An Autobiography

Remember, Reader, that these things can never more be seen, and that is why I give these extracts in extenso. Merely as history they are precious. How we would like to have some word pictures of Rome in the seventeenth, sixteenth and fifteenth centuries, but we don’t get them. The chronicles tell us of magnificence, numbers, illustrious people, dress, and so forth; but, somehow, we would like something more intimate and descriptive of local colour – effects of weather, etc. – to help us to realise life as it was in the olden time. I think in this age of ugliness we prize the picturesque and the artistic all the more for their rarer charm.

After “Morra” I did a life-size oil study of the head of the celebrated model, Francesco, which was a great advance in freedom of brush work. But the walks were not abandoned, and many a delightful round we made with our father, who was very happy in Rome. The Colosseum was rich in flowers and trees, which clothed with colour its hideous stages of seats. The same abundant foliage beautified the brickwork of Caracalla’s Baths, but those beautiful veils were, unfortunately, slowly helping further to demolish the ruins, and had to be all cleared away later on. I have several times managed to wander over those eerie ruins in later years by full moon, but I have never again enjoyed the awe-inspiring sensation produced by the first visit, when those trees waved and sighed, and the owls hooted, as in Byron’s time. And then the loneliness of the Colosseum was more impressive, and helped one to detach oneself in thought from the present day more easily. Now the town is creeping out that way.

“April 3rd.– Our goal was Santa Croce to-day, beyond the Lateran, for there the Pope was to come to bless the ‘Agnus Dei.’ This ceremony takes place only once in seven years. Everything was en petite tenue, the quietest carriages, the seediest servants, but oh! how glorious it all was in that fervent sunlight. We stood outside the church, I greatly enjoying the amusing crowd, full of such varied types. The effect of the Pope’s two carriages and the horsemen coming trotting along the straight, long road from St. John’s to this church, the luminous dust rising in clouds in the wind, was very pretty. The shouting and cheering and waving of handkerchiefs were quite frantic, more hearty even than at the Minerva. People seemed to feel more easy and jolly here, with no grandeur to awe them. His Holiness looked much more spry than when I last saw him. We lost poor little Mamma and, in despair, returned without her, and she didn’t turn up till 7 o’clock!”

The Roman Diary of 1870 must end with the last Easter Benediction given under the temporal power, Urbi et Orbi.

“Easter Sunday, April 17th. – What a day, brimming over with rich eye-feasts, with pomp and splendour! What can the eye see nowadays to come anywhere near what I saw to-day, except on this anniversary here in unique Rome? Of course, all the world knows that the splendour of this great ceremony outshines that of any other here or in the whole world. Mamma and I reserved ourselves for the benediction alone, so did not start for St. Peter’s till ten o’clock, and got there long before the troops. On getting out of the carriage we strolled leisurely to the steps leading up to the church, where we took up our stand, enjoying the delicious sunshine and fresh, clear air, and also the interesting people that were gradually filling the piazza, amongst whom were pilgrims with long staves, many being Neapolitans, the women in new costumes of the brightest dyes and with snowy tovaglie artistically folded. Some of these women carried the family luggage on their heads, this luggage being great bundles wrapped in rugs of red, black, and yellow stripes, some with the big coloured umbrella passed through and cleverly balanced. All these people had trudged on foot all the way. Their shoes hung at their waists, and also their water flasks. As the troops came pouring in we were requested by the sappers to range ourselves and not to encroach beyond the bottom step. Here was a position to see from! We watched the different corps forming to the stirring bugle and trumpet sounds, the officers mounting their horses, all splendid in velvet housings, the officers in the fullest of full dress. There was no pushing in the crowd, and we were as comfortable as possible. But there was a scene to our left, up on the terrace that runs along the upper part of the piazza and is part of the Vatican, which was worth to me all the rest; it was, pictorially, the most beautiful sight of all. Along this terrace, the balustrade of which was hung with mellow old faded tapestry, and bears those dark-toned, effective statues standing out so well against the blue sky, were collected in a long line, I should say, nearly all the bishops who are gathered here in Rome for the Council, in their white and silver vestments, and wearing their snowy mitres, a few dark-dressed ladies in veils and an officer in bright colour here and there supporting most artistically those long masses of white. Above the heads of this assembly stretched the long white awning, through which the strong sun sent a glowing shade, and above that the clear sky, with the Papal white and yellow flags and standards in great quantities fluttering in the breeze! My delighted eyes kept wandering up to that terrace away from the coarser military picturesqueness in front. Up there was a real bit of the olden time. There was a feeling as of lilies about those white-robed pontiffs. At last a sign from a little balcony high up on the façade was given, and all the troops sprang to attention, and then the gentle-faced old Pope glided into view there, borne on his chair and wearing the triple crown. Clang go the rifles and sabres in a general salute, and a few ‘evvivas’ burst from the crowd, which are immediately suppressed by a general ‘sh-sh-sh,’ and amidst a most imposing silence, the silence of a great multitude, the Pope begins to read from a crimson book held before him with the voice of a strong young man. Curiously enough, in this stillness all the horses began to neigh, but their voices could not drown the single one of Pio Nono. After the reading the Pope rose, and down went, on their knees, the mass of people and soldiers, ‘like one man,’ and the old Pope pressed his hands together a moment and then flung open his arms upwards with an action full of electrifying fervour as he pronounced the grand words of the blessing which rang out, it seemed, to the ends of the Earth.

“In the evening we saw the famous illumination of the dome of St. Peter’s from the Pincian. The wind rather spoiled the first or silver one, but the next, the golden, was a grand sight, beginning with the cross at the top and running down in streams over the dome. As I looked, I heard a funny bit of Latin from an English tourist, who asked a priest ‘Quis est illuminatio, olio o gas?’ ‘Olio, olio,’ answered the priest good-naturedly.”

And so our Papal Rome on May 2nd, 1870, retreated into my very appreciative memory, and we returned for a few days to Florence, and thence to Padua and Venice and Verona on our way to England through the Tyrol and Bavaria. What a downward slope in art it is from Italy into Germany! We girls felt a great irritation at the change, and were too recalcitrant to attend to the German sights properly.

But I filled the Diary with very searching notes of the wonderful things I saw in Venice, thanks to Veronese, Titian, Tintoretto, Palma Vecchio and others, who filled me with all that an artist can desire in the way of colour. I was anxious to improve my weak point, and here was a lesson!

It is curious, however, to watch through the succeeding years how I was gradually inducted by circumstances into that line of painting which is so far removed from what inspired me just then. It was the Franco-German War and a return to the Isle of Wight that sent me back on the military road with ever diminishing digressions. Well, perhaps my father’s fear, which I have already mentioned in my early ‘teens, that I was joining in a “tremendous ruck” in taking the field would have been justified had I not taken up a line of painting almost non-exploited by English artists. The statement of a French art critic when writing of one of my war pictures, “L’Angleterre n’a guère qu’un peintre militaire, c’est une femme,” shows the position. I wish I could have another life here below to share the joys of those who paint what I studied in Italy, if only for the love of such work, though I am very certain I should be quite indistinguishable in that “ruck.”

CHAPTER VII

WAR. BATTLE PAINTINGS

PADUA I greatly enjoyed – its academic quiet, its Shakespearean atmosphere; and still more did Shakespearean Verona enchant me. I had a good study of the modern French school at the Paris Salon, and on getting back to London rejoined the South Kensington schools till the end of the summer session. Then a studio and practice from the living model. In July we were all absorbed in the great Franco-German War, declared in the middle of that month. It seems so absurd to us to-day that we should have been pro-German in England. This little entry in the Diary shows how Bismarck’s dishonest manœuvres had hoodwinked the world. “France will fight, so Prussia must, and all for nothing but jealousy – a pretty spectacle!” We all believed it was France that was the guilty party. I call to mind how some one came running upstairs to find me and, subsiding on the top step with The Times in her hand, announced the surrender of MacMahon’s army and the Emperor. I wrote “the Germans are pro-di-gious!” and I have lived to see them prostrate. Such is history.

I was asked, as the war developed, if I had been inspired by it, and this caused me to turn my attention pictorially that way. Once I began on that line I went at a gallop, in water-colour at first, and many a subject did I send to the “Dudley Gallery” and to Manchester, all the drawings selling quickly, but I never relaxed that serious practice in oil painting which was my solid foundation. I sent the poor “Magnificat” to the Royal Academy in the spring of 1871. It was rejected, and returned to me with a large hole in it.

That summer, which we spent at well-loved Henley-on-Thames, was marred by the awful doings of the Commune in Paris. The Times had a stereotyped heading for a long time: “The Destruction of Paris.” What horrible suspense there was while we feared the destruction of the Louvre and Notre Dame. I see in the Diary: “May 28th, 1871. – Oh! that to-morrow’s papers may bring a decided contradiction of the oft-repeated report that the great Louvre pictures are lost and that Notre Dame no longer stands intact. As yet all is confusion and dismay, and one clings, therefore, to the hope that little by little we may hear that some fragments, at least, may be spared to bereaved humanity and that all that beauty is not annihilated.”

In August, 1871, we were off again. From London back to Ventnor! There I kept my hand in by painting in oils life-sized portraits of friends and relations and some Italian ecclesiastical subjects, such as young Franciscan monks, disciples of him who loved the birds, feeding their doves in a cloister; an old friar teaching schoolboys, al fresco, outside a church, as I had seen one doing in Rome. For this friar I commandeered our landlord as a model, for he had just the white beard and portly figure I required. Yet he was one of the most furibond dissenters I ever met – a Congregationalist – but very obliging. Also a candlelight effect in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, in Rome; a large altar-piece for our little Church of St. Wilfrid, and so on, a mixture of the ecclesiastical and the military. The dances, theatricals, croquet parties, rides – all the old ways were linked up again at Ventnor, and I have a very bright memory of our second dwelling there and reunion with our old friends. In the spring of 1872 I sent one of the many Roman subjects I was painting to the Academy, a water-colour of a Papal Zouave saluting two bishops in a Roman street. It was rejected, but this time without a hole. This year was full of promise, and I very nearly reached the top of my long hill climb, for in it I began what proved to be my first Academy picture.

What proved of great importance to me, this year of 1872, was my introduction, if I may put it so, to the British Army! I then saw the British soldier as I never had had the opportunity of seeing him before. My father took me to see something of the autumn manœuvres near Southampton. Subjects for water-colour drawings appeared in abundance to my delighted observation. One of the generals who was to be an umpire at these manœuvres, Sir F. C., had become greatly interested in me, as a mutual friend had described my battle scenes to him, and said he would speak about me to Sir Charles Staveley, one of the commanders in the impending “war,” so that I might have facilities for seeing the interesting movements. He hoped that, if I saw the manœuvres, I would “give the British soldiers a turn,” which I did with alacrity. I sent some of the sketches to Manchester and to my old friend the “Dudley.” One of them, “Soldiers Watering Horses,” found a purchaser in a Mr. Galloway, of Manchester, who asked through an agent if I would paint him an oil picture. I said “Yes,” and in time painted him “The Roll Call.” Meanwhile, in the spring of 1873, I sent my first really large war picture in oils to the Academy. It was accepted, but “skyed,” well noticed in the Press and, to my great delight, sold. The subject was, of course, from the war which was still uppermost in our thoughts: a wounded French colonel (for whom my father sat), riding a spent horse, and a young subaltern of Cuirassiers, walking alongside (studied from a young Irish officer friend), “missing” after one of the French defeats, making their way over a forlorn landscape. The Cameron Highlanders were quartered at Parkhurst, near Ventnor, about this time, and I was able to make a good many sketches of these splendid troops, so essentially pictorial. I have ever since then liked to make Highlanders subjects for my brush.

In this same year of 1873 my sister and I, now both belonging to the old faith, whither our mother had preceded us, joined the first pilgrimage to leave the shores of England since the Reformation. I had arranged with the Graphic to make pen-and-ink sketches of the pilgrimage, which was arousing an extraordinary amount of public interest. Our goal was the primitive little town of Paray-le-Monial, deep in the heart of France, where Margaret Mary Alacoque received our Lord’s message. I cannot convey to my readers who are not “of us” the fresh and exultant impressions we received on that visit. There was a mixture of religious and national patriotism in our minds which produced feelings of the purest happiness. The steamer that took us English pilgrims from Newhaven to Dieppe on September 2nd flew the standard of the Sacred Heart at the main and the Union Jack at the peak, seeming thus to symbolise the whole character of the enterprise. Those Graphic sketches proved a very great burden to me. Nowadays one of the pilgrims would have done all by “snapshots.” I tried to sketch as I walked in the processions at Paray and to sing the hymn at the same time. There was hardly a moment’s rest for us, except for a few intervals of sleep. The long ceremonies and prescribed devotions, the processions, the stirring hymns and the journey there and back, all crowded into a week from start to finish, called for all one’s strength. But how joyfully given!

I can never forget the hearty, well-mannered welcome the French gave us, lay and clerical. The place itself was lovely and the weather kind. It is good to have had such an experience as this in our weary world. The Bishop of Salford, the future Cardinal Vaughan, led us, and our clergy mustered in great force. The dear French people never showed so well as during their welcome of us. It suited their courteous and hospitable natures. Most of our hosts were peasants and owners of little picturesque shops in this jewel of a little town. We two were billeted at a shoemaker’s. The urbanity of the French clergy in receiving our own may be imagined. I love to think back on the truly beautiful sights and sounds of Paray, with the dominant note of the church bells vibrating over all. They gave us a graceful send-off, pleased to have the assurance of our approval of our reception. Many compliments on our solide piété, with regrets as to their own “légèreté,” and so forth. “Vive l’Angleterre!” “Vive la France!” “Adieu!”

CHAPTER VIII

“THE ROLL CALL”

I HAD quite a large number of commissions for military water-colours to get through on my return home, and an oil of French artillery on the march to paint, in my little glass studio under St. Boniface Down. But after my not inconsiderable success with “Missing” at the Academy, I became more and more convinced that a London studio must be my destiny for the coming winter. Of course, my father demurred. He couldn’t bear to part with me. Still, it must be done, and to London I went, with his sad consent. I had long been turning “The Roll Call” in my mind. My father shook his head; the Crimea was “forgotten.” My mother rather shivered at the idea of the snow. It was no use; they saw I was bent on that subject. My dear mother and our devoted family doctor in London (Dr. Pollard4), who would do anything in his power to help me, between them got me the studio, No. 76, Fulham Road, where I painted the picture which brought me such utterly unexpected celebrity.

Mr. Burchett, still headmaster at South Kensington, was delighted to see me with all the necessary facilities for carrying out my work, and he sent me the best models in London, nearly all ex-soldiers. One in particular, who had been in the Crimea, was invaluable. He stood for the sergeant who calls the roll. I engaged my models for five hours each day, but often asked them to give me an extra half-hour. Towards the end, as always happens, I had to put on pressure, and had them for six hours. My preliminary expeditions for the old uniforms of the Crimean epoch were directed by my kind Dr. Pollard, who rooted about Chelsea back streets to find what I required among the Jews. One, Mr. Abrahams, found me a good customer. I say in my Diary:

“Dr. Pollard and I had a delightful time at Mr. Abrahams’ dingy little pawnshop in a hideous Chelsea slum, and, indeed, I enjoyed it far more than I should have enjoyed the same length of time at a West End milliner’s. I got nearly all the old accoutrements I had so much longed for, and in the evening my Jew turned up at Dr. Pollard’s after a long tramp in the city for more accoutrements, helmets, coatees, haversacks, etc., and I sallied forth with the ‘Ole Clo!’ in the rain to my boarding house under our mutual umbrella, and he under his great bag as well. We chatted about the trade ‘chemin faisant.’”

I called Saturday, December 13th, 1873, a “red-letter day,” for I then began my picture at the London studio. Having made a little water-colour sketch previously, very carefully, of every attitude of the figures, I had none of those alterations to make in the course of my work which waste so much time. Each figure was drawn in first without the great coat, my models posing in a tight “shell jacket,” so as to get the figure well drawn first. How easily then could the thick, less shapely great coat be painted on the well-secured foundation. No matter how its heavy folds, the cross-belts, haversacks, water-bottles, and everything else broke the lines, they were there, safe and sound, underneath. An artist remarked, “What an absurdly easy picture!” Yes, no doubt it was, but it was all the more so owing to the care taken at the beginning. This may be useful to young painters, though, really, it seems to me just now that sound drawing is at a discount. It will come by its own again. Some people might say I was too anxious to be correct in minor military details, but I feared making the least mistake in these technical matters, and gave myself some unnecessary trouble. For instance, on one of my last days at the picture I became anxious as to the correct letters that should appear stamped on the Guards’ haversacks. I sought professional advice. Dr. Pollard sent me the beery old Crimean pensioner who used to stand at the Museum gate wearing a gold-laced hat, to answer my urgent inquiry as to this matter. Up comes the puffing old gentleman, redolent of rum. I, full of expectation, ask him the question: “What should the letters be?” “B. O.!” he roars out – “Board of Ordnance!” Then, after a congested stare, he calls out, correcting himself, “W. D. – War Deportment!” “Oh!” I say, faintly, “War Department; thank you.” Then he mixes up the two together and roars, “W. O.!” And that was all I got. He mopped his rubicund face and, to my relief, stumped away down my stairs. Another Crimean hero came to tell me whether I was right in having put a grenade on the pouches. “Well, miss, the natural hinference would be that it was a grenade, but it was something like my ‘and.” Desperation! I got the thing “like his hand” just in time to put it in before “The Roll Call” left – a brass badge lent me by the War Office – and obliterated the much more effective grenade.

On March 29th and 30th, 1874, came my first “Studio Sunday” and Monday, and on the Tuesday the poor old “Roll Call” was sent in. I watched the men take it down my narrow stairs and said “Au revoir,” for I was disappointed with it, and apprehensive of its rejection and speedy return. So it always is with artists. We never feel we have fulfilled our hopes.

The two show days were very tiring. Somehow the studio, after church time on the Sunday, was crowded. Good Dr. Pollard hired a “Buttons” for me, to open the door, and busied himself with the people, and enjoyed it. So did I, though so tired. It was “the thing” in those days to make the round of the studios on the eve of “sending-in day.”

Mr. Galloway’s agent came, and, to my intense relief, told me the picture went far beyond his expectations. He had been nervous about it, as it was through him the owner had bought it, without ever seeing it. On receiving the agent’s report, Mr. Galloway sent me a cheque at once – £126 – being more than the hundred agreed to. The copyright was mine.

The days that followed felt quite strange. Not a dab with a brush, and my time my own. It was the end of Lent, and then Easter brought such church ceremonial as our poor little Ventnor St. Wilfrid’s could not aspire to. A little more Diary:

“Saturday, April 11th.– A charming morning, for Dr. Pollard had a fine piece of news to tell me. First, Elmore, R.A., had burst out to him yesterday about my picture at the Academy, saying that all the Academicians are in quite a commotion about it, and Elmore wants to make my acquaintance very much. He told Dr. P. I might get £500 for ‘The Roll Call’! I little expected to have such early and gratifying news of the picture which I sent in with such forebodings. After Dr. P. had delivered this broadside of Elmore’s compliments he brought the following battery of heavy guns to bear upon me which compelled me to sink into a chair. It is a note from Herbert, R.A., in answer to a few lines which kind Father Bagshawe had volunteered to write to him, as a friend, to ask him, as one of the Selecting Committee, just simply to let me know, as soon as convenient, whether my picture was accepted or rejected. The note is as follows:

‘Dear Miss Thompson, – I have just received a note from Father Bagshawe of the Oratory in which he wished me to address a few lines to you on the subject of your picture in the R.A. To tell the truth I desired to do so a day or two since but did not for two reasons: the first being that as a custom the doings of the R.A. are for a time kept secret; the second that I felt I was a stranger to you and you would hear what I wished to say from some friend – but Father Bagshawe’s note, and the decision being over, I may tell you with what pleasure I greeted the picture and the painter of it when it came before us for judgment. It was simply this: I was so struck by the excellent work in it that I proposed we should lift our hats and give it and you, though, as I thought, unknown to me, a round of huzzahs, which was generally done. You now know my feeling with regard to your work, and may be sure that I shall do everything as one of the hangers that it shall be perfectly seen on our walls.