Little Memoirs of the 19th Century | Page 8

over the prospect set before him, rubbed his chin, and muttered: 'I should not like ye to go--it's hard for both of us; but what I say is, you always paid me when you could, and why should you not again when you are able?... Well, sir, here's my hand; I'll give you two years more, and if this does not sell--why then, sir, we'll consider what is to be done.'
Thus a roof was provided, but there was still dinner to be thought of, since, if a man works, he must also eat. 'I went to the house [John o' Groat's] where I had always dined,' writes Haydon, 'intending to dine without paying for that day. I thought the servants did not offer me the same attention. I thought I perceived the company examine me--I thought the meat was worse. My heart sank, as I said falteringly, "I will pay you to-morrow." The girl smiled, and seemed interested. As I was escaping with a sort of lurking horror, she said, "Mr. Haydon, my master wishes to see you." "My God," thought I, "it is to tell me he can't trust!" In I walked like a culprit. "Sir, I beg your pardon, but I see by the papers you have been ill-used; I hope you won't be angry--I mean no offence; but I just wish to say, as you have dined here many years and always paid, if it would be a convenience during your present work to dine here till it is done--so that you may not be obliged to spend your money here when you may want it--I was going to say that you need be under no apprehension--hem! for a dinner."' This handsome offer was condescendingly accepted, and the good man seemed quite relieved.
While Solomon was slowly progressing at the expense of the landlord and the eating-house keeper, Haydon spent his leisure in literary rather than artistic circles. At Leigh Hunt's he met, and became intimate with Charles Lamb, Keats, Hazlitt, and John Scott. In January 1813 he writes: 'Spent the evening with Leigh Hunt at West End. His society is always delightful. I do not know a purer, more virtuous partner, or a more witty and enlivening man. We talked of his approaching imprisonment. He said it would be a great pleasure if he were certain to be sent to Newgate, because he should be in the midst of his friends.' Hazlitt won our hero's liking by praising his 'Macbeth.' 'Thence began a friendship,' Haydon tells us, 'for that interesting man, that singular mixture of friend and fiend, radical and critic, metaphysician, poet, and painter, on whose word no one could rely, on whose heart no one could calculate, and some of whose deductions he himself would try to explain in vain.... Mortified at his own failure [in painting] he resolved that as he had not succeeded, no one else should, and he spent the whole of his after-life in damping the ardour, chilling the hopes, and dimming the prospects of patrons and painters, so that after I once admitted him, I had nothing but forebodings of failure to bear up against, croakings about the climate, and sneers at the taste of the public.'
By the beginning of 1814 Solomon was approaching completion, but the artist had been reduced to living for a fortnight on potatoes. He had now been nearly four years without a commission, and three without any help from home, so that it is not surprising to learn that he felt completely broken down in body and mind, or that his debts amounted to ￡1100. A frame was procured on credit, and, failing any more suitable place of exhibition, the picture was sent to the Water-colour Society. At the private view, the Princess of Wales and other eminent critics pronounced against the Solomon, but as soon as the public were admitted, the tune changed, and John Bull vowed it was the finest work of art ever produced in England. If posterity has not indorsed this judgment, the Solomon is at least regarded, by competent critics, as Haydon's most successful work. 'Before the doors had been open half an hour,' writes Haydon, 'a gentleman opened his pocket-book, and showed me a ￡500 note. "Will you take it?" My heart beat--my agonies of want pressed, but it was too little. I trembled out, "I cannot." The gentleman invited me to dine, and when we were sitting over our wine, agreed to give me my price. His lady said, "But, my dear, where am I to put my piano?" and the bargain was at an end!' On the third day Sir George Beaumont and Mr. Holwell Carr came to the Exhibition, having been deputed to buy the picture for the British Gallery. While they were discussing its merits,