Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2144 page)

“To Miss F. CLARKSON.

“1, Devonport-street. November 3rd, 1844.

“My dear Miss Fanny, — Notwithstanding the unfavourable state of the weather, I reached home perfectly dry; and certainly sustained no injury from the charming ride on the Brighton cliffs. I wish, indeed, most heartily, that I could have also enjoyed the ‘sunny waves’ on the following day.

“The magnificent present with which you have overwhelmed me I know not how to thank you for; the sight of it will not only scare away my cough, but constantly remind me of your kind commiseration. I should have had great satisfaction in wearing it to-day, but the weather with us, except for a short time in the early part of the day, has been by no means tempting. Yesterday I went out during the first part of a very fine day, and rather increased my malady; but by great prudence for a week or so, I hope to get rid of my troublesome companion.

“Mrs. Collins joins me in expressing a sincere hope that we may all meet in the spring, when we shall be most happy to give you at least a hearty welcome to such accommodation as our house will afford; and if anything should bring either your sister or yourself to London before that time, we shall be most truly glad to see you. Don’t you think you could get your hair much better cut in London than at Brighton? Take my advice and try.

“In the course of next week I hope to send you a few etchings which I did many years ago, but which were only published last year, as well as a print or two that may be useful to your sister in her studies; and although the etchings are trifles, I thought, as you told me you liked figure- drawings, you might, overlooking their defects in your kind way, give them a place on your table.

“It is now getting dark, so I must (with regret to myself, though with charity towards my reader,) send my scrawl to the post; hoping soon to see one of your family arrive to a warm dinner.

“I need, I trust, hardly say how much I should like to hear a good account of the inmates of Amberley Vicarage, when you can throw away a few minutes upon

“Your faithful and obliged friend,

“WILLIAM COLLINS.”

As the autumn advanced, the symptoms of Mr. Collins’s disease became worse; spitting of blood was produced by the violence of his cough, and the traces of illness became now but too plainly discernible in his altered face and wasted frame. Still, however, his buoyant spirits and determined patience did not fail him; the resolution that poverty had never quelled in his youth, sickness was now as little able to subdue. His panacea for sleepless nights, and his refutation of the forebodings of all who saw him, lay in his painting-room. Into this he entered, ardent and cheerful as was his wont, to prepare for the Exhibition, — sure that his Art was a solace that could not desert him, and satisfied in the conviction that the day had not yet come when his canvass should spread vacant before him, and his palette lie unbrightened by the presence of its old familiar hues.

CHAPTER III.

1844-1847.

Diary of 1844 continued — Pictures of 1845 — Remarks on the Painter’s return to English subjects — Extract from Diary of 1845 Continued — Illness — Departure from Town — Letter to Dr. Joseph Bullar — Stay at Torquay — Letter to Mr. Richardson — Serious Increase of Illness — Return to London — Perseverance in Painting under severe Suffering — Journal of 1846 — Pictures of 1846 — Last Expedition to the Country — Stay at Iver — The last Consolations of Art — Increasing Illness and Return to London — Letter to Mr. Reinagle, R.A. — Final Meeting with his brother Academicians — His last Sketch — Fatal progress of malady, on the opening of the year 1847 — Fortitude and Hopefulness during his last Sufferings — His Death, on the 17th of February — Post-mortem examination of his Heart — His Funeral and Grave.

As the new year approached, a slight but encouraging improvement became manifest in my father’s health, which is thus noticed in the following occasional passages of his journal for the latter part of 1844 and the beginning of 1845:

“1844, Christmas-day — I have been much out of health these many weeks. Mr. Richardson, the doctor, was sent for two months since, having, on the 24th of October, begun to try the various remedies his ingenuity could suggest. These were not very successful; the case is indeed a very complicated one. Doctor Chambers is puzzled too, evidently.

“My journal is sadly behindhand, and contains few of the recollections and memoranda I had intended to enter in it; but as it has pleased the merciful Giver of all good to restore to me so much of my former strength and spirits, I trust I may be more diligent for the future.

“This great day ought to be held in remembrance as the fountain of that ‘peace and good-will toward men,’ which ought to cheer us and enable us to ‘rejoice evermore’ — living a life of faith; recollecting that ‘whatever is not of faith is of sin.’ ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’

“28th December. — Contriving future pictures. 29th. — Composing a picture from a sketch of a scene at Ventnor, Isle of Wight. 31st. — Began a picture of this subject, wrote letters, and altogether worked too much for my nerves this day. Sleep at night disturbed.

“1845, January 1st. — Being overdone yesterday, too irresolute to-day to do more than read and talk with a visitor or two. I find myself not fit, at present, for my usual work at this season. But, as it has pleased the Almighty in his mercy that I should so far recover from my late attack, I trust I may have strength given me to fulfil the duties of my stewardship; and having so much to be thankful for during the past year, (as well as every year of my successful life,) I look humbly and cheerfully forward.”

The partial return to somewhat of his former strength, noticed above, produced its most remarkable effect, in the number of new pictures which it enabled Mr. Collins to execute for the season of 1845. In the last year, he had painted four new works; in this — while the traces of his sufferings during the summer and autumn were yet recent — he completed five; one of which was in many respects the most amusing effort of pictorial comedy that he had ever produced. The close application which he necessarily accorded to these pictures, far from contributing to increase the physical weakness under which he still laboured, appeared to be the sole influence that frequently preserved him from the pressure of despondency and the chances of relapse.

On the opening of the Exhibition of 1845, my father’s works appeared thus entitled in the Academy catalogue: “Fetching the Doctor;” “Undercliff, near Ventnor, Isle of Wight;” “Cromer Sands;” “Prawn Fishing coast of Sussex;” “Antonio.”

“Fetching the Doctor” illustrated no remarkable passage in the career of a celebrated physician, but represented that most ordinary grievance in the professional lives of all medical men, commonly denominated “being called up.” It is a frosty, starlight, winter’s night — no living figure is seen in the village street — snow lies thick on the ground, on the thatch of the closed cottages, on the tower of the old church. Everything is desolate, and everybody is asleep — everybody but the unhappy “Doctor Green,” (his name is seen inscribed on his door,) who stands fronting the nipping cold, at his threshold, having just answered the bell to a boy muffled up in a “comforter,” who has ridden to fetch the doctor from a distance which may be easily conjectured by the condition of the pony standing by his side, whose plump flanks are steaming in the sharp night air. Doctor Green stoops down to listen to the urchin’s message, with no very amiable expression of countenance. He is deaf, and old, and ill-tempered, this Doctor Green. He has got out of bed in such a hurry that his night- cap is still on his head, and his stockings about his ankles. Whatever may be the necessity that requires him — whether it be to preside “obstetrically” over some “village Hampden’s” first introduction into this world, or to smooth the exit of some elderly patient to the other — Doctor Green evidently and naturally curses his fate and his case, in the depths of his own bosom, while he listens to the tale of the boy, and forbodes, from the presence of the pony, the long night ride that is immediately in store for him.

The treatment of this picture is as original and true as its subject is natural and amusing. The painting of the snow, ruffled by the boy’s feet and the pony’s hoofs; the situation of the candle in the doctor’s hand, placed partly behind the door-sill, to keep it from the wind; the position of his rumpled night-cap, shoved off both his deaf ears in the hurry of the moment, in order that he may understand what the boy is saying to him; are all remarkable evidences of minute and graphic observation of Nature. The light and shade of the picture is exceedingly bold and grand; the large dark night shadows being finely opposed by the vivid, flaring light, thrown full on the doctor’s figure, in the foreground. The expression and position of the village physician are characteristic and natural in an eminent degree. Both in his figure and in the boy’s, the same comic truth and perfect freedom from caricature are immediately apparent. Nor should the pony be forgotten; he is both drawn and painted with no ordinary intelligence and skill. The work was universally popular and admired. It was painted for Mr. Gibbons; and was finely engraved in mezzotint, on a large scale.

The sea-piece of “Ventnor,” was of the same bold, original order as the picture of “Seaford,” of the last year. The cliffs and the distant wooded hills of the Isle of Wight almost filled the composition, the sea occupying only the left-hand corner. On the top of one of the cliffs in the foreground stands a boy, triumphing in having gained the summit before his companions, who are seen beneath, climbing to join him. The variety in the forms of the cliffs and hills, and the alternate vigour and delicacy in the painting of the foreground and background objects, give this picture a remarkable novelty, brightness, and purity of effect. It was commissioned by Mr. George Young, the possessor of the painter’s “Skittle Players.”

“Cromer,” and “Prawn-fishing,” were two smaller sea-pieces; the first pearly and delicate; the second clear and brilliant in effect; and both combining those peculiar qualities of Nature and originality, which mark all Mr. Collins’s works of this class; and to notice which more minutely would be but to repeat what has been often already remarked, in these and other pages, of his long and varied series of productions of the same order. Both these pictures were painted for Mr. Wethered.

“Antonio,” was treated on the same principles and on the same scale, as “The Patriarch” of the year before — the figure, in this instance, being that of a young man, with dark hair and beard, clothed in the costume of the middle ages. In depth of colour, in dignity of treatment, and in force and firmness of drawing, this picture was as striking and successful an experiment in the manner of the old masters, as its predecessor, and was in every way as creditable to the painter’s theory and practice of Art. It is now in the possession of Mr. Collins’s family.

With the exception of the last of them, it will be observed that my father’s works of this season were all illustrative of the early subjects of his pencil — no Italian scene being comprised in their number. This suspension of his efforts in his “new manner” was intimately connected with the serious illness under which he now laboured. As the symptoms of his malady almost daily increased in their adverse influence over the intellectual habits of his life, so did his hand and eye wander more and more frequently to his early sketches and his youthful designs; his mind being incited to revert in sickness to its most familiar studies, by the power of long attachment, and the instinct of happy experience. Thus, the two pictures of English scenery first produced with his Italian subjects of 1842, increased with the progress of his malady, in 1845, to four — one of which, (the sea-piece of “Cromer,”) was drawn from sources discovered during his visit to Norfolk in 1815, and produced under the influence of impressions which remained vivid and indestructible after a lapse of thirty years. Although, therefore, plans and purchasers for his Italian subjects were ready, whenever they should be resumed, his early sea-side studies now once more engaged his pencil, at the close as at the outset of his career; assuming to him, in his failing health, the aspect of old friends with whom he could communicate without effort — of studies which were too intimately connected with his mind, to cause him the anxiety of less familiar experiments — of those bright traces of the past, which most peacefully and gratefully influenced the dark shadows cast by suffering over the present.

The following fragmentary extracts from my father’s Journal continue those personal details on the subject of his illness, which have been commenced in former passages; and which, monotonous though they may appear, must yet necessarily be inserted, as now mixing more and more determinately with the darkening current of his life; and as showing how constantly increasing were the obstacles under which his studies were still continued, and his pictures yet produced.