September 6th. 1857 —
I think I paid my last visit to the Exhibition, and feel as if I had had enough of it, although I have got but a small part of the profit it might have afforded me.
But pictures are certainly quite other things to me now from what they were at my first visit; it seems even as if there were a sort of illumination within them, that makes me see them more distinctly.
Speaking of pictures, the miniature of Anne of Cleves is here, on the faith of which Henry VIII. married her;
also, the picture of the Infanta of Spain, which Buckingham brought over to Charles I. while Prince of Wales. This has a delicate, rosy prettiness.
One rather interesting portion of the Exhibition is the Refreshment-room, or rather rooms; for very much space is allowed both to the first and second classes. I have looked most at the latter, because there John Ball and his wife may be seen in full gulp aid guzzle, swallowing vast quantities of cold boiled beef, thoroughly moistened with porter or bitter ale; and very good meat and drink it is.
At my last visit, on Friday, I met Judge Pollock of Liverpool, who introduced me to a gentleman in a gray slouched hat as Mr. Du Val, an artist, resident in Manchester; and Mr. Du Val invited me to dine with him at six o’clock.
So I went to Carlton Grove, his residence, and found it a very pretty house, with its own lawn and shrubbery about it… . There was a mellow fire in the grate, which made the drawing-room very cosey and pleasant, as the dusk came on before dinner. Mr. Du Val looked like an artist, and like a remarkable man… .
We had very good talk, chiefly about the Exhibition, and Du Val spoke generously and intelligently of his brother-artists. He says that England might furnish five exhibitions, each one as rich as the present.
I find that the most famous picture here is one that I have hardly looked at, “The Three Marys,” by Annibal Caracci.
Figures on a winter path, and Figures by a river, by Charles DuVal
In the drawing-room there were several pictures and sketches by Du Val, one of which I especially liked, — a misty, moonlight picture of the Mersey, near Seacombe. I never saw painted such genuine moonlight… . [John Atkinson Grimshaw was a student of Charles DuVal]
I took my leave at half past ten, and found my cab at the door, and my cabman snugly asleep inside of it; and when Mr. Du Val awoke him, he proved to be quite drunk, insomuch that I hesitated whether to let him clamber upon the box, or to take post myself, and drive the cabman home.
However, I propounded two questions to him: first, whether his horse would go of his own accord; and, secondly, whether he himself was invariably drunk at that time of night, because, if it were his normal state, I should be safer with him drunk than sober.
Being satisfied on these points, I got in, and was driven home without accident or adventure; except, indeed, that the cabman drew up and opened the door for me to alight at a vacant lot on Stratford Road, just as if there had been a house and home and cheerful lighted windows in that vacancy.
On my remonstrance he resumed the whip and reins, and reached Boston Terrace at last; and, thanking me for an extra sixpence as well as he could speak, he begged me to inquire for “Little John” whenever I next wanted a cab.
Cabmen are, as a body, the most ill-natured and ungenial men in the world; but this poor little man was excellently good-humored.
Speaking of the former rudeness of manners, now gradually refining away, of the Manchester people, Judge Pollock said that, when he first knew Manchester, women, meeting his wife in the street, would take hold of her dress and say, “Ah, three and sixpence a yard!”
The men were very rough, after the old Lancashire fashion. They have always, however, been a musical people, and this may have been a germ of refinement in them. They are still much more simple and natural than the Liverpool people, who love the aristocracy, and whom they heartily despise.
It is singular that the great Art-Exhibition should have come to pass in the rudest great town in England.
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