“I have just had a ludicrous dispute to settle between Mr. Townley” (Charles Townley, Esq. of Townley), “myself and Turner, the draftsman. Mr. Townley it seems has found out an old and very bad painting of Gawthorpe at Mr. Shuttleworth’s house in London, as it stood in the last century, with all its contemporary accompaniments of clipped yews, parterres, &c.: this he insisted would be more characteristic than Turner’s own sketch, which he desired him to lay aside, and copy the other. Turner, abhorring the landscape and contemning the execution of it, refused to comply, and wrote to me very tragically on the subject. Next arrived a letter from Mr. Townley, recommending it to me to allow Turner to take his own way, but while he wrote, his mind (which is not unfrequent) veered about, and he concluded with desiring me to urge Turner to the performance of his requisition, as from myself. I have, however, attempted something of a compromise, which I fear will not succeed, as Turner has all the irritability of youthful genius.”[19]
The “compromise” was handing over the task of drawing from the objectionable picture to Mr. J. Basire the engraver.
We should like to see Turner’s “tragical” letter, and also his rejected drawing; we should also like to have seen Dr. Whitaker’s face if he had been told that not many years after a book would have been published of drawings by Turner, the draftsman, with “descriptions by the Rev. Dr. Whitaker.”
Of Mr. Fawkes, of whose hall at Farnley Turner made a drawing for the “Parish of Whalley,” but with whom he is said by Thornbury to have become acquainted about 1802, it may be said that he was one of Turner’s longest and staunchest friends. The number of drawings (still at Farnley) which he made when visiting Mr. Fawkes between 1803 and 1820 (including as they do studies of birds shot while he was there, of the outhouses, porches, and gateways on the property, of the old places in the vicinity, and of the rooms in Farnley Hall) attest the frequency of his visits and his affection for the place and its occupants, while the splendid series of drawings in England, Switzerland, Italy, and on the Rhine, and the few precious oil pictures purchased by Mr. Fawkes, show him to have been not only a true friend, but a warm and sympathizing admirer of his genius. He indeed was a friend such as few are permitted to know--one of a goodly number who in Turner’s youth and manhood should have made the world to him specially pleasant and sociable, frank and healthy. If he could not or would not have it so, it was not from insensibility, for his feeling was deep and his heart was sound. “He could not make up his mind to visit Farnley after his old friend’s death,” and he could not speak of the shore of the Wharfe (on which Farnley Hall looks down) “but his voice faltered.” Dayes wrote of him in 1804, “This man must be loved for his works, for his person is not striking, nor his conversation brilliant.” At Farnley, as at Mr. Wells’ cottage, Turner was made at home, but that he did not escape good-humoured ridicule even at Farnley is plain from a caricature by Mr. Fawkes, “which is thought by old friends to be very like. It shows us a little Jewish-nosed man in an ill-cut brown tail coat, striped waistcoat, and enormous frilled shirt, with feet and hands notably small, sketching on a small piece of paper, held down almost level with his waist.”[20] It is evident that at this time, in spite of his clear little blue eyes, and his small hands and feet, his appearance was not one likely to prepossess women, or to inspire consideration among men, and that one of the ills from which his painting room afforded a refuge may have often been a wounded vanity. There can be nothing more constantly galling to a sensitive man of genius than to feel that his appearance does not inspire the respect he feels due to him. If he has eloquence sufficient to command attention, this will not matter so much; but if he has not even that (and Turner had not), his natural refuge is solitude, his one absorbing occupation is his art, his only worldly ambition is to show what is in him, and to compel respect to his genius through his works.