DHE the first ten years of this period we have very little intelligence respecting Turner’s life. He moved from Hand Court, Maiden Lane, to 64, Harley Street, in 1799 or 1800, and it is not improbable that he bought the house, as No. 64 and the house next to it in Harley Street, and the house in Queen Anne Street, all belonged to him at the time of his death. There was communication between the three houses at the back, although the corner house fronting both streets did not belong to him. In 1801, 1802, 1803, and 1804, his address in the Royal Academy Catalogue is 75, Norton Street, Portland Road; but in 1804 it is again 64, Harley Street. In 1808[29] it is 64, Harley Street, and West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith; and this double address is given till 1811, when it is West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, only. In and after 1812 it is always Queen Anne Street West, with the addition, from 1814 to 1826, of his house at Twickenham, called Solus Lodge in 1814, and Sandycombe Lodge from 1815 to 1826. It is remarkable that in the Catalogue of the British Institution for 1814 his address is given as Harley Street, Cavendish Square, showing that he had not then given up his house in this street, and this is good evidence that it belonged to him.

The war which broke out with Bonaparte in 1803,[30] and was not finally closed till 1815, prevented him from pursuing his studies of Continental scenery, and he seems during this time to have devoted himself principally to the composition of his great rival pictures, and the “Liber Studiorum,” about which we have already written: he stayed occasionally with his friends, Mr. Fawkes at Farnley, where he studied the storm for Hannibal Crossing the Alps, and Lord Egremont at Petworth, where he painted Apuleia and Apuleius. Almost the only glimpse that we get of his house in Harley Street, though it is very doubtful to what period it belongs, was sent to Mr. Thornbury by Mr. Rose of Jersey:—

Whatever is the proper date of this story, it is to be feared that he had good reason for not wishing persons to pry into the secrets of his mÉnage. We ourselves have no wish to pry into those secrets; but the fact that Turner had for the greater part of his life a home of which he was ashamed, is sufficient to explain a great deal of his want of hospitality, his churlishness to visitors, and his confirmed habits of secrecy and seclusion.

There is no doubt that he habitually lived with a mistress. Hannah Danby, who entered his service, a girl of sixteen, in the year 1801, and was his housekeeper in Queen Anne Street at his death, is generally considered to have been one; and Sophia Caroline Booth, with whom he spent his last years in an obscure lodging in Chelsea, another. There are many who have lived more immoral lives, and have done more harm to others by their immorality; but he chose a kind of illegal connection which was particularly destructive to himself. He made his home the scene of his irregularities, and, by entering into ultimate relations with uneducated women, cut himself off from healthy social influences which would have given daily employment to his naturally warm heart, and prevented him from growing into a selfish, solitary man. Not to be able to enjoy habitually the society of pure educated women, not to be able to welcome your friend to your hearth, could not have been good for a man’s character, or his art, or his intellect.

His uninterrupted privacy possibly enabled him to produce more, and to develop his genius farther in one direction; but we could have well spared many of his pictures for a few works graced with a wider culture and a healthier sentiment. He could paint, and paint, perhaps, better for his isolation—

But it would have been better for him, and, we think, for his art also, if he could have said:—

It was not from any scorn of the conventions of society that he disregarded them, for there is no trace of any feeling of this sort in his pictures or his reported conversations, and in his will he required that the “Poor and Decayed Male Artists,” for whom he intended to found a charitable institution (“Turner’s Gift”), should be “of lawful issue.” One reason why he never married may have been his shyness and consciousness of his want of address and personal attraction. Mr. Cyrus Redding, from whom we have one of the brightest and best glimpses of Turner as a man, says:—

This, and the increasing absorption in his art of all of himself that could be so absorbed; his desire to economize both his time and his money; his innate hatred of interference with his liberty; his aversion from undertaking any obligation, the consequences of which he could not calculate—all tended to keep him from matrimony, and to make him content with the most unromantic amours.

That he in 1811 or thereabouts could be hospitable and a good companion away from home, is shown by Mr. Redding in his pleasant volume, from which we have just quoted. He met Turner on what appears to have been his first visit to the county to which his family belonged—Devonshire. He met him first, Mr. Redding thinks, at the house of Mr. Collier (the father of Sir Robert Collier), an eminent merchant of Plymouth, and accompanied him on many excursions. On one of these Turner actually gave a picnic “in excellent taste” at a seat on the summit of the hill, overlooking the Sound and Cawsand Bay.

This last sentence sounds somewhat paradoxical, but for that reason is probably all the more accurately descriptive of Turner’s art in words. Further on, when defending the great painter, we get a portrait of him as a “plain figure” with “somewhat bandy legs,” and “dingy complexion.” On another excursion, Redding spent a night at a small country inn with Turner, about three miles from Tavistock, as the artist had a great desire to see the country round at sunrise. The rest of the party, Mr. Collier and two friends, who had spent the day with them on the shores of the Tamar with a scanty supply of provisions, preferred to pass the night at Tavistock.

Another of these excursions was to Burr or Borough Island, in Bigbury Bay, “To eat hot lobsters fresh from the sea.”

IVY BRIDGE. Water-colour in National Gallery.
IVY BRIDGE.
Water-colour in National Gallery.

Two of the party were ill; one, an officer in the army, wanted to throw himself overboard, and they “were obliged to keep him down among the rusty iron ballast, with a spar across him.”

These reminiscences of Mr. Redding contain the most graphic picture of Turner we possess. His carelessness of comfort, his devotion to his art, his power of continuous observation in despite of tumult and discomfort, his love of the sun and the sea, his habit of sketching from a high point of view, his ability to take “pictorial memoranda” in a violent wind, are all striking and essential peculiarities.

It is interesting to learn also from Mr. Redding, that “early in the morning before the rest were up, Turner and myself walked to Dodbrooke, hard by the town, to see the house that had belonged to Dr. Walcot (sic), Peter Pindar, and where he was born. Walcot sold it, and there had been a house erected there since; of this the artist took a sketch.” Turner probably appreciated Peter’s “Advice to Landscape Painters.”

One piece of Turner’s conversation is also worthy of record, if only on account of its rarity.

This reads like a speech of Dr. Johnson.

We have another account of this same visit to Devonshire from Sir Charles Eastlake, which bears testimony to the hospitality which he received. Miss Pearce, an aunt of Sir Charles, appears to have been his hostess, and her cottage at Calstock the centre of his excursions. A landscape painter, Mr. Ambrose Johns, of great merit, according to Sir Charles, fitted up a small portable painting box, which was of much use to Turner in affording him ready appliances for sketching in oil.

Mr. Johns’s devotion was not rewarded till long afterwards, when the great painter sent him a small oil sketch in a letter. Mr. Redding obtained at the time a rough sketch, and these seem to have been the only returns he made for the kindness that was shown to him at Plymouth, though many years afterwards he spoke to Mr. Redding “of the reception he met with on this tour, in a strain that exhibited his possession of a mind not unsusceptible or forgetful of kindness.”

The date of this tour is given by Mr. Redding as probably 1811, and by Eastlake 1813 or 1814. The principal pictorial results of it were Crossing the Brook (exhibited in 1815), and various drawings for Cooke’s Southern Coast, which commenced in 1814. It seems probable that his engagement on this work determined his visit to Cornwall and Devonshire, but this is uncertain, as is also whether he paid more than one visit to the locality.

This tour is also interesting from its being the only occasion on which Turner is known to have visited his kinsfolk. We are enabled to state on the authority of one of his family that he went to Barnstaple and called upon his relations there, and a gentleman, late of the Chancery Bar, has kindly supplied us with the following extract of a memorandum made by him in 1853, from facts sworn to in suits instituted to administer Turner’s estate.

It is probable that Turner’s father removed with him to Harley Street in 1800. The powder tax of 1795 is said to have destroyed his trade, and he lived with his son till he died in 1830. He used to strain his son’s canvasses and varnish his pictures, “which made Turner say that his father began and finished his pictures for him.” As early as 1809, Turner “was in the habit of privately exhibiting such pictures as he did not sell, and the small accumulation he had at Harley Street in 1809 was already dignified with the name of the “Turner Gallery.”[35] This gallery Turner’s father attended to, showing in visitors &c., and when they stayed at Twickenham he came up to town every morning to open it. Thornbury says that the cost of this weighed upon his spirits until he made friends with a market-gardener, who for a glass of gin a-day, brought him up in his cart on the top of the vegetables. This is said to have been after Turner removed from Harley Street, and was very well off if not rich, for he had built his house in Queen Anne Street and his lodge at Twickenham,[36] both of which belonged to him, as well as the land at Twickenham, and (probably) the house in Harley Street. Turner’s father made great exertions to add to his son’s estate at Sandycombe, by running out little earthworks in the road and then fencing them round. At one time there was a regular row of these fortifications, which used to be called “Turner’s Cribs.” One day, however, they were ruthlessly swept away by some local authority. If, however, both father and son were very “saving” and eccentric in their ways, they were devoted to one another from the beginning to the end, to an extent very touching and beautiful, however strange in its manifestation.

Of Turner’s life at West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, we have only the following glimpse in a communication to Thornbury by “a friend.”

It may have been when at Hammersmith that he became acquainted with Mr. Trimmer, for in a letter to Mr. Wyatt of Oxford respecting two pictures of that city, which is dated “West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, Feb. 4, 1810,” he says, “Pray tell me likewise of a gentleman of the name of Trimmer, who has written to you to be a subscriber for the print.” This gentleman was the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, Vicar of Heston, who was one of Turner’s best and most intimate friends till his death. It is said that he first went to Hammersmith to be near De Loutherbourg, and it is probable that one of his reasons for building on his free—hold at Twickenham was to be nearer Mr. Trimmer. De Loutherbourg died in 1812.

Sandycombe Lodge, first called Solus Lodge, is on the road from Twickenham to Isleworth, and is built on low lying ground and damp. The original structure has been added to, but the additions being built of brick, it is easy to see how it looked in Turner’s time—a small semi-Italian villa covered with plaster and decorated with iron balustrades and steps. It is within walking distance (4 miles) of Heston. We are able by the kindness of Mr. F. E. Trimmer, the youngest son of Turner’s friend, to correct some false impressions conveyed by Thornbury’s garbled account of what he was told by the eldest son.

The Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, the son of the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer, and father of the Rev. Henry Syer Trimmer, who gave Thornbury his information, was about the same age as Turner, and very much interested in art. As an amateur painter he attained considerable skill, having a wonderful faculty for catching the manner of other artists. His great knowledge of pictures, and his continual experiments in the way of mediums, colours, and devices for obtaining effects, made his acquaintance specially interesting and valuable to Turner, and Turner’s to him. No better proof of his ability can be found than the two following stories:—

There is a picture at Heston before which Turner would frequently stand studying. It is a sea-piece with the sun behind a mist, and with a golden hazy effect not unlike Turner’s famous Sun rising in a Mist, but the sea washes up to the frame. One day Turner said to Mr. Trimmer, “I like that picture; there’s a good deal in it. Where did you get it?” (Or words to this effect.) “I painted it,” was the reply; upon which the artist turned away without a word, and never looked at the picture again.

The true story of the picture, supposed to be by Sir Joshua Reynolds, to which Mr. Trimmer added a background, is this.[37] He purchased it in an unfinished condition of a dealer in Holborn, and finished it himself, and it remained in his possession till his death, when his son (Mr. F. E. Trimmer), knowing its history, kept it out of the sale at Christie’s of his father’s fine collection, and sold it, among other less valuable and genuine productions, at Heston. The dealer who bought it (for £6) thought he had made a great catch, and inquired of Mr. Trimmer’s son the history of the picture, which he considered a splendid Sir Joshua, speaking especially of the background as being a proof of its authenticity. When Mr. Trimmer told him that his father had bought it in his own shop and had finished it himself, he would not believe it for a long time.

Of the other stories of Turner’s connection with Heston, and of his power to assist others in the composition of their pictures, the following is perhaps the most interesting:—[38]

Once when Howard (R.A.) was staying at the vicarage, painting a portrait of Mr. Trimmer’s second son, the Rev. Barrington James Trimmer, Turner was always finding fault with the work in progress. It was a full-size and full-length portrait of a boy of three years old, dressed in a white frock and red morocco shoes. One day Howard, annoyed at Turner’s frequent objections, told him that he had better do it himself, on which Turner said, “This is what I should do,” and taking up the cat he wrapped its body in his red pocket handkerchief, and put it under the boy’s arm. The effect of this, as may still be seen in the picture at the house of Mr. Trimmer’s son at Heston, was excellent. The cat gave an interest to the figure which it wanted, the red morocco shoes were no longer isolated patches of bright colour at the bottom of the picture, the blank expanse of white frock was varied and lightened up by the red handkerchief and pussy’s tabby face, and the work, which was on the brink of failure, was a decided success. Parts of the cat, handkerchief, and landscape were put in by Turner.

Sketching with oils on a large canvas in a boat, driving out on little sketching excursions in his gig with his ill-tempered nag Crop Ear, said to have been immortalized in his picture of the Frosty Morning (which was, however, painted before he went to Twickenham), fishing for trout in the Old Brent, or for roach in the Thames, with Mr. Trimmer’s sons, digging his pond in his garden and planting it round with weeping willows and alders, the picture of Turner’s life at Twickenham is a pleasant and healthy one. At Heston he drew his Interior of a Church for the “Liber,” and actually gave away two of his drawings to Mrs. Trimmer, one of a Gainsborough, which they had seen together on an excursion to Osterley House, and one of a woman gathering watercresses, whom they had met on their way. But these gifts were asked for by the lady, and Turner would not let them go without making replicas. He once stood with a long rod two whole days in a pouring rain under an umbrella fishing in a small pond in the vicarage garden, without even a nibble.

In connection with the Trimmers we get other instances of his rare and bare hospitality, which showed that he never altered his manner of living after he left Maiden Lane. We must refer the reader to Mr. Thornbury’s life for the remainder of these varied, interesting, and on the whole pleasant reminiscences.

Space, however, we must spare for a letter, very incorrectly given by Thornbury, the only record of his second attachment, the object of which was the sister of the Rev. H. Scott Trimmer, who was at that time being courted by her future husband:—

But for the assurance of the present Mr. Trimmer, of Heston, that this attachment of Turner to Miss Trimmer was undoubted, and that this letter has always been considered in the family as a declaration thereof, we should have thought that the offer he wanted was one for Sandycombe Lodge and not for his hand. It is, however, past doubt that Turner was violently smitten, and though forty years old, felt it much.

The above letter was the only one known to have been written by Turner to his friend the Vicar of Heston, and it is quite untrue, as asserted by Thornbury, that the Vicar’s letters were burnt in sackfuls by his son. His large correspondence was patiently gone through—a task which took some years. Thornbury was probably thinking of the destruction of the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer’s correspondence by her daughter, in which it is true that sackfuls of interesting letters perished.

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