132 ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING

105. Thus much for his jealousy of his brother-artists. You have also heard much of his niggardliness in money transactions. A great part of what you have heard is perfectly true, allowing for the exaggeration which always takes place in the accounts of an eccentric character. But there are other parts of Turner’s conduct of which you have never heard; and which, if truly reported, would set his niggardliness in a very different light. Every person from whom Turner exacted a due shilling, proclaimed the exaction far and wide; but the persons to whom Turner gave hundreds of pounds were prevented, by their “delicacy,” from reporting the kindness of their benefactor. I may, however, perhaps, be permitted to acquaint you with one circumstance of this nature, creditable alike to both parties concerned.

At the death of a poor drawing master, Mr. Wells,* whom Turner had long known, he was deeply affected, and lent money to the widow until a large sum had accumulated. She was both honest and grateful, and after a long period was happy enough to be able to return to her benefactor the whole sum she had received from him. She waited on him with it; but Turner kept his hands in his pockets. “Keep it,” he said, “and send your children to school, and to church.” He said this in bitterness; he had himself been sent to neither.¹

106. “Well, but,” you will answer to me, “we have heard Turner all our lives stigmatised as brutal, and uncharitable, and selfish, and miserly. How are we to understand these opposing statements?”

Easily. I have told you truly what Turner was. Yor have often heard what to most people he appeared to be.

* Not the Mr. Wells who taught drawing at Addiscombe. It appears that Turner knew two persons of the same name, and in the same profession. I am not permitted to name my authority for the anecdote; various egotistic “delicacies,” even in this case, preventing useful truth from being clearly assured to the public.2

¹ [This anecdote also is repeated in Thornbury’s Life, p. 289; where (ch. xxiii.) other cases in point are recorded.]

² [This note was inserted in ed. 2, in ansere to a letter in the Athenæum of June 10, 1854, denying the anecdote, which had been supposed by the writer of the letter to refer to William Frederick Wells, of the Old Water-Colour Society.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]