Page:Constable by C. J. Holmes.djvu/17

 Hampstead, and we find him writing to Fisher: "So hateful is moving about to me that I could gladly exclaim, 'Here let me take my everlasting rest!' ... This house is to my wife's heart's content, it is situated on an eminence at the back of the spot in which you saw us, and our little drawing-room commands a view unsurpassed in Europe—from Westminster Abbey to Gravesend. The Dome of St. Paul's in the air seems to realise Michelangelo's words on seeing the Pantheon, 'I will build such a thing in the sky.'"

Shortly after their move to Hampstead (2nd January 1829) Constable's fourth son Lionel was born. The painter's anxieties as to the future of his family were removed about the same time by a legacy, of £20,000 from Mr. Bicknell. Mrs. Constable, however, had been unwell for some time, and her illness now became serious. Symptoms of consumption developed, and she died towards the end of the year. Her death was a terrible blow to her husband, who wore mourning for the rest of his life. Even his election to full membership of the Academy did not revive his spirits. "It has been delayed," he said, "till I am solitary and cannot impart it." Thus when calling, in accordance with custom, to pay his respects to the President, he intimated to Lawrence that his admission was an act of justice rather than of favour; and a month or two later he writes to Leslie: "Can you tell me whether I ought to send it (his Hadleigh Castle) to the Exhibition? I am grievously nervous about it, as I am still smarting under my election." His resentment was not wholly unnatural, for he was in his fifty-third year.

The next few years of his life were made busy by the duties inseparable from the membership of the Selection Committee and as visitor of the Life Class. He was also much occupied with the engraving of the plates in his "English Landscape"—an undertaking of which he bore the cost, and which proved a failure from the first. Towards the end of 1831 Constable was taken seriously ill, and the depression consequent upon his weak health was not lessened by the knowledge that he must shortly lose his assistant John Dunthorne, the son of his friend at East Bergholt. Poor young Dunthorne died in November 1832. Two months earlier Constable lost his constant friend and patron Archdeacon Fisher. In 1833 the painter delivered a lecture in the Assembly Room at Hampstead, with the title "An Outline of the History of Landscape Painting." In the spring of the following year Constable suffered once more from an attack of acute rheumatism. In the summer he visited a namesake and patron, Mr. George Constable, at Arundel, and was greatly charmed with the castle and the splendid scenery round it. In the autumn he paid a visit to Lord Egremont at Petworth, with its magnificent collection of pictures. In May and June 1836 he delivered four lectures on Landscape at the Royal Institution, and in July he lectured at Hampstead to the Literary and Scientific Institution on the same subject. During these last years Constable seems to have devoted himself to his art more entirely than ever, though the starting of two of his sons in life also occupied his attention. John, the eldest, did not long survive his father: wishing to take orders, he went to Cambridge, but died of scarlet fever, caught while studying medicine in a hospital. Charles Constable, the second son, who inherited