Philip Gilbert Hamerton | Page 3

servant.--Young Helliwell.--Scant supplies in the camp.--Nature of the camp.--Necessity for wooden floors in a bad climate.--Double-hulled boats.--Practice of landscape- painting.--Changes of effect.--Influences that governed my way of study in those days.--Attractive character of the Scottish Highlands.--Their scenery not well adapted for beginners.--My intense love of it.

CHAPTER XXXI.
1857-1858.
Small immediate results of the expedition to the Highlands.--Unsuitable system of work.--Loss of time.--I rent the house and island of Innistrynich.--My dread of marriage and the reasons for it.--Notwithstanding this I make an offer and am refused.--Two young ladies of my acquaintance.--Idea of a foreign marriage.--Its inconveniences.--Decision to ask for the hand of Mdlle. Gindriez.--I go to Paris and am accepted.--Elective affinities.

CHAPTER XXXII.
1858.
Reception at home after engagement.--Preparations at Innistrynich.--I arrive alone in Paris.--My marriage.--The religious ceremony.--An uncomfortable wedding.--The sea from Dieppe.--London.--The Academy Exhibition of 1858.--Impressions of a Frenchwoman.--The Turner collection.--The town.--Loch Awe.--The element wanting to happiness.

MEMOIR.

CHAPTER I
1858.
My first sight of Loch Awe.--Arrival at Innistrynich.--Our domestic life.--Difficulties about provisions.--A kitchen-garden.

CHAPTER II.
1858.
Money matters.--Difficulties about servants.--Expensiveness of our mode of life.

CHAPTER III.
1858.
Painting from nature.--Project of an exhibition.--Photography.--Plan of "A Painter's Camp."--Topographic art.--Charm of our life in the Highlands.

CHAPTER IV.
1858.
English and French manners.--My husband's relatives.--First journey to France after our marriage.--Friends in London.--Miss Susan Hamerton.

CHAPTER V.
1859.
Visits from friends and relatives.--A Frenchman in the Highlands.-- Project of buying the island of Innistrynich.

CHAPTER VI.
1859-1860.
Financial complications.--Summer visitors.--Boats and boating.--Visit to Paris.--W. Wyld.--Project of a farm in France.--Partnership with M. Gindriez.

CHAPTER VII.
1861-1863.
Effects of the Highland climate.--Farewell to Loch Awe.--Journey to the south of France.--Death of Miss Mary Hamerton.--Settlement at Sens.--Death of M. Gindriez.--Publication of "A Painter's Camp." --Removal to Pr��-Charmoy.

CHAPTER VIII.
1863-1868.
Canoeing on the Unknown River.--Visit of relatives.--Tour in Switzerland.--Experiments in etching.--The "Saturday Review."--Journeys to London.--Plan of "Etching and Etchers."--New friends in London.--Etching exhibited at the Royal Academy.--Serious illness in London.--George Eliot.--Professor Seeley.

CHAPTER IX.
1868.
Studies of animals.--A strange visitor.--Illness at Amiens.--Resignation of post on the "Saturday Review."--Nervous seizure in railway train.--Mrs. Craik.--Publication of "Etching and Etchers." --Tennyson.--Growing reputation in America.

CHAPTER X.
1869-1870.
"Wenderholme."--The Mont Beuvray.--Botanical studies.--La Tuilerie.--Commencement of "The Portfolio."--The Franco-Prussian War.

CHAPTER XI.
1870-1872.
Landscape-painting.--Letters of Mr. Peter Graham, R.A.--Incidents of the war-time.--"The Intellectual Life."--"The Etcher's Handbook."

CHAPTER XII.
1873-1875.
Popularity of "The Intellectual Life."--Love of animals.--English visitors.--Technical notes.--Sir S. Seymour Haden.--Attempts to resume railway travelling.

CHAPTER XIII.
1876-1877.
"Round my House."--Journey to England after seven years' absence.--Visit to Mr. Samuel Palmer.--Articles for the "Encyclopedia Britannica." --Death of my sister.--Mr. Appleton.

CHAPTER XIV.
1878-1880.
"Marmorne."--Paris International Exhibition.--"Modern Frenchmen." --Candidature for the Watson Gordon Chair of Fine Arts.--The Bishop of Autun.--The "Life of Turner."

CHAPTER XV.
1880-1882.
Third edition of "Etching and Etchers."--Kew.--The "Graphic Arts."--"Human Intercourse."

CHAPTER XVI.
1882-1884.
"Paris."--Miss Susan Hamerton's death.--Burnley revisited.--Hellifield Peel.--"Landscape" planned.--Voyage to Marseilles.

CHAPTER XVII.
1884-1888.
"Landscape."--The Autobiography begun.--"Imagination in Landscape Painting."--"The Sa?ne."--"Portfolio Papers."

CHAPTER XVIII.
1888-1890.
"Man in Art" begun.--Family events.--Mr. G. F. Watts.--Mr. Bodley.--"French and English."

CHAPTER XIX.
1890-1891.
Decision to live near Paris.--Practice in painting and etching.--Search for a house.--Cl��matis.

CHAPTER XX.
1891-1894.
Removal to Paris.--Interest in the Bois de Boulogne.--M. Vierge.--"Man in Art."--Contributions to "Scribner's Magazine."--New form of "The Portfolio."--Honorary degree.--Last Journey to London.--Society of Illustrators.--Illness and death.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
1834--1858

CHAPTER I.
My reasons for writing an autobiography.--That a man knows the history of his own life better than a biographer can know it.--Frankness and reserve.--The contemplation of death.
My principal reasons for writing an autobiography are because I am the only person in the world who knows enough about my history to give a truthful account of it, and because I dread the possibility of falling into the hands of some writer who might attempt a biography with inadequate materials. I have already been selected as a subject by two or three biographers with very friendly intentions, but their friendliness did not always ensure accuracy. When the materials are not supplied in abundance, a writer will eke them out with conjectural expressions which he only intends as an amplification, yet which may contain germs of error to be in their turn amplified by some other writer, and made more extensively erroneous.
It has frequently been said that an autobiography must of necessity be an untrue representation of its subject, as no man can judge himself correctly. If it is intended to imply that somebody else, having a much slighter acquaintance with the man whose life is to be narrated, would produce a more truthful book, one may be permitted to doubt the validity of the inference. Thousands of facts are known to a man himself with reference to his career, and a multitude of determinant motives, which are not known even to his most intimate friends, still less to the stranger who so often undertakes the biography. The reader of an autobiography has this additional advantage, that the writer must be unconsciously revealing himself all along, merely by his way of telling things.
With regard to the great question of frankness and reserve, I hold that the reader has a fair claim to hear the truth, as a biography is not avowedly a romance, but at the same time that it is right to maintain a certain reserve. My rule shall