April 18I have been waiting till Easter should bring some Parliament men into
the Country to thank you for your delightful account of
your Glasgow excursion
Haydon had recently returned from Scotland, where he had exhibited his painting, Christ's Entry Into Jerusalem.--Oh what an honour & a pleasure it
is to be selected as a friend to whom you like “to unburthen your
thoughts”
--& how heartily I sympathised with all your feelings whether
stern or relenting--I had been waiting for a frank to tell you this--but I suppose
indignation is a stonger impulse than pleasure for since I received the
Examiner this morning I can no longer refrain from writing. I had read the Article in the Magazine wondering who could be meant--thinking
how likely it was to be misrepresented but never for an instant dreaming that it
could be aimed at you--of all impossible slanders that seemed the most
impossible--& I am even now lost in astonishment at such a malicious
falsehood's finding a place
in so respectable a publication.Mitford has just read
Haydon's short retort, "Alleged Inhumanity of a Living Artist" published in the Examiner's current issue of 15 April 1821
, in which he identifies himself as the unspecified "living artist" recently targeted in the April 1821 issue of The London Magazine, in "The British Institution". The London Magazine piece was an anonymous review of an art exhibition in which Haydon did not participate, but in which Edwin Landseer's Seizure of a Boar reminds the writer of an anecdote about "a living artist who, when a child was run over by a cart, before its own loved home, and the bankrupt mother stood rigid as stone, staring with maniac agony on her crushed darling, calmly and deliberately gazed on her 'to study the expression,' as he called it!! I care not to know his name. . . but let me take this opportunity to assure him, that, as a man, I hold him in the most sovereign contempt, not to say detestation!"
(page 438). In his prompt rejoinder, Haydon identified himself as the "living artist," and described the circumstances of the encounter: "About eight years ago, while the living Artist alluded to was accidentally approaching Temple Bar, he saw suddenly a great crowd, and heard the screams of some poor woman in great agony! He ran on with many other gentlemen and squeezing near enough to give her aid, found a poor creature turning her head from one side ot the other, beating away the people who offered to calm her, and screaming on 'her dear boy' with a dry, parched, agitated hoarseness!--The people at last forced her into a house, and upon his inquiring what had happened, he found that she had permitted her boy to hold a horse and to mount it, and that the poor little fellow had been thrown and trampled on. Now, Sir, this is the truth and nothing but the truth, whereas in the London Magazine, the living Artist is made to witness unmoved a dear little child crushed by a cart wheel! and indifferent to its horrid condition, deliberately to walk up to the mother without feeling, sympathy, or pain; quietly to look in her face, and enraptured to study her expression!"
Haydon continues that the child did not die of the accident, that the mother's face did not stare rigidly but was luridly animated, and that "The living Artist has often related this affecting incident to his friends, and has added, that his coming in contact with such a dreadful expression in Nature, at the very moment he was painting the real mother in the Judgment of Solomon, enabled him to give that look of 'agonized faintness' which it has been thought by every mother he has succeeded in giving."
I suppose that as there is now no regular Editor the venom slid in undetected.
The April 1821 issue of The London Magazine
announced the death of its founding editor, John Scott, who had on 16 February fallen in a duel with Jonathan Christie, John Gibson Lockhart's literary agent. Scott challenged Christie to the duel over what Scott took to be a personal insult, rooted in an escalating conflict between his London Magazine and what he took to be Lockhart's writings in Blackwood's Magazine caricaturing a Cockney School of London writers and artists. William Hazlitt had taken over as editor of
The London Magazine for the April 1821 issue. Mitford's surprise that The London Magazine would print an implicit insult to Haydon is certainly warranted, since Haydon had long been a friend of John Scott (Source: ODNB]). I am almost glad that it did since it has afforded you an opportunity of making a defence & dignified & so spirited--What a
necessary thing it is that a great painter should be a good writer! And really in
these days when the appetite for anecdote as it is called (that is for scandal) is so
craving
& the gossip of a set of
unidea'd women over a country tea table
yields in malice to the slander of literary chit chat, every man should be brought to
wield the pen as a weapon of defence against his enemies his rivals & his
friends. Do you know to which class the present writer belongs?--I will not talk of
him any more for it really gives me unwomanly feelings--to use a womanly
phrase it puts me in a passion.
----Here Mitford's long dash signals a change of topic, effectively a paragraph break.
What became of your poor
Glasgow culprit? Did he
come back to London according to your behest? And is he likely to turn honest &
make his way in the world?We have not yet identified this "Glasgow culprit" from our review of Haydon's published correspondence. I think if any thing
I think you know my friend Mrs Hofland I have
just had a letter from Miss James containing so
remarkable an anecdote respecting her that I am tempted to transcribe it--To
understand it I must tell you that Mrs Hofland
has been for several years involved in a Chancery suit on the success of which they
had placed great reliance.The National Archives documents multiple Chancery suits, with records dating 1813, 1814, and 1818 involving Thomas and Barbara Hofland as plaintiffs against Francis Hoole, Joseph Wreaks, Job Baseby Rolls and Frederick Parkin Hoole. The surnames Wreaks and Hoole suggest connections on Barbara Hofland's side, as Hoole was the name of her first husband and Wreaks was her maiden name. (Ah I could have told them what a miserable thing is a
successful Chancery suit!) Now for
Miss James's letter. "The Hofland suit is decided in their favour--but all the costs being to be paid out of the property not a sixpence Mrs. Hof. says will come to them. Their lawyer had
neglected to write & the news of the decision was brought by a neighbour who
told her only that it was decided in their favour--she went to Town to enquire
was
and was
quite overcome by the information she received--& was about to mount the outside of the
Twickenham Coach to
return all amort as you may
suppose when recollecting she should save sixpence in going by the
Richmond Stage & such an one being on hand,--she
withdrew her foot although a
most respectable woman with her husband at her side affected to make room for
her--Home she came by the Richmond Coach & saved her sixpence & her life.
The Twickenham Coach was overturned an hour after &
that decent woman in whose place she would have sat killed on the spot. The
husband had his collar bone & a rib broken. This most striking event gave a
new & just turn to her thoughts--I am
sure you will feel as thankful as I did at the detail which she gave in her most pathetic
manner."
_____
Having
begun storytelling I must tell
you another a story which comes from Germany.
The King of Naples
Possibly this a story about King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, also Ferdinand IV of Naples (1751 - 1825), though it is hard to tell if the anecdote is current. having arrived at
Laybach before the other sovereigns
of
was
desirous to have the amusement of bear hunting which of course was to be provided for
him but there being no bears resident in the neighbourhood one
was purchased of a Savoyard & placed a few
miles out of Town in a thicket. The King attended as the story went by a train of cars & courtiers arrived near the place & the Bear
finding himself in the neighbourhood of so much good company
fancied he was to perform as usual came out on his hind legs in a most graceful
attitude--which alas! had an effect on the hard heart of his Neopolitan Majesty who
discharged his piece & shot him dead. This story is none of my radical
inventions--it came from Lord Ashburton to Sir W. Elford & from him to
me. ____
I have a great grievance just now which I have nothing
all to
do with--but which I cannot help thinking a grievance nevertheless. The Duke of Wellington's sons are at home for the
Eton holidays & they come every day to a little alehouse next
door to learn French of a Jew who is lodging there for the purpose of teaching them.
"The poor little lads Ma'am", said my friend
the Landlord, "are kept very strict. They never look up but their tutor
corrects them, & there they sit in my parlour from eleven to half past
four & never have a glass of any thing." Without sympathising very
deeply in the misfortune which my friend the Alehouse keeper with a true
tap-room feeling considers as
worst of all, I am quite indignant at
the poor little boys being cheated of their holidays. Is it not abominable?--A worse
iniquity than
cheating
beating Napoleon.A reference to Wellington's famous defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. When they ought to be playing
cricket or stealing bird's nests or doing mischief or doing nothing.--The Battle of Waterloo was
Pray did you get a little letter which I sent to you at
Glasgow--It is not worth asking for.--My
Father & Mother join in kindest remembrances & I am ever
My dear Mr. Haydon
Most sincerely and affectionately yours
M. R. Mitford.
Were you not very affected at the death of poor John
Keats?
The April 1821 issue of The London Magazine to which Mitford refers earlier in this letter also contained an article on the "Death of Mr. John Keats" on pages 426-427
. There is another
proof of the terrible personality of the age. If he had lived I think his name would
have been second only to Wordsworth
amongst the Poets of the day--Indeed even now there are parts of
Endymion which surely no other man could have
written.
I am happy to tell you that after a great deal of enquiry & some threats we
have succeeded in regaining your greyhound puppy & have
placed him in very good
B.R. Haydon, Esqre
St. John's Place
Lisson Grove North
Regent's Park
London
