he returned to Oosdoom. Laborious preparations were necessary for the expedition. Bag- gage animals had to be engaged, and an escort WcLS required, for the whole country was in a disturbed con- dition. On his first journey to the Dead Sea the artist had been attacked by Arabs in the Wady Kerith. To travel without an armed guard and make a prolonged stay in that wild and desolate region was to court disaster. Even with a guard the risks were serious. On the first day the goat proved refractory, and it made so much noise that there was imminent danger of dra\\ing very
VICTIMS 129
undesirable hostile attention to the little party. On the second day Abou Daouk's encampment was reached, and the Sheikh was asked to furnish guides. He de- clared an escort of one hundred men at a cost of £500 to be necessary. But he found more than his match in Holman-Hunt at bargaining. Finally, amidst shrieks of execration from by-standing Arabs, he consented to provide an escort of five at a cost of seven pounds, with a douceur of three hundred piastres for himself. The sheikh's nephew, Soleiman, was one of the five. He attached himself with dog-Uke fideUty to the artist, and was bitterly disappointed at the close of the expedi- tion that he failed to arrange a marriage between the artist and the sheikh's daughter, and to induce him to accept nomination in his own place as successor to the chieftaincy of the tribe. A camp was formed in the Wady Zuara, some miles from the shore of the Dead Sea. From this place, having breakfasted before dawn, the artist, with Soleiman, a mule to carry the artist's material, and a boy to mind his horse, proceeded each morning to the shore, where the artist worked till dark, pausing only at midday for lunch. The difficulties were great — the terrific heat, the scarcity of water, the plague of flies (on opening the mouth a crowd entered), and the perpetual danger of unwelcome visits from wandering Bedouins. But the glory of the landscape filled the artist with joy. ' Every minute the mountains became more gorgeous and solemn, the whole scene more unhke anything portrayed. Afar off aU seemed of the brilliancy and preciousness of jewels, while near it proved to be only salt and burnt lime, with decayed trees and broken branches brought
I
130 BROTHERS IN ART
down by the rivers feeding the lake. Skeletons of animals, which had perished for the most part in cross- ing the Jordan and the Jabbok, had been swept here, and lay salt-covered, so that birds and beasts of prey left them untouched.'
Chilly nights contrasted with blazing days. On rising from work the third day as the stars came out, the artist waltzed, with his rifle as partner, to warm himself. Soleiman was dehghted. ' You dance Hke a dervish,' he cried. ' You are one,' and he hailed his master as a brother. On the fourth night there was a scare in camp. The artist woke from deep sleep to find the tent door down and all within in disorder. Investigation showed that the goat, having broken loose, had entered and rummaged round for rations. Some days later, when the picture was far advanced, a peril too great to be disregarded obUged Holman- Hunt to strike camp and return. In the afternoon, whilst at work on the shore of the lake, Soleiman gave warning of the approach of robbers — three men on horseback and four on foot. He counselled im- mediate escape, and on the artist's refusal ran off to hide himself. In an hour the Arabs arrived and surrounded the artist. He worked on, one hand upon his double- barrelled gun. The horsemen were armed with long spears, the footmen with guns, swords, and clubs. A colloquy ensued. Was the artist alone ? ' No.' Where was his servant? 'In hiding.' Call him. 'You call him. I don't want him.' The plain resounded with cries for Soleiman. On assurance of safety he came out of his nook, and fabricated the most extraordinary story ; that his master was guarded by a himdred Arabs ;
VICTIMS 131
that from sunrise to sunset he wrote on paper with coloured inks ; that his gun had two souls, and his pistol would shoot as often as he Uked without loading ; that he was, in truth, a dancing dervish, and trusted in Allah ; and he then recorded the story of the cities of the plain as told him by Holman-Hunt, but with astound- ing embellishments. Finally the Arabs left, fully persuaded that the white goat was used to charm the ground, and that the picture would be taken to England, the ' coloured inks ' rubbed off, and the position of the four cities with their buried treasure found beneath. The danger of the return of these Arabs in larger numbers was too great to be risked, and as nothing remained to be done to the picture that could not be undertaken at Jerusalem, Holman-Hunt left. On the return journey the goat died, the party came between the cross-fire of opposed forces near Hebron, and were stopped by robbers between Hebron and Jerusalem, but putting on a bold face, the artist won through. His first care on reaching his house was to wash from the picture all stains of travel. Happily it had received no harm. Then another goat had to be found. For two months the search was in vain. At last a perfect model was obtained from beyond the Jordan. The next day it died. A week later a white kid was procured. This served the artist to the end, and was afterwards given to the children of a missionary. From the roof of Dr. Sims's house at Jerusalem Holman-Hunt painted the clouds in his picture. A tray covered with black mud baked in the sun and watered with a solution of salt brought from the Dead Sea served as model for the patch of foreground on which the goat stood. The
132 BROTHERS IN ART
animal, when led upon this, broke through the encrusta- tion exactly as on the shore of the Dead Sea. Except for the shallows round the feet the whole of the fore- ground was painted at Oosdoom. On June 15, 1855, ' The Scapegoat ' was finished and put in its case. Rising at 4.30 the next morning, the artist rode with it to Jaffa and put it on board ship for England.
Tliis story of the picture, condensed from the artist's autobiography, is given at some length, because of notable paintings few, if any, have so interesting a history. And how was this picture, the fruit of so much toil and risk — a picture painted at the peril of the artist's life — received ? The clergy naturally welcomed it. Gam- bart, the dealer, complained that it was uninteUigible. ' Let your wife and the English girl with her in the carriage see it,' the artist suggested. ' The English read the Bible, more or less. Tell them the title only.' Alas ! the only comment the ladies had to make were : ' A pecuhar kind of goat, you can see, by the ears — they droop so,' and ' Is that the wilderness now ? Are you intending to introduce any others of the flock ? ' Press criticism gave but meagre praise. Academy opinion was hostile, but the picture was weU placed at the Exhibition of 1856, and the pubhc was won im- mediately, so arresting was the subject both in its strange beauty and in its evident symbohsm.
The artist has combined in his representation Rab- binical lore with the brief scriptural allusions to the scapegoat. According to the account in Leviticus, ' the goat on which the lot feU for Azazel ' was sent away ' for Azazel into the wilderness.' Azazel was the supposed prince of demons inhabiting the wilderness
VICTIMS 133
of Judah, There is a close parallel between this passage and the New Testament record, ' Then was Jesus led up of (St. Maxk, 'driven forth by') the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.' In Jewish ceremony a scarlet fiUet was bound round the horns of the goat, which was then led from the Temple and driven into the wilderness. A portion of this fillet was kept in the Temple, and it was beUeved that this would turn white when the corresponding portion whitened as a token of the pardoned iniquity of the people. There is perhaps an allusion to this in the famihar passage, ' Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ; though they be red hke crimson, they shall be as wool.' In later ages the scapegoat, instead of being driven out into the wilderness to perish of hunger and thirst, was cast from a rock in the neigh- bourhood of Jerusalem.
In Holman-Hunt's view the scapegoat is the emblem of the suffering Messiah, and, by an extension of the idea, an emblem of His suffermg Church in the early centuries of bitter persecution. Carrying the thought stiU farther, the scapegoat is symbolic of any nation or individual suffering, though innocent, for the mis- deeds of others. To take in the fuU significance of this picture is to feel an infinite compassion for, and an infinite sense of obligation towards, those afflicted peoples, those heroic men and women to whom the words of Isaiah hii. are apphcable — we esteemed them smitten of God and afflicted, but the chastisement of our peace was upon them, and with their stripes we are healed.
There are two versions of ' The Scapegoat ' In the
134 BROTHERS IN ART
smaller one, now in the Manchester Art Gallery, the goat is black, and a rainbow is introduced. WTien the artist on his first visit to the Dead Sea stood on the spot which he selected for his picture, ' a magnificent rainbow spanned the whole landscape.' Before he returned to Oosdoom he began this smaller version, and reproduced the rainbow. In the larger version, painted at Oosdoom, and now in the possession of Sir Cuthbert Quilter, Bart., the rainbow is omitted, and the goat is white. The I\Ianchester picture, first com- menced, was not completed until after the second visit to the Dead Sea, the record of which is given in this chapter.
' THE BLIND GIRL '
(millais)
Oh, perfect brilliance of a day When sunshine follows shower.
When leaf and blade and stem and flower Upon their rich array
A myriad liquid gems display, Bright jewels of the skies,
Flung from the arc that spans the grey
And thunderous clouds to melt away In lustrous harmonies.
Alas ! the treasures of the light,
The glow of earth and skies, Are veiled from these imseeing eyes ;
No stars encrust the night. No sun at full meridian height
Its dazzling radiance pours On sails of vessels gleaming white, On crested billows in the bight
Foaming on rock-bound shores.
But Nature still has other spells.
The whisper of the trees, And borne upon the freshening breeze
The chimes of village bells ; The rustling grass in fragrant dells.
The murmur of the bees, The scent of heather from the fells. And, springing from eternal wells,
Joys deeper yet than these : — 135
136 BROTHERS IN ART
The inward visions of the soul,
The heart's pure ecstasies, The soaring thoughts that spread and rise
To a long-hoped-for goal When life shall yield no measured dole,
When, sight restored again. As the mean contents of a bowl To seas that sweep from pole to pole.
Shall be this narrow world of pain
To some bright, limitless domain.
VICTIMS 137
* The Blind Girl '
When Holman-Hunt was at Fairlight, near Hastings, in 1852, Millais spent a week-end with him. He was so charmed with the place that he returned three years later and painted ' The Bhnd Girl ' in this neighbour- hood. The hiU in the distance, with its houses and church, is Winchelsea. The middle distance was painted in a hayfield near Rybridge at Bamhill, just outside Perth. Perth suppUed the models for the figures. The rooks and animals and the tortoise-sheU butterfly were aU painted from Nature. A curious defect marked the double rainbow. The second bow being a reflec- tion of the first, the colour should have been reversed. The artist overlooked this fact, and when the error was pointed out to him he painted the second bow again and gave the colours the correct reversal. The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856 and at Birmingham, and received the Birmingham annual prize of £50.
In a letter to Holman-Hunt, then in Palestine, Millais communicated his projected idea of the picture. His friend repHed from Jeinisalem, ' Your subject I think a very beautiful one. It is an incident such as makes people think and love more.' Madox Brown described the picture as ' a religious and a glorious one, God's bow in the sky double sign of a divine promise.' W. G. Rossetti said, ' One of the most touching and per- fect things I know ' ; and Professor Herkomer, on
138 BROTHERS IN ART
seeing the picture at Birmingham in 1893, wrote to the artist, ' I assure you that that work so fired me, so enchanted, and so altogether astonished me, that I am prepared to begin art all over again.'
But the finest description of all is Ruskin's. ' The shower has been heavy, and still is in the distance where an intensely bright double rainbow is reheved against the departing thundercloud. The freshly cut grass is radiant through and through with the new sunshine. The weeds at the girl's side are as bright as a Byzantine enamel and inlaid with blue veronica; her upturned face all aglow with the fight, which seeks its way through her wet eyelashes.'
The picture after passing through several hands was finally presented to the Birmingham Art Gallery in 1892 by the Rt. Hon. William Kenrick, P.C., as a permanent record of the success of the exhibition of P.R.B. work held in that city.
The particular pathos of this picture is due to the subtle manner in which it indicates on the one side the wealth of beauty from which the bhnd are cut off — the gfittering raindrops, the exquisite effects of sunshine after storm, the prismatic colours of the rainbow, the tints of grass and foUage, the rare loveUness of a butter- fly's wings — and on the other side those sources of delight to which the blind are abnormally sensitive — the chime of bells, the song of birds, the rustUng of the trees, all the sweet music of Nature, the sensations of warmth and comfort — and, beyond these, the placid expression on the face suggests an inward peace derived from deeper sources of consolation. In a very true sense the blind are in innumerable instances victims, the
VICTIMS 139
scapegoats of society, suffering the penalties due to the cruelty or carelessness or ignorance of the community. They wander in a wilderness of darkness to which they have been condemned through no fault of their own. It may be too much to hope that the underlying causes will ever be entirely swept away, but at least modern science is aUve to those causes, and in rare cases by cure, but chiefly by prevention, the mischief is being steadily diminished. Happily, by a merciful provision, un- expected avenues of joy and activity open out to the bhnd and afford some compensation. The extent to which the senses of hearing and touch and taste and smell, in their heightened susceptibiUty, replace the lack of vision is a remarkable illustration of the law of adaptation to environment. One of the world's great blind men was Dr. Nicholas Sanderson. He became Professor of Mathematics in the University of Cam- bridge, filling the position but recently vacated by Sir Isaac Newton, and cariying out its duties with in- creasing reputation during twenty-eight years. His proficiency in science and mathematical knowledge was phenomenal. He was bom in a poor cottage in the Httle-known village of Thurlstone in the year 1682. As a labouring man's child, in days when education was considered imnecessary, even undesirable, for the poor, his prospects were dismal enough. He became blind before he was two years old. Local tradition reports that in his early boyhood he taught himself to read by passing his fingers over the inscriptions on the gravestones in the neighbouring churchyard of Penistone, and having thus possessed himself of the key to knowledge, made such use of it that the poor blind
140 BROTHERS IN ART
boy succeeded to the chair of England's greatest philosopher.
John Pulsford, in Quiet Hours, tells a beautiful story of a blind girl who through her father's death was reduced from a life of ease to the necessity of earning her living by rough work. Her greatest treasure was her Braille copy of the Bible. In time she found to her distress that hard work was so destroying her sense of touch that her fingers could hardly distinguish the raised characters. She must either give up her work and starve or give up her Bible-reading. Lifting a volume to her hps to imprint upon it a farewell kiss, she found to her astonishment and deUght that her Hps could pick out the letters. I told this story to a blind girl. She had at the moment a h3min-book in Braille upon her knees. ' Can it be true ? ' I asked. ' Yes,' she said, 'I can quite beheve it. In the institution in which I was trained one of my companions had her right hand amputated. WTien the wound was healed she found that the skin over the stump was so sensitive that she was able to read b}^ her fist instead of her fingers.' * Read something ' I begged. She passed her fingers over the page and read with beautiful inflection of tones :
I will not let Thee go. Should I forsake my bUss ?
No ; Thou art mine
And I am Thine ; Thee will I hold when all things else I miss.
Her disposition was always cheerful and buoyant, for she had experience of ' the inward \nsions of the soul, the heart's pure ecstasies,' which Millais's picture suggests, justifying Madox Brown's comment upon it, ' A religious picture and a glorious one.'
'THE FINDING OF THE SAVIOUR IN THE TEMPLE' (holman-hunt)
Well may your keen and searching glances bend, White-bearded rabbis, on this beardless boy. Whose daring words and face lit up with joy
YoTir own dead creeds, your own cold hearts transcend.
Too high for you His soaring thoughts extend. Too deep th' inquiries in His eager lips ; Ye question Him, His burning zeal outstrips
The vain traditions ye would still defend.
Even His mother fails to comprehend The thoughts that glow in these far-seeing eyes ; 'My Son! My Son! Oh, wist Thou not,' she cries,
' What fears for Thee beset our journey's end? * And strangely answered her that Boy of boys, ' And wist not ye ' — His smile her hurt destroys — ' My Father's business every hour employs ? '
141
CHAPTER VIII
THE BOYHOOD OF JESUS
' The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple '
In May of 1854, sailing in a native boat down the east branch of the Nile to Damietta, Holman-Hunt worked out the design for his picture of the boy Jesus in the Temple. In preparation for this he had studied carefully Exodus, Leviticus, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and other New Testament books, together with Josephus and the Talmud. His reading made clear the character of the principal feasts and fasts, but the more he read the more bewildering he found his subject. Many features in Jewish ceremonial had changed between the time of their institution and the period of Christ's life, and there were several questions to be determined : who the leading Rabbis were of Christ's day, what stage the rebuilding of the Temple had reached, the features of the Temple structure and its furnishing, with other matters. To an artist of Holman-Hunt's disposition, bent upon painting an incident from Christ's life in the very place where it occurred, and upon making the picture as reaUsticaUy true as possible, these
143
144 BROTHERS IN ART
difficulties, on closer consideration, became so great that he almost despaired of canying out his purpose. But he hired a furnished house in Jerusalem and commenced the work. Every Saturday he went to the synagogues to acquaint himself more fully with Jewish rites and costumes and types of face. Immediately other dif- ficulties arose : trouble with domestic affairs, danger when he went out from ignorant and hostile fellahin. Privacy was impossible. He was followed everywhere ; demands for baksheesh were made by boys and girls, epithets such as ' dog,' ' pig of a Christian,' ' donkey,' hurled at him by men ; even actual violence was offered, so that he was obhged to apply to the Consul for pro- tection. But especially he found trouble with models. The Rabbis placed a ban upon their visiting the artist. By the interposition of Sir IMoses Llontefiore and Mr. Frederick W. Mocatta this was removed, but the strange prejudices and superstitions of the models themselves caused endless interruption to the work. One incident win illustrate the kind of difficulties that had to be faced and the need of all the artist's ready wit and unwearied patience to deal with them. A middle- aged Jew, having given one or two sittings, declined to continue on the ground that at the Day of Judge- ment, when his name was called, his portrait in the picture might have preceded him and his name upon the roll have been struck off as one already admitted to Paradise ; then, when he presented himself, he would be rejected as an impostor. Argument was impossible. The artist accepted the objection, and suggested that the difficulty might be obviated by baptizing the figure on the canvas under another name. To this the model
THE BOYHOOD OF JESUS 145
assented. His portrait in the picture was accordingly solemnly sprinkled and given the name ' Jack Robin- son,' and the Jew, fully satisfied, continued his sittings. From the roof of the house of a Canadian proselyte Holman-Hunt painted the C3^resses in the picture. The same man obtained for him from the master of the synagogue the loan for a few hours of the silver crown of the law. The last work done was the painting of the floor ' from slabs of local limestone rock represent- ing the pavement of the Court of the Temple polished by constant wear.' One exceptional stroke of good luck the artist had. The Pasha's secretary gave him an opportunity of entering the area of the Mosque of Omar. Guided by its custodian, a direct descendant of the official appointed centuries before by the Caliph Omar, he was even allowed, though with reluctance, to ascend the roof of As Sakreh, and in that brief hour he made a sketch of the walls and of Scopas, so achieving ' a victory over what seemed an insuperable obstacle.' The picture, still incomplete, was packed and sent to England in 1855. So many and so great had been the difficulties encountered that for months the artist had suspended work upon it and painted in the interval 'The Scapegoat.' Arriving in England, new difficulties beset him. Progress \vith the picture was arrested for want of money. There was nothing to be done but to abandon it for the time and paint what he could sell — replicas of previous pictures and such work as was immediately marketable. Sometimes for months not a day's work was added to the Temple picture. In 1859 Mr. Combe of Oxford offered the artist a loan of ;^300 to enable him to give his undivided attention to
146 BROTHERS IN ART
the completion of his great work. This generous aid enabled him to recommence, and in 1859 the picture was finished. Then arose the difficulty of finding a purchaser. The cost of producing the picture had been enormous. I he artist needed five thousand five hundred guineas to reimburse him for all the expenses involved, and he saw no hope of obtaining such a sum. Wilkie Collins suggested that Charles Dickens, as an acute man of business, might give valuable suggestions, and offered to interview him. The result was an invita- tion to the artist to call upon Dickens at Tavistock Square. A few questions ehcited the facts. How long had the picture taken to paint? Six years. The questions of cost at Jerusalem and elsewhere were gone into ; and the possible sources of revenue — the sale of the picture, its exhibition at a shilling a head to the public, the amount to be reaUzed from engravings. Finally Dickens gave as his verdict : * You want five thousand five hundred guineas ; a business man can afford to give it — £1,500 down, £1,000 in six months, and the balance in three years.' An interview with Gambart followed. The price asked staggered him. ' Impossible ! ' But finally he recognized the possibility, and accepted the terms. Upon exhibition the picture received the enthusiastic approval of the public. It was finally acquired by the Corporation of Birmingham, and the pubUc has, happily, ready access to one of the world's finest Biblical paintings.
Within a year of its completion the picture narrowly escaped destruction. On a keen winter's morning a canopy erected over it took fire and fell. The flames spread rapidly. Only a pail of frozen water was at
THE BOYHOOD OF JESUS 147
hand. A lady flung her valuable Indian shawl to the attendant, and he extinguished the blaze with it. Fortunately the picture received little damage. In a week the artist was able to repair the mischief and the picture was on exhibition again. The lady's shawl was completely destroyed. Though advertised for, her name was not forthcoming. It was only years later that Holman-Hunt discovered that the rescue of his pictmre was due to the wife of Sir Walter Trevelyan.
The subject of the picture speaks for itself. The artist has chosen the moment when the entrance of Joseph and Mary after their three days' anxious search breaks in upon the discussion between the Rabbis and the youthful inquirer after truth. The boy is neither disconcerted by the keen glances of the learned doctors of the Law nor by the anxious sohcitude and veiled reproaches of his parents. The conflicting emotions of the Rabbis — surprise, admiration, indignation ; the tender concern of the mother, not without a suggestion of natural vexation ; the deep seriousness of the boy Jesus, His growing conviction that He also was called to be a Teacher of Israel, and His supreme devotion to a God-given mission are finely depicted. The back- ground of the picture, a section of the Temple Court, with cypress-trees in the mid-distance and a glimpse of the hills beyond, is worthy of the grouping of the figures. The women of Bethlehem, distinguished for their beauty, furnished the type for the face of Mary, and the Rabbis of Jerusalem for the countenances of the doctors of the Law. But the central feature of the painting is this picture of ideal boyhood, this noble representation of the youthful Jesus, who from this
148 BROTHERS IN ART
utter absorption in His awakening consciousness to His great life-work turns away to spend long years in filial obedience to His parents and to the humble and laborious tasks of the carpenter's shop at Nazareth.
'CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF HIS PARENTS'
(millais)
' And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands ? Then he shall answer. Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends ' (Zech. xiii. 6).
Oh, sharp are the tools that the carpenter uses, And Httle their keenness the boy apprehends ;
From His fingers all bleeding the warm, red blood oozes — Thou art wounded, O Christ, in the house of Thy friends.
In boyhood, in manhood, and down through the ages
Thy glory for ever with suffering blends ; Thy story writ large on the world's crimson pages
Is of wounding received in the house of Thy friends.
'Tis not to the cross that, once only, men nailed Thee,
Not Calvary only Thy sacred flesh rends ; The Church of Thy planting has mocked Thee, assailed Thee,
And wounded Thee sore in the house of Thy friends.
As oft as in zeal for Thy honour she slaughters
(When Thy honour by sword and by stake she defends)
The staunchest and best of her sons and her daughters, Thou art wounded, O Christ, in the house of Thy friends.
When Thy servants but half-hearted lip-service bring Thee, When rehgion its cloak to hypocrisy lends,
When words of betrayal and broken oaths sting Thee, Oh, deep are Thy wounds in the house of Thy friends.
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When nation in war rises up against nation,
And prayer, Prince of Peace, for Thy blessing ascends.
And thou lookest on bloodshed and black desolation, Thou art grievously hurt in the house of Thy friends.
Will the day ever dawn when Thy house shall be glorious ?
The day when each people its Lord comprehends ? The day of Thy coming, O Christ, all victorious,
To dwell without hurt in the house of Thy friends?
THE BOYHOOD OF JESUS 151
* Christ in the House of His Parents '
In the summer of 1849 Millais heard a sermon at Oxford from the text, ' And one shall say unto Him, What are these wounds in thine hands ? Then he shall answer. Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.' This suggested to him as a subject for a painting a scene — an imaginary scene — from the boyhood of Jesus. He would depict the boy Christ as hurt by one of the sharp tools in the shop of his father Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, and ministered to by His mother. He showed a pen-and-ink sketch embodying his idea to Holman-Hunt, and his friend agreed that there were great possibilities in it. The artist as he proceeded with the work entertained doubts about it, but he worked on with mingled feelings of hope and fear. He would not have a lazy model pose for Joseph. He arranged with a real carpenter to sit for him, and for background he decided upon a car- penter's shop in Oxford Street, a shop in which there were some planks of real cedar wood. In this shop he worked for many days, with the sound of tools con- tinually in his ears. Other models were his father and H. St. Ledger, used with the carpenter for the figure of Joseph; his mother's sister-in-law, Mrs. Hodgkinson for Mary ; Noel Humphrey for Christ, and Edwin Everitt for St. John. The picture was finished for the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1850. The night before the opening Holman-Hunt slept at Millais's house. Early
152 BROTHERS IN ART
in the morning the artists went to the Academy and found that their pictures, Hohnan-Hunt's ' A Converted British Family ' and Millais's ' Christ in the House of His Parents,' were again hung pendant. Holman- Hunt expressed his admiration of Millais's work. Millais exclaimed, ' It's the most beastly thing I ever saw. Come away.' ' It's truly marvellous,' his friend replied. Just then two fellow students glanced at the picture, turned away, and laughed. JMillais stopped them. He might himself dub his picture ' a beastly thing,' for he judged it by his own excessivety high standard ; but he knew, none better, how much hard and conscientious work had been put into it, and this open contempt stung him. Putting his hand upon the shoulder of one of the students he said, ' Do you know what you are doing ? Don't you see if you were to live to the age of Methuselah, both of you, and you were to improve every day of your life more than you will in the whole course of it, you would never be able to achieve any work fit to compare with that picture ? ' * We said nothing,' they objected. ' No,' Millais retorted, ' but you laughed defiantly in my face. Egregious fools ! ' They slunk away. Press criticism that year was par- ticularly severe upon the work of both artists. ' Pictorial blasphemy ' the Athenaeum termed this painting of Millais. The Times called it 'revolting, disgusting.' Epithets such as 'infamous,' 'iniquitous,' were hurled at it, and Charles Dickens denounced it in a leading article in Household Words with a malevolence that was ludicrous. The fact is, that apart from the anger aroused by the aims of the new school of young artists, Millais's picture struck a fresh note in Bibhcal illustration As the Gospel
THE BOYHOOD OF JESUS 153
of St. Mark was unpopular in the early Church on account of its graphic dehneation of the human side of our Lord's life, so much so that at one period but one MS. of the Gospel, and that a mutilated one, survived, so Millais's attempt to set forth the hfe of the divine Boy in its most homely aspect aroused a storm of indignation. Holman- Hunt's representation of Christ the Carpenter in his picture ' The Shadow of Death ' a few years later pro- duced in certain circles the same effect. But, in truth, if any adverse criticism is to be passed upon Millais's picture it should be from the very opposite point of view. The fault, if fault must be found, is not that it is too reahstic, but that it lacks in reahsm. It inevit- ably challenges comparison with ' The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple ' or ' The Shadow of Death ' in its want of local colour. But it must be remembered in justice to the artist, that whereas Holman-Hunt painted his pictures in the Holy Land, under all the stimulus of Oriental surroundings and with Jewish types for models, Millais had only an English joiner's shop at hand, and his means being inadequate to pro- cure Jewish models, he was obUged to make use of his own friends. The picture in consequence is not too realistic, but insufficiently reahstic. It is a bold effort in the right direction — a casting aside of the old con- ventional methods, and an honest attempt to portray the boyhood of Jesus in its natural beauty and simpUcity — and as an illustration of the text which suggested the subject the imaginative power of the picture is as beautiful as it is original.
In spite of the critics the painting found a purchaser at once, and the artist received £300 for it. It is
154 BROTHERS IN ART
now in the possession of the Coq)oration of Birmingham and is exhibited in the Birmingham Art Gallery.
Turning from the history of this picture to its signifi- C£ince, a wide range of thought is opened up. Whether intended or not, when taken in conjunction with the text that gave rise to it, the picture becomes an allegory. It suggests the terrible fact that the most grievous woimds that have been inflicted upon Christ, the most terrible injury that has been wrought to Him and to His gracious purposes, have been wrought by the people, and in the places where especially His honour was sup- posed to be held sacred. There has been no exhibition of the anti-Christ spirit outside His Church more bitter and uncompromising than that which has been manifest inside the Church. The merciless persecution of Christians by Christians ; the haughty arrogance of great prelates ; the cold-hearted indifference of professed followers of the Clirist ; the deadly formahty of worship offered to Him ; the utter misunderstanding of His spirit and purposes ; the jealousies and enmities between rival factions in His Church, — these things throughout the ages have been the repeated wounding of Christ in the house of His friends. The biting irony of G. F. Watts's picture, ' The Spnit of Christianity,' and the underlying significance of this picture of Millais, will have to be taken into account and acted upon if ever the Church of Christ is to fulfil its destiny, and Christianity to become, through its inlierent beneficence, the domina- ting faith amongst the great rehgious systems of the world.
'THE SHADOW OF DEATH*
(holman-hunt)
What treasures of a sacred past are here,
Laid by within this carven ivory chest —
Crown, sceptre, robe — a monarch to invest. What memories a mother's heart to cheer ! Her lowly son must presently appear
In all His glorious majesty confessed ;
Ah ! not in vain the star-led Sages' quest Who came with these rare gifts the Christ-Child to revere.
But, glancing up, a sudden fear descends. And on the mother's heart rests hke a pall ;
In shivering dismay she holds her breath ; The Carpenter His weary arms extends,
And by the noon-tide sun, cast on the wall,
Lo ! the black shadow of a shameful death.
X55
CHAPTER IX
FOREBODINGS
' The Shadow of Death '
HoLMAN-HuNT reached England after his first visit to the Holy Land in February 1856. He was not able to return to the East until 1869. He secured a house known as Dar Berruk Dar in an elevated quarter of Jerusalem on a three-years' tenancy, with permission to enlarge certain of the windows. A large stable occupied the ground floor ; the living-rooms were reached by a flight of steps. The servants' rooms and offices encircled a courtyard. Above were other rooms and a flat, open roof. The house was said to be haunted. It might well seem so with its rattling windows and its abundance of rats, serpents, scorpions, and centipedes. But there were glorious views from the upper casements, and the whole of the Temple area came within the range of vision. Upon the flat roof two wooden huts were erected, one for the artist and one for his model. The huts moved upon rollers, and could be adjusted to varying conditions of light.
It had been Holman-Hunt's intention, if he could have returned to Jerusalem earlier, to have painted a picture of Christ reading in the Synagogue at Nazareth. He
157
158 BROTHERS IN ART
had patiently studied this subject, but the treatment of it was deferred for want of a suitable studio, and the in- tention was never carried out. He turned now instead to the humbler duties of Jesus prior to His Messianic call. The record of St. Mark's Gospel,' Is not this the carpenter?' arrested the artist's attention. Beyond this flash of light cast by St. Mark upon Christ's occupation up to the commencement of His ministry no other writer had dwelt upon this subject except Justin Martyr. Holman- Hunt felt ^the importance of emphasizing this fact in our Lord's human life, and round about this fact his imagination played. Would not the faith of the mother of Jesus be sorely tested when she contrasted the glorious predictions made at His birth with those long years of humble toil in the carpenter's shop, and the more so when she heard the mutterings of the brothers of Jesus that He was ' beside Himself ' ? How natural that from time to time she should examine with proud and lo\'ing interest those royal gifts brought years before by the Wise Men from the East — the golden crown, the sceptre, the kingly raiment, the censer for the enthronement — and strengthen her tested faith by gazing upon these marvellous memorials of the mysterious nativity. The artist would represent her in the act of opening a carved ivory chest which contained these treasures, whilst close at hand her son was occupied with his arduous toil, working hke an ordinary labourer with no indication any- where apparent of that predicted Messianic splendour. Ah ! but it must dawn presently, for what else could be the significance of these costly offerings ? And then sud- denly a terrible shock and a grievous foreboding — the Carpenter pausing for a moment in His work, stretching
FOREBODINGS 159
His arms for relief, lifting His face heavenwards, and murmuring words of prayer ; the mother glancing up, terrified by the shadow projected upon the wall and tool-rack, the sinister resemblance of a crucified man ; and the very moment of the revival of her faith the moment of the awakening of a presentiment of coming tragedy and of the anguish that would rend her heart.
With this subject in his mind the artist visited and watched many native carpenters at work. Then, whilst his Jerusalem house was being made ready, he visited Bethlehem. There he hunted up such old-time tools as were used in Christ's day, tools hkely soon to be altogether abandoned for those of European design. For several weeks he worked in uninterrupted sunshine on the roof of the German Mission House at Bethlehem. This accommodation was due to the kindness of Miss Hofmann, the temporary custodian. During this period the Suez Canal was opened, and the Crown Prince of Prussia, passing from Egypt to Palestine, visited Bethlehem and rested for a midday meal at the German Mission. Holman-Hunt was introduced. The Prince named some of the artist's pictures and asked if he could see the work then on hand. The artist had to explain that it was only just begun and quite unintelligible.
The difiiculty of securing models recurred. The Bethlehem people were superstitiously afraid of allowing their features to be transferred to canvas, but a timid woman having posed, though reluctantly, for the Virgin Mary, and no harm befalling, the most intelhgent people consented to sit for the artist at his Jerusalem studio when required.
Dar Berruk Dar being now ready for occupation,
i6o BROTHERS IN ART
Holman-Hunt continued his work there for months. His picture necessitated a flat wall for a background. To relieve the monotony of this he introduced an open win- dow, and to provide a suitable landscape for the window outlook he made a four-days' journey to Nazareth and spent several days there in making sketches. Returning with these to Jerusalem he resumed his work. Then fresh difficulties sprang up. News of the Franco-German war disturbed pohtical conditions. There was insufficient rain, cisterns were empty, and children went about begging water in God's name. This was attributed to the open- ing of the Suez Canal. The model sitting for the figure of Christ proved unsatisfactory. He was a sad rascal at best. During the progress of the picture he was arrested and imprisoned on a charge of murder. The artist secured his release, but the model's skin, tanned to a chocolate hue, and his meagre Hmbs were a drawback. Happily as the artist was wandering through the lanes of Bethlehem he came upon just what he needed, a man of 'singularly noble form and beauty of expression.' He was a staunch member of the Greek Church, by name Jarius Hasboon. This man consented to pose, and from this model Holman-Hunt painted the head of Christ and modified the figure. It is interesting, and exceedingly pleasant, to have the artist's testimony to this model : ' Undoubtedly the most truthful, honest, and dignified servant I ever met in Syria.'
At last, after many difficulties and delays, the picture was finished and taken to Jaffa for shipment to England. At Jaffa it was exhibited to the Pasha and other dig- nitaries and to resident Europeans. During this ex- hibition a great hubbub arose outside. The shopkeepers
FOREBODINGS i6i
and workpeople clamoured to see the picture. They were admitted in batches of twenty. A mason com- plained that he was not allowed to touch the canvas. He wanted to feel the difference between the shavings, the flesh, the linen, the sky. Others were urgent that the picture should be turned round. They were shown the back of another canvas and told that there was no differ- ence. The answer entirely failed to satisfy them, for, said one, they had been twenty minutes looking at the front of Messiah and the back of Sit Miriam ; was it not natural that they should want to see the face of Sit Miriam and the back of the Christ ? No Roman Cathohcs came. They were forbidden by the priests on the ground that the Virgin was represented with her face hidden. This was considered ' a Protestant indignity to the Madonna.'
Some months were spent by the artist in further amend- ment of the painting after its arrival in London. Messrs. Agnew & Sons bought it — £5,500 to be paid down for it and for the first study, and a similar sum in the future. The picture was exhibited in London and Oxford, and subsequently throughout the country. Lady Augusta Stanley informed the artist that Queen Victoria desired to see the picture at Buckingham Palace. It was taken there. The artist received a gracious message of Her Majesty's appreciation, and a commission for a rephca of the head of the Saviour. This was duly executed. It hung for several years in the picture gallery at Bucking- ham Palace and is now in the Chapel Royal.
As in Jerusalem, so also in London, the extreme Church party denounced the picture as ' blasphemous.' They refused to accept the record in St. Mark's Gospel as an
L
i62 BROTHERS IN ART
authority for representing Jesus Christ as being Himself a carpenter. But the public generally, and especially the artisan public of the great industrial centres in the North, hailed the picture wiih delight. It excited their deepest interest, and great numbers of working men paid two guineas in weekly instalments for a print to hang in their homes. This was precisely what the artist most of all desired, ' the dutiful humility ' of Christ thus carrying its deepest lesson.
The picture was finally presented by Sir William Agnew to the Corporation of Manchester, and it is now one of the choicest treasures of the Manchester Art Gallery.
'THE VALE OF REST'
(MiLLAIS)
A sky with sunset hues aglow,
A cool October breeze, The opalescent colours flow
About the dusky trees ; The rustling branches murmur low
A requiem for the dead, The while with rhythmic thrust and throw, As one by usage numbed to woe.
Nun digs for nun a bed.
But, why, fair lady, comest thou
To this sequestered place ? Why that dark cloud upon thy brow,
That sadness in thy face ? Dost thou lament thy solemn vow
In heedless girlhood made. Or her sad story — ended now — Across whose grave the poplar bough
Will nightly fling its shade ?
* O sweet, in this sweet Vale of Rest
From life's unrest to cease, Here at the mighty mother's breast
To find unbroken peace ! ' Seemeth it, sister, this is best ?
Sunset and souls released ? Ah ! if so fair the darkening west What splendour will be manifest
When dawn lights up the east !
163
FOREBODINGS 165
"The Vale of Rest'
When Millais on his wedding tour in 1855 was descend- ing the steep hill from Inverary to Loch Awe, the coach- man pointed out on one of the islands of the loch the ruins of an old monastery. This led to a talk between the artist and his wife about the old times. They con- jured up in imagination the scenes of monastic days — white-robed nuns floating in boats on the water and singing sweet chants under the inspiration of the wondrous loveUness of that supremely lovely spot. Millais de- clared that he was determined some day to paint a picture in which nuns should be the leading figures. One afternoon at the end of October in that year he was struck with the exceptional beauty of the sunset. He rushed into the house for a large canvas and began work upon it at once. For background he had the wall of the Bowerswell garden, with tall trees and poplars behind. Two or three exquisite sunsets followed in succession. The artist worked at his highest speed to secure the evanescent effects. Seated just outside the front door, he had the principal part of the picture, the terrace and shrubs of Bowerswell, immediately before him. The comer of the house he transformed into an ivy-covered chapel. The grave was painted from one freshly made in Kinnoul churchyard. Some months later, in cold, stormy weather, when he was working upon his picture in the churchyard, two old men, known familiarly in Perth as ' Sin and Misery,'
i66 BROTHERS IN ART
watched the artist's unremitting toil with immense interest. He would not even pause for refreshment. They supposed he must be gaining a hard Hvelihood by painting graves for sorrowing relatives, and they brought him daily wine and cake to sustain him in the arduous labour.
The figure of the woman digging the grave caused the artist very great trouble. Never, his wife affirmed, had she known such a time in her hfe as when her hus- band was painting that woman. For seven weeks he painted and repainted her with ever worse results. Then, for his good, his wife abducted the picture and locked it up in a wine-cellar. Entreaties were in vain. The model, who was receiving good pay, continued coming ; she was engaged for the duration of the painting. All remonstrance was disregarded. At last the artist was induced to take up other work. When after a consider- able interval his picture was released, he saw at a glance what was wrong, and a few hours' work overcame the difficulty.
The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1859. The title selected was taken from one of Mendelssohn's part-songs, ' The Vale of Rest, where the weary find repose,' It was sold for seven hundred guineas, and subsequently bought by Sir Henry Tate for £3,000. It is now in the National Gallery of British Art, and is regarded as one of the artist's greatest paintings. H. W. B, Davis, R,A., says : ' Can any one look upon " The Vale of Rest " viithout, in fancy, feeling the very air of approaching twilight ? This is, indeed, to my mind a faultless picture,'
The picture offers an enigma. Why the haunting
FOREBODINGS 167
sadness in the eyes of the beautiful nun seated by the grave ? Is it weariness of her own hfe that brings her here to indulge in morbid reflections on the restfulness of death ? Or is it the tragic lot of the sister nun for whom this grave is being prepared that fills her with sorrow ? Or does the digging of this grave arouse gloomy forebodings and point to the inevitable time when for her also the sun must set and the dcirkness fall ?
Times there are when such forebodings cloud the mind, when instead of the feeling that the very best must be made of life's brief day because ' the night Cometh when no man can work,' the very opposite feeling is excited ; the night draws on so rapidly, the working hours are so brief, that nothing of real and permanent value can be accomphshed in them, and it were best, therefore, to attempt nothmg and settle down into apathetic indifference. But there are two supreme events at the close of a well-spent hfe, events so imcomparably beautiful that they make every effort worth while. The pictmre plainly expresses one, and the suggestion of the other is not far away — the loveh- ness of a perfect sunset and the glory of a perfect dawn. It is not the setting of the sun in a clear sky that is desir- able. The ineffable glow and colour of simset are impos- sible apart from clouds, but when the clouds of past difficulties and failures and disappointments and struggles are irradiated in hfe's twihght ; when they take on new forms and glow with unsuspected colours ; when they are seen in the mellow hght of departing day to have been all parts of a perfectly ordered plan and they become gorgeous with an undreamt-of beauty in the light reflected upon them from the sim on the horizon
i68 BROTHERS IN ART
as they never could be with the sun at its zenith, a new meaning will enter into the past, a strange lovehness suffuse the once perplexing mysteries of Ufe, and the triumphant spirit will pass on its way to the joyous cadence of Simeon's phrase, ' Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.'
But if hfe's sunset hues are perfect in their lovehness, how must the glory of the dawn of an eternal day be infinitely more so ? The symbohsm of Scripture and the imagery of h3minology have been strained to the utmost in the attempt to express this. The Vale of Rest for the toil-worn and weary, the declining sun, the gold and crimson and green of the western sky — these can be depicted ; but the sun in the East again, the delicate flush of dawn, the hght every moment gaining in intensity, the awakening to renewed hfe and activity, and full comprehension of the significance of the words apphcable to that marvellous dawn, ' Thy sun shall no more go down ; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself : for the Lord shall be thine everlasting hght, and the days of thy mourning shaU be ended ' — these glories bafiie the imagination ; they transcend the power of words to describe and the skill of the artist's brush to depict. But at least the known lovehness of sunset suggests the unknown grandeur of the coming dawn, and this beautiful picture is beautiful not only on account of that which it actually expresses, but by reason also of the sequence of thought which it inspires.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE INNOCENTS ?
(holman-hunt)
Spirit-children, spirit-children, Ghostly forms to earth returning
To attend the infant Christ,
Holy Innocents enticed By a more than mortal yearning ;
Spirit-children, spirit-children.
For the Babe-King sacrificed.
Now they cluster round about Him, They have saved Him by their dying,
Saved Him from the ruthless sword ;
Joyously they fence their Lord, In triumphant gladness vying ;
Spirit-chndren, spirit-children.
Dead, but now to hfe restored.
Weeping mothers, weeping mothers. Of your grief what sweet beguihng
In one fleeting glimpse of them.
And the Babe of Bethlehem On His escort gaily smiling ;
Spirit-children, spirit-children.
Crowned for ever With the martyrs' diadem.
169
CHAPTER X
THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS
' The Triumph of the Innocents '
In 1865 the Vicar of St. Michael and All Angels, Cam- bridge, expressed a desire that Holman-Hunt should decorate and paint the interior of the church. Un- fortunately sad circumstances in the artist's hfe and subsequently the Vicar's death prevented the canying- out of this work. One subject selected for a wall of the church was ' The Fhght of the Holy Family uito Egypt.' During his second visit to the Holy Land, whilst he was engaged upon ' The Shadow of Death,' this sub- ject came back to Holman-Hunt's remembrance, and, thinking over St. Matthew's story, it occurred to him that the massacred children of Bethlehem, perhaps little playmates of the child Jesus, were a vicarious sacrifice, and that in their spiritual life they would be ' still constant in their love for the forlorn but heaven- defended family.' This idea interested him so far that he recorded it on a canvas, and made an expedition to the Phihstine plain near Gaza to secure materials for the landscape. A group of trees and a water-wheel at Gaza provided these, and the artist occupied some
171
172 BROTHERS IN ART
moonlight nights in painting them. On leaving Jerusalem upon the completion of ' The Shadow of Death ' this small unfinished picture was carefully packed and put by in his house, Dar Berruk Dar.
On the third visit to the Holy Land with Mrs. Holman- Hunt in 1875 the house was found in such a condition that it was uninhabitable. Worse still, all the artist's painting materials were damaged. Happily the sketch for the ' Triumph of the Innocents ' had escaped injury. The materials left ready for dispatch from England had not arrived. There was nothing for it but to obtain the best linen procurable in the bazaar for the pictures in hand. This answered well enough for the small painting ' The Ship,' but its use as a canvas for ' The Triumph of the Innocents ' caused endless trouble. In the spring of the next year a visit to Philistia deter- mined certain details of the background of the picture. A house and studio were built, but the studio was not rainproof. This caused additional trouble ; then the increasing hostihty of the Moslems made Jerusalem unsafe, and Mrs. Hohnan-Hunt and the children were sent to Jaffa. The artist remained and worked on, only to find ever-increasing trouble with his defective canvas. On his return in two and a half years to England he had Uttle to show but his partly finished picture. It was at last abandoned in despair, and a larger version painted on a new canvas. Upon the completion of this, the canvas of the original picture, after many disheartening experiments, was so treated that eventually it became possible to finish the painting.
The two pictures differ in certain details of form and colour, and both differ markedly from the first study in
THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS 173
the attitude of the infant Christ. In the original sketch Mary holds her child against her left shoulder. In the two other pictures the infant Jesus rests against the Virgin's right shoulder, leaning back and smihng upon the spirit-children near to Him. There are thus three versions of ' The Triumph of the Innocents.' No. i, the small original sketch begun during the artist's second sojourn at Jerusalem and found uninjured in the house Dar Berruk Dar on the artist's third visit. This is now in the possession of Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Morse. No. 2, the larger picture begun upon Jerusalem hnen during the artist's third visit to Jerusalem, abandoned after years of toil upon it as hopeless, and finally completed upon the restored fabric. This was acquired by the Corporation of Liverpool and is now in the Walker Art GaUery. No. 3, the repHca of No. 2, begun when the artist despaired of completing No. 2, and finished first. This is in the National Gallery.
The subject of this picture is weU worth consideration. The artist has focused attention upon that incident, so seldom called to remembrance amongst the festivities of Christmas-tide — the dark tragedy of the massacre at Bethlehem. We are accustomed to think of Bethlehem as the city of joy, the glorious spot of happy memories, where Jacob found Rachel, where the sweet idyll of Ruth had its setting, where David fed his flock and re- ceived his call to a throne, where the Christ-child was bom. St. Matthew's Gospel recalls the fact that it was a city of sorrow. Here Jacob's saddest hour was passed when near by he buried Rachel ; here the Jewish captives, hurried into exile, gathered on the eve of that terrible journey, and Rachel is represented as weeping
174 BROTHERS IN ART
over her exiled daughters ; here Herod's ruthless soldiery slaughtered the innocents, and once again Rachel had reason to weep for her children. In truth, though for the most part Bethlehem is associated with the ex- quisite stories of the nativity, it has, besides, its dark and terrible records. What did the mothers of Bethlehem think of the nativity ? That event of supreme joy to the world involved for them a frightful sacrifice. Holman- Hunt has portrayed in his picture the bright side of that tragedy. The babes who cluster around the infant Christ are not babes of flesh and blood, but spirit-children. Some are hardly aw^ake as yet to this new Hfe, and reveal the horrors and suffering of the day of slaughter. Others, conscious of the service they are permitted to render, are joyously triumphant. One in priestly office leads the band, and the spirit-children following cast the symbols of martyrdom in the path of their infant Lord. One infant spirit, apart, wonders to find no hurt, where the sword pierced him, upon the glorified body. Mary, fuU of joy for her own child's rescue, and full of compassion for the murdered children and their childless mothers, is replacing the garments in which the infant Jesus had been hurriedly wrapped at the escape, when He recognizes the spirit-forms of His Uttle Bethlehem playmates, and lean- ing towards them, smiles His welcome. The period is spring-tide, rich in flowers and fruits ; the hour towards dawn ; a declining moon shedding its last rays, and an unearthly Ught faUing upon the spirit children. A shallow stream, hardly stirred by Joseph's footsteps, reflects the beauty of the night sky. Signal fires are burning on the hillside, and lights gleam from the village huts. The nearest trees overhang a water-wheel used
THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS 175
for irrigation purposes. Wild dogs that have come from the mill-house to bark slink back, troubled by the strange splendour of the passing procession. Joseph alone seems unaware of anything unusual. With gaze intently fixed upon the signal fires, and concerned only for the safety of mother and child whilst passing this village, he sees nothing of the spirit-children. But they float along, gliding upon the stream — the river of hfe — which for ever rolls onward. And this flood in constant motion breaks, not into spray, but into magnified globes which image in a succession of pictures the Jewish belief in the millennium that was to follow the advent of the Messiah. The patriarch's dream at Bethel is depicted on the large globe, the adoration of the Lamb by the elders on another, and on others the sorrow of the penitent, the simpUcity of the child, the tree for the healing of the nations, and thus the flood upon which the spirit-children advance symbolizes all that pertains to eternal hfe.
The same symbohcal device, water — in this case the sea, breaking into pictorial globes — is employed by Byam Shaw in his painting 'Whither?' exhibited a decade later at the Royal Academy.
Ruskin saw ' T?.e Triumph of the Innocents,' version No. 2, in its incomplete state at the artist's Chelsea studio, and made it the subject of one of his lectures on the art of England. His words of warm apprecia- tion came just at the critical moment when Holman- Hunt, on the point of giving up all hope of ever being able to complete the picture, was thinking of rehnquish- ing it for some other subject. But for that apprecia- tion, the artist has averred, 'I should scarcely have persevered to save the work of so many alternating
176 BROTHERS IN ART
feelings of joy and pain.' If so, a debt of gratitude is due to Ruskin, for of all Holman-Hunt's work this paint- ing is pre-eminent for its imaginative quality and the wealth of its symbolism. It is at once a deep weU of consolation and a radiant beam of light cast upon the great hereafter.
THE MARTYR OF THE SOLWAY FIRTH'
(millais)
The tide sweeps on, the waters swirl
Around the ankles of the dauntless girl.
Around her knees, about her breast,
They soak the Bible to her bosom pressed •
But from her hps floats out a song,
A precious paean of the past,
A psalm of faith for souls made strong
To die, if so the lot be cast.
Chained to her stake the maiden martyr sings.
And pleads her cause before the King of Kings :
' Mine eyes and eke my heart
to Him I will advance ; That plucked my feet out of the snare
Of sin and ignorance. With mercy me behold,
to Thee I make my mone : For I am poor, and desolate,
and comfortless alone. The troubles of my heart
are multiplied indeed : Bring me out of '
She sings no more ; the words expire
In gurgling sobs, in passionate desire
To meet at once her utmost pain
And pass through suffering to endless gain.
The salt waves fiU her mouth, they fill
Her nostrils and wide-open eyes,
Flow o'er her head, advancing still ;
Some bubbles to the surface rise,
The virgin mart^nr's last convulsive breath,
Alone, beneath the tide, with God and death.
177 M
THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS 179
* The Martyr of the Solway Firth '
The foul crime of the massacre of the Innocents was a matter of state poHcy, not of ecclesiastical hatred. And in general the persecution of the eariy Christians, bitter and relentless as it was, originated in considerations of pohtical expedience rather than in religious rancour. The most diabohcal forms of persecution, the most inhuman inventiveness in methods of torture, are recorded in the annals of the Christian Church itself, and they are the outcome of blatant bigotry and uncompromis- ing intolerance. In the long and terrible list of victims to ecclesiastical tyranny the martyr, or rather the martyrs of the Solway Firth, for there were two of them, a young girl and an old woman, hold an honoured place. Millais has seized upon the incident, and in his painting of the pathetic tragedy of the Scotch maiden who slowly perished in the rising tide rather than abandon her faith, he has given extended pubUcity to a story which otherwise might have remained more or less buried in the records of Scottish rehgious history. The story is so terrible an example of utter brutal callousness that its truth has been called in question, but whatever uncertainty there may be as to minor details, the main outlines rest on a foundation too solid to be shaken.
In 1684 one, James Renwick, a Covenanter with a great reputation as a field preacher, pubUshed an Apologetical Declaration. It was, in effect, a plea for
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and a justification of the assassination of the enemies of the Covenant. It was wholly disastrous in its effect, since violence cannot but beget violence. The Privy Council countered the Declaration with an order that every subject, old or young, should solemnly abjure it, under penalty of death for refusal. This order, although in itself a civil measure, gave a convenient handle to CathoHc intolerance and stirred up more fiercely the flame of religious hatred.
Gilbert Wilson, a substantial farmer, was living at this time near Wigtown on the Solway Firth. He and his wife were sound EpiscopaUans, but their children seem to have come under the influence of Renwick and his party. There were three of them, Margaret aged eighteen, Thomas sixteen, and Agnes twelve. Young as they were they were staunch Covenanters, and they refused to hear the Episcopal incumbent in the Church where their parents worshipped. This exposed them to dire peril. To escape the danger they fled into the country and hid for weeks amongst hills, bogs, and caves. Their parents were forbidden on their peril to harbour them or to supply their needs. Gilbert Wilson was fined heavily for his children's opinions ; soldiers were quartered upon him, sometimes to the number of one hundred ; his attendance was required almost weekly at the \Mgtown courts, thirteen miles from his house. These things ruined him in health and money, and he died in abject poverty. His widow Uved to a great age upon charity. Thomas, after wandering here and there in concealment till the 1688 revolution, joined King William's army in Flanders, and finally came back to the old home. The tragedy centres in Margaret. She
THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS i8i
and her sister Agnes ventured into Wigtown to see some acquaintances. A pretended friend betraj^ed them. They were seized by a party of soldiers and cast into prison. In the same prison there was another Margaret — Margaret McLauchlan, a widow of between sixty and seventy. She refused to take the oath of abjura- tion mentioned above, persisted in hearing Presbyterian ministers as she had opportunity, and continued to supply, so far as she could, the need of her persecuted relatives and friends, amongst whom were the two Wilson girls. For these crimes she was thrown into prison to await trial. Many attempts were made to induce the woman and the two girls to swear the oath demanded, but in vain. They were tried and con- demned to death by drowning, the old Scottish punish- ment for treason. By the payment of a hundred pounds the father secured the release of Agnes on the ground of her extreme youth. No mercy was shown to the woman of nearly seventy or to the girl of eighteen.
On May ii, 1685, the sentence was carried out in the water of Bladnoch, near Wigtown, where the sea flows at high tide. Stakes were driven into the sand below the high-water mark, and to these the women were fastened. The older woman was placed some distance away, nearer to the inflowing tide, in the hope that the sight of her suffering and death would induce the girl to give in. The sight was indeed terrible, but Margaret Wilson never wavered. Chained to her stake, she read the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and when the rising water made it impossible to continue reading she sang some verses from the twenty-fifth
i82 BROTHERS IN ART
psalm. It is said that even when the water had covered her head she was pulled out, and so soon as she could speak she was offered release if she would swear the oath of abjuration, and that refusing, she was thrust back and so perished.
The story of this tragedy in fuU detail is given in Robert Wodrow's History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution, pub- Hshed in 1722. The storj^ is repeated at some length, with quotations from Wodrow and an interesting dis- cussion of certain legal aspects of the case and some controverted points in a most interesting volume by Alexander S. Morton, Galloway and the Covenanters (Alex, Gardner, Paisley, 1914). Macaulay's History has a brief, vivid description of the martyrdom, and Lang's History of Scotland throws a flood of Ught upon the political currents of the day and the conflicting forces out of which so many tragedies arose.
It may be wondered that a girl Uke Margaret Wilson, and many noble men and women, should choose death rather than abjure a Declaration which was, in effect, an incitement to murder. The correct answer is pro- bably that, whilst the Declaration was such in fact, and was known and intended to be such by a few hot- blooded leaders, it would appear in a different light to the mass of the people. The popular estimate of the Declaration, and the consequent persistence in refusal to renounce it, may be gathered from the epitaph on Margaret Wilson's tombstone in the old churchyard of Wigtown, and from the inscrip- tion upon the monument erected on Windy Hill in
THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS 183
1858 to the memory of the martyrs. The epitaph states :
Murthered for ouning Christ supreame Head of His Church and no more crime But not abjuring presbytry And her not ouning prelacy.
The memorial monmnent affirms that these women suffered martyrdom ' because they refused to forsake the principles of the Scottish Reformation, and to take the Government oath abjuring the right of the people to resist the tyranny of their rulers.' It can well be conceived that on the one hand the Declaration was so construed as to cover much more than the evil principle it embodied, and that on the other hand the majority of the martyrs, misunderstanding the full significance of the Declaration, died, not to substantiate the justice of promiscuous assassination, but (a quite different matter) to uphold their right to combine in their own defence ' against the tjnranny of their rulers.'
It would be interesting to know what version of the Psahns Margaret Wilson used as she sung her triumph- song of faith and hope whilst the waves were rising about her. Up to 1650 the Scotch Psalter in common use was that of 1564-5. In this thirty-seven psalms were versions by Thomas Stemhold, and Psahn xxv. is one of these. Although the new Psalter of 1650 was ordered to be used in all the churches, it is likely, especially amongst the Covenanters, that the old Psalter would continue in use for many years. Acting upon this supposition, the quotation incorporated in the poem placed opposite to Millais's picture is taken from Sternhold's rendering of the twenty-fifth psalm.
i84 BROTHERS IN ART
The painting is in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. It is at once a beautiful tribute to the heroic giri-martyr, a keen rebuke to the spirit of intolerance, and an eloquent plea for that large charity apart from which the Church nullifies its mission to the world by destroying that which is best within itself.
' SORROW '
(holman-hunt)
Eyes that with silent misery o'erflow,
Lips mute with grief too bitter to confide, The round throat swelHng to the rising tide
Of mad, tumultuous, overpowering woe ;
For life's fair promises are all laid low, The enchanted castles maidens build and hide Deep in the heart are overthrown. He died ;
And death wrecked all at one disastrous blow.
But memories there are to ease the pain. Fragrant and Hly-white as this sweet bloom ;
They light the past, they Hght the days to be,
Their perfumed purity death cannot stain.
Nor quench their brilliant radiance in the tomb-
Their searchlight rays that touch eternity.
CHAPTER XI THE BEYOND
' Sorrow '
In the period subsequent to the completion of ' The Triumph of the Innocents ' Hohnan-Hunt turned to several small pictures — pictures, he calls them, ' Of no definite didactic suggestion, relying alone on their aesthetic character.' ' Sorrow ' was one of these. Nevertheless, the expression of grief so poignant, and the black ribband with the attached locket holding a miniature portrait, seemed to suggest so strongly the possibiHty of some historic incident in the background of the artist's mind that only his own definite assertion in regard to the genesis of the picture, and its purpose, dispels the impression. This is his statement as to the motives which prompted him to complete this subject and the 'Bride of Bethlehem.' He says, 'My aim was to paint varying types of healthy beauty, with that unaffected innocence of sentiment essential to a heroic race. An artist should make sure that in his treatment of Nature alone he is able to incorporate some new enchantment to justify his claim as a master of his craft, doing this at times without reliance upon any special interest in the subject he undertakes.' This
i87
i88 BROTHERS IN ART
picture is therefore not an allegory nor a concrete example of grief. Any story attaching to it must be furnished by each beholder out of his own imagination. It is a representation of an abstract emotion — sorrow ; more particularly, it may be surmised, from the black ribband and the locket, of that type of sorrow due to separation by death from some loved one — a father, a brother, a lover, a friend. And since this is a type of ' healthy beauty ' it is not a portrayal of morbid grief, but of sorrow that is as noble as it is profound. It is at once a picture of sorrowing beauty and of beautiful sorrow, and it recalls those hues from Keats's ' Hyperion ' :
But oh ! how unlike marble was that face : How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.
The picture, therefore, does more than simply satisfy the aesthetic sense. It suggests certain reflections, and raises certain questions — questions such as these : WTiat part does sorrow play in the general scheme of life ? Is there a bright side to sorrow ? Is there any intimate connexion between sorrow and joy, so that the one is the inevitable coroUary of the other ? Does a beneficent purpose underhe sorrow ? Could character be built up without sorrow, or any toil worth under- taking be carried to a successful issue apart from sorrow ? To ponder these matters till, emerging from the dim mist in which so often thej' he hidden, they stand forth in full hght, wiU bring a deeper peace in days of dark- ness and firmer courage in hfe's periods of testing. And yet other questions arise. What is sorrow's ultimate goal, and what are its finest palliatives ?
THE BEYOND 189
Of hard work as a remedy the artist knew well the value. Speaking of one of the darkest hours of his own Ufe, he said, ' Necessitous labours were now my blessings.' But whilst work is the supreme source of heahng, there is another remedy and a sweet one. The maiden in the picture holds to her heart a lily of the valley, the lovely bloom so perfect in its purity, so fragrant in its scent. Will not every bell upon the stem stand for a pure and happy memory ? Forget, says morbid grief, the golden days ; they are dead and gone, never to return. Oh, for a draught of the stream of Lethe ! Remember, says noble sorrow, the sweet days of old, that they may be an inspiration for the future. Remember ! For memory is a searchlight that sweeps in every direction. It lights up the past, and, swinging round, it lights up the future also. Apart from Revelation there is no evidence that so distinctly points to a glorious future as that which arises from memories of a beautiful past and from the intuition springing from such memories that these joys are immortal.
Does sorrow play some beneficent part in the general scheme of hfe ? It assuredly does. It has brought life to many a dead soul, and understanding sympathy to many a heartless nature, and knowledge of great truths that would never have been discovered in the blazing simshine of an untroubled hfe, for ' as night brings out the stars, so sorrow shows us truths.' Is there a bright side to sorrow ? Is there not ? No one can perceive the best that is in human nature whose eyes have not been opened to an unsuspected wealth of sympathy and kindness by sorrow. Is there a
190 BROTHERS IN ART
connexion between sorrow and joy ? In very truth there is. Our highest joys are intimately and inseparably associated with sorrow.
Each time we love We turn a nearer and a broader mark To that keen archer, Sorrow, and he strikes.
In the building up of character sorrow provides the essential disciphne ; in the carrying out of any noble enterprise sorrow is the toll demanded of success. But of the many things that have been said about sorrow nothing is more beautiful or more exact than the pithy aphorism of the quaint seventeenth-century Bishop Hall : ' Sorrows are the weights which are attached to the diver's feet, to sink him to the depths where pearls are found.' If we gather the precious pearls of under- standing, sympathy, patience, faith, purity, we gather them only in the depths, and to those depths we are only brought by sorrow. Perhaps the Bishop might have gone a step farther and reminded us that the weights upon the diver's feet will be terribly disastrous imless the cord attached to his person be in the hands of the sailors up above on deck. Sorrow will sink us to the depths where the pearls may be gathered, but unless there be a di\ine power to Uft us again, in the depths we shall remain.
To return to modern writers : Could any finer couplet be inscribed beneath Holman-Hunt's beautiful picture of sorrow than these lines from Ehzabeth Barrett Browning's ' Vision of Poets ' ? :
Knowledge by suiJenng cntereth, And Life is perfected by Death.
_lv, ^y -CiS
' SPEAK, SPEAK ! ' (millais)
Is this, indeed, some ghostly form
That Uving eyes behold ? Can love break through the bamers of death, So strong the passion that reraembereth
The glorious days of old, Of intermingled bUss and storm ?
Or do our rapt imaginings.
When memory's magic works, So visuaHze our glowing fantasies That, for a spirit, our deluded eyes
Mistake some shape which lurks Deep in the mind's subconscious springs ?
Oh, for one word ! If the dead seek
To knit again the bond Of loving comradeship and mutual joy. Has that far world no language to employ?
Thou wraith from the beyond. If such thou art, Oh, speak ! oh, speak !
191
THE BEYOND 193
* Speak, Speak ! '
There are two ways in which the mystery of death may be faced. Hoknan-Huiit's picture indicates one — sorrow, noble, patient, resigned, accepted as part of life's discipUne, and mitigated by redoubled work and a growing apprehension that even sorrow comes to the imderstanding laden with precious gifts. Millais"s pic- ture ' Speak, speak ! ' points to a quite different attitude — a determined effort to break through the barriers that separate the worlds of matter and spirit, and to find satisfaction and relief by estabhshing communication between the two. It is not afiirmed that the picture was painted with this deliberate intention, but the two pictures illustrate these diverse attitudes when the tremendous problems that centre in death are forced upon our attention, and clamour for solution. Is patient sorrow the only possible response to death's challenge, or can the mystery of mysteries be made to yield its secret by the careful collation of abnormal experiences and resolute exploration of the vast and unmapped territory of psychology ?
The picture itself was commenced by Millais in November, 1894, at Bowerswell, near Perth. The subject had lain dormant in the artist's mind for twenty years. It is a curious fact that he only embodied it within two years of his death and that this is one of the last pictures he painted, painted when already he was within the grip of the disease that proved fatal.
N
194 BROTHERS IN ART
J, G. Millais describes the picture thus ; ' A young Roman has been reading through the night the letters of his lost love ; at da\\Ti the curtains of his bed are parted, and there before him stands, in spirit or in truth, the lady herself, decked as on her bridal night, gazing upon him with sad but loving eyes. An open door displays the winding stair down which she has come ; and through a smaU window above it the light steals in, forming with the light of the flaring taper at the bedside a harmonious discord such as the French school delight in, and used by ]\Iillais to good effect in his earher picture, '' The Rescue.'" The old four-poster bedstead was purchased at Perth and set up in one of the spare rooms at Bowers- well. After two months' work it was possible to con- tinue elsewhere, and Millais took the picture to London and completed it there. Miss Hope Anderson, daughter of the old minister at Kinnoul, and Miss Buchanan White were models for the lady, and her face was painted after the artist's return to town from Miss Lloyd, who posed for Millais's picture of the same year, ' A Disciple,' and for Sir Frederick Leighton's ' Lachrymae.' The artist roughly sketched the figure of the Roman in Scot- land, and after much searching foimd a suitable model in London in a good-looking Italian. He was partic- ularly pleased with his model's wonderful Italian throat. The model for the lamp was found in South Kensington Museum. As this could not be taken away, MiUais made a drawing of it and from this an ironmonger fsLshioned a facsimile. The painting is the last of the series of the artist's moonlight pictures. ' The Eve of St. Agnes ' of his earher period, and ' The Knight- Errant ' of his middle life, are other famous examples.
THE BEYOND 195
The Royal Academy purchased ' Speak, speak ! ' under the Chantrey Bequest for the nation, and it became a permanent addition to the National Gallery of British Art. This mark of appreciation on the part of his brother artists, says J. G. MillEiis, gave great pleasure to his father, the more so as it set a seal upon the artist's own estimate of his picture, ' Never before, I think, had I seen him so pleased with any work of his own.' It is delightful to realize that amidst much suffering, and aware that the end of his career was near at hand, the artist could put such vigour and beauty into his work and derive real satisfaction from it. The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy of 1895. The year after the artist passed into that other world where the secrets of Hfe and death, the subject-matter of almost his last painting, are disclosed.
Subjective or objective ? That is the riddle the picture propounds. Ghosts cannot be airily dismissed as the mere product of a disordered imagination. The stories of strange appearances are too numerous and too wide-spread to be so summarily dealt with. But are such apparitions the projection upon the material world of the obscure workings of the sub-conscious mind, and therefore illusions, or can they be in some instances real manifestations of the beyond? The question is one of extraordinary difhculty. Know- ledge of the beyond based upon scientific investigation is nil, and psychology, the study of the vast possibilities of the mind, dimly apprehended but little understood, is yet in its infancy. Two diametrically opposed attitudes have added to the difficulties of investigation. On the one hand it is held that the quest of such knowledge
196
BROTHERS IN ART
is, if not positively sinful, at least undesirable. It is an attitude difficult to understand. If the finest study of man is man, surely the eager pursuit of physiology, the attempt to interpret the marvels of blood, and muscle, and glands, and nerves, and brain, allowed by aU to be essential study, must be incomparably inferior to the pursuit of psychology — the attempt to fathom the mysteries of mind and soul, to read the riddle of the ego itself, and of its destructibiUty or indestructibility.
On the other hand, spirituahsm, so-caUed, saturated through and through with the grossest trickery and ministering to an almost universal aptitude for self- delusion, has discounted serious investigation and set up a reaction in the direction of absolute materiahsm. A breath of sturdy common sense is badly needed. Dark seances and all the paraphemaHa of fraud prejudice the issue, and the affirmation so often made, that although trickery is imdeniable, amongst so many recorded phenomena of mediumship there must be some sub- stratum of truth, is only to claim stupidly that nothing multiphed by a sufficiently large factor will yield a product.
Meanwhile the yearning for knowledge inherent In human nature and the imperative demands of love cannot be stifled. As at the present time certain mysterious and unaccountable signals are under examina- tion, in view of the possibiUty of attempts being made to set up interplanetary communication, so there is a growing consciousness that the plane of the spiritual realm may be seeking to estabUsh communication with the plane of our mundane existence. The cry of humanity to-day is more insistent than ever, ' Speak, speak ! '
It may invesugatic'
{ear on the oniheotbe
find aditic of saeEce. adiieve, no beauty Aa' bsofar^ breathing t of detectini listening to
TH
O)
It may yet bt t investigation of ihi. . . fear on the one hand on the other, will ;, pectations and l- find additional c • of science. But \ achieve, no new it beauty that which h.v in so far as tlu breathing throu^;.. of detecting any listening to.
196 BROTHERS IN ART
is, if not positively sinful, at least undesirable. It is an attitude difficult to understand. If the finest study of man is man, surely the eager pursuit of physiology, the attempt to interpret the marvels of blood, and muscle, and glands, and nerves, and brain, aDovved by aU to be essential study, must be incomparably inferior to the pursuit of psycholog}^ — the attempt to fathom the mysteries of mind and soul, to read the riddle of the ego itself, and of its destructibihty or indestructibility.
On the other hand, spiritualism, so-caUed, saturated through and through with the grossest trickery and ministering to an almost universal aptitude for self- delusion, has discoimted serious investigation and set up a reaction in the direction of absolute materiaUsm. A breath of sturdy common sense is badly needed. Dark seances and aU the paraphernalia of fraud prejudice the issue, and the affirmation so often made, that although trickery is undeniable, amongst so many recorded phenomena of mediumship there must be some sub- stratum of truth, is only to claim stupidly that nothing multipUed by a sufficiently large factor wiU yield a product.
Meanwhile the yearning for knowledge inherent in human nature and the imperative demands of love cannot be stifled. As at the present time certain mysterious and unaccountable signals are under examina- tion, in view of the possibiUty of attempts being made to set up interplanetary communication, so there is a growing consciousness that the plane of the spiritual realm may be seeking to estabUsh communication with the plane of our mundane existence. The cry of humanity to-day is more insistent than ever, ' Speak, speak ! '
THE BEYOND 197
It may yet be that patient, reverent, common-sense investigation of the whole field, freed from superstitious fear on the one hand and from mammon-seeking fraud on the other, will prove fruitful, and that the high ex- pectations and beautiful ideals based upon faith will find additional confirmation in the actual discoveries of science. But whatever careful investigation may achieve, no new revelation can exceed in grandeur and beauty that which has aheady been made ; and only in so far as the soul's hearing is attuned to the voice breathing through that revelation will it be capable of detecting any other voice from the beyond worth listening to.
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