The Press. — London, England, 1858-06-19 00:00:00

ittraturt. The Struggles of a Young Artist. Being a Memoir of David C. Gibson. By a Brother Artist. London : Nisbet. THE principal facts in this memoir, so far as we can gather them from a narrative which is neither very precise nor very accurately dated, may be soon told. Gibson was born at Edin burgh in 1827; was educated at the Iligh•school, and, having shown a talent for drawing, attended the classes of Sir William Allan. He lost his father, mother, and fLister before he was eighteen, and within a short time of each other ; and sup ported himself for some years by portrait-painting. In 1852 he came to London; in 1853 had a picture rejected at the British Institution; in 1855 be came au exhibitor at the Royal Academy, and in the same year went to Spain for his health. From Spain he sent home some pictures which met with considerable success, and on his return the next year (1856) began to paint with re newed ardour. In the autumn, however, he had the misfortune to break a blood-vessel on the lungs, and died about three weeks afterwards. Ilis style was genre. His chief pictures seem to have been, " The Little Stranger," which was hung as a companion to Faed's " Mitherless Bairn " in the Academy of 1855; " Spanish Gossips at the Well," which appeared on the same walls in 1856, and was purchased, we be lieve, by Mr. Creswick ; and "Country Cousins," a subject on which he was engaged at the time of his death. Such a career as this affords but few materials for biography, nor, whatever might be the case with friends, would the world have demanded a Life of one so comparatively unknown to fame. But the struggles of artists have almost always something interesting about them, and the title of the volume might naturally seem to promise such particulars as would encourage men who have begun life under equally depressing circum stances, but whom his exertions, crowned as they were by at least the dawn of fortune and repu tation, might well inspire with fresh faith in themselves and in their art. In this respect the book is a disappointing one. A few common place anecdotes of the caprices of persons who sat to Gibson for their portraits, and some in teresting particulars of a visit to Abbotsford during Scott's last illness, fill up the period be tween 1844 and 1852, while the artist's mind was forming, and his senses and feelings gaining ex perience of the world. Extracts from his journal are given, from which his simple, amiable, affec tionate character may be plainly perceived ; but of his habits and mode of life the compiler has permitted us to see but little, and that little not of a pleasant character. In Gibson's life, as in that of hundreds of other men, there seems to have been a period when his morality was by no means flawless, and his orthodoxy by no means unimpeachable. The guilt or sin which may be involved in such phases of faith and experience we have no wish to palliate or deny ; and it would be both false and foolish to assert that no character can be complete without its knowledge of evil, or that "the grain by which a man may live" could not have sprung up unless the wild oat had preceded it. And for holding up such passages to reprobation or pity there is in some cases an excuse. In the case of a public man whose example is of consequence—in the case of one who parades his feelings, like Byron, or his opinions, like Shelley—it is inevitable to inquire whether practice and profession are in accordance, and to what secret causes arc traceable those phenomena which the surface of the character exhibits. Such men have challenged the curio sity of their fellows during life, and can hardly hope t o escape it after death. They pay the penalties of celebrity in more ways than one. Omne animi vitium tanto conspectins in se Crimea habet, quanto major qui peccet habetur. But this is very different from the case of an un distinguished individual, who is neither bad enough to be a warning nor good enough to be set up as an example to the world at large. Whether he sins or whether he repents, his sin and his repentance is between him and his Maker. By what right does that most formidable being, the " candid friend," THE PRESS, JUNE 19, 1858. drag his frailties from their dread abode, Whore they alike in trembling hope repose, The bos. m of his Father and his God, into the light of common day, and " improve the occasion" of his death—when he has (humanly speaking) made his peace with Heaven—by tear ing open all the old wounds of a conscience which sincere contrition and change of purpose had effectually healed ? That if-a man who has erred, repents and leads a new life, he is likely both to prosper in his worldly concerns and to enjoy peace of mind in spiritual things, is surely not so uncommon a lesson that it needs to be enforced by the dissection of every poor fellow's character whom passion, or weakness, or bad company has led astray in the early part of his career. Endeavours after improvement are not likely to be encouraged by a knowledge that, whatever he may do to acquire the approbation of his own conscience and the respect of his fellow-creatures, still, after all, the carrion vulture waits To tear his heart before the crowd ; and that his private journals are to be ransacked in order to afford evidence for such a description as this : While his intellectual nature was advancing, the nobler part of his being seems to have been miserably retro• grading. Sad and significant entries in his journal show how lamentably he had belied early promise, and sacrificed peace to the indulgence cf baser passions. It requires a delicate hand to touch all the chequered experiences of a life like Gibson's ; and yet we feel that the power, as well as fidelity of memoirs, is often sacrificed by passing slightly over those seasons of debasement and gloom antecedent to the struggle between light and dark ness. The return of the prodigal eon is described —his reception in his father's halls—the tear; of forgiveness— the feast and merrymaking; but the tale of the "far county "—the garbage of the wilderness—the herding and companionship with the swine: these are eith,r Blurred over, or else alt. Igether omitted. Not only thereby is truthfulness surrendered ; but we lose—what great painters seem to understand better than biographers—the power of contrast. The Bible parable we have referred to ( that ideal of picture•writing) would lose half its impres siveness, had those Divine lips which uttered it given us only the closing scene, and omitted the description of the wretch, cowering in shame and squalor, in the inhospitable waste, " fain to fill his belly with the husks which the swine did eat." . . Gibson was now in this "far country," without either earthly or heavenly haute. It could not be said, indeed, of hint, as of the other, that " no man gave unto hint." Alas I human hands came to minister to the unbefriended orphan, but they were those who, when he asked of them bread, gave him a stone, and added gall to the wormwood. Not one of them pointed with a friendly hand to the light glimmering in the sacred threshold of virtue and peace. Their object was to lead him to plunge deeper and deeper into the wilds of the wilderness, and become more assimi lated to the beast than the man. Too readily—too thoroughly did they succeed. Once set in motion, the momentum increased with fatal velocity. Profligacy drowned and deadened conscience—that conscience that was once so full of delicate sensibility. The vitiated awl shallow intellects with whom he came in contact sought to complete the triumph by the avowal of speculative infidelity. The Bible was scoffed at ; it was the book of a bygone age —in antagonism M ith science, and especially with the revelations of modern geology ! Glad was poor Gibson to catch at such wretched and fatal delusions. We cannot wonder that the prodigal who wallowed night after night in the filth of the purlieus of Drury-lane and the Hay market, revelling with degraded and degrading minds, making himself the song of the drunkard,—we cannot wonder that he should too willingly give credence to the lviag prophets, who proclaimed that death is an eternal sleep, hell a phantasy, and God's Holy Book, with all its elevating parity, the forgery of a superstitious age! As infidelity followed debauchery —so, in the natural order of things, wild Utopian dreams as to Chartism and Socialism—tho equality of rights and division of property —tracked the footsteps of their elder sisters. Every wretched he•esy of ;he Owen school seemed ready to complete the wreak and disorganization of his moral nature. The following is from a chapter entitled " The Crisis" : The young artist. had been long breasting the billows. Hopes were blighted, and even worldly ambition was well nigh crushed in the straggle for subsistence. A deeper moral chaos, too, had settled down upon him. The memories of early innocence, a pore heart, at.d once joyous home, came back in sad contrast with the systematic depravity that was hurrying him on to wretchedness and ruin, and hastening him to au early grave. His mother's prayers—his sister's gentle voice —would, indeed, in spite of him, ever and anon obtrude in these hours of coarse revelry. The embers of a once noble, gentle nature, had not been trodden out by the plola of heartless seducers. Yet every day was narrowing the pathway of the prodigal's return, and the dark wist of despair was gathering thicker and faster around ! These are grave charges, and should not he lightly made, for they not only affect Gibson's memory, but must bear hardly on many of his surviving associates. Does the writer really mean to imply that the men with whom Gibson mixed during his London career were guilty of such diabolical depravity as is- indicated by the passages we have italicised ? We find great difficulty in believing it without much more evi dence than he has chosen to afford us; and the following letter, which was addressed to the Athenceum last week, bears out the supposition that such statements arc not altogether to be trusted :- 27, West Derby-street, Liverpool, June 10. A review appeared in your number of the 15th nit., of a memoir of my cousin, tne late Mr. Gibson, the tenor of wnich led me to obtain the book in question (" Straggles of a Young Artist"), that I might for in; self judge of its contents. And, on behalf of Mr. Gibson's relatives as well as for myself, his oldest companion, I,choolfellow, and friend, I must say its contents tilled me with indignation. I deal that Mr. Gibson was, at any time of life, the de bauchee or socialist represented by the author, who has wisely suppressed his name ; and, even bad Le been so, what right had he to expose to the public the faults of the dead, who cannot defend himself, and whose memory, therefore, ought to be sacred—more especially to the author of this book, who well knew Mr. Gibson's sensitive feelings on this very subject, expressed mily a few days before his death. As a Life of Mr. Gibson, I may add, the work is incorrect and incomplete. Hy your insertion of these lines you will deeply oblige, not only myself, but a large circle of the late Mr. Gibson's relatives, who feel painfully hurt that such a character of him should go forth to the world without contradiction.-1 am, &e., W. S. LAURIE. The biographer leaves us in doubt whether Gibson's early death was in consequence of the dissoluteness he imputes to him, or of an here ditary malady. We suspect that the latter is really the case, and that much of the self-re proach evinced by his journal was caused by the morbid sensitiveness which ill-health frequently occasions. Nor do we see how, at the period to which the said excesses are attributed, Gibson would have had either time or money for any great indulgence in them. There are portions of the volume, however, which will well repay perusal. Their value, indeed, is not owing in any degree to the bio grapher, but to Gibson himself whose simple and amiable nature, and correct sense of the require ments of art, is perceptible in all the extracts made from his journal on that subject. The fol lowing passages seem extremely characteristic both of the man himself and the kind of subjects to which he principally devoted himself. The first is from a tour in the Highlands in the autumn of 1853 : A shepherd boy gave me the agreeable information that I was near Por.insherrick retry, which boasts of an inn on the opposite side. liesidea feeling tired, and having no objection to rest a night near this mountain solitude, I saw a tine old castle on an island in the loch, near the opposite shore. So I soon found myself in the ferryman's cot The sun was streaming in through a little window, and subdued the hot glare of burning pests, neatly piled up on flat stones in the middle of the clay floor. A little girl, eating a piece of ost-cake, sat on a low stool. The dog having quietly acquiesced in my entrance, com menced familiarly to brush himself against my legs, and to rest his head on my knee when I sat down. The woman took from a cupboard a bowl of milk, and gave it me. In return, I pulled from my pocket a flask of ahem (i.e. Highland•inn sherry !) and asked her to drink. She had scarcely done so, when going to the little girl, she stooped down and put it, to her lips, saying, " Just taste that, Jessie ; it's no every day ye'll get the like ! " Not withstanding the very homely appearance of the woman— she was big,atout, and rough-spoken—l could not help liking her. In a greater abundance than the milk she gave me, she seemed to possess that of human kindness. As I began to chat to and take notice of the child, " Ab ! she'll soon be of use to me," she said; " she's ■n orphan, poor thing ; sho has no father and no mother. After they died and lett her, she lived with an aunt ; but her aunt got married, and went with her husband to Australia ; so I took her to stay with us ; and we never mist her bite o' meat, poor thing ! Sure ye would'nt like to leave no— would ye, Jessie ?" Great Father of Natnre ! would that all Thy children viewed the sorrows and trials of their fellow-creatures with the same kindly feeling that glows in the heart of this poor ferryman's wife ! The following are good ideas, which it is to be regretted he did not live to realize : " I must have a spell of the country by and by, and not only make sketches, hut paint one or two pictures on the spot. I have been thinking how seldom we see a real peasant painted. They are always town's people, got np in the studio for the occasion, with short gowns, plaids, &e. What fine Minnas and Brendas Wight be met wi , .h in the Orkneys ! How novel, and, at the same time, how natural would they look beside the misses in satin and lace that are taken so often to represent these northern maids." Again IVhat splendid pictures might be made of snow storms, and how lew are attempted ! I was thinking to day what a good plan it would be to buy an old GAMINS get a large window made in it—drive it to some fine spot —kindle a jolly good fire in it—aud paint pictures in all weathers and at all seasons ; in fact, to fit it np like a regular studio, and move it to whatever •iew von wished to paint! The idea seems ridiculous, but it would be an excellent plan—would it not? And if one's funds failed, A