Little Memoirs of the 19th Century | Page 9

one of the officials went over, and put 'sold' on the frame, whereupon the artist says he thought he should have fainted. The work had been bought at the price asked, ￡700, by two Plymouth bankers, Sir William Elford (the friend and correspondent of Miss Mitford) and Mr. Tingecombe.
Poor Haydon now thought that his fortune was secure. He paid away ￡500 to landlord and tradesmen in the first week, and though this did not settle half his debts, it restored his credit. The balance was spent in a trip to Paris with Wilkie, Paris being then (May 1814) the most interesting place on earth. All the nations of Europe were gathered together there, and the Louvre was in its glory. So absorbed and fascinated was Haydon by the actual life of the city, that he finds little to say about the works of art there collected. Yet his first visit was to the Louvre, and he describes with what impetuosity he bounded up the steps, three at a time, and how he scolded Wilkie for trotting up with his usual deliberation. 'I might just as well have scolded the column,' he observes. 'I soon left him at some Jan Steen, while I never stopped until I stood before the "Transfiguration." My first feeling was disappointment. It looked small, harsh and hard. This, of course, is always the way when you have fed your imagination for years on a work you know only by prints. Even the "Pietro Martyre" was smaller than I thought to find it; yet after the difference between reality and anticipation had worn away, these great works amply repaid the study of them, and grew up to the fancy, or rather the fancy grew up to them.... It will hardly be believed by artists that we often forgot the great works in the Louvre in the scenes around us, and found Russians and Bashkirs from Tartary more attractive than the "Transfiguration"; but so it was, and I do not think we were very wrong either. Why stay poring over pictures when we were on the most remarkable scene in the history of the earth.'
On his return to London, Haydon was gratified by the news that his friend and fellow-townsman, George Eastlake, had proposed and carried a motion that he should be presented with the freedom of his native city, as a testimony of respect for his extraordinary merit as a historical painter. Furthermore, the Directors of the British Gallery sent him a hundred guineas as a token of their admiration for his latest work. But no commission followed, either from a private patron or public body. However, the artist, nothing daunted, ordered a larger canvas, and set vigorously to work on a representation of 'Christ's Entry into Jerusalem,' a picture which occupied him, with intervals of illness and idleness, for nearly six years.
The year 1815 was too full of stir and excitement for a man like Haydon, who was always keenly interested in public affairs, to devote himself to steady work. The news of Waterloo almost turned his brain. On June 23 he notes: 'I read the Gazette [with the account of Waterloo] the last thing before going to bed. I dreamt of it, and was fighting all night; I got up in a steam of feeling, and read the Gazette again, ordered a Courier for a month, and read all the papers till I was faint.... 'Have not the efforts of the nation,' I asked myself, 'been gigantic?' To such glories she only wants to add the glories of my noble art to make her the grandest nation in the world, and these she shall have if God spare my life....
'June 25.--Dined with Hunt. I give myself credit for not worrying him to death at this news. He was quiet for some time, but knowing it must come, and putting on an air of indifference, he said, "Terrible battle this, Haydon." "A glorious one, Hunt." "Oh yes, certainly," and to it we went. Yet Hunt took a just and liberal view of the situation. As for Hazlitt, it is not to be believed how the destruction of Napoleon affected him; he seemed prostrated in mind and body; he walked about unwashed, unshaved, hardly sober by day, and always intoxicated by night, literally, without exaggeration, for weeks, until at length, wakening as it were from his stupor, he at once left off all stimulating liquors, and never touched them after.'
It is in this year that we find the first mention in the Journal of Wordsworth, who, throughout his life, was one of Haydon's most faithful friends and appreciative admirers. On April 13, the artist records: 'I had a cast made yesterday of Wordsworth's face. He bore it like a philosopher.... We afterwards called on Hunt, and as