Samuel Rogers and his Contemporaries
Uvedale Price to Samuel Rogers, 25 May 1823
‘My dear Sir,—I have to thank you for a most
acceptable present in every respect; it tells me in the ![]()
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pleasantest manner that you have not forgotten me, and the reading of it has
afforded me no common degree of pleasure. This work of yours has given me two
longings: the one to revisit that enchanting country of which you have drawn so
many varied and striking pictures; the other to induce you to revisit this
place, where you have left a very pleasing remembrance of the short time you
passed amongst us. As to the first, I believe I should view Italy even with
increased delight after more than fifty years’ absence. I was then a very
young, though a very eager observer; I am now a very old one, and hardly less
eager, but age and infirmities, were there no other obstacles, forbid any hope
of so long a journey. The second, that of seeing you here, I will not despair
of, and of being able to talk to you vivâ
voce about many things in your poems, and thence of many
others connected with them in your mind, and which I should delight to hear. I
also wish to have my revenge and to shew you (anch’ io son pittore) a number of pictures I have
been producing since you saw the place, working with the materials of nature;
they are, as you may remember, most abundant; and I have endeavoured to form
with them such compositions, from the foreground to the most distant objects,
as would satisfy the eye of a judicious painter. I have had the satisfaction of
seeing more than one excellent artist, and one of them—Lord Aylesford—extremely averse to have
anything pointed out to him as a good subject for a drawing, take his stand
exactly where I wished, and where I had secretly conducted him, and draw the
composition as if he had discovered it himself, tale
quale and con amore. This
picture-![]()
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making (you well know the
delight of it in poetry) is a most amusing and interesting operation; it is,
however, a very nice one, and the varied frame of each composition, itself an
essential part, is to be studied almost to a twig. You remember, I dare say, a
fanciful but ingenious idea, I forget whose, that in every block of marble a
beautiful statue lay concealed, and that you had only to clear away the
rubbish. It is the same, mutatis mutandis, in this
place, and in every place of a similar kind; innumerable pictures are
concealed, and I am endeavouring poco a
poco to clear away what, after due deliberation, I judge to
be rubbish. You have lately been viewing all that is most excellent in real and
painted landscapes, and must come here and look at my operations and see
whether I have followed the principles of the great masters of composition. All
this, I am afraid, will not appear very seducing; but I know you love drawings
of the old masters, and have yourself some very good specimens. I particularly
remember one of Giorgione that I envied
you. Now I have books full of the old masters which I believe you have scarcely
looked into, and though I have no Giorgione I have a
Titian or two, and many drawings well
worth your notice.
‘I must now ask you a question or two by letter, en attendant mieux. Is the story of Jorasse, his fall into the barathrum, the
dreadful canopy of ice, the river that ran under it, his plunge into the deep
water, and his rising into Paradise—all true? A more striking one never
was invented, and the dénouement is the most sudden
and most delightfully surprising of all dénouements. You have done it justice, and that is saying ![]()
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everything. I pointed it out the other day to a friend of
mine of great taste and sensibility, and he was as much delighted with it as I
was.
‘Now a word or two about the ancient larch. I wish I had
been with you, for I never saw an ancient larch and long very much to see one,
and particularly on one account. The larches I have, some of them nearly ninety
feet high, are mere infants compared with yours, for they were all planted by
my father and are probably about my age, if so old. Several of them have roots
above ground of a size and character that seem to belong to trees of at least
twice their age, as you shall see when you come here, for come you must. Now I
want to know whether you happened to notice the roots of your ancient larch,
“majestic though in ruins.” I am afraid you were
occupied with the human figure sitting near it, and scarcely observed them. You
love a little anecdote, and I will tell you one of Sir Joshua. He mentioned to me his having once gone down the
Wye from Monmouth to Chepstow. I asked him whether he was not very much struck
with the inside of Tintern Abbey at the opening of the door. “I
believe,” he said, “it is very striking, but I was so taken up
with the groups of begging figures round the door, and their look of want
and wretchedness, that I could not take my eyes from them.” The
fact is, that he did not care very much about landscape of any kind in nature,
and had only a high relish for it in the works of the greatest masters,
particularly in the backgrounds of Titian.
‘Among other numerous longings, you have given me a very
strong one for a sight of the Orsini Palace, its ![]()
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noble gardens, terrace above terrace, and of the
Domenichino, so interesting a
subject by such a painter. I did not stop at Modena, shame upon me, and never
heard of this Ginevra; but the main part of
her story I remember hearing from my mother when I was quite a child, and it
made a deep and lasting impression on me. You may perhaps be curious to hear it
in its simple English dress, and I believe I can tell it you very much as I had
it from my mother. A number of young girls, she said, were playing at
hide-and-seek in an old rambling mansion; one of them, a very lovely and
beautiful girl and very eager in the sport, could never be found by her
companions during the game, and after it was over was still missing. Weeks
passed and still no tidings of her, when one of the family going into a
lumber-room in a remote part of the house smelt a terrible stench, which seemed
to come from a chest that was locked. It was burst open, when the putrid
remains of the poor girl appeared, and the spring-lock told the horrible story.
The same catastrophe may certainly have happened in England, and the name of
the person and the place have been forgotten, but it seems more probable that
the whole was taken from Ginevra, though
the circumstances are altered. In any case, I was highly pleased to read my
nursery story so impressively told, and with so many circumstances that give it
both dignity and interest and what mine wants, “a local habitation and
a name.” In mine, however, to which I have an early attachment,
the play of hide-and-seek seems more naturally to account for an unfrequented
part of the house, and a hiding-place being sought after, and there is
something peculiarly ![]()
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terrible and affecting in the idea of
the discoverer, the father or mother, or perhaps the lover of the miserable
victim, being led by the alarming stench to the fatal chest, and seeing, when
it was forced open, the corpse of what they so loved, got green in death and
festering in her tomb, and while all her loveliness was fresh in their memory.
I never can think without shuddering of the moment ‘When the spring-lock that lay in ambush there Fastened her down for ever, |
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of the unavailing screams and struggles, the lingering agonies, and so
near those she loved, so near assistance—si forte
pedem, si forte tulissent.
‘You have been equally happy in your gay and your gloomy
pictures. As to the first, I have no lakes to shew you, no passage boats with
peasant girls, fruits and flowers gliding by, nor trellises and corridors,
vintages in their hey-day, barks sailing up and down, all pleasure, life and
motion on land and water; but as to your dark tints, I have ancient yews that
will match the lonely chapel of St. Bernard, or the gloomy silence of St.
Bruno. Your ancient larch is probably a child to my yews, some of which must
remember the Conquest, and one or two the Heptarchy. Rembrandt would delight in them and give full effect to their
black massy trunks and spreading branches; but I should beg Claude’s assistance for the aerial tint
of a distant mountain that I have let in, and that appears in one or two
instances, under the solemn canopy. I long to shew you what relief and value
they give to each other. I should have thanked ![]()
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you sooner for all the pleasure you have given
me, but the foul fiend Dyspepsia, who never quite leaves me, has lately been
unusually harassing, and as you well know, when the stomach, Magister artis, ingeniqne largitor, is out of order, the head is good
for nothing.
‘Believe me, my dear Sir,
‘Ever most truly yours,
‘When will the Second Part come out? Another
longing.’
Claude Lorrain (1600-1682)
French painter whose idealized landscapes were much admired in Britain.
Domenichino (1581-1641)
Italian painter of the Bolognese school.
Giorgione (1477 c.-1510)
Venetian painter, with Titian he was a student of Giovanni Bellini.
Sir Uvedale Price, first baronet (1747-1829)
Of Foxley in Herefordshire; he was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and
published
Essay on the Picturesque (1794).
Rembrandt (1606-1669)
Dutch painter and etcher.
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)
English portrait-painter and writer on art; he was the first president of the Royal
Academy (1768).
Titian (1487 c.-1576)
Venetian painter celebrated for his portraits.
