Besant was also a native of Portsmouth; and his story By Celia's Arbour deals with the times of the French prisoners at Portchester Castle, a few miles distant from his birthplace. Miss Charlotte Yonge's numerous works were written at Otterbourne, where she resided; and Captain Marryat's best story has to do with the New Forest. For some years William Cobbett lived at Fairthorn Farm, Botley; but the large square house built of the noted Fareham red brick, in which he dispensed hospitality to his friends, has been pulled down. His political pamphlets have now passed into obscurity; but his racy book the Rural Rides is still a favourite among lovers of country life. Many of these rides,' undertaken during the years 1821 to 1832, were through the county of Hants, and Cobbett's descriptions of the scenery and of the state of agriculture are alike full of vigour and interest. Passing mention must also be made of Colonel Peter Hawker, whose Instructions to Young Sportsmen, published in 1830, is the most famous book on shooting in the language, while his Diary is the delight of field naturalists. The Colonel lived at Longparish House by the river Test, in which he loved to angle, and in which he caught literally thousands of trout; he also spent much time on the coast of Hampshire, where he built himself a cottage at Keyhaven, near Lymington, but the number of wild-fowl has sadly diminished since the great sportsman wrote his celebrated books. It must not be forgotten that the poet Keats during his 'short journey to the grave' sojourned now and again at Shanklin, in the Isle of Wight, where he began Endymion, and afterwards wrote Lamia. His poem To Autumn was written when on a visit to Winchester.

In conclusion a brief reference must be made to the connection with our county of Lord Tennyson, the greatest literary name (with the possible exception of Jane Austen) associated with it. Hearing in 1853 that the beautiful old house of Farringford, at Freshwater, was for sale, he went with his wife to see it. They crossed the Solent in a rowing-boat on a still November evening, and 'one dark heron flew over the sea, backed by a daffodil sky.' Next day, we are told, ' as they gazed from the drawing-room window towards a sea of Mediterranean blue, with the down on the left rising above the foreground of undulating park, golden-leaved elms and chestnuts, and red-stemmed pines, they agreed that they must if possible have that view to live with,' So Tennyson came to Freshwater, far from smoke and noise of town,' to the secluded, creeper-covered house of Farringford, which was to be his home for forty years, and where many of his best works, including Maud and the Enoch Arden volume and the Idylls of the King, were written. One of his favourite haunts was the meadow called Maiden's Croft (dedicated to the Virgin Mary), looking over Freshwater Bay and toward the downs. In this field of the old priory he built himself a little summer-house, where he would write down the lines he made as he paced up and down the meadows.

6

'I made most of The Holy Grail' he would say, ' walking up and down my field "Maiden Croft." The country around Freshwater, and especially the 'noble downs,' the air of which, he used to say, was 'worth sixpence a pint,' are intimately associated with the great poet's memory. His favourite walk, his son tells us, was along the downs from Watcombe Bay by the Beacon towards the thymy promontory that towers above the Needles. The views of sea and cliff, the gloom and glory over the waters on either hand, were a perpetual delight to him.' On the one side the hoary Channel tumbles a billow on chalk and sand,' and on the other the beautiful outlines of the New Forest, with the noble edifice of Christchurch in the distance, are seen beyond the blue waters of the Solent. He liked to listen to 'the scream of the madden'd beach dragg'd down by the wave'; or watch at sunset the great waves flinging their rosy 'veil of spray' behind them and shouldering the sun.' One special spot that he liked above all was a platform of cliff above Scratchell's Bay, looking up to a dazzling white precipice, which he named Taliessin or the 'splendid brow.' Here he loved to stand, and watch the birds, an unceasing source of interest to him, that haunt the chalk ledges-the splendid peregrines, the ravens with their 'iron knell,' the kestrel-hawks, the stock-doves, the countless wild fowl, cormorants, puffins, guillemots, razorbills, that visit the cliffs every spring. Not far from this spot, on 'the ridge of the noble down,' fitly stands the lofty Iona cross of grey Cornish granite which has been erected as a memorial to our Island poet. In the church below, a tablet to his memory has been placed upon the chancel wall which tells us that his 'happiest days were passed at Farringford in this parish.'

JOHN VAUGHAN.

X X

VOL. LXI-No. 362

THE NORWICH SCHOOL AND THEIR LAST EXPONENT

THE Norwich School have come into their kingdom, but it is only within the last few years, surprising as the statement may at first appear. In Norwich four years ago there was a very fine exhibition of their work, to which Mr. James Reeve sent his now famous collection. Not long afterwards the Reeve collection was again shown in London, on its acquisition by the British Museum. On several recent occasions, too, the pictures collected by the late Mr. Staats Forbes were seen in London, and at Christie's a number of Norwich School pictures have changed hands. The first books written upon the School have appeared during the last year, one that promised more than it performed by Mr. Dickes, and another of considerable value, on Crome's etchings, by Mr. Theobald, the happy possessor of the Dawson Turner collection. All these happenings have increased the sum of knowledge and stimulated to a degree hitherto unknown the public interest. It is to be hoped that now adequate monographs will be written on some of the associates and followers of 'Old' Crome. Justice, though tardy, has been done to Crome himself and to Cotman, but other members of the Norwich school have yet to receive full recognition. Now and again some notable landscape is exhibited at Burlington House, such as George Vincent's Driving the Flock, which was to be seen a few years ago, and critics are constrained to say that if this example were typical of his work the painter would rank with our masters of landscape painting. The 'if,' like the wise wagging of a forefinger, would seem to imply knowledge, but in truth Vincent's pictures are little known even to the critics and when brought at long intervals from their retreat it is generally to surprise. There is no picture by Vincent in the National Gallery, and the little subject, a forest road, at the South Kensington Museum is singularly unrepresentative of the work of a painter who has revealed the phases of the sky with an aerial charm that lingers in the memory. When his masterpiece, Greenwich Hospital, was shown at the International Exhibition of 1862 interest was aroused for a time in the forgotten painter. He would have ranged,' wrote Mr. Palgrave, with our best men, if we may argue safely from one example.' Exhibited

again at the Royal Academy, it caused many to marvel that a picture by a man almost ignored in the annals of our art could easily vie with the pictures of Turner and Wilson between which it was hung.

The works of James Stark, Crome's most celebrated pupil, have for a generation or more been sought by discriminating judges, and their worth is estimated by those who

buy and sell our pictures, take and give,

Count them for garniture and household stuff,

at augmenting prices. But to the public, to that posterity for whom Crome urged him to paint, his pictures can hardly yet be said to be familiar. His posthumous reputation, moreover, has suffered from the habit of attributing some of his best work to the hand of his master. An instance of this occurred at one of the winter exhibitions of the Royal Academy, when a picture by Stark was assigned in the catalogue to Crome, and was cited at the time as an example of an excellence in Crome's painting to which none of his pupils could attain. Another instance occurred in 1903, when the late Mr. Forbes exhibited his Norwich School pictures at the rooms of the Fine Art Society. Among them was A Lane near Norwich, a fine landscape attributed to Crome. The history of this picture was known to me, and having in my possession an etching of it made by the painter from his picture, I sent this etching with its history to Mr. Forbes, with the result that he restored the painting to its rightful ownership. Before Stark's work found favour in the auction room some of the pictures of his best period were, for purposes of gain, assigned to Crome, the difference in the price of the works of master and pupil being considerable. Since the market value of Stark's best work has approximated to that of Crome's the temptation has been slight. But again and again have Stark's pictures been exhibited thus re-christened, and it is now a hopeless task to restore them to their true paternity. In addition, feeble works that have but scant claims even to resemble those of the Norwich school are freely called Starks, and bear conspicuously upon their faces his signature, although the pictures signed by him are probably only two in number. Such is the price that must be paid sometimes for the growth of a painter's reputation. When in 1876 Stark's Valley of the Yare was seen at Burlington House it was a revelation to many of the admirable quality of his best work, and ten years afterwards it was acquired by the National Gallery. Owing to the adoption of a somewhat arbitrary chronology, it has since been removed to the Tate Gallery, and is thus divorced from other pictures of the school in the older building. That this picture is known as a Stark and not as a Crome is due to the late Mr. Arthur Stark, the son and pupil of the painter. While it was in Mr. Arthur Stark's possession he was offered for it what was then the high price of a thousand pounds, a sum which at that time he could ill afford to

forfeit. 'But if I have it,' said the disingenuous dealer, 'it's a Crome.' 'And wherever I see it, it's a Stark,' replied the owner, and refused the bribe.

Our public galleries are comparatively rich in examples of Crome's work, discreditably poor in examples of the work of Cotman and other members of the school. Of the Dutch Galliot in a Storm in the National Gallery, which sails under Cotman's flag, the less said the better. It is one of the many forgeries. He whom it may tempt to associate with the name of Cotman something hard and mechanical should contrast it with the Fishing Boats off Yarmouth in the Norwich Castle Museum. Apart from the tale of our public galleries, but few opportunities had been afforded until lately of reviewing the claims of these painters. At the International Exhibition were to be seen some of Crome's finest subjects, but it was not until 1878 that the school received their first appropriate recognition, when at the winter exhibition of the Royal Academy a room was devoted to fifty-six of their pictures, the majority of which, however, were by Crome and Cotman. Stark's pictures, eight in number, were ill chosen, there were only six by Vincent, although these included On the Yare, and four by Stannard. Soon afterwards the Norwich Art Circle gave several interesting exhibitions, Thirtle's water colours being for the first time gathered together, landscapes characterised at once by freedom and delicacy. It was seen then that some of Thirtle's pictures are spoilt for posterity because the painter mixed the fugitive indigo with Indian red to produce the gray of his skies. As in some water colours by Copley Fielding, the indigo has faded, leaving a brilliant red to bewilder the spectator. After this revival of interest the school was little heeded for twenty years.

Norwich is now proud of its painters, but in their lifetime it was otherwise. In those days in East Anglia it needed a man of genius to divine the genius in Crome. Seek'st thou a living master?' cries Lavengro to his brother. Thou hast one at home in the old

East Anglian town .. the little dark man with the brown coat and the top boots. whose works will at no distant period rank amongst the proudest pictures of England . . . thy, at present, all too little considered master, Crome.' Crome was a drawing master, and by virtue of his industry and engaging qualities he earned in this way, after a struggle, a modest competence. His pictures he painted on Sundays and in his holidays, sometimes making a present of his work to a patron whose children he taught, and if he received five pounds for a masterpiece he deemed himself lucky. Among his Norwich contemporaries he was called Black Jack, a sobriquet in which there lurked disparagement, for to the dark minds of these worthy gentlefolk and merchants the deep interwoven mystery in his pictures was blackness. This was the Norwich for whose fair fame he was so ambitious that he strove to make it a centre of art second only to the