|
|
|
|
| [48] |
| The volumes of the ‘Literary Souvenir’ for 1830 and 1831, with their luxurious bindings of crimson silk, which the proprietors seem to have borrowed from the ‘Keepsake,’ though not at first sight
appearing to differ materially from those which had immediately preceded them, exhibit to the discriminating eye some characteristics worthy, and indeed needful to be noted, because illustrative of the motions of
the time in such matters. An element of taste in the externals rather than in the spirit; a fastidiousness and fashion beginning to overlie the sentiment which had been the charm of the earlier volumes. The
sentiment not externally lacking; yet a sense of a vacuum in that region present, to be felt, yet not readily definable. These and similar books had created a custom or fashion of giving presents, and had
popularized in the general public, not then deeply endowed in the region of feeling, a sense of tasteful sentiment very valuable to it. But when the time comes, as come it will, when gifts, whether they be annuals,
or wedding presents, or Christmas cards, begin to be made from fashion, and |
| [49] |
| not from feeling, the spirit of sentiment in the giving has evaporated, and may, perhaps, not be greatly remarked as absent, when lacking in the gift itself. These ‘annual’ books, beautiful and
tasteful as they are, have yet something now about them a little artificial. They seem more fitted to be turned over as a toy on the drawing-room table, than cherished as a memory in the little bookcase of the
secret chamber. In a word, the ‘Annual’ has become a fashion. The change in the spirit of his [sic] book to which I am referring, was influencing, or rather had been influenced by, a change of spirit in my father’s character important to notice in the history of the man. ‘I have seen,’ says Gerald Griffen, in a letter to his sister written in 1830, ‘Mr. Alaric Watts reposing among all the glories of a literary lionmonger, sofas, silk cushions, paintings, portfolios, etc.’ Yes, it was even so; my father had exuberated from the man of sentiment into the man of taste! The germs of this tendency in his nature, and the risks of its growing into predominance, had been perceived in his early volume of verse by his friend Coleridge. ‘I have no |
| [50] |
| objection,’ the sage had said, ‘to your spiritual cranium containing both the taste exquisite and the faculty divine, this in one hemisphere, and that in another; but let the poet be kept from the
connoisseur.’ This advice,--like most good advice,--it was not within the will, or indeed the power, of the recipient to adopt. Had he sought to follow it he would have been as untrue to himself as to his art, to which this particular quality gave its individuality. To have done so, would indeed have been to render him artificial, instead of securing him from being so. All that concerned him was to be true to his own real nature, and this I think he always was. The fact is, the age was moving in the same direction. I have sought in a former chapter to indicate that the imaginative literature of the age, which I have ventured to describe as the second period of the age of sentiment in England, inaugurated by the sonnets of Bowles, was a school in which sentiment was refined and purified by an interior spirit of taste. During the forty years which had since elapsed, these characteristics had intensified, and, in doing so, had in operation become reversed. The |
| [51] |
| In this state of things one of two results would seem to have become inevitable. Either the spirit of taste in the time must receive a new infusion of poetical imagination; or it must seek
satisfaction to its needs in some other direction than poetry. It found both these outlets. In 1830 appeared the first of the many volumes by which the poetry of the age was regenerated by the illustrious writer of
‘The Palace of Art;’ while the gates of that palace, in its more restricted and literal sense, thrown wide open to the great mass of the middle-classes, largely by the |
| [52] |
| instrumentality of the description of works of which I am writing, was ready to receive those who were unprepared at the moment to recognise the spirit of taste of which they were devotees in its
new and more highly imaginative literary aspect. My father was of the latter class. He threw himself into this art sphere of life with energy and enthusiasm. A ‘Diary and Daily Remembrancer for 1830,’ happily preserved, displays him in the very thick of this art life. It contains only one distinct entry of an event, but that is a significant one. He writes, under date ‘January 21st,’ ‘On this day the remains of Sir Thomas Lawrence were conveyed to St. Paul’s with great pomp.’ But, it is filled with lists and plans and accounts, in which the life of the time seems very clearly and characteristically pourtrayed. Here, for example, are lists of subjects, or of existing pictures, suitable for future volumes of his ‘Souvenir;’ suggestions for new works of an artistic nature, such as ‘Poetical Sketches from the Old Masters,’ ‘A Galley of Modern British Art,’ plan of a ‘Landscape Annual,’ of ‘A Book of Beauties |
| [53] |
| of all Nations, being a series of engravings from the most celebrated portraits of beautiful women, from Titian’s mistress to Lawrence’s Duchess of Rutland;’ another, of ‘Memorials of the
Poets,’ of which he issued a prospectus, being views of their residences and places of resort. Some of these ideas were worked out later by others. In the ‘Landscape Annual’ he was, indeed, anticipated this very
year by Mr. Jennings, the print-seller, in Cheapside. The ‘Book of Beauties,’ though confined to portraits of contemporary beauties, and vulgarized in consequence, was carried out later by Mr. Charles Heath; and
the ‘Memorials of the Poets,’ in the popular ‘Homes and Haunts of the Poets, by his friend William Howitt. Accompanying these, and similar notes and projects, are lists of pictures of his own collection, showing the prices paid for them and the sums received for others disposed of, only, I suspect to be replaced. A similar list of some two hundred drawings, purchased by him at different times, of the modern French and English schools. A list there is of drawings, very tastefully and discriminatively selected, |
| [54] |
| headed with the suggestive words, ‘Drawings to complete series for Zillah.’ He would seem to have succeeded in persuading himself that he was really collecting these costly works of art for the
enjoyment and gratification of his wife, who had no desire for such possessions, nor any wish in the world but to see him happy and free from care, whereunto all this was perhaps rather a circuitous route. Some slight indications, I think, I find in this very book of a suspicion on his part that his expenditure in these matters, and perhaps generally, had been exceeding what was prudent; for I come upon an entry with a heading, with which possibly some of the readers of this narrative may not be wholly unfamiliar, in the following terms: ‘Moneys paid in 1829, not necessary expenses of the year, or likely to occur again.’ The details of this ‘extraordinary budget’ amount to something like £2000; and some of them, of an artistic and generally decorative character, are, I am bound to say, such as ought neither to recur, nor to have occurred, except upon the hypothesis that he was in very prosperous circumstances. Perhaps he was! |
| [55] |
| He claims, in his preface to the volume for 1830, that a very large increase had taken place in the circulation of the work, which he had now taken into his own hands, --a circumstance, to me, a
little ominous. A rough estimate in this account-book shows that provision had to be made, at that time, for an annual sale of ten thousand copies. Nevertheless, on the whole, I entertain misgivings, as will have
done also, I think, the mistress of all these beautiful things, as she sat devising economies, and balancing, as best she might, her domestic budget in a room the wall-paper whereof was nowhere to be seen for
pictures and the backs of rare and costly books. |
*** |
|
| [153] |
| Between the years 1829 and 1835, the annuals had continued to increase and multiply. The following additions to them may be noted: the ‘Comic Offering,’ edited by Miss Louisa Sharpe; the ‘Iris,’ a
religious annual, competing with Mr. S.C. Hall’s ‘Amulet,’ by the Rev. Thomas Dale, afterwards Canon of St. Paul’s, and rector of St. Pancras; and the ‘Comic Annual,’ written and illustrated with infinite fun and
drollery by Thomas Hood. In 1831-32 he had published his exquisitely tender and delicate ‘Plea for the Midsummer Fairies,’ which had attracted no attention. ‘Many thanks, my dear Watts,’ he writes, in relation to
a friendly notice of it, ‘for your kind attempt to rescue my “Plea” from the “Common Pleas.”’ |
| [154] |
| A brochure of Hood’s published about this time without his name, but not for a moment to be mistaken for the work of any other, entitled, ‘The Battle of the Annuals,’ must not be overlooked here,
especially as it indicates not only the competition which had arisen amongst them, but the salient characteristics of each. It is not first-rate, but it is droll, and a few verses may be quoted in illustration of this period of my narrative: |
|
| [155] |
|
| [156] |
|
| Two classes of the annual established at this time, from their influence, though in very different, not to say opposite directions, are deserving of notice. It had been usual, as will have been
seen, in the ‘Literary Souvenir,’ and indeed in all, to introduce views from drawings by Turner and other distinguished masters of the landscape school, of interesting and beautiful scenes at home and abroad, and
these had been very popular. Few persons of the middle classes in those days dreamt of going abroad, or, indeed, of leaving home at all, unless to visit friends; and their knowledge of, and interest in, the
beautiful spots of the world were wholly derived from these engravings in the ‘annuals.’ In 1830, it occurred to Mr. Jennings, the printseller in the Poultry, that an ‘annual,’ the embellishments whereof should be composed entirely of such views, would be likely to be popular; and the ‘Landscape Annual,’ edited by Thomas Roscoe, son of the distinguished |
| [157] |
| author of the ‘Life of Lorenzo di Medici,’ was the result. It was, as it deserved to be, eminently successful. It lasted nine years. The engravings were from drawings by David Roberts. The idea was
taken up by Mr. Charles Heath, of the ‘Keepsake,’ who in 1833 established the ‘Picturesque Annual,’ under the editorship of Leitch Ritchie, a popular and agreeable writer, who was sent abroad by the proprietors to
visit the various places of which drawings for this work were made by Turner. It continued to be published, year by year, till 1841. It was edited latterly by Mrs. Gore the novelist. The influence of these annuals
was eminently healthful and refining, highly conducive, as they were, to the awakening and stimulating among the great mass of the middle classes, especially in the country, of the taste for landscape art in
England. It had also been usual in the ‘annuals’ to introduce from time to time a portrait, usually by Sir Thomas Lawrence, of some aristocratic beauty. It gave an interest to the book, and was a compliment very well merited to the liberality with which the galleries of the |
| [158] |
| nobility were made available to the conductors of these publications in the selection for engraving their works, of valuable pictures of wider public interest. It occurred in the year 1835 to Mr. Heath, that an ‘annual, the engravings in which should consist exclusively of portraits of beautiful women on the aristocracy, would be likely to be acceptable to a large section of the public; and the ‘Book of Beauty,’ edited by the Countess of Blessington, was the result. A ‘Book of Beauty,’ edited by a countess, could not fail to be largely attractive. It was a success, lasting till 1842, and became at one time so much a fashion, that a lady of rank regarded the introduction of her portrait into the ‘Book of Beauty’ as almost as indispensable as her presentation at St. James’s, or her marriage at St. George’s. This had its disadvantages. Like the Roman Virgin, the ‘Book of Beauty’ ultimately succumbed to the weight of embellishment thus imposed upon it by the fashion which it had itself invoked. The age became ‘dazzled and drunk with beauty;’ and not only so. In these |
| [159] |
| latter days,--how it came about it would be impertinent to inquire,--portraits began to be introduced into this ‘golden book’ of female aristocratic loveliness, of ladies who, if it may be with all
delicacy put upon record, possessed only one of the qualifications for admission to its pages, and that, unfortunately, not the most important one. The memory of some of my readers will recall to them some very
wonderful presentments for a work with such a title in some of its later volumes. It was, moreover, sometimes a little difficult to the poets of that age,--as human nature goes, a truth-loving class, and in that day not greatly familiar with aristocratic circles and their standards of beauty and otherwise,--to prove equal to the emotional pressure involved in celebrating appropriately and adequately the graces, not always self-evident in the portrait of ladies with whom they had not the honour of being acquainted; and the editress therefore found it convenient to have recourse for illustrative letterpress to these portraits to the aid of gentlemen more favoured in this, if not in other respects. |
| [160] |
| I have in a former chapter ventured upon the opinion that the four thousand years of crimson silk for binding, and the ‘pigs in pokes’ purchased to secure ‘names’ as contributors to the ‘Keepsake,’
were the beginning of the declension of this class of work. Candour obliges me to add that it was accelerated by the portraits of aristocratic ladies, or some of them, in Lady Blessington’s annual, illustrated by
the aristocratic pens of some of their admirers. The sentiment and taste of the annuals was being scorched up by fashion. |
*** |
|
| [162] |
| The annuals had now been in existence as a class for some ten years, and the public had displayed unusual constancy to them. They had appealed, in the first instance, to its sentiment, and latterly
to its taste; for the age had been gradually developing from the one into the other, by a natural and necessary transition, of which I have spoken. To sentiment they originally appealed; by taste the time was
coming, if it had not arrived, at which they were not to be judged. Taste is the touchstone of unreality, for with that which is artificial or inharmonious it cannot exist side by side. Now the ‘annuals’ all
started with a distinct fundamental underlying unreality in them, which could not long conceal itself from the eye of taste; and they began to lose their hold upon the public when that unreality began to be fully
apprehended by it. It was professed by all, that the engravings in them were illustrative of the letterpress, whereas the embellishments were selected in |
| [163] |
| the first instance, and the literature written to illustrate them. So long as they were a novelty, and so long especially as they were a novelty, and so long especially as taste regulated the
selection of the pictures for engraving, and the literary compositions to illustrate them, the real state of things was not perceived; or, if perceived, not too curiously inquired into by a general public, not as
sensitive in such matters by many degrees as that of today. But, as these publications became more numerous, and the editors of some of them less careful and discriminative, anomalies, from this cause, began to
obtrude themselves, and the whole class of these works suffered in consequence. For example, if there was a writer whose works were universally known by all intelligent persons in that day, it was Walter Scott.
Surely, it was an outrage upon the taste and common-sense of the judicious reader if, on turning over the pages of an annual, he should find, as in these later days he might not infrequently do, appended as an
illustration to a tale of no very marked excellence, a design distinctively and obviously intended by the artist as an illustration to |
| [164] |
| some well-known incidence from the Waverly novels . . . Solecisms such as these were far from infrequent; they were an affront to the understanding of the intelligent reader, which he was beginning
instinctively to resent. My father’s taste aroused him to a recognition of these defects before they had been perceived, or, at all events, before they had been avowed, by this brother editors. He saw that whatever hold these publications had continued to maintain over the public taste was attributable to the Art which they had been instrumental in so widely popularizing, and which had become, or at all events was becoming, largely through their instrumentality, so important an element in the general development of culture in the age, and not to their Literature. He determined. |
| [165] |
| that, in so far as he was concerned, the ‘annual’ should now be at all events which it professed to be, and should directly and distinctly address that spirit in the age to which it was its real
mission to appeal. In the preface to the ‘Literary Souvenir’ for 1834, he had given notice of a proposed changed in the plan of the work, which was carried out in that for the year 1835. ‘With the year 1835,’ says the editor in his preface to the volume for that year, ‘the “Literary Souvenir” begins a new epoch of its existence. In separating itself from the class of publications with which it has been so long associated, laying aside their livery, and adopting a new form, and to a certain extent, a new character, a brief exposition of the views of its proprietor may not be deemed irrelevant.’ Instead of ten engravings, the work was now to contain no less than twenty-five, selected from characteristic specimens of the modern French and English schools. Instead of associating these pictures with stories to be written for them, but to which they were to |
| [166] |
| appear to be the illustrations, short notices were appended to them of the works of the artists. The susceptibility of art to be illustrated by poetry was, however, recognised; but there was to be
no mistake about the fact that the poem was suggested by the picture, not the picture by the poem. To emphasize more clearly and unmistakably the more artistic character of the work, the editor added this year to
the original title of ‘Literary Souvenir,’ by which it had attained its popularity, and which he was unwilling at the outset of his experiment to sacrifice, the second title of ‘Cabinet of Modern Art;’ and he
dedicated the volume for this year to his friend Sir Martin Archer Shee, the President of the Royal Academy. With something of the same idea in his mind, he introduced the volume with a poem in which a variety of
the great masterpieces of art are characterized, each in a line, as it were, as passing before the eyes of a painter in a dream. It is, I think, a highly finished and powerful illustration of that school of poetry
which I venture to describe as the poetry of taste, and which has, |
| [167] |
| a peculiar affinity with the art of painting. In the volume for the year 1836 the original title, ‘Literary Souvenir,’ was abandoned, leaving the title simply ‘The Cabinet of Modern Art.’ With that for the year 1837 the work closed a more or less successful career of twelve years. Among the seventy-five engravings from the works of the later masters of the English School, contained in these last three volumes, will be found specimens of Romney, Sir William Beechy, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Wright of Derby, Stothard, Leslie, Howard, Collins, Uwins, Abram Cooper, David Roberts, Westall, Martin, Danby, Stewart Newton, Penry Williams, Bonington, and many of these of the finest representative speciments. . . . |
| [168] |
| . . . |
| I am not aware that, up to that time, any such attempt had been made to place before the public such a representative series of the works
of the English School of that age, as was realized in these volumes. The annuals continued for a longer period than might have been anticipated, to contend with one another for the suffrages of the town. They made, I think, not new point due depart after my father’s attempt to improve upon them in his ‘Cabinet of Modern Art.’ It must be admitted that he had in this attained no such success as to encourage their imitation. The ‘Friendship’s Offering,’ in the hands of Messrs. Smith and Elder, survived to link on with the age of poetry and art, then passing away, a new age, introducing to the public, through some early poems, the names of Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Ruskin. The ‘Keepsake,’ that ‘hardy annual,’ under the editorship in later days of Miss Margaret Power, a niece of Lady Blessington, survived until the year 1856, when, by a coincidence entirely fortuitous, it was reserved for this narrator to close its eyes with some juvenile verses, which he trusts this record of the fact may not lead to their rising in judgment against him. |