On 30 August Constable wrote to Maria in Putney Heath from Wivenhoe Park, near Colchester, where he was making a painting for General Rebow, to tell her ‘I live in the park and Mrs Rebow says I am very unsociable’. On 6 September he wrote to her again from the Rebows’, enclosing a letter from his friend Fisher. Fisher told Constable he would be in London on 24 September happy to marry them – so stop shilly-shallying. ‘Follow my example, & get you to your lady, & instead of blundering out long sentences about the “hymeneal altar” &c., say that on Wednesday September 25 you are ready to marry her. If she replies, like a sensible woman as I suspect she is, well, John, here is my hand I am ready, all well & good … I am at her service.’ Fisher wanted them to spend their honeymoon at Osmington, near Weymouth, where he was vicar. The supporters of the couple included Mr Driffield, who had christened Constable and now said he would marry them if Fisher couldn’t. Mr Driffield picked up Constable from the Rebows and drove him to East Bergholt.
Maria was indeed as sensible as Fisher suspected, and although she thought a wedding date a few days later than that proposed by Fisher suited her better, she wasn’t thinking in terms of postponements. She wanted Constable to put himself on the line and undertake the unpleasant task of letting the Doctor know their plans. She had shown Fisher’s letter to her father, ‘in hope they would make some impression upon him, [but] he merely says that without the Doctor’s consent, he shall neither retard, or facilitate it, complains of poverty & so on’. Constable wrote to Dr Rhudde in ‘the most respectful manner’. The Doctor had recently been sending mixed messages, one moment calling Constable an ‘infidel,’ the next – according to Abram – suggesting via Mr Travis that Constable should go into the Church. It was easy to get into, the Doctor said, and being a clergyman was less objectionable than being an artist. When Dr Rhudde returned from his annual trip to Cromer, he actually bowed graciously to Constable from his coach, while his coachman Thomas, holding the reins, gave Constable a knowing grin from the seat above.
Through this closing period of his bachelorhood, Constable seems to have been a good deal distracted. Was he in fact ready to marry Maria? Should the wedding be postponed? He now gave the impression of putting his professional obligations before her. Excusing himself, he told her he had been busy on pictures which he hoped would provide funds for their future together. A few portraits might assist with living expenses through the winter. The Rebows obviously intended their commission – they hoped for several paintings – to help the couple on their way. Constable had been working on a large picture of Flatford Mill for the next Academy exhibition, and his mind was much on the problems of painting Wivenhoe Park. As if hoping she would understand, he wrote to Maria that he was getting on well with it, albeit with a struggle: ‘The great difficulty has been to get so much in as they wanted … On my left is a grotto with some elms, at the head of a peice of water – in the centre is the house over a beautiful wood and very far to the right is a deer house, which it was necessary to add, so that my view comprehended too many [distances]. But to day I have got over the difficulty, and begin to like it myself.’ Possibly the Rebows wanted some of these ‘necessities’, perhaps he wanted them himself. The painting needed to be wider to accommodate things and so he added strips of canvas at each side. He seemed to have been taking note of how grassy the grass looked, and how bright green and how almost edible it could be. He was painting a natural scene, painting ‘from nature’, but also transfusing the scene with light. Wrestling with the real, he heightened the actual into the ideal.8
Far from wanting the marriage put off, Maria asked for Constable’s opinion of what she should wear on the day. She wasn’t pleased when he replied that he always wore black and thought she looked well in that colour. This apparent lack of nuptial enthusiasm made her remind him that, even now, if he wanted to, it wasn’t too late to follow her father’s advice and wait. But as she probably guessed it would, resolution once again seized Constable. Fisher wrote to suggest the first of October. In East Bergholt the village was abuzz with the impending union and Constable was congratulated as though he were already a married man. Then, of course, came a late difficulty: a portrait to be done of an elderly clergyman in Brightwell who was expected to die at any minute and a sitting requested; Constable couldn’t say no. However, on Saturday 28 September, only a day later than promised, he went up to London on the ‘Times’ coach, and on the following Monday Maria and her aunt Mrs Charles Arnold – a stalwart supporter of Maria in her proposed union – called in Charlotte Street to discuss final arrangements. Maria had told him to make his own invitations to family and friends, and although he now wrote to his sister Martha Whalley to ask her to attend the ceremony, he had left it too late; she couldn’t come. Constable sent his kindest love to Maria’s sister Louisa, who he hoped forgave him for taking Maria from her family. After this Maria had a last talk on the subject with her father, and ‘warm words’ were exchanged. Did she make a final, fruitless attempt to get Papa’s blessing? For whatever reason, the wedding was put off one more day.
Maria Bicknell, 1816
But at last, on Wednesday 2 October, according to the parish register of St Martin-in-the-Fields, ‘John Constable of the Parish of Saint Pancras a Bachelor and Maria Elizabeth Bicknell of this Parish a Spinster were married in this Church by Licence …’ It was the first wedding solemnised that day in St Martin’s; the others all conducted by the church’s curate John Tillotson, this by ‘John Fisher, Prebendary of Sarum’. The long-term bachelor groom was forty, the bride twenty-eight. If Maria had hoped to the last minute the church doors would swing open and a procession of Bicknells would come in, she was disappointed; her immediate family, who lived a few hundred yards away, were noticeably absent, and apparently none of his family showed up either. The witnesses in the great near-empty church were his close neighbours from Charlotte Street the apothecary William Manning and his wife Sarah. In the absence of other well-wishers, the Mannings were left to bid the happy couple long life and good fortune.9
At the end of May 1816 Constable had put his name forward once again for election that autumn as an Associate of the Academy; thirty-six other artists did so too. Farington told him that he intended to suggest to several influential members that the Academy ‘fill at least 4 of the 5 vacancies by electing such Artists as had been sometime on the list and were of considerable standing in years’.10 Constable certainly qualified on both counts. Moreover, now that Constable’s marriage was an accomplished fact, his father-in-law felt he had a stake in his success. Mr Bicknell met the Academician William Owen at Putney and, knowing how some naval officers were advanced by the Admiralty, asked him if any outside influence would be useful in getting Constable elected. Owen, so Farington reported, said ‘nothing of the kind would have any effect, but that the general feeling was so much in favor of Constable that whenever it could be done with propriety He would have friends ready to support him’.11 But despite Farington and Owen, once again at the November elections Constable got no votes.12
For the moment Constable had other things on his mind. He was on an extended honeymoon and happily drawing, painting and making up for lost time with Maria. They went first to stay with Bishop Fisher and his wife in Salisbury, then to his aunt Mary Gubbins and her family in Southampton. From there they made an excursion to the picturesque ruins of Netley Abbey.13 After that they joined Prebendary Fisher and his wife in Osmington, a small Dorset village tucked into a cleft of the land half a mile from the sea. They stayed for seven weeks. In his invitation Fisher had commended the place: ‘The country here is wonderfully wild & sublime & well worth a painters visit. My house commands a singularly beautiful view & you may study from my very windows. You shall [have] a plate of meat set by the side of your easel without your sitting down to dinner: we never see company: & I have brushes paints & canvas in abundance.’ He knew Constable’s obsessiveness and apparent unsociability. But in the small vicarage there wasn’t room for much except the conten
tment of the two newly-married couples.
From the wooded valley of Sutton and Preston, a small amphitheatre formed by hills, you could see (so Fisher said) ‘a peep of the blue sky in the distance with Portland: and two old forlorn ash trees in the foreground. The place is very sequestered & is frequented by kingfishers & woodcocks.’ From Osmington Mills, where fishing boats were hauled up, they walked along the shore westward to Redcliff Point and round the end of it into Weymouth Bay and Bowleaze Cove. There, Constable painted an oil showing a stream called the Jordan snaking across the beach to the sea. The Constables and Fishers also took higher walks on the downs above, where old drystone walls enclosed the grassy fields and there were far views along Chesil Beach to Portland Island. Monarchical enthusiasts among the locals had carved in the chalk hillside overlooking Weymouth an image of George III on horseback – but that wasn’t conspicuous from Osmington and Constable’s royalist sympathies weren’t put into conflict with his tangible sense of the Dorset landscape. Indeed, any assumption that he could only paint Suffolk or Stour valley scenes would now have been quickly overturned. Channel clouds, Channel skies. Wide views with lonely figures and small flocks of sheep. Fisher – as he had said he would – provided canvases and paints. Constable carried a sketchbook everywhere and painted daily, mostly in fair weather but sometimes in foul. When conditions were really bad he moved indoors and kept on painting: a portrait of a buxom, ringletted Mary Fisher, wearing a low-cut dress and a pearl necklace with a pendant crucifix, was one from this time. Fisher had promised in his letter of invitation, ‘My wife is quiet & silent & sits & reads without disturbing a soul & Mrs Constable may follow her example. Of an evening we will sit over an autumnal fireside[,] read a sensible book perhaps a Sermon, & after prayers get us to bed at peace with ourselves & all the world.’ One suspects that Fisher spoke with his ecclesiastical tongue slightly in cheek, and the two newly-wed pairs had other things to occupy and amuse them. Certainly Fisher and Constable discussed each other’s drawings. Any pensiveness on Mary Fisher’s part may have been prompted by occasional thoughts of her cousin John Wordsworth, brother of the poet, whose ship the East Indiaman Abergavenny had been wrecked off this shore in February 1805. Seeking shelter after a partial dismasting, the vessel had run aground and several hundred men had been lost, including John Wordsworth. Toll for the brave.
Weymouth Bay
John and Maria Constable stayed longer than they had intended. The couples got on well and the two men shared confidences about the Established Church and the art establishment whose heart was the Royal Academy. Fisher, even more than his helpful uncle, the Bishop, perceived qualities of genius in the often self-doubting Constable. He overrode the artist’s moments of low esteem with intelligent praise and criticism. He helped Constable set a higher value on his own worth and eventually – by buying paintings at good prices – became Constable’s first major patron. On the last Sunday of his extended honeymoon Constable sat in a choir stall of Preston church, near Osmington, where Fisher also performed parish duties, and sketched his friend in the pulpit as he delivered a sermon.14
Married life began properly back in Charlotte Street in mid-December. Maria was married to a painter, and these were his working quarters. Constable had got his landlord Richard Weight to repaint the staircase and front rooms; a new wallpaper was still to be selected for the back drawing room, for which Lady Heathcote had earlier approved a salmon colour – a good choice as a background for pictures. Constable’s sister Ann invited them to spend Christmas in Bergholt, sister Mary wrote sending her affection and congratulations on their marriage, and Abram turned up in town in person to do the same. But Bergholt itself raised the question: how did the great Caesar, Dr Rhudde, feel about them now?
He was still blowing hot then cold. Mr Travis ‘sounded’ the rector when he encountered him and mentioned that ‘Mr and Mrs Constable would much like to visit Bergholt’. The rector, seemingly relishing his power, replied, ‘If they do, and call upon me, I will not see them.’ The couple postponed their trip. Nevertheless, other signs suggested hope. Dr Rhudde’s servant Thomas brought Abram a fine turkey for Christmas, with the Doctor’s compliments, and this was seen as a peace offering. Mary sent news on 12 January 1817 that Mr Travis understood that the rector simply wanted Constable ‘to make a proper apology’ to Mr Bicknell and himself, presumably for Constable’s conduct in general and in particular for stealing away Maria; then ‘all would be well’. So Constable wrote a letter to Mr Bicknell, which did the trick, and another to the rector, which did not. Abram reported that Dr Rhudde told Mr Travis, ‘If you can see a simple apology in that letter it is more than I can.’ The Doctor further accused Constable of laughing at him in church and drawing caricatures of him. It was obviously time to bow and scrape, never easy for Constable, but Abram and Mr Travis advised it, and for Maria no concession was too great. Constable did his humble duty and wrote again to the rector, sending a copy of his submission to Abram. On 19 January Abram met Dr Rhudde who said he had had a letter from John. Would Abram tell his brother the Doctor would be coming to town in February and would have come to a decision by then? He wasn’t displeased by Constable’s second letter; in fact, ‘I wish them both happy and shall try to make them so.’ Abram thought the rector was softening: ‘He must have his way, it is no use to oppose him, & by giving way & humoring him, any thing may be got over.’
Dr Rhudde was eighty-four and cranky; he was seen to have trouble getting up to and down from the pulpit. The Constables’ suspense continued. The Doctor’s February trip to town didn’t help and he returned home, so Constable told Farington, ‘in as ill a humour as ever’. But, Constable added, the rector had had a new will drawn up in which he had made provision for any children Constable might have. In that respect Constable and Maria had apparently been doing their natural best since John Fisher joined their hands at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Although Maria unfortunately had a miscarriage in mid-February, she was soon pregnant again. In April, sister Ann sent Maria her good wishes and love, and recommended for her condition the remedy of Bergholt air. First, however, Maria tried East Ham air at the Whalleys’, and Constable made a quick and almost undercover trip to Bergholt on his own. While there he wrote Dr Rhudde a ‘most respectful’ letter which was counter-productive: in fact, the Doctor was made really miserable by it. Ann, Mary and Abram all made a point of calling at the rectory but no progress was achieved.
7. Housekeeping (1817–19)
BEFORE A SUMMER holiday in Suffolk, decisions had to be taken about a new place to live in town. Constable’s lodgings with the Weights, despite repainting, would no longer do. Farington’s advice was sought, and a house further up Charlotte Street considered, but Farington thought the price being asked for goodwill, lease and annual rent too dear.1 Maria’s father was giving her an allowance of £50 a year, and this with Constable’s private income of £200 meant he needed to bring in about £100 from painting to meet their expected expenses. For the time being Maria took shelter with Mr Bicknell and her sister in Putney Heath, at what Constable called ‘Louisa Cottage’. Meanwhile, spurred by the absence of his wife, Constable hunted for a new home.
He soon found one. Number 1 Keppel Street, north of the British Museum and between Gower Street and Russell Square, had a view of fields, ponds and a pig farm; it was almost country.2 It was only seven or eight years old and Constable told Maria it was a ‘charming, snugg place & a great bargain’. John Fisher soon dubbed it Ruysdael House, in honour of one of his friend’s favourite Dutch painters.3 In late June Constable told Maria, still in Putney, ‘The more I see of the house the better I like it – I know it will suit us exactly’. But he cautiously sent a surveyor – who found nothing amiss – and a painter to give him an estimate for rooms that he wanted to be redecorated. He signed a seven-year lease at £100 a year, ‘including taxes’, a copy of which was approved by Mr Bicknell’s legal partner Anthony Spedding. Constable said later that the five years they spent there were th
e happiest of his life.
*
His Academy entries that year were almost all from his native scenery. It was as though he knew an epoch – his own time in his own place – was about to end, and he was putting together the evidence of it. Flatford Mill was again a subject, though the title was less specific, Scene on a Navigable River; was among the largest paintings he had exhibited. Among the others was the small, startling and rather surreal Cottage in a Cornfield, a close-up picture with some of the simplified qualities of his view of Brightwell. On view but not for sale was Wivenhoe Park, his panoramic prospect of General Rebow’s house and grounds, the commissioned result of his ‘living in the park’ the previous summer. His portrait of John Fisher was an entry from beyond East Anglia. Together with the portrait of Mary it hung in the Fishers’ house in a room where the clergyman kept up with his correspondence – in one such letter he told Constable the portraits were much admired. During this summer Constable also painted a through-the-trees view of East Bergholt church and a moody Dedham lock-and-mill scene, with a stormy sky making dark reflections on the surface of the Stour. Charles Leslie, his future biographer, met Constable about this time and thought Constable’s art was ‘never so perfect as at this period of his life’. Leslie took particular notice of the cottage in the cornfield (corn being a term for all sorts of grain; in this case it was wheat). The cottage, he wrote, was ‘closely surrounded by corn which, on the side most shaded from the sun, remains green, while over the rest of the field it has ripened’.4 It was the sort of close observation in a painting that most of Constable’s viewers weren’t aware of. The newspaper critics that year thought he was improving but buyers weren’t particularly evident.5
John Constable Page 11
