Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 359, September 1845. Various
her letters had said: – "Mr **** was here nearly an hour on Saturday, reading the paper and talking to himself. I hope you will not admit him so often. Mr ****, another lounger, has been here once or twice."
"Cole-Orton Hall, November. 21st.– My dearest love, I am as heartsick as ever you can be at my long absence from you, and all our dear darlings, but which is now fast drawing to a close. In fact, my greediness for pictures made me cut out for myself much more work than I ought to have undertaken at this time. One of the Claudes would have been all that I wanted, but I could not get at that first, and I had been here a fortnight before I began it. To-day it will be done, with perhaps a little touch on Saturday morning. I have then an old picture to fill up some holes in. But I fear I shall not be able to get away on Saturday, though I hope nothing shall prevent me on Monday. I can hardly believe I have not seen you, or my Isabel, or my Charley, for five weeks. Yesterday there was another very high wind and such a splendid evening as I never before beheld at this time of the year Was it so with you? But in London nothing is to be seen, worth seeing, in the NATURAL way.
"I certainly will not allow of such serious interruptions as I used to do from people who devour my time, brains and every thing else. Sir George says it is quite serious and alarming. Let me have a letter on Sunday, my last day here, as I want to be made comfortable on my journey, which will be long and tiresome, and I shall be very nervous as I get near home; therefore, pray let me have a good account of you all. I believe some great folks are coming here in December, which Sir George dreads, as they so much interfere with his painting habits; for no artist can be fonder of the art."
"November 25th.– My very dearest love, I hope nothing will prevent my leaving this place to-morrow afternoon and that I shall have you in my arms on Thursday morning, and my babies; Oh, dear! how glad I shall be. I feel that I have been AT SCHOOL, and can only hope that my long absence from you may ultimately be to my great and lasting improvement as an artist, and indeed in every thing. If you have any friends staying with you, I beg you will dismiss them before my arrival."
We have already said we have no intention of going through the meagre incidents in the life of Constable. He was elected an Academician in 1829 after the death of his wife, which took place the year before. Much as he was pleased at the attainment of the honour, he could not help saying, "It has been delayed till I am solitary and cannot impart it." He could not add with Johnson, "until I am known and do not want it;" for probably no painter of equal genius was at that time less generally known in his own country. Two days before, he writes, "I have just received a commission to paint a mermaid for a sign to an inn in Warwickshire! This is encouraging, and affords no small solace after my previous labours on landscape for twenty years."
His death took place in 1837.
"On Thursday the 30th of March, I met him at a general assembly of the Academy; the night, though very cold, was fine, he walked a great part of the way home with me. The most trifling occurrences of that evening remain on my memory. As we proceeded along Oxford Street, he heard a child cry on the opposite side of the way: the griefs of childhood never failed to arrest his attention, and he crossed over to a little beggar girl who had hurt her knee; he gave her a shilling and some kind words, which, by stopping her tears, showed that the hurt was not very serious, and we continued our walk. Some pecuniary losses he had lately met with had disturbed him, but more because they involved him with persons disposed to take advantage of his good feelings, than from their amount. He spoke of these with some degree of irritation, but turned to more agreeable subjects, and we parted at the west end of Oxford Street, laughing. I never saw him again alive.
"The whole of the next day he was busily engaged finishing his picture of Arundel Mill and Castle. One or two of his friends who called on him saw that he was not well, but they attributed this to confinement and anxiety with his picture, which was to go in a few days to the Exhibition. In the evening he walked out for a short time on a charitable errand connected with the Artists' Benevolent Fund. He returned about nine o'clock, ate a hearty supper, and, feeling chilly, had his bed warmed – a luxury he rarely indulged in. It was his custom to read in bed; between ten and eleven he had read himself to sleep, and his candle, as usual, was removed by a servant. Soon after this, his eldest son, who had been at the theatre, returned home, and, while preparing for bed in the next room, his father awoke in great pain, and called to him. So little was Constable alarmed, however, that he at first refused to send for medical assistance. He took some rhubarb and magnesia, which produced sickness, and he drank copiously of warm water, which occasioned vomiting, but the pain increasing, he desired that Mr Michele, his near neighbour, should be sent for, who very soon attended. In the mean time Constable had fainted, his son supposing he had fallen asleep. Mr Michele instantly ordered some brandy to be brought; the bed-room of the patient was at the top of the house, the servant had to run down-stairs for it, and before it could be procured life was extinct; and within half an hour of the first attack of pain.
"A post-mortem investigation was made by Professor Partridge, in the presence of Mr George Young and Mr Michele, but, strange to say, the extreme pain Constable had suffered could only be traced to indigestion, no indications of disease were any where discovered, sufficient, in the opinion of those gentlemen, to have produced at that time a fatal result. Mr Michele, in a letter to me, describing all he had witnessed, says, 'It is barely possible that the prompt application of a stimulant might have sustained the vital principle, and induced reaction in the functions necessary to the maintenance of life.'
"Constable's eldest son was prevented from attending the funeral by an illness brought on by the painful excitement he had suffered; but the two brothers of the deceased, and a few of his most intimate friends, followed the body to Hampstead,3 where some of the gentlemen residing there, who had known Constable, voluntarily joined the procession in the churchyard. The vault which contained the remains of his wife was opened, he was laid by her side, and the inscription which he had placed on the tablet over it,
'Eheu! quam tenui e filo pendet
Quidquid in vitâ maxime arridet!'
might will be applied to the loss his family and friends had now sustained. The funeral service was read by one of those friends, the Rev. T. J. Judkin, whose tears fell fast on the book as he stood by the tomb."
Mahmood the Ghazavide. 4
Hail to the morn that reigneth
Where Kaff,5 since time began
Allah's eternal sentinel,
Keeps watch upon the Sun;
And through the realms of heaven,
From his cold dwelling-place,
Beholds the bright Archangel
For ever face to face!
Kaff smiles – the loosen'd morning
On Asia is unfurl'd!
Sind6 flashes free, and rolls a sea
Of amber down the world!
Lo! how the purple thickets
And arbours of Cashmere
Beneath the kindling lustre
A rosier radiance wear!
Hail to the mighty Morning
That, odorously cool,
Comes down the nutmeg-gardens
And plum-groves of Cabool!
Cold 'mid the dawn, o'er Ghazna,
The rivall'd moon retires;
As on the city spread below,
Far through the sky's transparent glow,
A hundred gold-roof'd temples throw
Their crescents' sparkling fires.
The Imam's cry in Ghazna
Has
"I cannot but recall here a passage in a letter to Mr Fisher, written by Constable nearly ten years before his death, in which, after speaking of having removed his family to Hampstead, he says, 'I could gladly exclaim, here let me take my everlasting rest!'"
One of the greatest and most memorable of the Turkish princes was Mahmood the Ghaznavide, who reigned in the eastern provinces of Persia, A.D. 997-1028. His father, Sebactagi, arose from the condition of a slave to the command of the city and province of Ghazna. In the fall of the dynasty of the Sammanides, the fortune of Mahmood was confirmed. For him the title of
Ghazna, from being the emporium of India, and the metropolis of a vast dominion, had almost shrunk from the eye of the geographer, until, under the modified appellation of Ghizni, it again emerged into importance in our Affghan war. A curious crowd of associations is suggested by the fact, that the town which gave its name to a dynasty that shook the successors of Mahomet on their thrones, now confers the dignity of Baron on a native of one of the obscurest villages in Ireland – Lord Keane of Ghizni,
Kaff of late years is considered to have been more a creation of Eastern mythology, than a genuine incontestable mountain. Its position is supposed to be at the highest point of the great Hindoo-Kosh range. Such was its astonishing altitude, that, says D'Herbelot, "vous trouvez souvent dans leurs anciens livres, pour exprimer le lever du soleil, cette façon de parler,
The name of Sind, Attok, or Indus, is applied indifferently to the mighty stream that forms the western boundary of Hindostan.