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DILECTA
knew my mother had had no sleep for the storm and thinking Jane was in it at sea. 'Jane, how d'ye do?' to the astonished servant, and walked straight up to mamma's room, opened the door, to meet, as I expected her wide-open, anxious, patient eyes, and to hear 'Jane! -- Oh, thank God!' 49. "The next year, I think, going to the Academy, I turned at once, as I always did, to see what Turners there were.
"Imagine my feelings: --
=== "'Rain, Steam, and Speed, Great Western Railway, June the —, 1843.' ===
"I had found out who the 'seeing' eyes belonged to! As I stood looking at the picture, I heard a mawkish voice behind me say: "'There now, just look at that; ain't it just like Turner? —- whoever saw such a ridiculous conglomeration?' "I turned very quietly round and said: " I did; I was in the train that night, and it is perfectly and wonderfully true; and walked quietly away.1 "When I saw your young portrait of Turner,2 I saw that some of it was left in the 43 face, enough to make me feel it always delightful to look at the picture. "There, my dearest Mr. John, I've scribbled (for I can no longer write) as you wished. Best love to you, and love to all. I send it to Joan to read to you. "Ever yours, with John's truest love, "J. S."
^
1 [There is, however, some difficulty in accepting Lady Simon's recollections as accurate. The railway journey she describes was by night, during a terrific storm, in company with an elderly gentleman whom she afterwards assumed to
be Turner, on recognising, as she thought, the storm in his picture of " Rain, Steam, and Speed" in the Royal Academy; but Turner's picture represents neither night nor storm, but a passing shower on a bright, sunny day! Mr. Wedderburn remembers once asking Ruskin why, if an engine was so ugly, Turner had painted one in this picture. "To show," replied Ruskin, "what he could do even with an ugly subject."
Ruskin, as explained in Vol. XIII. p. lvi., had at various times collected a good many recollections, etc., relating to Turner. A few anecdotes may here be given. "At Farnley once, a young lady said to him, 'Oh, Mr. Turner, how could you make the sky in your picture so yellow?' He said, 'Where's the mustard pot?' and flung the contents on to the sky, and worked them in." Lucy Tovey, the parlour-maid (see above, p. 343), used to describe how Turner at dinner "would pull down his coat-sleeves over his wrists to try to hide the dirty, crumpled shirt-cuffs."
The difficulty of seeing Turner in his studio induced people to ring at the area bell in Queen Anne Street. The old housekeeper used to greet them with "Are ye cat's meat?" Two Academicians who called on one occasion were told to wait in the hall; on Turner consenting to admit them, she shouted over the bannisters, "Acadameemians ye can come up." Turner told the Rev. W. Kingsley that "he had learned more from Watteau than any other painter."]
2 [The frontispiece to Vol. XIII]
