Exacting Hope: Memoir of a Forgotten Child

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Richard's English mother, Connie, a showgirl who gave up her career to get married, is treated with no such reverence. Her "cold, rain-sodden" family, in contrast to the cultured and exotic Wollheims, is a void. Her own mother "knew nothing, she read nothing, and she displayed no interest in, nor did she have any understanding of, others". Connie is true to family type. At finishing school, aged 18, "she visited her last museum, and did her last reading". She is brilliantly but mordantly characterised by her bookish son.

Even the momentary opening of a door at the wrong moment would necessitate repeating the whole process again from the beginning. Wollheim never says that he hated his mother, but the dry, penetrating wit of this portrait, drawn largely in negatives, conveys an almost incredulous irritation.

The psychological interest of such obsessive-compulsive behaviour is barely explored. Not a single kind thing is said about her. But the account itself is unforgettable. Wollheim makes clear that "everything I have lived through either has been completely forgotten or is as yesterday". Passages of childhood offer themselves to his adult inspection in hallucinatory detail, and with a sense that if something is remembered it is for a reason.

Germs is evidently the work of someone encouraged by long experience of psychoanalysis to read his childhood with special care. His fear of inundation, by liquid, sound and smell, is traced to a complex of feelings about his body and its defects. Lavatorial functions are charged with magical significance. She married, and she and her husband had four daughters, four granddaughters and four grandsons.

Product details File Size: March 28, Publication Date: March 28, Sold by: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Showing of 3 reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Such an inspiring story! Jean is so brave to tell her own personal story that others in similar situations are too scared or ashamed to. She brings light to issues many people sadly turn a blind eye to.

Wonderful story of courage, strength, perseverance, and hope. She is such a role model to women and children in rough circumstances. Full of courage and strength. I loved reading it. Thanks for showing us how to have real "hope". See all 3 reviews. I paint a head, revel in colour, hit an expression, sit down fatigued, take up a poet or historian, write my own thoughts, muse on the thoughts of others, and hours, troubles, and the tortures of disappointed ambition pass and are forgotten.

Portraits, and one or two commissions for small pictures, kept Haydon afloat throughout this year, but a widespread commercial distress in the early part of affected his gains, and in February he records that for the last five weeks he has been suffering the tortures of the Inferno. He was persuaded, much against his will, to send his pictures to the Academy, and he was proportionately annoyed at the adverse criticism that greeted his attempts at portraiture.

This attack he regarded as the result of a deep-laid plot to injure him in a lucrative branch of his art. There is a pathetic touch in the account of this visit, on which so much depended. In order to pay his models Haydon was obliged to pawn one of his two lay-figures, since he could not bring himself to part with any more books.

The truth is I am fonder of books than of anything on earth. I consider myself a man of great powers, excited to an art which limits their exercise. In politics, law, or literature they would have had a full and glorious swing, and I should have secured a competence. The fact that Haydon was more at home among the literary men of his acquaintance than among his fellow-artists was a natural result of his intense love of books, and his keen interest in contemporary history.

And it is evident that his own character and work impressed his poetical friends, for we find that not only Wordsworth and Keats, but Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, Miss Mitford, and Miss Barrett addressed to him admiring verses. I grant that Wordsworth is very pure, very holy, very orthodox, and occasionally very elevated, highly poetical, and oftener insufferably obscure, starched, dowdy, anti-human, and anti-sympathetic, but he never will be ranked above Byron, nor classed with Milton. I dislike his selfish Quakerism, his affectation of superior virtue, his utter insensibility to the frailties, the beautiful frailties of passion.

Ought not this exquisite group to have softened his heart as much as his old, grey-mossed rocks, his withered thorn, and his dribbling mountain streams? I am altered very much about Wordsworth from finding him too hard, too elevated, to attend to the voice of humanity. No, give me Byron with all his spite, hatred, depravity, dandyism, vanity, frankness, passion, and idleness, rather than Wordsworth with all his heartless communion with woods and grass.

It speaks more of what he thinks of my talents than anything that ever happened to me. What a destiny is mine! Among them came Charles Lamb, who afterwards set down some impressions and suggestions in the following characteristic fashion: I think the face and bearing of the Bucephalus-tamer very noble, his flesh too effeminate or painty. Once more he appealed to Parliament by a petition presented by Brougham, and to the public through letters to the newspapers.

Parliament and the larger public turned a deaf ear, but private friends rallied to his support. Scott, himself a ruined man, sent a cheque and a charming letter of sympathy, while Lockhart suggested that a subscription should be raised to buy one or more pictures. The result of these efforts was the release of the prisoner at the end of July. During this last term of imprisonment Haydon witnessed the masquerade, or mock election by his fellow-prisoners, and instantly decided that he would paint the scene, which offered unique opportunities for both humour and pathos.

This picture, Hogarthian in type, was finished and exhibited before the close of the year. The exhibition was moderately successful, but the picture did not sell, and Haydon was once more sinking into despair, when the king expressed a desire to have the work sent down to Windsor for his inspection. Hopes were raised high once more, and this time were not disappointed. The Eucles occupied the artist during the remainder of , and early in he began a new Hogarthian subject, a Punch and Judy show. He was still painting portraits when he could get sitters, and on April 15, he notes: I have an exquisite gratification in painting portraits wretchedly.

I am rascal enough to take their money, and chuckle more. Darling, who had helped him out of more than one difficulty. He presented yet another of his innumerable petitions to Parliament in favour of Government encouragement of historical painting, through Mr. Agar Ellis, but as the ministry showed no desire to encourage this particular historical painter, he passed through the Bankruptcy Court, and returned to his family on the 20th of July. During his period of detention, George IV.

He admired her sports, gloried in her prejudices, had confidence in her bottom and spirit, and to him alone is the destruction of Napoleon owing. I have lost in him my sincere admirer; and had not his wishes been continually thwarted, he would have given me ample and adequate employment.

Although Haydon had regained his freedom, his chance of maintaining himself and his rapidly increasing family by his art seemed as far away as ever. Two of my children are ill, and Mary is nursing. All night she was attending to the sick and hushing the suckling, with a consciousness that our last shilling was going.

I got up in the morning bewildered--Xenophon hardly touched--no money--butcher impudent--all tradesmen insulting. Sold enough for maintenance for the week. Several people looked hard at me with my roll of prints, but I feel more ashamed in borrowing money than in honestly selling my labours. It is a pity the nobility drive me to this by their neglect.

In December came another stroke of good-luck. Peel asked how much Haydon charged for a whole length figure, and was told a hundred pounds, which was the price of an ordinary portrait. Taking this to be the charge for the Napoleon, he paid no more. Peel afterwards sent him an extra thirty pounds, but the subject remained a grievance to Haydon for the rest of his life, and Peel, who had intended to do the artist a good turn, was so annoyed by his complaints, that he never gave him another commission.

Haydon, composed on seeing his picture of Napoleon in the island of St. The close of this year was a melancholy period to poor Haydon. He lost his little daughter, Fanny, and his third son, Alfred, was gradually fading away. Out of eight children born to this most affectionate of fathers, no fewer than five died in infancy from suffusion of the brain, due, it was supposed, to the terrible mental distresses of their mother.

My father, who was passionately attached to both wife and children, suffered the tortures of the damned at the sight before him. His sorrow over the deaths of his 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! The earliest and most painful death was to be preferred to our life at that time. By dint of borrowing in every possible quarter, generally at forty per cent.

Haydon, though a high Tory by birth and inclination, was an ardent champion of the Bill, as he had been for that of Catholic Emancipation. His brush was once more exchanged for the pen, and he not only poured out his thoughts upon Reform in his Journal, but wrote several letters on the subject to the Times , which he considered the most wonderful compositions of the kind that had ever been penned. After the passing of the Bill he congratulates himself upon having contributed to the grand result, and adds: I thanked God I lived in such a time, and that he gifted me with talent to serve the great cause.

On reading the account of the monster meeting of the Trades Unions at Newhall Hill, Birmingham, it occurred to Haydon that the moment when the vast concourse joined in the sudden prayer offered up by Hugh Hutton, would make a fine subject for a picture. Accordingly, he wrote to Hutton, and laid the suggestion before him. The Birmingham leaders were attracted by the idea, and the picture was begun, but support of a material kind was not forthcoming, and the scheme had to be abandoned.

Lord Grey then suggested that Haydon should paint a picture of the great Reform Banquet, which was to be held in the Guildhall on July The proposal was exactly to the taste of the public-spirited artist, who saw fame and fortune beckoning to him once more, and fancied that his future was assured. Then followed a period of triumphant happiness.

The leading men of the Liberal party sat for their heads, and Haydon had the longed-for opportunity of pressing upon them his views about the public encouragement of art by means of grants for the decoration of national buildings. Although it does not appear that he made a single convert, he was quite contented for the time being with the ready access to ministers and noblemen that the occasion afforded him, and his Journal is filled with expressions of his satisfaction.

The sittings for the Reform picture continued through , and the early part of Haydon was kept in full employment, but domestic sorrows marred his satisfaction in his interesting work. In less than twelve months, he lost two sons, Alfred and Harry, the latter a child of extraordinary promise. I saw him buried to-day, after passing four days sketching his dear head in his coffin--his beautiful head.

With a brow like an ancient god! In April , the Reform picture was exhibited, but the public was not interested, and Haydon lost a considerable sum over the exhibition. The price of the commission had long since gone to quiet the clamours of his creditors. On May 12 he writes: Last year, all was hope, exultation, and promise with me.

My door was beset, my house besieged, my room inundated. It was an absolute fight to get in to see me paint. Well, out came the work--the public felt no curiosity--it failed, and my door is deserted, no horses, no carriages. Now for executions, insults, misery, and wretchedness. The state of degradation, humiliation, and pain of mind in which I sat in that dingy back-room is not to be described.

Studies, prints, clothes, and lay-figures were pawned to pay for the expenses of the work, and on October comes the entry: When the broker came for his money, he burst out laughing. There was the fellow, an old soldier, pointing in the attitude of Cassandra--up right and steady as if on guard.

On October 16, , the Houses of Parliament were burned down. Mary and I went in a cab, and drove over the bridge. From the bridge it was sublime. We alighted, and went into a public-house, which was full. The feeling among the people was extraordinary--jokes and radicalism universal. The comfort is that there is now a better prospect of painting the House of Lords. Lord Grey said there was no intention of taking the tapestry down; little did he think how soon it would go. For many years, as we have seen, he had been advocating, in season and out of season, the desirability of decorating national buildings with heroic paintings by native artists, and, with the need for new Houses of Parliament, it seemed as if at last his cause might triumph.

Once more he attacked the good-humoured but unimpressionable Lord Melbourne, and presented another petition to Parliament through Lord Morpeth. In the summer of this year Mr. Ewart obtained his Select Committee to inquire into the best means of extending a knowledge of the arts and the principles of design among the people; and further, to inquire into the constitution of the Royal Academy, and the effects produced thereby.

But meanwhile ruin was again staring him in the face. On September 26 he writes: For this year I have principally supported myself by the help of my landlord, and by pawning everything of value I have left. Lay awake in misery. Threatened on all sides. Doubtful whether to apply to the Insolvent Court to protect me, or let ruin come. Improved the picture, and not having a shilling, sent out a pair of my spectacles, and got five shillings for the day.

Shall call my creditors together.

Hope Of A Child

In God I trust. The meeting of the creditors took place, and Haydon persuaded them to grant him an extension of time until June, Thus relieved from immediate anxiety he set to work on his picture with renewed zest. The most remarkable trait about him, observes his son Frederick, was his sanguine buoyancy of spirits. He was the most persevering, indomitable man I ever met. With us at home he was always confident of doing better next year.

But that next year never came. Blest as he was with that peculiar faculty of genius for overcoming difficulties, he might have found life tame without them. I remember his saying once, he was not sure he did not relish ruin as a source of increased activity of mind. A less elastic temperament and a less vigorous constitution would have broken down in one year of such a fight. Haydon kept it up for ten.

The first half of went by in the usual struggle, and in September Haydon was thrown into prison for the fourth time. On November 17 he passed through the Insolvency Court, and on the following Sunday he records: I relished the oil; could have tasted the colour; rubbed my cheeks with the brushes, and kissed the palette. Ah, could I be let loose in the House of Lords!

He lectured in Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham, as well as in London, and did good service by agitating for the establishment of local schools of design, and by arousing in the minds of the wealthy middle classes some faint appreciation of the claims of art. Through the influence of Mr. So elated was he at this unexpected piece of good fortune that, with characteristic sanguineness, he seems to have thought that all his troubles were at an end for ever.

Even his pious dependence on heavenly support diminished with his freedom from care, and he notes in a Sunday entry: My piety is never so intense as when in a prison, and my gratitude never so much alive as when I have just escaped from one. The year passed in comparative peace and comfort. The picture for the asylum was finished about the end of August, when Haydon congratulated his Maker on the fact that he Haydon had paid his rent and taxes, laid in his coals for the winter, and enjoyed health, happiness, and freedom from debt--fresh debt, be it understood--ever since this commission. Going down to Liverpool to hang his work, it was proposed to him by Mr.

Lowndes that he should paint a picture of the Duke of Wellington on the field of Waterloo, twenty years after the battle. Inspired by history, I fear not making it the grandest thing. The Liverpool committee wrote to the Duke, to ask if he would consent to give sittings to Haydon, and received a promise that he would sit for his head as soon as time could be found. Meanwhile, Haydon set to work upon the horse, which was copied from portraits of Copenhagen. In this prime of dandyism, he took up a nasty, oily, dirty hog-tool, and immortalised Copenhagen by touching the sky. A few weeks later he was overjoyed at receiving an invitation to spend a few days at Walmer, when the Duke promised to give the desired sittings.

His Journal contains a long and minute account of his visit, from which one or two anecdotes may be quoted. The first evening the conversation turned, among other topics, upon the Peninsular War. He said every Englishman who has a house goes to bed at night. He found bivouacking was not suitable to the character of the English soldier.

He got drunk, and lay down under any hedge, and discipline was destroyed. But when he introduced tents, every soldier belonged to his tent, and, drunk or sober, he got to it before he went to sleep. It is their habit. They have no homes. The next morning, after his return from hunting, the Duke gave a first sitting of an hour and a half.

I found that to imagine he could not go through any duty raised the lion. I saw nothing of that peculiar expression of mouth the sculptors give him, bordering on simpering. His colour was beautiful and fleshy, his lips compressed and energetic. It is probable that the Duke was afraid of being attacked by Haydon on the burning question of a State grant for the encouragement of historical painting, a subject about which he had received and answered many lengthy letters, for on each evening, when there was no party, he steadily read a newspaper, the Standard on Saturday, and the Spectator on Sunday, while his guest watched him in silent admiration.

On the Monday morning, the hero came in for another sitting, looking extremely worn, his skin drawn tight over his face, his eyes watery and aged, his head slightly nodding. He looked like an aged eagle beginning to totter from its perch.

Mystery/Suspense

I prefer the Duke infinitely. He is more manly, has no vanity, is not deluded by any flattery or humbug, and is in every way a grander character, though Lord Grey is a fine, amiable, venerable, vain man. During the remainder of the year, Haydon worked steadily, and finished his picture. On December 2 he notes: The whole world was against me. I had not a farthing. Yet I remember the delight with which I mounted my deal table and dashed it in, singing and trusting in God, as I always do. When one is once imbued with that clear heavenly confidence, there is nothing like it.

It has carried me through everything. I think my dearest Mary has not got it; I do not think women have in general. Two years ago I had not a farthing, having spent it all to recover her health. During the first part of , Haydon seems to have been chiefly engaged in lecturing, the only picture on the stocks being a small replica of his Napoleon Musing for the poet Rogers.

In February he was enabled to carry out one of the dreams of his life, namely, the delivery of a series of lectures upon art in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, under the patronage of the Vice-Chancellor.

See a Problem?

I then walked into town, and when I returned she was at home, and hurt that I did not wait, so this begat mutual allusions which were anything but loving or happy. So much for anticipations of human happiness! On June 12,, Haydon notes: Last Wednesday a deputation called on me from the Committee, saying they wished for a sketch of the scene.

The meeting was very affecting. Poor old Clarkson was present, with delegates from America, and other parts of the world. Haydon took a malicious pleasure in suggesting to his sitters that he should place them beside the negro delegate; this being his test of their sincerity. Thus he notes on June He sophisticated immediately on the propriety of placing the negro in the distance, as it would have much greater effect.

Lloyd Garrison comes to-day. Garrison met me directly. George Thompson said he saw no objection. But that was not enough. A man who wishes to place a negro on a level with himself must no longer regard him as having been a slave, and feel annoyed at sitting by his side. In the Fine Arts Committee appointed to consider the question of the decoration of the new Houses of Parliament, sat to examine witnesses, but Haydon was not summoned before them, a slight which he deeply felt.

With an anxious heart he set about making experiments in fresco, and was astonished at what he regarded as his success in this new line of endeavour. During the past year, the Anti-Slavery Convention picture, and one or two small commissions, had kept his head above water, but now the clouds were beginning to gather again, his difficulties being greatly increased by the fact that he had two sons to start in the world. The eldest, Frank, had been apprenticed, at his own wish, to an engineering firm, but tiring of his chosen profession, he desired to take orders, and, as a university career was considered a necessary preliminary to this course, he was entered at Caius College, Cambridge.

In the spring of the Fine Arts Commission issued a notice of the conditions for the cartoon competition, intended to test the capacity of native artists for the decoration of the House of Lords. The joy with which Haydon welcomed this first step towards the object which he had been advocating throughout the whole of his working life, was marred by the painful misgiving that he would not be allowed to share the fruits of victory. When he had first begun his crusade, he had felt himself without a rival in his own branch of art, not one of his contemporaries being able to compete with him in a knowledge of anatomy, in strength of imagination, or in the power of working on a grand scale.

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But now he was fifty-six years old, there were younger men coming on who had been trained in the principles of his own school, and he was painfully aware that he had made many enemies in high places. Still, in spite of all forebodings, he continued his researches in fresco-painting, and wrote vehement letters to the papers, protesting against the threatened employment of Cornelius and other German artists.

That the wolf was once again howling at the door is evidenced by the entry for February 6. I knew if my debt to the tutor of Caius was not paid, the mind of my son Frank would be destroyed, from his sensitiveness to honour and right. As he is now beating third-year men, I dreaded any check. In the absence of any lucrative employment he was only able to carry on his work by pawning his lay-figure, and borrowing off his butterman. Small wonder that he exclaims: Thank God with all my soul and all my nature, my children have witnessed the harrowing agonies under which I have ever painted, and the very name of painting, the very thought of a picture, gives them a hideous taste in their mouths.

Thank God, not one of my boys, nor my girl, can draw a straight line, even with a ruler, much less without one. In the course of this year Haydon began a correspondence with Miss Barrett, afterwards Mrs. Browning, with whom he was never personally acquainted, though he knew her through her poems, and through the allusions to her in the letters of their common friend, Miss Mitford.

The paper friendship flourished for a time, and Haydon, who was a keen judge of character, recognised that here was a little Donna Quixote whose chivalry could be depended on in time of trouble. More than once, when threatened with arrest, he sent her paintings and manuscripts, of which she took charge with sublime indifference to the fact that by so doing she might be placing herself within reach of the arm of the law.

In all his struggles up to this point, Haydon had the consolation of hope that better times were coming. But now the good time for art was at hand, and he was passed over. The blow fell heavily--indeed, I may say, was mortal. He tried to cheat himself into the belief that the old hostile influences to which he attributed all his misfortunes, had been working here also, and that he should yet rise superior to their malice. He would not admit to himself that his powers were impaired--that he was less fit for great achievements in his art than he had been when he painted Solomon and Lazarus.

But if he held this opinion, he held it alone. It was apparent to all, even to his warmest friends, that years of harass, humiliation, distraction, and conflict had enfeebled his energies, and led him to seek in exaggeration the effect he could no longer attain by well-measured force. His restless desire to have a hand in all that was projected for art, had wearied those in authority. He had shown himself too intractable to follow, and he had not inspired that confidence which might have given him a right to lead.

In a letter to his old pupil, Eastlake, who was secretary to the Fine Arts Commission, he says: On June 27 he heard from Eastlake that his cartoons were not among those chosen for reward. Half stunned by the blow, anticipated though it had been, he makes but few comments on the news in his Journal, and those are written in a composed and reasonable tone.

It is exactly what I expected, and is, I think, intentional. I am wounded, and being ill from confinement, it shook me. July 1st A day of great misery. I burnt loads of private letters, and prepared for executions. The three money prizes were awarded to Armitage, Cope, and Watts, but it was announced that another competition, in fresco, would be held the following year, when the successful competitors would be intrusted with the decoration of the House of Lords. Haydon did not enter for this competition, but, as will presently appear, he refused to allow that he was beaten.

On September 4 he removed his cartoons from Westminster Hall, with the comment: These Journals witness under what trials I began them--how I called on my Creator for His blessing--how I trusted in Him, and how I have been degraded, insulted, and harassed. By the beginning of his spirits had outwardly revived, thanks to the anodyne of incessant labour, and he writes almost in the old buoyant vein: How exquisite is a bare canvas, sized alone, to work on; how the slightest colour, thin as water, tells; how it glitters in body; how the brush flies--now here--now there; it seems as if face, hands, sky, thought, poetry, and expression were hid in the handle, and streamed out as it touched the canvas.

I bow, and am grateful. I knelt up in my bed, and prayed heartily to accomplish them, whatever might be the obstruction. I will begin them as my next great works; I feel as if they will be my last, and I think I shall then have done my duty.

In July the frescoes sent in for competition were exhibited in Westminster Hall, and in the result six artists were commissioned to decorate the House of Lords, Maclise, Redgrave, Dyce, Cope, Horsley, and Thomas. I gave lectures at Liverpool, sometimes twice a day, and lectured at the Royal Institution. I have not been idle, but how much more I might have done! What honour, what distinction would I not confer on my great country! However, it is my destiny to perform great things, not in consequence of encouragement, but in spite of opposition, and so let it be.

The following entry alone is sufficient proof that Haydon, even in his worst straits, was almost as much an object of envy as of compassion: If that be not happiness, what is? If, on the other hand, the exhibition failed, he must have realised that he would be irretrievably ruined, with all his hopes for the future slain. Everything was to be sacrificed to this last grand effort. My fate hangs on doing as I ought, and seizing moments with energy. I shall never again have the opportunity of connecting myself with a great public commission by opposition, and interesting the public by the contrast.

If I miss it, it will be a tide not taken at the flood. By dint of begging and borrowing, the money was scraped together for the opening expenses of the exhibition, and Haydon composed a sensational descriptive advertisement in the hope of attracting the public. The private view was on April 4, when it rained all day, and only four old friends attended. On April 6, Easter Monday, the public was admitted, but only twenty-one availed themselves of the privilege. For a few days Haydon went on hoping against hope that matters would improve, and that John Bull, in whose support he had trusted, would rally round him at last.

But Tom Thumb was exhibiting next door, and the historical painter had no chance against the pigmy. Their eyes are open, but their sense is shut. It is an insanity, a rabies, a madness, a furor, a dream. Tom Thumb had 12, people last week, B. Exquisite taste of the English people! No man can accuse me of showing less energy, less spirit, less genius than I did twenty-six years ago. I have not decayed, but the people have been corrupted. I am the same, they are not; and I have suffered in consequence.

He sends up passionate and despairing petitions that God will help him in his dreadful necessities, will raise him friends from sources invisible, and enable him to finish his last and greatest works. Day by day went by, and still no commissions came in, no offers for any of the large pictures he had on hand. Haydon began to lose confidence in his ability to finish his series, and with him loss of self-confidence was a fatal sign. The June weather was hot, he was out of health, and unable to sleep at night, but he declined to send for a doctor.

His brain grew confused, and at last even the power to work, that power which for him had spelt pride and happiness throughout his whole life, seemed to be leaving him. On June 16 he writes: I will finish my six under the blessing of God, reduce my expenses, and hope His mercy will not desert me, but bring me through in health and vigour, gratitude and grandeur of soul, to the end. The last two or three entries in the Journal are melancholy reading. My landlord, Newton, called. After breakfast, he asked his wife to go and spend the day with an old friend, and having affectionately embraced her, shut himself in his painting-room.

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