CHAPTER IV.

LOVE AND AMBITION.

Ir is perhaps to about this period of the painter's life that we must assign an event that affected his mind for ever. When he was at Margate, as we have before said, Turner had formed an acquaintance with the family of one of his schoolfellows. To his school comrade's sister he soon became attached: she has long been dead now, but beautiful or not, Turner was one of those who could have seen "Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt." He loved her, there can be no doubt, with an unchanging love the misery of his whole scathed life, and the constant dwelling on those sad words, "THE FALLACIES OF HOPE," are fully sufficient to prove that: and love must have transformed the dull houses of Margate, where he afterwards loved so much to visit, to golden palaces. The wind, as it rippled the sail of the boat he sat sketching in, must have lisped her name; the waves frothing against the cliffs must have roared incessantly to the lover's ears that one word.

Turner was not then the red-faced, blue-eyed, slovenly dressed old painter he afterwards became; he was the bright-eyed young genius, always old looking, as tradition says, but still winning, with some of the

divinity of youth radiant on his features. He did not grunt out his dry monosyllables then; the love of money had not yet corroded into him; he was not silent, suspicious, and mistrustful, though already reserved about his art and anxious about his profits.

He caught the old ailment we all have suffered from: sighed, wrote verses, blushed, doubted certainties, and was certain about love-tokens that to any sane person were more than doubtful. He wished himself dead; he trembled; his heart was now a lump of lead, and now it seemed to sing for joy. He grew hot, he grew cold, he turned pale, he turned red, he talked nonsense at twilight; he walked, swam, rode and drove, thinking but of her; seeing her name written on the sands, in the clouds, hearing the trees whisper it all through the Kentish land, and far above the hop-fields hearing the birds warble it.

One eventful hour in the summer dusk he dares to ask the question: he hears the whispered, bashful "yes," his soul soars up again to the seventh heaven, and there joy crowns it. Now he cares not if pictures fail or not; if work comes not, or comes; if rivals triumph, or if patrons grind. He is eternally happy.

"O golden time of youthful love."-(SCHILLER.)

But now a blunder creeps into the tradition: it goes on to say that "the courtship proceeded until, at the age of nineteen, or thereabout, Turner went abroad in order to study his art, and that, before leaving, vows of fidelity were exchanged between the two lovers."

Now Turner did not make his first tour till he

was twenty-seven, yet the story comes to me from one who heard it from relations of Miss

she told it.

to whom

Perhaps the date of the lovers' separation was not Turner's first continental tour, but his departure for his home tours in Wales or Yorkshire; in fact, the increase of his business and employment—that greatest foe to love.

In default of better dates, let us call it some tearful day in 1796 that the lovers part; not heeding the omens of evil that bode in the rainy clouds or rise from the moaning sea, they tear apart with one long kiss of unutterable love.

The young painter promises he will write frequently, and their marriage is soon to take place. He leaves her as a pledge-his portrait, painted by his own hand. I wish I could think that it was the one preserved now in the Vernon Gallery—the dark pale face.

Month after month, and no letters reached Miss Hope, at first chilled and sad, still guards the sacred chamber in the heart where love weeps over its idol. The forsaken girl begins to find home miserable. A step-mother rules there, and treats her as step-mothers do their adopted children.

Still no line from her lover-no token that she was remembered. If she heard of him, it was only at a distance, through some newspaper recording his excellent contributions to some exhibition. These only bring the tears to her eyes, and strike a fresh pang through her heart of disappointment and grief.

THE WICKED STEP-MOTHER.

73

Unhappy at home, and filled with a growing belief that Turner must have forgotten her, or transferred his love to some one else, the poor girl, with no one to confide in, anxious to escape from her step-mother, and feeling forsaken by one she really loved, began to listen to another lover, who in the mean time had been pressing his suit.

When two years had elapsed, unable to any longer resist the chance of escaping her step-mother's persecution, Miss, believing herself now free, yielded to her suitor's importunities, and gave him her hand. The day for the marriage was fixed-the dresses were prepared.

A week from the appointed day, Turner suddenly arrived from a distant tour. He immediately came to visit his accepted bride. He was frantic at hearing what had occurred. He had written constantly. (It was afterwards found that the cruel step-mother had intercepted his letters.) Notwithstanding he had received no replies, his faith in Miss had re

mained unshaken. He still loved her with all fervour and all truth. He urged her in the most passionate manner to break off the alliance she was about to form. But the lady, believing her honour in question, said mournfully it was too late; and that she felt she had no resource now but to take the step that was then imminent. Entreaties and adjurations were of no use; all a lover's arguments were in vain; and Turner left her in bitter grief, declaring that he would never marry; and that his life was henceforth hopeless and blighted.

The marriage took place soon after, and turned out

most unfortunately. There was Turner's curse upon it, a superstitious person might have said. Thus one bad woman spoiled two lives. Thus the happiness of two lovers was wrecked, and perished.

For both henceforth was left but a vague, regretful looking back. Behind them-as behind our first parents when they were driven from Eden-life lay like a blooming garden; before them was the howling wilderness. Henceforth, golden hope, the atmosphere that once lapped them round, became blackness of darkness for ever. Then first came that bitter pang that never ceased at times to wring both; till their hearts became transformed by age into mere dead bone, that could neither throb nor ache.

Incalculable harm this early and sore disappointment wrought upon Turner. He gradually now began to change-not into the misanthrope, for that he never was—but into the self-concentrated, reserved money-maker. It helped to sour that great, generous nature, and burn out of him hope and youth, with the terrible corrosive of disappointment. Yet art it only made him love the more, not merely for its own sake, but also for the money's sake. He had always been brought up to be saving and thrifty by the careful, scraping old barber, his father.

"How can you wonder?" Turner used to say sometimes to his old friends; "dad never praised me for anything but saving a halfpenny!"

Saving was in the Turner blood. The thriftiness once a virtue, had corrupted by degrees into something almost like a vice.