January 15, 1825.—To-night (at the Southampton), Hazlitt told some capital things about Dawe the painter.* Describing his essential and ingrained meanness of character, he said, “He had a soul like the sole of a shoe;” and he related some things illustrative of this character. He said Dawe used to lend out every farthing of his own money at usurious interest, and then borrow money of his friends at no interest at all to get on with; and that once he quite abused, and almost quarrelled with John Lamb, who used to lend him money, because on one occa-
* Who was at this time at St. Petersburgh, whence he afterwards returned with a fortune of near half a million of money. |
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He described a capital scene that had taken place at Dawe’s. There was a man named K——, who was reckoned to be like Dawe in personal appearance (both of them being remarkably ugly), and this K—— had often asked Hazlitt to introduce him to Dawe,—he (K.) having a great wish to see a likeness of himself. Dawe, too, had often heard of this resemblance. At last Hazlitt took K—— to Dawe’s house. There was a glass over the chimney-piece in Dawe’s painting-room, and on Hazlitt introducing K——, he described each as first giving a furtive glance at the glass and then at each other.
Hazlitt.—This is Mr. K——, Mr. Dawe.
Dawe.—Very
happy to see Mr. K—— (looking first at
K. and then at himself in the glass, and giving a sort
of inward smile of self-congratulation, as much as to
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K——. Why, no; I don’t see much resemblance myself. There may, perhaps, be a little something in the forehead—a kind of ——
In short, each evidently piqued at the unsatisfactory nature
of the portrait of himself, and each wondering how anybody could possibly think
him like so ugly a person as the other. Hazlitt made out the scene capitally; you
could see each party coquetting, as it were, with his own simular in the glass,
and comparing it, with infinite self-satisfaction, with the living object
before him. There was a portrait of Holcroft which Dawe had
painted, and which belonged to Mrs.
Holcroft, and was to be engraved by Dawe
for a Life of Holcroft,
which Hazlitt was writing. Hazlitt
said that he and Mrs. Holcroft went about it one day to
Dawe’s
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He described very admirably a scene he had witnessed at the M——’s, between Mrs. M—— and Dawe, illustrating the contrast between the flowing, graceful, queen-like style and manner of the one, and the little, peddling, pimping, snipped manner of the other. Mrs. M. was speaking of a picture she had just seen of Sir Joshua’s, of a lady, which she described in her fine way. “The face, Mr. Dawe, was remarkably fair—almost of a marbly whiteness, and on the cheek, to relieve this, there was a slight tinge of colour. The lady wore a perfectly white dress, and she was walking in a sort of garden scene, with a white wall behind her; and overhead there was floating along one white cloud, and by her side was growing one white lily.”
The contrast to all this was furnished by the little snipped and cut-up interruptions of Dawe, thrown in between every stately pause in the description. “Ah!—Yes!—Indeed!—Yes, very nice—ay, indeed.”
Speaking of Haydon
to-night, he said he
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The following was intended by Hazlitt to form part of one of his Conversations with Northcote (Boswell Redivivus) in the New Monthly Magazine, but was suppressed by the editor. It relates to Haydon, the historical painter.
“He then asked me if I had seen anything of
H——? I said, yes; and that he
had vexed me; for I had shown him some fine heads from the Cartoons, done
about a hundred years ago (which appeared to me to
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“I said I never heard him speak with enthusiasm of
any painter or work of merit, nor show any love of art, except as a
puffing-machine for him to get up into and blow a trumpet in his own
praise. Instead of falling down and worshipping such names as Raphael and Michael Angelo, he is only considering how he may, by storm
or stratagem, place himself beside them, on the loftiest seats of
Parnassus, as ignorant country squires affect to sit with judges on the
bench. He told me he had had a letter from Wilkie, dated Rome, with three marks of admiration, and
that he had dated his answer ‘Babylon the Great,’ with
four marks of admiration. Stuff! Why must he always
‘out-Herod Herod?’
Why must the place
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“I said that when I heard stories of this kind, of
even clever men who seemed to have no idea or to take no interest except in
what
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