69. THE APPLE ORCHARD
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. Dobson.
Painted about 1877.

Originally, no doubt, a study of one of those subjects which artists like to attack, a misshapen tree presenting every imaginable contortion of foreshortened curvature to harass and worry the draughtsman,—a tree, specimens of which are too often to be found in old orchards of this size, whose bearing time has long departed, and who now only cumber the ground, and with their many fellows have had much to do with the gradual decay of the English apple industry.

CHAPTER IX
TENNYSON’S HOMES

Few poets have been so fortunate in their residences as was the great Poet Laureate of the Victorian era in the two which he for many years called his own. Selected in the first instance for their beauty and their seclusion, they had other advantages which fitted them admirably to a poet’s temperament.

Farringford, at the western end of the Isle of Wight, was the first to be acquired, being purchased in 1853; it was Tennyson’s home for forty years, and the house wherein most of his best-known works were written. At the time when it came into his hands communication with the mainland was of the most primitive description, and the poet and his wife had to cross the Solent in a rowing-boat. So far removed was he from intrusion there that he could indulge in what to him were favourite pastimes—sweeping up the leaves, mowing the grass, gravelling the walks, and digging the beds—without interruption. Many of the visitors which railway and steamship facilities brought to the neighbourhood in later years felt that he set the boundary within which no foot other than his own and that of his friends should tread at an extreme limit. Golfers over the Needles Links—persons who, perhaps, are prone to consider that whatever is capable of being made into a course should be so utilised—were wont to look with covetous eyes over a portion of the downs that would have formed a much-needed addition to their course, but over which no ball was allowed to be played. But the pertinacity of the crowd, in endeavouring to get a sight of the Laureate, necessitated an inexorable rule if the retreat was to be what it was intended, namely, a place for work and for rest.

Mrs. Tennyson thus described “her wild house amongst the pine trees”:—

The golden green of the trees, the burning splendour of Blackgang Chine, and the red bank of the primeval river contrasted with the turkis blue of the sea (that is our view from the drawing-room) make altogether a miracle of beauty at sunset. We are glad that Farringford is ours.

Although at times the weather can be cold and bleak enough in this sheltered corner of the Isle of Wight, and

must oftentimes have “shocked the ear” in the Farringford house, the climate is too relaxing an one for continued residence, and Tennyson’s second house, Aldworth, was well chosen as a contrast. Aubrey Vere thus describes it:—

It lifted England’s great poet to a height from which he could gaze on a large portion of that English land which he loved so well, see it basking in its most affluent beauty, and only bound by the inviolate sea.

The house stands at an elevation of some six hundred feet above the sea, on the spur of Blackdown, which is the highest ground in Sussex, on a steep side towards the Weald, just where the greensand hills break off. It is some two miles from Haslemere, and just within the Sussex border.

Two of the drawings connected with these houses, which are reproduced here, were painted before Tennyson’s death, namely, in 1890.

The house at Farringford was drawn in the spring, when the lawn was pied with daisies, and the Laureate required his heavy cloak to guard him from the keenness of the April winds.

The kitchen-garden at Farringford, which somewhat belies its name, for flowers encroach everywhere upon the vegetables, and the apple trees rise amidst a parterre of blossom, was painted in its summer aspect, when it was gay with pinks, stocks, rockets, larkspurs, delphiniums, aubrietias, eschscholtzias, and big Oriental poppies. Tennyson visited it almost daily to take the record of the rain-gauge and thermometer, which can be descried in the drawing about half-way down the path.

The kitchen-garden at Aldworth opens up a very different prospect to the banked-up background of trees at Farringford. Standing at a very considerable elevation, it commands a magnificent view over the Weald of Sussex. The spot is referred to in the poem “Roses on the Terrace” in the volume entitled Demeter, thus—

as also in the lines—

It was this view that the dying poet longed to see once again on his last morning when he cried, “I want the blinds up! I want to see the sky and the light!”

The time of year when Mrs. Allingham painted it was October, and a wet October too, for two umbrellas even could not keep her from getting wet through.

It is rare for Mrs. Allingham to set her flowers so near the horizon as in this case,—in fact I only remember having seen another instance of it,—but no doubt the same feeling that appealed to the poet’s eye, and impelled him to pen the lines we have quoted, fascinated the artist’s, namely, the beautiful appearance of the varied hues of flowers against a background of delicate blue.

October is the saddest time of year for the garden, but a basket full of gleanings at that time is more cherished than one in the full heyday of its magnificence. Here the apple tree has already shed most of its leaves, the hollyhock stems are baring, and autumnal flowers, in which yellow so much predominates, as, for instance, the great marigold, the herbaceous sunflower, and the calliopsis, are much in evidence. Nasturtiums and every free-growing creeper have long ere this trailed their stems over the box edging, and made an untidiness which forebodes their early destruction at the hands of the gardener. Of sweet-scented flowers only a few peas and mignonette remain.

Mr. Allingham knew the Poet Laureate for many years, having at one time lived at Lymington, which is the port of departure for the western end of the Isle of Wight, and whence he often crossed to Farringford. The artist’s first meeting with Tennyson was soon after her marriage. He and his son Hallam had come up to town, and had walked over from Mr. James Knowles’s house at Clapham, where they were staying, to Chelsea. He invited Mrs. Allingham to Aldworth, an invitation which was accepted shortly afterwards. The poet was very proud of the country which framed his house, and during this visit he took her his special walks to Blackdown, to Fir Tree Corner (whence there is a wide view over the Weald towards the sea), and to a great favourite of his, the Foxes’ Hole, a lovely valley beyond his own grounds. Whilst on this last-named ramble he suddenly turned round and chided the artist for “chattering instead of looking at the view.” During this visit he read to her a part of his Harold, and the wonder of his voice and whole manner of reading or chanting she will never forget.

When the Allinghams came to live at Witley they were able to get to and from Aldworth in an afternoon, and so were frequent visitors there. One day in the autumn of 1881 Mrs. Allingham went over alone, owing to her husband’s absence, and after lunch the poet walked with her to Foxes’ Hole, where they sat on bundles of peasticks, she painting an old cottage since pulled down, and he watching her. After a time he said slowly, “I should like to do that. It does not look very difficult.” Years later he showed her some water-colour drawings he had made, from imagination, of Mount Ida clad in dark fir groves, which were undoubtedly very clever in their suggestiveness.

Lord Tennyson’s Isle of Wight home Mrs. Allingham did not see until after she returned to live in London, when Mr. Hallam Tennyson, in conversing with her about her drawings, told her that if she would come to the Isle of Wight he could show her some fine old cottages. She accordingly went at the Easter of 1890 to Freshwater, when he was as good as his word, and she at once began drawings of “The Dairy” and the cottage “At Pound Green.” Miss Kate Greenaway, who had come to stay with her, also painted them. The next spring, and many springs afterwards, Mrs. Allingham went to Freshwater, generally after the Easter holidays.

During one of these stays she accompanied Birket Foster to Farringford, and the poet asked the two artists to come for a walk with him. There happened to be a boy of the party in a sailor costume with a bright blue collar and a scarlet cap, and Birket Foster, who was at the moment walking behind with Mrs. Allingham, said, “Why is that red and blue so disagreeable?” Tennyson’s quick ear caught something, and he turned on them, setting his stick firmly in the ground, and asked Mr. Foster to explain himself. “Well,” Mr. Foster said, “I only know that the effect of the contrast is to make cold water run down my spine.” Mrs. Allingham cordially agreed with Mr. Birket Foster, but Tennyson could not feel the “cold water,” although he saw their point, and said it was doubtless with painters as with himself in poetry, namely, that some combinations of sound gave intense pleasure, whilst others grated, and he quoted certain lines as being so to him. On another occasion, whilst walking with him at Freshwater, he said something which led Mrs. Allingham to mention that she generally kept her drawings by her for a long time, often for years, working on them now and again and considering about figures and incidents for them,14 upon which he remarked that it was the same in the case of poems, and that he used generally to keep his by him, often in print, for a considerable time before publishing.

The following drawings have been sufficiently described in the text:—

70. THE HOUSE, FARRINGFORD
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. John Mackinnon.
Painted 1890.

71. THE KITCHEN-GARDEN, FARRINGFORD
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. Combe.
Painted 1894.

72. THE DAIRY, FARRINGFORD
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. Douglas Freshfield.
Painted 1890.

73. ONE OF LORD TENNYSON’S COTTAGES, FARRINGFORD
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. E. Marsh Simpson.
Painted 1900.

74. A GARDEN IN OCTOBER, ALDWORTH
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. F. Pennington.
Painted 1891.

The next three water-colours find a place here, as having been painted during visits to the Island.

75. HOOK HILL FARM, FRESHWATER
From the Water-colour in the possession of Sir James Kitson, Bt., M.P.
Painted 1891.

An old farmhouse on the other side of the Yar Valley to Farringford, but one which Tennyson often made an object for a walk. It possessed a fine yard and old thatch-covered barn, which, however, has passed out of existence, but not before Mrs. Allingham had perpetuated it in water-colour. This group of buildings has been painted by the artist from every side, and at other seasons than that represented here, when pear, apple, and lilac trees, primroses, and daisies vie with one another in heralding the coming spring.

76. AT POUND GREEN, FRESHWATER, ISLE OF WIGHT
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. Douglas Freshfield.
Painted about 1891.

To the cottage-born child of to-day the name of the “Pound” has little significance, but even in the writer’s recollection it not only had a fascination but a feeling almost akin to terror, being deemed, in very truth, to be a prison for the dumb animals who generally, through no fault of their own, were impounded there. Both it and its tenants too were always suggestive of starvation. When (following, at some interval of time, the village stocks) it passed out of use, the countryside, in losing both, forgot a very cruel phase of life.

A child of to-day has, with all its education, not acquired many amusements to replace that of teasing the tenants of the Pound on the Green, so he never tires of pulling anything with the faintest similitude to the cart which he will probably spend much of his later life in driving. Here the youngster has evidently been making stabling for his toy under a seat whose back is formed out of some carved relic of an old sailing-ship that was probably wrecked at the Needles, and whose remains the tide carried in to Freshwater Bay.

77. A COTTAGE AT FRESHWATER GATE
From the Water-colour in the possession of Sir Henry Irving.
Painted 1891.

Tramps are usually few and far between in the Isle of Wight, for the reason that the island does not rear many, and those from the mainland do not care to cross the Solent lest, should they be tempted to wrong-doing, there may be a difficulty in avoiding the arm of the law or the confines of the island. It is somewhat surprising, therefore, to find the only flaw in our title of Happy England in such a locality. But here it is, on this spring day, when apple, and pear, and primrose blossoms make one

We have the rift, making the discordant note, of want, in the person of a woman, dragged down with the burden of four children, sending the eldest to beg a crust at a house which cannot contain a superfluity of the good things of this world.

A singular interest attaches to Mrs. Allingham’s drawing of this cottage. She had nearly completed it on a Saturday afternoon, and was asked by a friend whether she would finish it next day. To this she replied that she never sketched in public on Sunday. On Monday the cottage was a heap of ruins, having been burnt down the previous night.

CHAPTER X
MRS. ALLINGHAM AND HER CONTEMPORARIES

That a true artist is always individual, and that his work is always affected by some one or other of his predecessors or contemporaries, would appear to be a paradox: nevertheless it is a proposition that few will dispute. Art has been practised for too long a period, and by too many talented professors, for entirely novel views or treatments of Nature to be possible, and whilst an artist may be entirely unaware that he has imbibed anything from others, it is certain that if he has had eyes to see he must have done so.

I have already stated that Mrs. Allingham’s work, whether in subject or execution, is, so far as she is aware, entirely her own, and it would, perhaps, be quite sufficient were I to leave the matter after having placed that assertion on record. To go farther may perhaps lay oneself open to the charge, qui s’excuse s’accuse. I trust not, and that I may be deemed to be only doing my duty if I deal at some length with comparisons that have been made between her work and that of certain other artists.

The two names with whose productions those of Mrs. Allingham are most frequently linked are Frederick Walker and Birket Foster: the first in connection with her figures, the latter with her cottage subjects.

As regards these two artists it must be remembered that both their and her early employment lay in the same direction, namely, that of book illustration, and therefore each started with somewhat similar methods of execution and subject, varied only by leanings towards the style of any work they came in contact with, or by their own individuality.

That both had much in common is well known; in fact, Mrs. Allingham used to tell Mr. Foster that she considered him, as did others, the father of Walker and Pinwell.

In the case of Frederick Walker, his career was at its most interesting phase whilst Mrs. Allingham was a student. Her first visit to the Royal Academy was probably in 1868, when his “Vagrants” was exhibited, to be followed in 1869 by “The Old Gate,” in 1870 by “The Plough,” and in 1872 by “The Harbour of Refuge.”

It must not be forgotten that the name of Frederick Walker was at this time in every one’s mouth, that is, every one who could be deemed to be included in the small Art world of those days. The painter visitors to the Academy schools sang his praises to the students, and he himself fascinated and charmed them with his boyish and graceful presence. As Mrs. Allingham says, everybody in the schools “adored” him and his work, and on the opening of the Academy doors on the first Monday in May the students rushed to his picture first of all.

To contradict a dictum of Walker’s in those days was the rankest heresy in a student. Mrs. Allingham remembers an occasion when a painter was holding forth on the right methods of water-colour work, asserting that the paper should be put flat down on a table, as was the custom with the old men, and the colour should be laid on in washes and left to dry with edges, and if Walker taught any other method he was wrong. Mrs. Allingham and her fellow-students were furious at their hero being possibly in fault, and asked for the opinion of an Academician. His reply was: “And who is Mr. ——, and how does he paint that he should lay down the law? If Walker is all wrong with his methods, he paints like an angel.”

Mrs. Allingham’s confession of faith is this: “I was influenced, doubtless, by his work. I adored it, but I never consciously copied it. It revealed to me certain beauties and aspects of Nature, as du Maurier’s had done, and as North’s and others have since done, and then I saw like things for myself in Nature, and painted them, I truly think, in my own way—not the best way, I dare say, but in the only way I could.”

Those, therefore, who discover not the reflection but the inspiration of Walker in the idyllic grace of Mrs. Allingham’s figures, and in her treatment of flowers, place her in a company which she readily accepts, and is proud of.

But it is with Birket Foster that our artist’s name has been more intimately linked by the critics, some even going to the length of asserting that without him there would have been no Mrs. Allingham.

Having had the pleasure of an intimacy with Birket Foster, which extended to writing his biography (Birket Foster: His Life and Work, Virtue and Co., 1890), I can emphatically assert that he never held that opinion, but stated that she had struck out a line which was entirely her own, and, as he generously added, “with much more modernity in it than mine.”

There are, however, so many similarities between their artistic careers that I may be excused for dwelling on some of them, for they no doubt unconsciously influenced not only the method of their work but the subject of it.

Drawing in black and white on wood in each case formed the groundwork of their education, and was only followed by colour at a subsequent stage.

Both, having determined to support themselves, were fain to seek out the engravers and obtain from them a livelihood. Birket Foster at sixteen was fortunate enough to meet in Landells one who at once recognised his capabilities, whilst Mrs. Allingham found a similar friend in Joseph Swain. Again, book illustration was as much in vogue in 1870 as it was in 1842; and by another coincidence both years witnessed the birth of an illustrated weekly, for Birket Foster, in 1842, was employed upon the infant Illustrated London News, while Mrs. Allingham was the only lady to whom Mr. Thomas allotted some of the early work on the Graphic. Differences there were in their opportunities, and these were not always in the lady’s favour. Birket Foster found in Landells a man who looked after his youngster’s education, and, convinced that Nature was his best mistress, sent him to her with these instructions: “Now that work is slack in these summer months, spend them in the fields; take your colours and copy every detail of the scene as carefully as possible, especially trees and foreground plants, and come up to me once a month and show me what you have done.” A splendid memory aided Foster in his studies all too well, for he learnt to draw with such absolute fidelity every detail that he required, that he never again required to go to Nature. That he did so we know from his repeated visits to every part of Europe—visits resulting in delightful work; but what the world saw was entirely studio work, and this tended to a repetition which oftentimes marred the entire satisfaction that one otherwise derived from his drawings. Mrs. Allingham herself, although living close to and engaged on the same subjects, never came across him painting out of doors, and only once saw him note-book in hand.

Chance influenced the two careers also in another way, which might have made any similarity between them altogether out of question. The first commission to illustrate a book which Miss Paterson obtained was a prose work, in which figures and household scenes entirely predominated,—in fact, all her black-and-white work was of this homely nature,—and for some years she had no call for the delineation of landscape. With Foster it was not very different. It is true that his first commission was The Boys Spring and Summer Book, in which he had to draw the seasons, and to draw them afield. But this might not have attracted him to landscape work, for his patron’s next commission was quite in another direction. I may be excused for referring to it at length, for the little-known incident is of some interest now that the actors in it have each achieved such world-wide reputations. Certain of the young pre-Raphaelites, including Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Millais, had been entrusted with the illustration of Evangeline. The result was a perfect staggerer to the publisher Bogue, who was altogether unable to appreciate their revolutionary methods. “What shall I do with them?” he was asked by the engraver to whom he showed the blocks on which most elaborate designs had been most lovingly drawn. “This,” said Bogue, and wetting one of them he erased the drawing with the sleeve of his coat, serving each in turn in the same way.

After this drastic treatment the Evangeline commission was handed over to Birket Foster. It can be easily imagined with what trepidation he, knowing these facts, approached and carried out his task, and his delight when even the Athenæum could say, “A more lovely book than this has rarely been given to the public.” The success of the work was enormous. His career was apparently henceforth marked out as an illustrator of verse in black and white, for his popularity continued until it was not a question of giving him commissions, but of what book there was for him to illustrate; and he used laughingly to say that finally there was nothing left for him but Young’s Night Thoughts and Pollok’s Course of Time.15

Thus we see that Birket Foster’s art work was for long confined to subjects as to which he had no voice, but which certainly influenced his art, and it says much for his temperament that throughout it warranted the term “poetical.” In like manner it is much to Mrs. Allingham’s credit that her prosaic start did not prevent the same quality welling up and being always in evidence in her productions.

If I have not wearied the reader I would like to point out some further coincidences in their careers which are of interest.

Birket Foster became a water-colourist through the chance that he could not sell his oil-paintings, which consequently cumbered his small working-room to such an extent that one night he cut them all from their stretchers, rolled them up, and sneaking out, dropped them over Blackfriars Bridge into the Thames; water-colours cost less to produce and took up less space, so he adopted them. Mrs. Allingham abandoned oils after a year or two’s work in them at the Royal Academy Schools, because she gradually became convinced that she could express herself better in water-colours. But she considered that it was a great advantage to have worked, even for the short time, in the stronger medium. It was this practice in oils that made her for some time (until, indeed, Walker’s lessons to her at the Royal Academy) use a good deal of body-colour.

Both artists aspired to obtain the highest rank which then, as now, is open to the water-colourist, namely, membership of The Royal Water-Colour Society, but whilst Birket Foster only attained it in 1860, in his thirty-fifth year, and at his second attempt, Mrs. Allingham followed him in 1875, when only twenty-six, and at her first essay. Both promptly at once gave up a remunerative income in black and white, and having done so, never had cause to regret their decision.

The coincidences do not end even here, for both within a year or two of their election found themselves, the one on the invitation of Mr. Hook, R.A., the other, twenty years later, for reasons we have mentioned, settled near the same village, Witley, in the heart of the country which they have since identified with their names. Here the selection of subjects from the same neighbourhood naturally brought their work still closer together.

Both of them have been attracted to Venice; Mr. Foster again and again, Mrs. Allingham only within the last year or two.

Lastly, few artists have been indulged with so many smiles and so few frowns from the public for which they have catered. Birket Foster considered that he had been almost pampered by the critics, and Mrs. Allingham has never had the slightest cause to complain of her treatment at their hands.

Having dwelt at such length upon the interesting concurrences in their careers, I now pass on to a comparison of their methods of work; and here there are many resemblances, but these are no doubt due to the times in which they lived. Birket Foster found himself, when he commenced, the pupil of a school which had some merits and more demerits. Composition and drawing were still thought of, and before a landscape artist presumed to pose as such, he had to study the laws which governed the former, and to thoroughly imbue himself with a knowledge of the anatomy of what he was about to depict. Mrs. Allingham, as I have pointed out, was also fortunate enough to commence her tuition before the fashion of undergoing this needful apprenticeship died out. But Birket Foster came at the end of a time when landscape was painted in the studio rather than in the field. He went to Nature for suggestions, which he pencilled into note-books in the most facile and learned manner, but content with this he made his pictures under comfortable conditions at home. The fulness of his career, too, came at a time when Art was booming, and the demand for his work was such that he could not keep pace with it. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the zenith of his fame his pictures were, in the main, studio pictures, worked out with a marvellous facility of invention, but nevertheless just lacking that vitality which always pervades work done in the open air and before Nature.

Mrs. Allingham’s work at the outset was very similar to this. For her subject drawings she made elaborate preliminary studies from Nature in colour, but the drawing itself was thought and carried out in the house. Fortunately this method soon became unpalatable to her, and she gradually came to work more and more directly from Nature, and when, at Witley, she found her subjects at her doors, she discontinued once and for ever her former method. Since then she has painted every drawing on the spot during the months that it is feasible, leaving actual completion for some time, to enable her to view her work with a fresh eye, and to study at leisure the final details, such, for instance, as where the figures shall be grouped, usually posing, for this purpose, her models in the open air in her Hampstead garden. Her figures are, however, sometimes culled from careful studies made in note-books, of which she has an endless supply. Fastidious to a degree as to the completeness of a drawing, she lingers long over the finishing touches, for it is these which she considers make or mar the whole. Every sort of contrivance she considers to be legitimate to bring about an effect, save that of body-colour, which she holds in abhorrence; but the knife, a hard brush, a pointed stick, a paint rag, and a sponge are in constant request.

Mrs. Allingham is above all things a fair-weather painter. She has no pleasure in the storm, whether of rain or wind. Maybe this avoidance of the discomforts inseparable from a truthful portrayal of such conditions indicates the femininity of her nature. Doubtless it does. But is she to blame? Her work is framed upon the pleasure that it affords her, and it is certain that the result is none the less satisfactory because it only numbers the sunny hours and the halcyon days.

I ought perhaps to have qualified the expression “sunny hours,” for as a rule she does not affect a sunshine which casts strong shadows, but rather its condition when, through a thin veil of cloud, it suffuses all Nature with an equable light, and allows local colour to be seen at its best. In drawings which comprise any large amount of floral detail, the leaves, in full sunshine, give off an amount of reflected light that materially lessens the colour value of the flowers, and prevents their being properly distinguished. Mr. Elgood, the painter of flower-gardens par excellence, always observes this rule, not only because the effect is so much more satisfactory on paper, but because it is so much easier to paint under this aspect. As regards sky treatment, both he and Mrs. Allingham, it will be noted, confine themselves to the simplest sky effects, feeling that the main interest lies on the ground, where the detail is amply sufficient to warrant the accessories being kept as subservient as possible. For this reason it is that the glories of sunrise and sunset have no place in Mrs. Allingham’s work, the hours round mid-day sufficing for her needs.

To the curiously minded concerning her palette, it may be said that it is of the simplest character. Her paint-box is the smallest that will hold her colours in moist cake form, of which none are used save those which she considers to be permanent. It contains cobalt, permanent yellow, aureolin, raw sienna, yellow ochre, cadmium, rose madder, light red, and sepia. She now uses nothing save O.W. (old water-colour) paper. Mrs. Allingham’s method of laying on the colour differs from that of Birket Foster, who painted wet and in small touches. Her painting is on the dry side, letting her colours mingle on the paper. As a small bystander once remarked concerning it, “You do mess about a deal.”

Mrs. Allingham has been a constant worker for upwards of a quarter of a century, during which time, in addition to contributing to the Royal Society, she has held seven Exhibitions at The Fine Art Society’s, each of them averaging some seventy numbers. She has, therefore, upon her own calculation, put forth to the world nearly a thousand drawings. In spite of this, they seldom appear in the sale-room, and when they do they share with Birket Foster’s work the unusual distinction of always realising more than the artist received for them.

The illustrations which adorn this closing chapter have no connection with its subject, but are not on that account altogether out of place; for they are the only ones which are outside the title of the work, two being from Ireland, and two from Venice, and they are associated with two of the main incidents of the artist’s life, namely, her marriage, and her only art work abroad.

78. A CABIN AT BALLYSHANNON
From a Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1891.

Ballyshannon is the birthplace of Mr. William Allingham, who married Mrs. Allingham in 1874. It is situated in County Donegal, and was described by him as “an odd, out-of-the way little town on the extreme western verge of Europe; our next neighbours, sunset way, being citizens of the great Republic, which indeed to our imagination seemed little, if at all, farther off than England in the opposite direction. Before it spreads a great ocean, behind stretches many an islanded lake. On the south runs a wavy line of blue mountains, and on the north, over green, rocky hills, rise peaks of a more distant range. The trees hide in glens or cluster near the river; grey rocks and boulders lie scattered about the windy pastures.” Here Mr. Allingham was born of the good old stock of one of Cromwell’s settlers, and here he lived until he was two-and-twenty. The drawing now reproduced was made when Mrs. Allingham visited the place with his children after his death in 1889. Many ruined cabins lie around; money is scarce in Donegal, and each year the tenants become fewer, some emigrating, others who have done so sending to their relations to join them. Better times are indeed necessary if the country is not to become a desert.

79. THE FAIRY BRIDGES
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1891.

The Fairy Bridges—a series of natural arches, carved or shaken out of the cliffs, in times long past, by the rollers of the Atlantic—are within a walk of Ballyshannon, and were often visited by Mrs. Allingham during her stay there. Three of them (there are five in all) are seen in the drawing, and a quaint and mythological faith connects them with Elfindom—a faith which every Irishman in the last generation imbibed with his mother’s milk, and which is not yet extinct in the lovely crags and glens of Donegal.

The scene is introduced into two of Mr. Allingham’s best-known songs; in one, “The Fairies,” thus—

The only land which separates the wind-swept Fairy Bridges from America is the Slieve-League headland, whose wavy outline is seen in the distance. It, too, finds a place in one of Mr. Allingham’s songs, “The Winding Banks of Erne: the Emigrant’s Adieu to his Birthplace” (which in ballad form is sung by Erin’s children all the world over)—

By a curious coincidence Mr. Allingham when here in “the eighties” sent an “Invitation to a Painter”16—

but the first to come was his own wife.

80. THE CHURCH OF STA. MARIA DELLA SALUTE, VENICE
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. C. P. Johnson.
Painted 1901.

Mrs. Allingham, after an absence of thirty-three years, visited Italy again in 1901, in company with a fellow-artist, and the following year the Exhibition of the Old Water-Colour Society was rendered additionally interesting by a comparison of her rendering of Venice with that of a fellow lady-member, Miss Clara Montalba, to whose individuality in dealing with it we have before referred.

The drawing of Mrs. Allingham’s here reproduced shows Venice in quite an English aspect as regards weather. It is almost a grey day; it certainly is a fresh one, and has nothing in common with one which induces the spending of much time about in a gondola.

In selecting the Salute for one of her principal illustrations of Venice, Mrs. Allingham has respectfully followed in the footsteps of England’s greatest landscapist, for Turner made it the main object in his great effort of the Grand Canal, and there are few of the craft who have failed to limn it again and again in their story of Venice.

But whilst most people are disposed to regard it as one of the most beautiful features of the city, the church has fallen under the ban of those exponents of architecture that have studied it carefully.

Mr. Ruskin classified it under the heading of “Grotesque Renaissance,” although he admitted that its position, size, and general proportions rendered it impressive. Its proportions were good, but its graceful effect was due to the inequality in the size of its cupolas and the pretty grouping of the campaniles behind them. But he qualified his praise by an opinion that the proportions of buildings have nothing whatever to do with the style or general merits of their architecture, for an artist trained in the worst schools, and utterly devoid of all meaning and purpose in his work, may yet have such a natural gift of massing or grouping as will render all his structures effective when seen from a distance. Such a gift was very general with the late Italian builders, so that many of the most contemptible edifices in the country have a good stage effect so long as we do not approach them. The Church of the Salute is much assisted by the beautiful flight of steps in front of it down to the Canal, and its façade is rich and beautiful of its kind. What raised the anger of Ruskin was the disguise of the buttresses under the form of colossal scrolls, the buttresses themselves being originally a hypocrisy, for the cupola is of timber, and therefore needs none.

81. A FRUIT STALL, VENICE
From the Drawing, the property of Mr. C. P. Johnson.
Painted 1902.

A lover of gardens and their produce, such as Mrs. Allingham is, could not visit Venice without being captivated by the wealth of colour which Nature has lavished upon the contents of the Venetian fruit stalls. Even the most indifferent, when they get into meridional parts, cannot be insensible to the luscious hues which the fruit baskets display. To look out of the window of one’s hotel on an Italian lake-side at dawn and see the boats coming from all quarters of the lake laden with the luscious tomatoes, plums, and other fruits, is not among the least of the delights of a sojourn there. Mrs. Allingham’s drawing bears upon its face evidences that it is a literal translation of the scene. We have none of the introduction of stage accessories in the way of secchios and other studio belongings which find a place in most of the Venetian output of this character. She has evidently delighted in the mysteries of the tones of the wicker baskets, for we recognise in them traces of the skill she achieves in England in the delineation of similar surfaces on her tiled roofs. Her figure, too, has nothing of the studio model in it. This black-haired girl is a new type for her, but it is a faithful transcript of the original, and not one of the robust beauties which one is accustomed to in the pictures of Van Haanen and his followers. The stall itself was located somewhere between the Campo San Stefano and the Rialto.

With these illustrations of Mrs. Allingham’s painting elsewhere than in England our tale is told. We trust that this digression, which appeared to be necessary if a complete survey of the artist’s lifework up to the present time was to be portrayed, will not be deemed to have appreciably affected the appropriateness of the title to the volume, nor invalidated the claim that we have made as to her work having most felicitously represented the fairest aspects of English life and landscape—English life, whether of peer, commoner, or peasant, passed under its healthiest and happiest conditions, and English landscape under spring and summer skies and dressed in its most beauteous array of flower and foliage—an England of which we may to-day be as proud as were those who lived when the immortal lines concerning it were penned:—