other he had sent to Oxford. But he had also eight young children at home to support, and the struggle was desperate. Within the next few years his five youngest children died, one after the other, from the effects of the terrible mental distresses of their mother, whose bright face was sad enough now. I can remember the sweet old roses of her sunken cheeks fading away daily with anxiety and grief. Haydon, who was passionately attached to both wife and children, suffered all the tortures of the damned at the sight before him. His sorrow over the deaths of his dear children was something more than human, I remember watching him as he hung over his daughter Georgiana, and over his dying boy Harry, the pride and delight of his life. Poor fellow, how he cried! and he went into the next room, and beating his head passionately on the bed, called upon God to take him and all of us from this hateful world. Those were dreadful days. The earliest and the most painful death was to be preferred to our life at that time. Who can feel surprised at Haydon entreating the Almighty to afflict his children with every other calamity on earth than a love for painting? THE REFORM BANQUET. The commission from Lord Grey was to paint the Great Reform Banquet at the Guildhall on the occasion of the passing of the Bill of 1832. The Corporation of the City of London also engaged to take a copy of the picture, and Haydon at once set to work. It was a picture of portraits; ninety-seven of the leading Whigs and Radicals of the day had to be painted, and thus Haydon found himself compelled to go again into that society from which he had greatly been excluded since 1823.` But it was now an unequal combination, and these are always disadvantages to the weaker side, as we shall see. Lord Grey, Mr. Stanley, Lord Althorp, the Duke of Richmond, Lord Lansdowne, Lord John Russell, Lord Melbourne, Lord Brougham, Lord Palmerston, Sir Francis Burdett, Tom Duncombe, Sir James Graham, O'Connell, Hume, and all the leading members of the reform party of that day sat to Haydon in turn, and satirized each other, while their wives criticized the portraits of each other's husband. With his sitters Haydon, of course, became on good terms; but he complains that he found the Whigs more lax in their views on morality, especially on the subject of the Seventh Commandment, than the Tories, who were perhaps just as lax but did not talk about it-and not given to generous hospitality.' There was a hard aristocratic selfishness about them that he did not like, and contrasted unfavorably with his old friends. The three men he liked best and who liked him were Lord Melbourne, Lord Palmerston, and Lord Durham. He had no reason to complain of their aristocratic exclusiveness, nor were they chary of their hospitality towards him. Upon their opinions of the Seventh Commandment he discreetly says nothing. The two first were men of the world, the last a misanthrope, who found in Haydon's disappointed ambition something congenial with his own. Haydon finished the picture of the "Reform Banquet" by the spring of 1834, and by particular desire of the Whigs, exhibited it publicly. They hoped it would recall the days of their glory. But the discredit into which Lord Grey's government had fallen kept the Ten-Pounders away, and the general agitation of the times made the exhibition a failure. This inflicted a pecuniary loss of some 240l. upon Haydon. The moment the Whigs saw that the exhibition did not take, they began to abuse the picture, and "cut" the painter. This was judicious, but not magnanimous. Yet Haydon could have borne the loss without danger if the Corporation of the City of London had kept faith with him, and taken a copy of Lord Grey's picture as they had originally agreed. But, to their great disgrace, the Corporation followed suit with the Whigs, and I regret to feel compelled to apply such a term to the Lord Mayor and Corporation of the City of London, that "model for the municipalities of Europe"--but they broke faith with the painter in the meanest manner, dishonorably One day at the late Lord Grey's house, during the first days of their acquaintance, and while Lord Grey was sitting to him, luncheon was announced. Lord Grey got up and left the room, and left Haydon in it; nor was any luncheon sent in.-ED. shirked out of their promise, and never offered him the slightest compensation. Haydon had trusted implicitly to their honor, and they soiled and disgraced it. The moment Lord Althorp heard of his troubles, he came forward with his great, broad, good heart, said he could not afford to do much, but he would buy all the chalk drawings of the sitters in Lord Grey's picture and make a gallery of them at Althorp, but Attwood and the Birmingham League he would have none of. This was a help, and Haydon bore Lord Althorp in grateful remembrance all his life. But the rest of the Whig party did nothing. The Tories say it is their practice to desert their friends. They had honored him by allowing him to paint their portraits, for which they had paid nothing, and that should be sufficient. Lord Grey, with his large family and many claims, could do no more than he did. Lord Palmerston contemplated a commission, but somehow he never got beyond the contemplation. And thus Haydon was left in the lurch, and to bear the loss incurred by the exhibition of the picture. Now, 248/. taken out of 5257. for nineteen months' work is a serious matter. Even if we add the 200 guineas Lord Althorp paid for the drawings, it yet leaves Haydon something under 15s. a day for his nineteen months' labor, and to find his own materials. Decidedly the Whigs were a worse paymaster than Sir Robert Peel. He at least gave Haydon a journeyman painter's wages. Edward Ellice, one of the leading men of the Whigs, had assured Haydon that the "Party" would not let him sink, and had sent Haydon 50l. himself. In his later extremity Haydon turns to his distinguished friend. What follows is given in his Journal with touching simplicity. On the close of the exhibition he writes to Edward Ellice, "The exhibition has failed, with a loss of 248/." Edward Ellice replies, "I can give you no advice." As claims and embarrassments and lawyers' threats close on him, Haydon writes again, reminding Mr. Ellice of his promise, and piteously adds, "Don't let me sink." He gets no answer. Again he writes, "I am sinking," and Edward Ellice, putting on his hat, goes out to take a stroll in the park, telling his son, "Write to Haydon, and say I have gone down to the House." When Vittoria Colonna received news that her husband, Francesco, was desperately wounded, in great distress, and a prisoner at Ravenna, she immediately addressed him in thirtyseven stanzas of terza rima, and remained, at ease, at home in her villa at Pietralba. I dare say my father was as much com forted as Francesco. PAINTS" CASSANDRA." At length, in July, 1834, when being cruelly pressed by attorneys on all sides, the Duke of Sutherland, out of sheer pity, gives him a 400-guinea commission for “Cassandra." "But for this commission," writes Haydon, somewhat unnecessarily, "I should have been crushed." On the 3d September, the Duke sends him, at his earnest request, 100l. "in advance." Here was the mischief. He was always taking drafts on the labor of time to come. Yet this 100l. was only in time to save him, for immediately after the arrival of the letter enclosing the Duke's cheque, an execution is put in by order of the Whig Treasury, for arrears of taxes. The Whig finance in those days seldom had a balance and could not afford to forbear. The Duke's advance is soon paid away-200/. follow in the same course, a vast proportion of it going to the attorneys for their law costs, and by the end of the year, when "Cassandra " is finished, Haydon has only a small balance to receive, and no further employment in view. LORD DURHAM. The year 1835 was to Haydon a year of terrible struggle, harass, irritation, threats of execution, and actual execution for "arrears of taxes." Full of what he calls "heart-breaking apprehensions seizing me at intervals of thought," he was never for one moment free from that supreme curse of having to make every sovereign he got do the work of ten, and was driven to every extremity in life to get that one. Why do they not employ me?" he says mournfully one day to Lord Durham, with whom he was very intimate. "Why?" says 66 66 Lord Durham, "I'll tell you why; they can't afford it. The greater part of the nobility of this country is insolvent." "But they marry and mend their fortunes," expostulated Haydon No," said Lord Durham, "not a bit of it, my dear friend; their marriages are on credit, like everything else about them." Lord Durham had no higher opinion of his noble friends than Lord Byron of his; but, unlike Byron with his poor companions, Lord Durham forgot to redeem their character, by employing Haydon himself. His curious amusement seems to have been to say disagreeable things to his amiable wife in Haydon's presence, and to look on at Haydon painting and starving, and watch how long his noble friends would leave him unaided and alone to struggle. With all his wealth, I cannot see that he ever did anything for Haydon except give him his portrait, and once send him thirty guineas for a chalk sketch of her favorite boy, which Haydon had made a present to Lady Durham. He vexed the painter sadly in so doing; but this was the man. He would not employ him, but he would accept no presents. PERSONALITY OF HAYDON. Haydon was now in his fiftieth year, (as I well remember him,) a handsome, fresh-colored, robust, little man, with a big bald head, small ears, aquiline features, a peculiarly short upper lip, and a keen, restless, azure-grey eye, the pupil of which contracted and expanded, rose and fell as he talked, just as if some inner light and fire was playing on his brain. He was a very active man; motion was his repose. In fact, he lived in a hurricane, and fattened on anxiety and care. He carried himself uprightly and stamped his little feet upon the ground, as if he revelled in the consciousness of existence, especially in an E.N.E. wind, meeting him, at his own corner, in the month of February.' He was always a poor man, pru 1 This love for fresh air he carried to an excess in his own house, and sometimes in those of other persons. It was quite his hobby, as well as his suspicion of a damp bed. Wherever he visited he always did two things: he opened all the windows, and, summer or winter, lighting his bed-room fire, he aired his sheets and mattress. The late Lord Egremont used to tell a story of him on his arrival at Petworth the first night. |