August 30th 1857. —
I have been two or three times to the Exhibition since my last date [Hawthorne’s last journal entry was 20th August, so possibly 21st, 26th and 28th, as a Wednesday and Friday pattern has emerged] and enjoy it more as I become familiar with it.
There is supposed to be about a third of the good pictures here which England contains; and it is said that the Tory nobility and gentry have contributed to it much more freely and largely than the Whigs. The Duke of Devonshire, for instance, seems to have sent nothing.
Mr. Ticknor, the Spanish historian, whom I met yesterday, observed that we should not think quite so much of this Exhibition as the English do after we have been to Italy, although it is a good school in which to gain a preparatory knowledge of the different styles of art. I am glad to hear that there are better things still to be seen. [The Art Treasures Exhibition had been criticised because, although the great names were all represented, there were perhaps not their greatest pieces, and they were not all in the best condition.]
Nevertheless, I should suppose that certain painters are better represented here than they ever have been or will be elsewhere. Vandyke, certainly, can be seen nowhere else so well; Rembrandt and Rubens have satisfactory specimens; and the whole series of English pictorial achievement is shown more perfectly than within any other walls.
Perhaps it would be wise to devote myself to the study of this latter, and leave the foreigners to be studied on their own soil. Murillo can hardly have done better than in the pictures by him which we see here.
There is nothing of Raphael’s here that is impressive. Titian has some noble portraits, but little else that I care to see. In all these old masters, Murillo only excepted, it is very rare, I must say, to find any trace of natural feeling and passion; and I am weary of naked goddesses, who never had any real life and warmth in the painter’s imagination, — or, if so, it was the impure warmth of an unchaste woman, who sat for him.
Last week I dined at Mr. F. Heywood’s . . .
. . . to meet Mr. Adolphus [John Leycester Adolphus, 1795-1862], the author of a critical work on the Waverley Novels, published long ago, and intended to prove, from internal evidence, that they were written by Sir Walter Scott… .
His wife was likewise of the party [Clara, nee Richardson, 1795-1892], … . and also a young Spanish lady, their niece, and daughter of a Spaniard of literary note. She herself has literary tastes and ability, and is well known to Prescott [William H Prescott, American historian, author of History of the Conquest of Peru, et al] , whom, I believe, she has assisted in his historical researches, and also to Professor Ticknor; and furthermore she is very handsome and unlike an English damsel, very youthful and maidenlike; and her manners have all ardor and enthusiasm that were pleasant to see, especially as she spoke warmly of my writings; and yet I should wrong her if I left the impression of her being forthputting and obtrusive, for it was not the fact in the least. She speaks English like a native, insomuch that I should never have suspected her to be anything else.
My nerves recently have not been in an exactly quiet and normal state. I begin to weary of England and need another clime.
Nathaniel Hawthorne Old Trafford
As neither Mr or Mrs Adolphus had a brother or sister who married a Spaniard of literary note I put it to you that Hawthorne was getting a little mixed up here. I further put it to you that far from being of Mediterranean lineage she was in fact of Bavarian stock!
I think that Heywood’s young female dinner guest was in fact Margaret Hebeler, daughter of Bernard Hebeler, Consul General of His Majesty the King of Prussia! The reason she spoke English like a native was because she had been born in England. Margaret was living with the Adolphuses at the time of the 1861 census, four years later.
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