the thought. A week after, the same friend met him again, gay, happy, and jumping up on his old toes; he asked him the reason of the sudden change in his spirits: he replied,-" Why, lookee here, I have found a way at last of coming up cheap from Twickenham to open my son's gallery-I found out the inn where the market-gardeners baited their horses, I made friends with one on 'em, and now, for a glass of gin a-day, he brings me up in his cart on the top of the vegetables." Turner's father died in 1830, and was buried in St. Paul's Church, Covent-garden; his son wrote for his monument the following confused epitaph: "In the vault Beneath and near this Place are deposited the remains of many years an inhabitant of this parish, who died September 21st, 1830. To his memory and of his wife, Their son, J. M. W. Turner, R.A., Old Turner, when he lived at Twickenham, used to come up now and then to dress the wigs of former customers round Maiden-lane. Turner, always fond of architecture from the time he had worked as a draftsman for architects, several times essayed the arduous task of designing a house-a task which seems to me by no means beyond the intellect of an intelligent man, especially if he have an artistic taste. He designed his own house, Solus Lodge, at Twickenham; he designed his own doorway in Queen Anne-street; and he made designs for his friend Fawkes's house at Farnley, in Yorkshire. The name of this Solus Lodge-so called, I suppose, to express his love of, or wish for, solitude-Turner afterwards changed into Sandycomb Lodge, which has a sort of Devonshire flavour about it, to my mind. Here he once received some Academicians, including Mr. Mulready, to tea; and here he once feasted Mr. Pye, his celebrated engraver and the great opponent of Academic abuses, with a bit of strong cheese and a pint of stale porter. It was here, too, he used to protect from the birds'-nesting boys the blackbirds who sang and cheered him after his day's work; and it was MODELS OF SHIPS. 167 here, in his rude tangle of a garden, that he grew water-plants to introduce into his foregrounds. To be near Reynolds's old house at Richmond is said to have been one of Turner's chief reasons for building Solus Lodge. More probably it arose from his wish to be undisturbed, to study the Thames, and to be near his old schoolboy home at Brentford. And here I willingly withdraw a moment from the stage to introduce some reminiscences of Turner when at Twickenham, which have been furnished me by the eldest son of his oldest friend, the Rev. Mr. Trimmer, Rector of Heston, near Brentford; they do not entirely relate to this period of Turner's life, but I give them together, that I may not destroy the interest of their sequence. "About this time," says Mr. Trimmer, “Turner removed to Twickenham, where he purchased Sandycomb Lodge, near Richmond-bridge. It was an unpretending little place, and the rooms were small. There were several models of ships in glass cases, to which Turner had painted a sea and background. They much resembled the large vessels in his sea pieces. Richmond scenery greatly influenced his style. The Scotch firs (or stone-pine) around are in most of his large classical subjects, and Richmond landscape is decidedly the basis of The Rise of Carthage.' "Here he had a long strip of land, planted by him so thickly with willows, that his father, who delighted in the garden, complained that it was a mere osier-bed. Turner used to refresh his eye with the run of the boughs from his sitting-room window. 168 HOME-MADE WINE. "At the end of his garden was a square pond-I rather think he dug it himself—into which he put the fish he caught. The surface was covered with waterlilies. I have been out fishing with him on the Old Brent, with a can to catch trout for this preserve; but the fish always disappeared; at last he discovered that a jack was in the pond: and Turner would have it that it had been put in to annoy him. "I have dined with him at Sandycomb Lodge, when my father happened to drop in, too, in the middle of the day. Everything was of the most modest pretensions, two-pronged forks, and knives with large round ends for taking up the food; not that I ever saw him so use them, though it is said to have been Dean Swift's mode of feeding himself. The tablecloth barely covered the table, the earthenware was in strict keeping. I remember his saying one day, 'Old dad,' as he called his father, 'have you not any wine?' whereupon Turner, senior, produced a bottle of currant, at which Turner smelling, said: 'Why, what have you been about?' The senior, it seemed, had rather overdone it with hollands, and it was set aside. At this time Turner was a very abstemious person. "I have also dined with him in Queen Anne-street, where everything was of the same homely description. I should say that he never altered his style of living from his first start in Maiden-lane; not that I think him censurable for preferring the frugal meals of past times. You were welcome to what he had, and if it was near his dinner-time, he always pressed us to stay, and brought out cake and wine; the cake he would good-naturedly stuff into my pocket. I mention this for the benefit of those who think Turner destitute of humanity. "When a child, I have been out fly-fishing with him on the Thames; he insisted on my taking the fish, which he strung on some grass through the gills, and seemed to take more pleasure in giving me the fish than in taking them. These little incidents mark character. He threw a fly in first-rate style, and it bespeaks the sportsman wherever the rod is introduced into his pictures. "He had a boat at Richmond, but we never went further than the water's edge, as my father had insured his life; but I have seen him start on his sketching expeditions. From his boat he painted on a large canvas direct from nature. Till you have seen these sketches, you know nothing of Turner's powers. There are about two score of these large subjects, rolled up, and now national property. In my judgment these are among his very finest productions: no retouching, everything firmly in its place. If the subject had been photographed, there would have been greater exactitude, but Turner's would have carried the bell in elevation of sentiment and mind. This is the perfection of the art; but Turner's mind was so comprehensive that he could not carry out the detail, though he was far from despising it, and I was told by Howard he would spend hours sketching a stone. There is a red sunset (simply the sky) among these rolls, the finest sky, to my mind, ever put on canvas. Probably these are thrown aside as worthless, and not popular, but what studies for young painters! Reynolds has |