Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

And ’scape alike the law’s and Muse’s wrath?
Nor blaze with guilty stare through future time,
Eternal beacons of consummate crime?
Arouse thee, Gifford! be thy promise claim’d,
Make bad men better, or, at least, ashamed.

One curious peculiarity Gifford had. He made his old housekeeper sit in his study doing her needlework whilst he was engaged on his literary labours. To the end he maintained a warm friendship with Dr. Ireland, Dean of Westminster, son of a butcher of Ashburton, and a schoolfellow in former days, and when he died he bequeathed to him his library.

“The last month of Gifford’s life was but a slow dying”, says Mr. Smiles. “He was sleepless, feverish, oppressed by an extreme difficulty of breathing, which often deprived him of speech; and his sight had failed. Towards the end of his life he would sometimes take up a pen, and after a vain attempt to write, would throw it down, saying, ‘No, my work is done.’ Even thinking caused him pain. As his last hour drew near, his mind began to wander. ‘These books have driven me mad,’ he once said; ‘I must read my prayers.’ He passed gradually away, his pulse ceasing to beat five hours before his death. And then he slept out of life on the 31st December, 1826, in his 71st year.”

He left £25,000 of personal property. He left the bulk of it to the Rev. John Cookesley, son of his early patron, whom he also instituted residuary legatee. He also left a sum of money the interest of which was to be distributed annually among the poor of Ashburton.

Finally, one touching trait in the character of Gifford was his exceeding love for children. Looking back at his own desolate, loveless childhood, full of hardship, his heart expanded towards all little ones, and he delighted in attending juvenile parties, and rejoiced at seeing the children frisking about in the happiness of youth. His domestic favourites were his dog and his cat, both of which he dearly loved. He was also most kind and considerate to his domestic servants; and all who knew him well knew that his bark was worse than his bite; he made no answer, did not retaliate when attacked vindictively, insultingly by Hazlitt, and when William Cobbett called him “the dottrel-headed old shuffle-breeches of the Quarterly Review” he cast back no vituperative term in reply.

Gifford was a staunch friend. He left his house in James Street, Buckingham Gate, to the widow of his old friend Hoppner, the portrait painter.

Sir Walter Scott wrote on 17 January, 1827: “I observe in the papers my old friend Gifford’s death. He was a man of rare attainments and many excellent qualities. His Juvenal is one of the best versions ever made of a classic author, and his satire of the Baviad and Mæviad squabashed at one blow a set of coxcombs who might have humbugged the world long enough. As a commentator he was capital, could he but have suppressed his rancours against those who had preceded him in the task; but a misconstruction or misinterpretation, nay, the misplacing of a comma, was in Gifford’s eyes a crime worthy of the most severe animadversion. The same fault of extreme severity went through his critical labours, and in general he flagellated with so little pity, that people lost their sense of the criminal’s guilt, in dislike of the savage pleasure which the executioner seemed to take in inflicting the punishment. This lack of temper probably arose from indifferent health, for he was very valetudinary, and realized two verses, wherein he says Fortune assigned him: —

One eye not over good,
Two sides that to their cost have stood
A ten years’ hectic cough,
Aches, stitches, all the various ills
That swell the devilish doctor’s bills,
And sweep poor mortals off.

But he might also justly claim as his gift the moral qualities expressed in the next fine stanza: —

A soul
That spurns the crowd’s malign control,
A firm contempt of wrong;
Spirits above affliction’s power,
And skill to soothe the lingering hour
With no inglorious song.

“He was a little man, dumped up together, and so ill made as to seem almost deformed, but with a singular expression of talent in his countenance.”

Gifford was buried in Westminster Abbey, and his schoolfellow and lifelong friend, Dean Ireland, was afterwards buried in the same grave.

The authorities for his life are his own biographical account of his early life, and Smiles’s Memoir and Correspondence of John Murray, the Publisher. London, 1891.

Also a “Life,” by Mr. J. S. Amery, in the now extinct Ashburtonian, 1891.

Also a brief account by the Rev. Treasurer Hawker in “Two Ashburton Scholars,” in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 1876.

BENJAMIN R. HAYDON

The only painting by which this artist is generally known is that of Napoleon standing on a cliff at S. Helena, gazing on the departing glories of the day as the sun sets in the ocean. There is feeling and pathos in the picture, as there is in Watts’s “Young Man with Great Possessions,” although in both only the back is seen of the personage depicted. Haydon did his “Napoleon Musing” over a good many times. He sold a copy to the King of Hanover.

On 7 March, 1844, he entered in his diary: “I have painted nineteen Napoleons. Thirteen Musings at S. Helena, and six other Musings. By heavens! how many more?”

And of all his pictures Haydon thought least of this. But he was a man mistaken in his estimate of his own powers and of what he could do. He wanted to be an heroic painter, but projected his own personality upon his canvas, and as he was a man with disproportionately short legs, his “Moses,” his “Alexander,” and other heroes must be short nether-limbed as well.

The Haydons of Cadhay, in Ottery S. Mary parish, were an ancient family. They built the south porch of the collegiate church in 1571, and set up on it the inscription “He that no il will Do no thynt yt lang yto,” or in plainer English, “He that no ill will do, let him do nothing that belongs thereto”; a motto that it had been well for Benjamin had he retained it and acted on it to the end.

The authentic pedigree of the Haydons goes back to the reign of Henry III. They were, originally, of Ebford, in Woodbury parish, and did not acquire Cadhay till the beginning of the seventeenth century; but in the eighteenth century they got into difficulties through expensive lawsuits, and lost both Cadhay and Ebford, and disappeared as water that sinks into the sand. The last of whom we know anything was Gideon Haydon, of Cadhay, who died in 1707, and left two sons, Gideon and John.

Benjamin Robert Haydon in his Autobiography says: “My father was the lineal descendant of one of the oldest families in Devon, the Haydons of Cadhay. The family was ruined by a chancery suit, and the children were bound out to various trades. Among them was my grandfather, who was bound out to Mr. Savery, of Slade, near Plymouth. He conducted himself well, and gained the esteem of his master, who in time made him his steward. In a few years he saved money, and on the death of Mr. Savery set up a bookseller’s shop in Plymouth, where he died in 1773 from disease of the heart. My grandfather married Mary Baskerville, a descendant of the great printer. At my grandfather’s death my father succeeded to the business, and married a Miss Cobley, daughter of a clergyman, who had the living of Ide, near Exeter. He was killed early in life by the fall of a sounding-board on his head while preaching.”

Unfortunately B. R. Haydon does not give the Christian names of his father and grandfather, so that we are not able to say where they hitch on to the submerged Haydons of Cadhay.

B. R. Haydon left at his death not only an Autobiography extending to the year 1820, but also a Journal in twenty-six folio volumes. The former has been published entire, but the Journal has been compressed, and the whole edited in three volumes by Mr. Tom Taylor (London, 1853). It is not my intention in a short article to go through the entire Life and further to compress it, but rather to pick out a few salient points, and to draw from other sources more impartial estimates of Haydon than he formed of himself and of his work.

As the opening of his Autobiography contains some lively sketches of old Plymouth, I shall extract these.

“My father sent me to the grammar school under the Rev. Dr. Bidlake, a man of some taste. He painted and played on the organ, patronized talent, was fond of country excursions, wrote poems which nobody ever read.

“Finding that I had a taste for art, he always took me, with another boy, from our studies to attend his caprices in painting. Here his odd and peculiar figure, for his back was bent from fever, induced us to play him tricks. As he was obliged to turn round and walk away to study the effect of his touches, we used to rub out what he had done before he returned, when his perplexity and simplicity were delightful to mischievous boys. Once he sent my companion to cut off the skirt of an old coat to clean his palette with, and the boy cut off the skirt of his best Sunday coat. Poor dear Dr. Bidlake went to Stonehouse Chapel in his great-coat the next Sunday, and when he took it off to put on the surplice the clerk exclaimed in horror, ‘Good God, Sir! somebody has cut off the skirt of your coat!’”

“My father used to show my drawings to his customers. One of them was a very great man in the town – merchant and, I believe, consul. John H. [Hawker] was a very worthy but pompous man, exceedingly vain, very fond of talking French before people who could not speak a word of it, and quoting Italian sayings of which he knew little; liked everything but steady attention to his business, was a good father, good husband, and to play soldier for a week at any time would have laid his head upon the block. During the dread of invasion volunteer corps became the rage. The very infants in the nursery played soldiers too. Mr. John [Hawker] either raised or joined a corps of volunteers, and warier men made him colonel, that the expense might not fall on their heads. Colonel he was, and devoted himself to the occupation with so much sincerity that his men in discipline and order would certainly not have disgraced a marching militia regiment. After review days, nothing gave the Colonel so much delight as marching right through the town from the Hoe, to the horror and consternation of the apple-women. The moment the drums and trumpets were heard sounding at the bottom of Market Street, the scramble to get out of the way among the poor old women is not to be imagined. Market Street in Plymouth is a sort of hill, and how often as a boy have I left my drawing, dashed down and out to the top of the hill to see the Colonel in all his glory.

“First came in view his feather and cap, then his large, red, pride-swollen, big-featured face, with a smile on it in which grim war, dignity, benevolent condescension, stolidity, and self-satisfaction were mixed in equal proportions; then came his charger, curvetting with graceful fire, now hind-quarters this side, now fore-quarters that side, with the Colonel – sword drawn and glittering in the sun – recognizing the wives and children of the ironmongers, drapers, and grocers who crowded the windows to see him pass. Then came the band, big drum and trumpets; then the grenadier company with regular tramp; then the Colonel’s eldest son, John, out of the counting-house, who was captain; then his lieutenant, an attorney’s clerk; then the Colonel and band turned to the right down Broad Street – the music became fainter and fainter, the rear lagged after. The Colonel drew up his regiment before his own parlour windows, and solaced by white handkerchiefs and fair lips, dismissed his men, and retired to the privacy of domestic life until a new field day recalled him to the glory of the Hoe and the perils of apple-stalls and slippery streets.”

B. R.’s father had been a fast and dissipated man, but before he utterly sank past recovery, he pulled himself together and became a man of business, always somewhat shifty, and disposed to enjoy himself rather than stick to work. On one occasion the bookseller was asked angrily by a important customer why he had not fulfilled his oft-repeated promise to procure some young walnuts to which he had access, and his reply was that there had been such a demand for gun-stocks from the war then raging in the Peninsula that there were no trees left.

A somewhat congenial spirit came to Plymouth and settled into his house. This was a Mr. Cobley, brother of Mrs. Haydon, a man fond of society and of his bottle, accomplished, and so habitually indolent that when he came to see his sister on a six weeks’ visit he never had the energy to remove, got embedded in the family, stayed thirty years, and quitted it and life together.

B. R. does not appear to have had much love for his father, but he always speaks of his mother with the tenderest affection, and her opposition to her only boy’s choice of the profession of a painter cost him a severe struggle before he could disregard her entreaties to abide by his father’s trade.

Haydon was little more than a boy in years when he left home in May, 1804, and plunged into the uncertain depths of London life. He had an introduction to Northcote, a Devonshire man like himself, but jealous, spiteful, and unwilling to help a struggling beginner. And he was fortunate in attracting the notice of Fuseli, Keeper of the Royal Academy, who liked him, and helped him to master the rudiments of his profession.

Haydon admired the effects of London smoke.

“By Gode,” said Fuseli to him one day, “it’s like the smoke of the Israelites making bricks.” “It is grand,” retorted B. R., “for it is the smoke of a people who would have made the Egyptians make bricks for them.”

He became friendly with Wilkie, then a raw, red-headed Scotch lad, who had made a hit, and taken the town by storm with his “Village Politicians.”

David Wilkie was canny about money. One day he was showing his fellow pupils some drawing-paper he was using. “Why, Wilkie!” exclaimed Haydon, “where did you get this? Bring us a quire to-morrow.” He promised that he would. The next day, and the day after, no drawing-paper. When remonstrated with, David quietly excused himself, “Weel, weel, jest give me the money first, and ye’ll be sure to hae the paper.”

When thus starting as a painter, a hint was given to Haydon, by this success of Wilkie, what was the line that he should pursue, what was the style of picture that would appeal to the public. But he was too obstinate to take the hint. His idea was the High Art, heroic subjects from mythology or classic history, or from the Old Testament, on huge canvases – themes that interested few, and of a size that few could buy.

“Your paintings are too big,” said a duchess to him one day; “we have not houses that can contain them.”

“It is not that,” replied Haydon; “it is that your hearts are too contracted to appreciate them.”

In 1807 Haydon was summoned to Plymouth by the failure of his mother’s health.

“Incessant anxiety and trouble, and her only son’s bursting away from her at a time when she had hoped for his consolations in her old age, gradually generated that dreadful disease angina pectoris. Her doom was sealed, and death held her as his own, whenever it should please him to claim her. Her fine heroic face began to wither and grow pale; loss of exercise brought on weakness and derangement. She imagined that the advice of an eminent surgeon in London might save her, and though I and everybody else knew that nothing could be done, we acceded to her wish immediately.

“I painted her portrait, and as she sat I saw a tear now and then fill her eye and slowly trickle down her cheek, and then she would look almost indignant at her own weakness. My dear mother felt her approaching end so clearly that she made every arrangement with reference to her death. I went to Exeter to get her apartments ready at the hotel the day before she left home. She had passed a great part of her life with a brother (the prebend of Wells), who took care of a Mr. Cross, a dumb miniature painter. Cross (who in early life had made a fortune by his miniatures) loved my mother, and proposed to her, but she, being at that time engaged to my father, refused him, and they had never seen each other since. He retired from society, deeply affected by his disappointment. The day after leaving Exeter we stopped at Wells, as my mother wished to see my uncle once more.