DILECTA

CHAPTER I

“6, MOIRA PLACE, SOUTHAMPTON,

“June 7th, 1884.

1. “MY father was staying at Lord Egremont’s; it was in September, I believe, of 1832. The sun had set beyond the trees at the end of the little lake in Petworth Park; at the other end of this lake was a solitary man, pacing to and fro, watching five or six lines or trimmers, that floated outside the water lilies near the bank. ‘There,’ said my father, ‘is Mr. Turner, the great sea* painter.’ He was smoking a cigar, and on the grass, near him, lay a fine pike. As we came up, another fish had just taken one of the baits, but, by some mischance, this line got foul of a stump or tree root in the water, and Turner was excited and very fussy in his efforts to clear it, knotting together bits of twine, with a large stone at the end, which he threw over the line several times with no effect. ‘He did not care,’ he said, ‘so much about losing the fish as his tackle.’ My father hacked off a long slender branch of a tree and tried to poke the line clear. This also failed, and Turner told him that nothing but a boat would enable him to get his line. Now it chanced that, the very day before, Chantrey, the sculptor, had been trolling for jack, rowed about by a man in a boat nearly all day; and my father, thinking it hard that Turner should lose his fish and a valuable line, started across the park to a keeper’s cottage, where the key of the boathouse was kept. When we returned, and while waiting for the boat, Turner became quite chatty, rigging me a little ship, cut out of a chip, sticking masts into it, and making her sails from a leaf or two torn from a small sketch-book, in which I recollect seeing a memorandum in colour that he had made of the sky and sunset. The ship was hardly ready for sea before the man and boat came lumbering up to the bank, and Turner was busy directing and helping him to recover the line, and, if possible, the fish. This, however, escaped in the confusion. When the line was got in, my father gave the man a couple of shillings for bringing the boat; while Turner, remarking that it was no use fishing any more after the water had been so much disturbed, reeled up his other lines, and, slipping a finger through the pike’s gills, walked off with us toward Petworth House. Walking behind, admiring the great fish, I noticed as

* I have put “sea” in italics, because it is a new idea to me that at this time Turner’s fame rested on his marine paintings-all the early drawings passing virtually without notice from the Art world.

571

[Version 0.04: March 2008]