Without Lifting A Finger

After that, I saw the Flicks less often. This sudden and rapid moving seemed to become a mania with Wilbur. He had added narcotics to his liquor, and he was very soon suffering from a delusion that it was utterly impossible for him to get to sleep—he liked to dramatize his insomnia with a kind of diluted Weltschmerz that had a flavor of both Hemingway and Spengler—without a complicated ritual of drug-taking.

 

On the death of his grandfather, Ford Madox Brown: Upon the top was inscribed “Ford Madox Brown,” and on the bottom, “Wycliffe on His Trial Before John of Gaunt. Presented to the National Gallery by a Committee of Admirers of the Artist.” In this way the “X” of Madox Brown came exactly over the centre of the picture. It was Madox Brown’s practice to begin a painting by putting in the eyes of the central figure. This, he considered, gave him the requisite strength of tone that would be applied to the whole canvas. And indeed I believe that, once he had painted in those eyes, he never in any picture altered them, however much he might alter the picture itself. He used them as it were to work up to. Having painted in these eyes, he would begin at the top left-hand corner of the canvas, and would go on painting downward in a nearly straight line until the picture was finished. He would, of course, have made a great number of studies before commencing the picture itself. Usually there was a...

A passage re the last meeting between William Morris and Ford Madox Brown (FMF's grandfather): Morris, I suppose, was tired with his lecturing and answering of questions, for at a given period he drew from his pocket an enormous bandana handkerchief in scarlet and green. This he proceeded to spread over his face, and leaning back in his chair he seemed to compose himself to sleep after the manner of elderly gentlemen taking their naps. One of the young maidens began asking my grandfather some rather inane questions — what did Mr. Brown think of the weather, or what was Mr. Brown’s favorite picture at the Academy? For all the disciples of Mr. Morris were not equally advanced in thought. Suddenly Morris tore the handkerchief from before his face and roared out: “Don’t be such an intolerable fool, Polly!” Nobody seemed to mind this very much — nor, indeed, was the reproved disciple seriously abashed, for almost immediately afterward she asked: “Mr. Brown, do you think that Sir Frederi...

 

European Goldfinch @ St Ives. Had seen them before (here and Spain) but never got a good pic. Saw another one in St Ives (as we were waiting for the train back to St Erth and eventually London), he came to the tracks and even flashed the gold on his sleeve. But alas, by the time I got my camera out of the suitcase he'd flown up into the trees. #rlswihart #stives #cornwall #uk #goldfinchesofinstagram #europeangoldfinch #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2023 #ukraine 🇺🇦

On Pre-Raphaelites and the Aestheticists: Pre-Raphaelism in itself was born of Realism. Ruskin gave it one white wing of moral purpose. The Æstheticists presented it with another, dyed all the colors of the rainbow, from the hues of mediæval tapestries to that of romantic love. Thus it flew rather unevenly and came to the ground. The first Pre-Raphaelites said that you must paint your model exactly as you see it, hair for hair, or leaf-spore for leaf-spore. Mr. Ruskin gave them the added canon that the subject they painted must be one of moral distinction. You must, in fact, paint life as you see it, and yet in such a way as to prove that life is an ennobling thing. How one was to do this one got no particular directions. Perhaps one might have obtained it by living only in the drawing-room of Brantwood House, Coniston, when Mr. Ruskin was in residence. —

 On Christina Rossetti: She wanted to be obscure, and to be an obscure handmaiden of the Lord, as fervently as she desired to be exactly correct in her language.

 

And over the porch was the funereal urn with the ram’s head. This object, dangerous and threatening, has always seemed to me to be symbolical of this circle of men, so practical in their work and so romantically unpractical, as a whole, in their lives. They knew exactly how, according to their lights, to paint pictures, to write poems, to make tables, to decorate pianos, rooms, or churches. But as to the conduct of life they were a little sketchy, a little romantic, perhaps a little careless. I should say that of them all Madox Brown was the most practical. But his way of being practical was always to be quaintly ingenious. Thus we had the urn. Most of the Pre-Raphaelites dreaded it; they all of them talked about it as a possible danger, but never was any step taken for its removal. It was never even really settled in their minds whose would be the responsibility for any accident. It is difficult to imagine the frame of mind, but there it was, and there to this day the urn remains.

And morning had brought the common-sense idea that probably she wanted to do nothing more than pull the string of the shower-bath — which meant committing herself to the first extravagant action that came into her head — and exulting in the consequences.