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 to 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,