HAPPY ENGLAND

AGENTS IN AMERICA
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
66 Fifth Avenue, New York

Beautiful Britain

HAPPY ENGLAND

BY HELEN ALLINGHAM, R.W.S.
TEXT BY MARCUS B. HUISH

ROYAL CANADIAN EDITION
LIMITED TO 1000 SETS



CAMBRIDGE CORPORATION, LIMITED
MONTREAL

A. & C. BLACK, LONDON

Contents

List of Illustrations

The illustrations in this volume have been engraved and printed by the Hentschel Colourtype Company.

Happy England

CHAPTER I
OUR TITLE

To choose a title that will felicitously fit the lifework of an artist is no easy matter, especially when the product is a very varied one, and the producer is disposed to take a modest estimate of its value.

In the present case the titles that have suggested themselves to one or other of those concerned in the selection have not been few, and a friendly contest has ensued over the desire of the artist on the one hand to belittle, and of author and publishers on the other to fairly appraise, both the ground which her work covers and the qualities which it contains.

The first point to be considered in giving the volume a name was that it forms one of a series in which an endeavour—and, to judge by public appreciation, a successful endeavour—has been made to illustrate in colour an artist’s impressions of a particular country: as, for instance, Mr. John Fulleylove’s of the Holy Land, Mr. Talbot Kelly’s of Egypt, and Mr. Mortimer Menpes’s of Japan. Now Mrs. Allingham throughout her work has been steadfast in her adherence to the portrayal of one country only. She has never travelled or painted outside Europe, and within its limits only at one place outside the British Isles, namely, Venice. Even in her native country her work has been strictly localised. Neither Scotland nor Wales has attracted her attention since the days when she first worked seriously as an artist, and Ireland has only received a scanty meed, and that due to family ties. England, therefore, was the one and only name under which her work could be included within the series, and that has very properly been assigned to it.

But it will be seen that to this has been added the prefix “Happy,” thereby drawing down the disapprobation of certain of the artist’s friends, who, recognising her as a resident in Hampstead, have associated the title with that alliterative one which the northern suburbs have received at the hands of the Bank Holiday visitant; and they facetiously surmise that the work may be called “’Appy England! By a Denizen of ’Appy ’Ampstead!”

But a glance at the illustrations by any one unacquainted with Mrs. Allingham’s residential qualifications, and by the still greater number ignorant even of her name (for these, in spite of her well-earned reputation, will be the majority, taking the countries over which this volume will circulate), must convince such an one that the “England” requires and deserves not only a qualifying but a commendatory prefix, and that the best that will fit it is that to which the artist has now submitted.

We say a “qualifying” title, because within its covers we find only a one-sided and partial view of both life and landscape. None of the sterner realities of either are presented. In strong opposition to the tendency of the art of the later years of the nineteenth century, the baser side of life has been studiously avoided, and nature has only been put down on paper in its happiest moods and its pleasantest array. Storm and stress in both life and landscape are altogether absent. We say, further, a “commendatory” title, because as regards both life and landscape it is, throughout, a mirror of halcyon days. If sickness intrudes on a single occasion, it is in its convalescent stage; if old age, it is in a “Haven of Rest”; the wandering pedlar finds a ready market for her wares, the tramp assistance by the wayside. In both life and landscape it is a portrayal of youth rejoicing in its youth. For the most part it represents childhood, and, if we are to believe Mr. Ruskin, for the first time in modern Art; for in his lecture on Mrs. Allingham at Oxford, he declared that “though long by academic art denied or resisted, at last bursting out like one of the sweet Surrey fountains, all dazzling and pure, you have the radiance and innocence of reinstated infant divinity showered again among the flowers of English meadows of Mrs. Allingham.”

This healthiness, happiness, and joy of life, coupled with an idyllic beauty, reveals itself in every figure in Mrs. Allingham’s story, so that even the drudgery of rural life is made to appear as a task to be envied.

And the same joyous and happy note is to be found in her landscapes. Every scene is

One feels that

Rain, wind, or lowering skies find no place in any of them, but each calls forth the expression

No attempt is made to select the sterner effects of landscape which earlier English painters so persistently affected. With the rough steeps of Hindhead at her door, the artist’s feet have almost invariably turned towards the lowlands and the reposeful forms of the distant South Downs. Cottages, farmsteads, and flower gardens have been her choice in preference to dales, crags, and fells.

And in so selecting, and so delineating, she has certainly catered for the happiness of the greater number.

What does the worker, long in city pent, desire when he cries

And what does the banished Englishman oftenest turn his thoughts to, even although he may be dwelling under aspects of nature which many would think far more beautiful than those of his native land? Browning in his “Home Thoughts from Abroad” gives consummate expression to the homesickness of many an exile:—

And Keats also—

These, the poets’ longings, suggested the prefix for which so lengthy an apology has been made, and which, in spite of the artist’s demur, we have pressed upon her acceptance, confident that the public verdict will be an acquittal against any charge either of exaggeration, or that he who excuses himself accuses himself.

If an apology is due it is in respect of the letterpress. The necessity of maintaining the size to which the public has been accustomed in the series of which this forms a part, and of interleaving the numerous illustrations which it contains, means the provision of a certain number of words. Now an artist’s life that has been passed amid such pleasant surroundings as has that of Mrs. Allingham, cannot contain a sufficiency of material for the purpose. Indulgence must, therefore, be granted when it is found that much of the contents consists merely of the writer’s descriptions of the illustrations, a discovery which might suggest that they were primarily the raison d’être of the volume.

As regards the illustrations, a word must be said.

The remarkable achievements in colour reproduction, through what is known as the “three-colour process,” have enabled the public to be placed in possession of memorials of an artist’s work in a way that was not possible even so recently as a year or two ago. Hitherto self-respecting painters have very rightly demurred to any colour reproductions of their work being made except by processes whose cost and lengthy procedure prohibited quantity as well as quality. Mrs. Allingham herself, in view of previous attempts, was of the same opinion until a trial of the process now adopted convinced her to the contrary. Now she is happy that a leap forward in science has enabled renderings in little of her water-colours to be offered to thousands who did not know them previously.

The water-colours selected for reproduction have been brought together from many sources, and at much inconvenience to their owners. Both artist and publishers ask me to take this opportunity of thanking those whose names will be found in the List of Illustrations, for the generosity with which they have placed the originals at their disposal.

It was Mrs. Allingham’s wish that the illustrations should be placed in order of date, and this has been done as far as possible; but this and the following chapter being in a way introductory, it has been deemed advisable to interleave them with three or four which do not fall in with the rest as regards subject or locality. For reasons of convenience the description of each drawing is not inserted in the body, but at the end of the chapter in which it appears.

2. IN THE FARMHOUSE GARDEN
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1903.

A portrait of Vi, the daughter of the farmer at whose house in Kent Mrs. Allingham stays.

Mrs. Allingham was tempted to take up again her disused practice of portrait-painting, by the attraction of the combination of the yellow of the child’s hair and hat, the red of the roses, and the blue of the distant hillside.

3. THE MARKET CROSS, HAGBOURNE
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. E. Lamb.
Painted 1898.

Berkshire, in spite of its notable places and situation, does not boast of much in the way of county chronicles, and little can be learnt by one whose sole resource is a Murray’s Guide concerning the interesting village where the scene of this drawing is laid, for it is there dismissed in a couple of lines.

Hagbourne, or Hagborne, is one of the many “bornes” which (in the counties bordering on the Thames, as elsewhere) takes its Saxon affix from one of the burns or brooks which find their way from thence into the neighbouring river. It lies off the Great Western main line, and its fine church may be seen a mile away to the southward just before arriving at Didcot. This proximity to a considerable railway junction has not disturbed much of its old-world character.

The buildings and the Cross, which make a delightful harmony in greys, probably looked much the same when Cavalier and Puritan harried this district in the Civil War, for with Newbury on one side and Oxford on the other, they must oftentimes have been up and down this, the main street of the village. The Cross has long since lost its meaning. The folk from the countryside no longer bring their butter, eggs, and farm produce for local sale. The villagers have to be content with margarine, French eggs, and other foreign commodities from the local “stores,” and the Cross steps are now only of use for infant energies to practise their powers of jumping from. So, too, the sun-dial on the top, which does not appear to have ever been surmounted by a cross, is now useless, for everybody either has a watch or is sufficiently notified as to meal times by a “buzzer” at the railway works hard by.

Mrs. Allingham says that most of her drawings are marked in her memory by some local comment concerning them. In this case a bystander sympathetically remarked that it seemed “a mighty tedious job,” in that of “Milton’s House” that “it was a foolish little thing when you began”—the most favourable criticism she ever encountered only amounting to “Why, it’s almost worth framing!”

4. THE ROBIN
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. S. H. S. Lofthouse.
Painted 1898.

One of the simplest, and yet one of the most satisfying of Mrs. Allingham’s compositions.

It is clearly not a morning to stay indoors with needlework which neither in size nor importance calls for table or chair. Besides, at the cottage gate there is a likelier chance of interruption and conversation with occasional passers-by. But, at no time numerous on this Surrey hillside, these are altogether lacking at the moment, and the pink-frocked maiden has to be content with the very mild distraction afforded by the overtures of the family robin, who is always ready to open up converse and to waste his time also in manœuvres and pretended explorations over ground in her vicinity, which he well knows to be altogether barren of provender.

CHAPTER II
PAINTRESSES, PAST AND PRESENT

The fair sex is so much in evidence in Art to-day (the first census of this century recording the names of nearly four thousand who profess that calling) that we are apt to forget that the lady artist, worthy of a place amongst the foremost of the other sex, is a creation of modern growth.

Paintresses—to call them by a quaint and agreeable name—there have been in profusion, and an author, writing a quarter of a century ago, managed to fill two bulky volumes1 with their biographies; but the majority of these have owed both their practice and their place in Art to the fact of their fathers or husbands having been engaged in that profession.

History has recorded but little concerning the women artists who worked in the early days of English Art. The scanty records which, however, have come down to us prove that if they lived uneventful lives they did so in comfort. For instance, it is noted of the first that passes across the pages of English history, namely Susannah Hornebolt (all the early names were foreign), that she lived for many years in great favour and esteem at the King’s Court, and died rich and honoured: of the next, Lavinia Teerlinck, that she also died rich and respected, having received in her prime a higher salary than Holbein, and from Queen Elizabeth, later on in life, a quarterly wage of £41. Farther on we find Charles I. giving to Anne Carlisle and Vandyck, at one time, as much ultramarine as cost him £500, and Anna Maria Carew obtaining from Charles II. in 1662 a pension of £200 a year. About the same time Mary Beale, who is described as passing a tranquil, modest existence, full of sweetness, dignity, and matronly purity, earned the same amount from her brush, charging £5 for a head, and £10 for a half-length. She died in 1697, and was buried under the communion table in St. James’s, Piccadilly, a church which holds the remains of other paintresses.

Another, Mary Delaney, described as “lovely in girlhood and old age,” and who must have been a delightful personage from the testimonies which have come down to us concerning her, lived almost through the eighteenth century, being born in 1700, and dying in 1788, and being, also, buried in St. James’s. She has left on record that “I have been very busy at my usual presumption of copying beautiful nature”; but the many copies of that kind that she must have made during this long life are all unknown to those who have studied Art a hundred years later.

Midway in the eighteenth century we come across the great and unique event in the annals of Female Art, namely the election of two ladies to the Academic body, in the persons of Angelica Kauffman—who was one of the original signatories of the memorial to George III., asking him to found an Academy, and who passed in as such on the granting of that privilege—and Mary Moser, who probably owed her election to the fact that her father was Keeper of the newly-founded body.

The only other lady artists who flit across the stage during the latter half of that century—in the case of whom any attempt at distinction or recognition is possible—were Frances Reynolds, the sister of the President, and the “dearest dear” of Dr. Johnson, and Maria Cosway, the wife of the miniaturist. These kept up the tradition of ladies always being connected with Art by parentage or marriage.

The Academy catalogues of the first half of the nineteenth century may be searched in vain for any name whose fame has endured even to these times, although the number of lady exhibitors was considerable. In the exhibitions of fifty years ago, of 900 names, 67, or 7 per cent, were those of the fair sex, the majority being termed in the alphabetical list “Mrs. ——, as above”; that is to say, they bore the surname and lived at the same addresses as the exhibitor who preceded them.2

The admission of women to the Royal Academy Schools in 1860 must not only have had much to do with increasing the numbers of paintresses, but in raising the standard of their work. In recent years, at the annual prize distributions of that institution, when they present themselves in such interesting and serried ranks, they have firmly established their right to work alongside of the men, by carrying off many of the most important awards.3

The Royal Female School of Art, the Slade School, and Schools of Art everywhere throughout the country each and all are now engaged in swelling the ranks of the profession with a far greater number of aspirants to a living than there is any room for.

This invasion of womankind into Art, which has also shown itself in a remarkable way in poetry and fiction, is in no way to be decried. On the contrary, it has come upon the present generation as a delightful surprise, as a breath of fresh and sweet-scented air after the heavy atmosphere which hung over Art in the later days of the nineteenth century. To mention a few only: Miss Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler), Lady Alma Tadema, Mrs. Jopling, Miss Dicksee, Mrs. Henrietta Rae, Miss Kemp Welch, and Miss Brickdale in oil painting; Mrs. Angell, Miss Clara Montalba, Miss Gow, Miss Kate Greenaway, and Mrs. Allingham in water-colours have each looked at Art in a distinguished manner, and one quite distinct from that of their fellow-workers of the sterner sex.

The ladies named all entered upon their profession with a due sense of its importance. Many of them may perhaps be counted fortunate in having commenced their careers before the newer ideas came into vogue, by virtue of which anybody and everybody may pose as an artist, now that it entails none of that lengthy apprenticeship which from all time has been deemed to be a necessary preliminary to practice. Even so lately as the date when Mrs. Allingham came upon the scene, draftsmanship and composition were still regarded as a matter of some importance if success was to be achieved. Nature, as represented in Art, was still subjected to a process of selection, a selection, too, of its higher in preference to its lower forms. The same pattern was not allowed to serve for every tree in the landscape whatever be its growth, foliage, or the local influences which have affected its form. A sufficient study of the human and of animal forms to admit of their introduction, if needful, into that landscape was not deemed superfluous. Most important of all, beauty still held the field, and the cult of unvarnished ugliness had not captured the rising generation.

The endeavours of women in what is termed very erroneously the higher branch of the profession, have not as yet received the reward that is their due. Placed at the Royal Academy under practically the same conditions as the male sex whilst under tuition, both as regards fortune and success, their pictures, when they mount from the Schools in the basement to the Exhibition Galleries on the first floor of Burlington House, carry with them no further possibility of reward, even although, as they have done, they hold the pride of place there. It is true that as each election to the Academic body comes round rumours arise as to the chances of one or other of the fair sex forcing an entrance through the doors that, with the two exceptions we have named, have been barred to them since the foundation of the Institution. The day, however, when their talent in oil painting, or any other art medium, will be recognised by Academic honours has yet to come.

To their honour be it said, the undoubted capacities of ladies have not passed unrecognised by water-colour painters. Both the Royal Society and the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours have enrolled amongst their ranks the names of women who have been worthy exponents of the Art.

The practice of water-colour art would appear to appeal especially to womankind, as not only are the constituents which go to its making of a more agreeable character than those of oil, but the whole machinery necessary for its successful production is more compact and capable of adaptation to the ordinary house. The very methods employed have a certain daintiness about them which coincides with a lady’s delicacy. The work does not necessitate hours of standing, with evil-smelling paints, in a large top-lit studio, but can be effected seated, in any living room which contains a window of sufficient size. There is no need to leave all the materials about while the canvasses dry, and no preliminary setting of palettes and subsequent cleaning off.

Yet in spite of this the water-colour art during the first century of its existence was practised almost solely by the male sex, and it was not until the middle of the Victorian reign that a few women came on to the scene, and at once showed themselves the equals of the male sex, not only so far as proficiency but originality was concerned. In the case of no one of these was there any imitation or following of a master; but each struck out for herself what was, if not a new line, certainly a presentation of an old one in a novel form. Mrs. Angell, better known perhaps as Helen Coleman, took up the portrayal of flowers and still life, which had been carried to such a pitch of minute finish by William Hunt, and treated it with a breadth, freedom, and freshness that delighted everybody. It secured for her at once a place amid a section of water-colourists who found it very difficult to obtain these qualities in their work. Miss Clara Montalba went to Venice and painted it under aspects which were entirely different from those of her predecessors, such as James Holland; and she again has practically held the field ever since as regards that particular phase of atmospheric effect which has attracted attention to her achievement. The kind of work and the subjects taken up by Mrs. Allingham will be dealt with at greater length hereafter, but I may premise by saying that she, too, ultimately settled into methods that are entirely her own, and such as no one can accuse her of having derived from anybody else.

The following illustrations find a place in this chapter:—