The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-06-25

Memories and Impressions-By Ford Maddox-Harper Brothers, New ork. s1.O
 In these pages all the great figures of the Victorian period live. Here they dis port themselves in most homely and neighborly style. Those who will soon appear to the worlds memory only by glimpses and on Olympian heights wrap
 ped around with the clouds of fame here
 are beheid once more on most familiar
 shape as sketched by one who knew
 them we'll, loved them much, and for
 the most part valued them rightly. MT. Hueffer, himself figure in our day,
 would have us believe that nearly all
 the aspiration was stiffled out of him
 when he was "Forde," wearing be- cause of his connection hereditary and not of choice), with the Pre-Rapnael- l ties, long golden hair "a suit Of green
 ish-yeIlow corduroy velveteen with soid | buttons. and two stockings, oS~ which tbe one was red and the other green"- stifled and smothered out by the enor- | y,ousness of the overshadowfng '~Vic- 1 torian great
 To his children he confides in his | dedication" feeling many may share; | Nowadays we have no great figures.
 and thank heaven for 1t because you and can breathe freely. With the pass ing the other day of Tolstoy. with the 1 death Just a few weeks before of MT. Holman Hunt, they all went away to Olympus, where very fittingly they may dwell"
 l They lived, these great ones, largely
 and generously, they had no petty econ
 omies of sparing themselves either in
 purse or in thought they gave of their substance and of themselves freely, eX- pecting nor exacting return, they set all
 doors of opportunity open and left them wide that less fortunate ones might enter also
 l Maddox Brown, the authors grandfath- CT, is as alive in these pages as ever his contemporaries saw him. He Is for all the world like "a king of hearts" in appearance. full of strange paths, and overflow ing with stranger charities. One of these was to feed in his kitchen vociferous socialist workmen out of em- ploy-except the employment of invent l ing wonderful hard luck and politicai- persecuted tales warranted to appeal to
 Maddox Browns simplicity Another was unique llan to redeem poets and others from dipsomania, upon those like to be over tempted by the flowing bowl he fastened labels upon which were inscribed his own name and address, therefore when these were discovered in any place incapable of taking care of themselves they were brought to Brown, the cabman often thinking every ono so labeled was Brown himself.
 | The author professes to have more than once heard such colloquy: Cabman- | i've got your master in my cab. He's very drunk, The maid of the Brown household with immense intonation of pride: My masters a-sittng at the l head of the table entertaining his guest. | That's MT. -. Carry him upstairs and lay him in the bath" This in the | house on Fitzroy square. the house where | Thackery saw fit to put Colonel New come to dwell. With hundred quaint and loveable charities like these afoot 1t is no wonder that Mir Hueffer finds resemblance between the good colonel of fiction and the good painter of real life similar natures in their chivalrous, un- business-like, and naive simplicity" Here we have as in life Brown, the great painter. There was only one English l painter who could paint. His name was 1 Brown, you probably never heard of him. He painted picture called Work so l Hueffer quotes an American art critic as saying to himself; and thus he quotes R. A. NJ. Stevensons (whom some Eng | lishmen pronounce more of a genius than Robert l.. s. valuation of Browns pie ] ture "The Pretty Baa-Lambs" By God. the whole history of modern art begins l with that picture. Corot, Manet the 1 Marises, all the Fontainbleau school, all | the impressionists, never, did anything but initiate that picture" Here We have Maddox Browns mode of painting; first many and minute pencil drawings, then large charcoal cartoon then a version In vf-ofa oln han tt, ctaI- tl,a l in oils-then to work on the picture It. 1 self We see him painting on his huge 1 picture ''Wycliffe on His Trial Before John of Gaunt," the studies that precede l the real work were cone the great can vas itself was half filed in:
 1 !" Half the picture is done and it l feels as If I were going home "-"Those think were his last words. He laid h's Brushes upon his painting cabinet, scrap ed his palette of all mixed paints. laid his palette upon his brushes and his | spectacles upon his palette. He took off the biretta that he always wore when he was painting-he must have worn such a biretta for upward of half a. century l ever since he had been French stu dent. And so. having arrived at his end 1 of-the-day routine, which he had follow ed for innumerable years, he went up- stairs to bed-and died in his seep-the picture remaining ownstairs-unfinish- ed"
 l So passed Madox Brown-according to some critics the only real English painter since Hogarth-the only na- | tional one, the only one who could paint, the only one who had ideas NoI th the snuff of candle" His grand son has here given the picture of a very great man, simple generous and l good.
 Here we have Rossetti filling his house with all the curios of all sorts. of all periods that he could get or that l could be gotten off on him, so that they were in themselves gay and beau l titul and purported to be rare: "Ro- | setti lying on a sofa in the black studio with lighted candles at his feet and lighted candles a this head, while two extremely beautiful ladies dropped grapes into his mouth
 William Morris. who lunched daily off roast beef and plum pudding at every season of tho year and who "lked his pudding large" Mir. Huef-
 fer assures his readers that the inner circle the men who really made up the Brotherhood of -Raphaelites,
 were rough and ready fellows. as bold and burly as any of those English Sol diars who have girdled the world with
 English tongue and English homes. It
 was the outer circle the followers, who
 Hanted to Hive on the smell of a lily"
 who were all for poetic pallor. cling | ing garments and for ascetic counte- nances."
 Here we have Ruskin pouring liba- 1 tions of praise to Rosetti (Dante) and Rossatti declaring that both Ruskin and himself were "sneaks. Ruskin | I,ot