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How Gothic architecture was viewed only seventeen years before Samuel Prout was born may be judged by Matthew Bramble’s account of York Minster in Humphrey Clinker. He writes: “As for the minster, I know not how to distinguish it, except by its great size and the height of its spire, from those other ancient churches in different parts of the kingdom which used to be called monuments of Gothic architecture; but it is now agreed that the style is Saracen – and I suppose it was first imported into England from Spain, greater part of which was under the domination of the Moors. Those British architects who adopted this style don’t seem to have considered the propriety of their adoption. Nothing could be more preposterous than to imitate such a mode of architecture in a country like England, where the climate is cold and the air eternally loaded with vapours. For my part, I never entered the abbey church at Bath but once, and the moment I stepped over the threshold I found myself chilled to the very marrow of my bones. I should be glad to know what offence it would give to tender consciences if the House of God were made more comfortable; and whether it would not be an encouragement to piety, as well as the salvation of many lives, if the place of worship were well floored, wainscotted, warmed, and ventilated.
“The external appearance of an old cathedral cannot but be displeasing to the eye of every man who has any idea of propriety and proportion, even though he may be ignorant of architecture as a science. There is nothing of the Arabic architecture in the Assembly Rooms, which seems to me to have been built upon a design of Palladio, and might be converted into an elegant place of worship.”
In little more than a generation popular taste was completely changed. Augustus Pugin and Le Keux published their Specimens of Architectural Antiquities in Normandy in 1827; Parker his Glossary of Architecture in 1836, which rapidly went through several editions. A. Welby Pugin poured forth the vials of scorn on the taste of his day in his Contrasts, 1841; Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of Architecture laid down first principles in 1849; Rickman, the Quaker, had issued his Attempt to Distinguish the Styles of English Architecture as early as 1817, and this also rapidly passed through several editions. But it was not enough to instruct the public: its heart must be touched, its eyes unsealed to the beauties of the so-called Gothic style; and this is what Prout did with his exquisite drawings. There was no technical skill obtruded, no attempt made to distinguish styles: he simply with his pencil brought its charms before the public eye in an engaging form. And the public saw and believed.
Mr. S. C. Hall, writing of Prout’s personal qualities, says: “No member of the profession has ever lived to be more thoroughly respected, we may add beloved, by his fellow artists; no man has ever given more unquestionable evidence of a gentle and generous spirit, or more truly deserved the esteem in which he is so universally held. His always delicate health, instead of souring the temper, made him more thoughtful of the trials of others. Ever ready to assist the young by the counsels of experience, he is a fine example of perseverance and industry combined with suavity of manner and those endearing attributes which invariably blend with admiration of the artist, affection for the man. During the last six or seven years we have sometimes found our way into his quiet studio, where, like a delicate exotic requiring the most careful treatment to retain life within it, he could keep himself warm and snug, as he expressed it. There he might be seen at his easel, throwing his rich and beautiful colouring over a sketch of some old palace in Venice or time-worn cathedral of Flanders; and though suffering much from pain and weakness, ever cheerful, ever thankful that he had still strength enough to carry on his work. He rose late, and could seldom begin his labours before the middle of the day, when, if tolerably free from pain, he would paint till the night was advanced. No man ever bore suffering more meekly. Essentially religious, he submitted with patience and resignation to the Divine will. All the home affections were warm and strong in him. He was of a tender, loving, and truly upright nature.”
He spent some time at Hastings for his health, and when there his parish church was S. Mary’s. He attended this church regularly, and the vicar, the Rev. Mr. Vines, used to say: “I always wait for Prout to come and light up my church.” Indeed, his temper was always sunny, and he was eminently devout. What touched him profoundly was the piety he noticed among the peasantry abroad – how they uncovered for a brief prayer at the sound of the Angelus, and how they made of their churches a veritable home, where they could pour out their hearts in prayer in all sorrows, and in thanksgiving in all joys. But abroad or at home, in his hotel or his studio, his constant companions were his English Bible and Book of Common Prayer, and with them he said that he was satisfied.
As Mr. Hine says beautifully in his Memoirs of Prout: “All the subjects of his pictures point upwards, the lovely street scenes terminating in the tall tower or the divine spire. The doves hover about the highest ridges of his roofs and the loftiest pinnacles of his towers. He had the most implicit faith in the final article of the Nicene Creed – ‘I believe in the life of the world to come’ – and his own pictures are the faint but beautiful symbols of that celestial city which he saw as through a glass, darkly.”
He had been invited with many literary and artistic celebrities to dine with Mr. Ruskin, the elder, on Tuesday, 9 February, 1852, to keep the birthday of John Ruskin, and hear a letter from Venice, from the younger Ruskin, who was then in that city.
Samuel Prout had not been well of late, but he went to the dinner, and returned between ten and eleven, and said to his wife, “I’ve had such a happy evening! The Venice letter was capital.” Then he retired to his studio. Shortly after a tapping sound, often made by him as a summons, was heard. One of his daughters running upstairs found her father lying on the hearthrug in a fit of apoplexy. His open Bible, in which he had been reading one of the Psalms, lay on the table. He was carried to bed, but never spoke again. He died in the sixty-ninth year of his age. “There will never be any more Prout drawings,” said Ruskin sorrowfully.
In the north aisle of St. Andrew’s Church, Plymouth, is a marble tablet to his memory.
“There is one point,” says Ruskin, “in which Turner, Bewick, Hunt, and Prout, all four agree – that they can draw the poor, but not the rich. They acknowledge with affection, whether for principal or accessory subjects of their art, the British farmer, the British sailor, the British market-woman, and the British workman. They agree unanimously in ignoring the British gentleman. Let the British gentleman lay it to heart, and ask himself why.
“The general answer is long and manifold. But, with respect to the separate work of Prout, there is a very precious piece of instruction in it respecting national prosperity and policy, which may be gathered in a few glances.
“You see how all his best pictures depend on figures either crowded in market-places or pausing (lounging, it may be) in quiet streets. You will not find, in the entire series of subjects from his hand, a single figure in a hurry. He ignores not only the British gentleman, but every necessary condition, nowadays, of British business.
“Look again and see if you can find a single figure exerting all its strength. A couple of men rolling a single cask perhaps; here and there a woman with a rather large bundle on her head – any more athletic display than these you seek in vain. His figures are all as quiet as the Cathedral of Chartres. Some of them you can scarcely think are standing still, but they all move quietly. The real reason is that he understood, and we do not, the meaning of the word ‘quiet.’
“He understood it, personally, and for himself; practically, and for others. Take this one fact – of his quiet dealings with men – and think it over.
“The modern fashionable interest in what we suppose to be art had just begun to show itself a few years before Prout’s death, and he was frequently advised to raise his prices. But he never raised them a shilling to his old customers, nor greatly to his new ones. They were supplied with all the drawings they wanted at six guineas each – to the end. A very peaceful method of dealing, and under the true ancient laws ordained by Athena of the Agora, and St. James of the Rialto.
“And learn from your poor wandering painter this lesson – for some of the best he had to give you (it is the Alpha of the laws of true human life) – that no city is prosperous in the sight of Heaven unless the peasant sells in its market; that no city is ever righteous in the sight of Heaven unless the noble walks in its street.”
Prout’s work is divided into two clearly defined periods. In the first he drew only English scenes. In 1819 he made his first tour on the Continent, and thenceforth devoted himself almost entirely to foreign subjects. In this devotion Ruskin lamented the “loss of his first love.” His grand wrecks of Indiamen were instinct with that subtle sense of vastness that the Art Teacher felt.
AUTHORITIES
The authorities for the life of Samuel Prout are: —
“Samuel Prout, Artist,” by J. Hine, in the Transactions of the Plymouth Institution, 1879–80.
Art in Devonshire, by Geo. Pycroft, Exeter, 1883, pp. 106–17.
Royet, History of the Old Water-Colour Society, London, 1891.
Ruskin’s “Notes on Samuel Prout and William Hunt,” new edition in Ruskin on Pictures, London, 1902.
NOTE. – The publisher of this work will esteem it a favour if the possessors of pictures or drawings by Prout will place themselves in communication with him. He is particularly anxious to obtain copies of letters by, or documents about, the artist – in short, any material which may be of use in the preparation of the exhaustive Life which is in progress. All communications should be addressed to Mr. John Lane, The Bodley Head, Vigo Street, London, W.
FONTELAUTUS
It may seem – in fact, it must seem – strange to have included in a volume of notices of remarkable Devonshire characters a biography of an infant who did not attain to the age of two years; but I leave the reader to judge from the sequel whether I should have been justified in omitting a notice of Fontelautus.
For an account of the life and adventures of this precocious infant we are obliged to refer to the following work, published 1826: Subversion of Materialism by Credible Attestation of Supernatural Occurrences… Pt. I. Memoirs of Fontelautus, infant son of Prebendary Dennis, comprising his demoniacal obsession, and diversified apparition, with his father’s ante-nuptial vision and revelations. Pt. II. Supernatural Anecdotes of various Families’ Farewell Apparitions, Supernatural Fire tokens… By Jonas Dennis, B.C.L., Prebendary of the Royal Collegiate Church of Exeter Castle.”
Prebendary Dennis hurls his son Fontelautus as a bomb into the camp of atheists, materialists, and rationalists. If Fontelautus does not shatter their unbelief, they are past arguing with, past praying for.
Prebendary Dennis begins with the ancestry of Fontelautus, who was derived in direct lineal descent from Sir Thomas Dennis of Holcombe Burnell, the rapacious and insatiable devourer of ecclesiastical estates, made fat on the plunder of Church property by Henry VIII. Mr. Jonas Dennis is led to observe that there was an hereditary tendency in the Dennis family to acquisitiveness, to avarice; but this proclivity, like gout, jumped a generation, and he informs us that he himself was so entirely free from the family taint that he declined a benefice from scruples respecting the administration of the sacraments; that he further rejected the advances of a lady with a fortune of £50,000, on the discovery of incompatibility of inclination; and that he subsequently married “a lady with ten pounds for her fortune, calculating probability of conjugal felicity from the endowment of amiable qualities, placid disposition, compliable temper, serious principles, polite accomplishments, and last, though not least, domestic habits.” But if acquisitiveness jumped a generation, it manifested itself in Fontelautus, who from the earliest age clawed and endeavoured to ram into his mouth whatever he could lay his hands on.
The Dennis family had been one of warriors: their arms were battle-axes; and the Rev. Jonas admits that combativeness remained as a pronounced feature in his own character, the hereditary principle in himself prompting him to engage in controversy. Some of his achievements he records. It seems that the priest vicars of the cathedral of Exeter had petitioned the Dean and Chapter to suppress the week-day matins. The Chapter was more than half inclined to agree, when the stalwart Jonas threw himself into the midst, and stormed, threatened, pointed to the Constitutions, dared the Chapter to give way, and so saved the choral matins in the minster.
The cathedral, he informs us, was kept open, and was used for assignations and for various objectionable gatherings. At his instigation the doors were locked between the hours of Divine service. It is possible that what he here refers to may be the performance of the Gloria in Excelsis by the choir in the Minstrel Gallery at midnight on Christmas Eve. This was stopped about the same time on account of the disorderly scenes that took place in the nave; but he does not specially refer to this.
Every now and then information reached his ear of intended jobs by the Bishop (Carey) to accommodate noblemen, and rich squires of the diocese, by putting very undesirable scions of these families into some of his best livings. Dennis wrote to the Bishop, told him that if he proceeded in these appointments he would publish what he knew about the character of those whom he presented and of the negotiations undertaken to obtain these benefices.
He also strove to get Convocation to transact business. “It was a point gained to make a torpid tribe stretch and flap their wings, although speedily drooping into a seven years’ rest.”
The mother of Prebendary Dennis was a daughter of John Cobley, of Crediton – in fact, the Fontelautus who was to be would be a kinsman through his grandmother of the immortal Uncle Tom Cobley.
The Prebendary having no church near him at Exmouth, where he resided, that was open for daily prayer, was wont to recite his office when walking or riding. One day when he was on horseback and engaged in prayer, he saw a sudden illumination of the sky in the east, that grew brighter and ever more brilliant till it exceeded that of the sun, and the light appeared to pulsate in waves. Dazzled and overcome he reined in his horse, when from the depths of the light he heard a voice, “The discipline of the Church shall be restored through you!” Then a pause, and the light swelled and enveloped him, and he heard, “Miss Shore will marry you!” After a pause a third voice fell from heaven, “You shall recover your health by observing the fasts of the Church.” Then the light gradually faded away.
“Of the three predictions,” writes Prebendary Dennis, “attended with a vision, two have already been fulfilled, i.e. his engagement and marriage to Miss Shore (Juliana Susannah) daughter of the Rev. Thomas Shore, vicar of Otterton, and brother of Lord Teignmouth; next his recovery of sound health. Toward the fulfilment of the other the author has from that day laboured with might and main. To it he has devoted prayer, thought, money, speech, travel, exerting every effort within compass of attainment.” According to him, Papal supremacy had been abolished in the Church of England, Royal supremacy existed but as a shadow, that supremacy under which the Church was crushed, but did not groan and seem inconvenienced, or to dislike, was the supremacy of Mammon. And he traced this supremacy to the coming over of William of Orange, and the filling of the bishoprics, and all preferments with men who were mere timeservers and political partisans. He was an advocate for the restoration of clinical unction; he preached it, and records several instances of healing through it. He also regarded madness as in many cases due to demoniacal possession, and urged the use of exorcism.
The following is an extract from the Register of Baptisms of Exmouth for the year 1824: —
“Fontelautus, first-born son and fifth child of Jonas and Juliana Susanna … Dennis, Prebendary of Kerswell, in the R. Collegiate Church of the Castle of Exeter. Baptised by me, Jonas Dennis, B.C.L., the aforesaid Prebendary. Sponsors: Sir W. T. Pole, Bart., by his proxy, the Rev. R. Prat, vicar; the Rev. Jno. Dennis, A.B., and Elizabeth his wife. Supposed to be the first instance of trine immersion since its suppression by the Presbyterian Directory of the Long Parliament.”
Fontelautus means, of course, “washed in the (sacred) fount.” What could a wretched infant do with such a name? Could it possibly live?
“Peaceful was his countenance, engaging was his manner, penetrating his looks. In family worship his attention and serious aspect was striking to the spectators.”
But, alas! there was something of the hereditary taint in Fontelautus – the love of admiration. “Every little cunning trick was resorted to for its gratification. Every description of expedient was equally adopted by him as by a vain adult. Approaching home in his attendant’s arms, on her return from executing any commission, he studiously assumed appearance of having been bearer of the purchased article by grasping it in his extended fingers, merely to excite admiration. Rather than not excite attention, he courted notice by laying his head on the floor in preference to other support.”
Here follows an exquisite specimen of the style of the Rev. Jonas: “The few moments spent in his father’s arms were marked by ecstacy; and the privilege of attendance on tonsorial operations” – he means watching the barber cut his father’s hair and shave him – “was highly estimated by the animated boy. But the son of a scholar commands an inferior portion of paternal time and caresses, than he ensures in maternal embraces or sartorial attention! His mother, of course, was the paramount object of regard. He could not obliterate the associated delight of a suckling.”
Fontelautus seemed to be progressing lustily with his pap and his bottle, and dribbling effusively as indication of teething, when about a fortnight before the end of May, as the cook-maid sat at night in the kitchen, she saw the headless form of a child enter the door from the court, walk or glide through the kitchen into the pantry, and suddenly vanish.
On 1 June, seven weeks before Fontelautus had completed his second year, rising to meet his father who had been absent from home for some months, the boy got his foot entangled in a bedside carpet, and falling on his right arm bent the bone, or, as Jonas words it, “the pressure of the superincumbent weight gave it an unprecedented degree of incurvation.” Before he had recovered from this he had a fall on his head, and soon water on the brain began to gather, and he had convulsions during ten days, and from the appearance of his eyes it was clear that the child could no longer see. The father was convinced that this was a case of obsession by an evil spirit, not of possession, as he is careful to explain, and he had recourse to exorcism, which temporarily relieved the distressed infant. The contortions, the expression of the face, the foaming of the mouth, all satisfied the father that the child was beset by evil spirits, and his exorcisms were always conducive to relief of the patient; an expression of repose and relief stole over the distressed countenance of the child; and when he died it was during such a pause of relief; as the Prebendary says, “His soul was not extracted from the body by the coercive agency of an infernal envoy.”
So far we do not see how that Fontelautus should be such a crushing argument against materialism. Yet the Memoirs were addressed to “Mr. William Lawrence, surgeon, as chief British apostle of the system of Natural Philosophy completely reducing man to a biped featherless brute; therefore eradicating apprehensions of future responsibility, consequently destructive of every moral feeling in the heart.”
But wait, Mr. Apostle Lawrence, the evidence against materialism is coming!
It must be premised that the family lived at the time at Belmont House, in Bicton Street, Exmouth, and this was the scene of what followed: —
“On the night succeeding the decease of Fontelautus, for preclusion of the body from renewed maternal inspection, it was removed to an attic apartment, having an unglazed window open to the staircase. With the same view, the lid of the coffin was screwed until the following day, when it was unscrewed on suggestion of hazard to bearers from condensation of putrescent exhalation.”
At the Prebendary’s desire, the head of his child had been cut off and the skull opened to examine the condition of the brain, and to ascertain the amount of water that was in it. And it is remarkable that this operation took place in the room immediately above the kitchen in which a few weeks before the cook had seen the apparition of the headless child.
“Pending the intervening night, the inmates of the nursery being removed to another sleeping room, the nursemaid, during half an hour, while lying in bed, heard his accustomed tones of voice as distinctly as when occasionally lying with her during lifetime. Sitting up, she heard the voice continued precisely in the usual mode constantly resorted to by the affectionate child, to engage his nurse’s nocturnal attention, if through fatigue reluctant to be disturbed. His vocal tones were peculiarly winning, coaxing, and caressing. They retained their pristine character during the period of apparition. Forgetful, for the time, of all impossibility of reanimation, through dissection of the cerebellum, she concluded, through protraction of the phenomenon, that life was restored. On walking out on the staircase, and remaining ten minutes, the voice continued to attend her, until hastening to the coffin and without success endeavouring to force open the lid. His favourite sister, Maria, lying in a crib in the same room, heard her brother’s voice with equal distinctness, both that night and the two following days. She, indeed, heard the sound of his voice so frequently transmitted from the attic room, as repeatedly to be induced to hasten thither in expectation of finding him alive. Her mother, sitting in the drawing-room, likewise heard the same articulate sound. At one time, the girl at the foot of the stairs, and the servant at the nursery door, both heard the infant’s tones repeated at the same time from the attic room. At another time, Maria, during five minutes, saw the apparition of her brother’s hand stretching out of the room window where his body lay; and she knocked at her mother’s door, calling her out to see Lautus, as he was alive. Before her mother arrived, she saw the hand turned round and drawn in at the window. She continued to hear his voice coming in the same direction the succeeding day.
“At night, her mother, entreated by her father to deny herself the pleasure of saluting her deceased darling’s icy lips, reluctantly yielded to the injunction. She was subsequently awakened from sound sleep by sensible perception of a wing fluttering on her lips, with such rapidity as nearly to suspend breathing. Sitting up in the bed, she then heard the more distant sound of which fluttering, equally distinct to the ear as previously perceptible by contact. It continued for some time in the upper part of the room. On searching the following morning, no material object elucidating the phenomena was by any means discoverable, both window and door having through the night been closely shut and locked.”
That this was none other than a moth that escaped notice by day by clinging to a curtain with folded wings is obvious enough.
The reader is by this time doubtless so tired of the inflated style of the Prebendary, that he will be grateful to have the rest of the story told in plain English.
The Rev. Jonas had made up his mind to have Fontelautus buried in the garden of his home, and arrangements were made that his five sisters were to be the bearers. But this was at once met by the positive refusal of Maria, who declared that she would be no party to the burial of her brother, who, she was assured, was still alive. After the funeral she remained in an agony of distress, and this idea continued to possess her, and so firmly impressed her mind, that at length, to appease her and satisfy her that Fontelautus was really dead, he was dug up again.
Such is the story that the Prebendary thought would be annihilation to materialism.
He was the author of a good many books. I give the titles of a few.
Church Reform, by a Church Radical, and Other Tracts. Exeter, 1834–5.
Alliance of Church and State, Neither Sinful nor Unscriptural. London, 1834.
Key to the Regalia, with Anecdotes of the Late King. London, 1820.
Architectura Sacra. Exeter, 1819.
Cat o’ Nine Tails. Exeter, 1823.
The Landscape Gardener. Chelsea, 1835.
The Rev. Jonas Dennis himself died at Polsloe Park on 6 December, 1846, aged seventy-one. His only ecclesiastical preferment in life was the prebend of Carswell, one of the four prebends attached to the church of St. Mary, in the Castle of Exeter, which he held from 1799 to the day of his death, receiving the yearly emolument of £2 13s. 4d.
He was buried at Otterton, and his grave and tombstone, as well as those of his wife, are in the churchyard.
If Providence had chosen him, as the voice from heaven intimated, to reform the Church, it made a most unhappy selection, as his inflated and absurd style of writing and speaking made him an object of ridicule not of respect, and deprived his efforts of success.
I will add some of the stories from the second part of his Hammer of Materialists.
Prebendary Salter, M.A., tutor to the son of the former Bishop Fisher, of Exeter, translated to Salisbury in 1807, declared that one night he saw his father’s apparition standing by the bedside. At the same time his little child began to whimper, and this roused his wife, who also saw the spectre, and both particularly noticed the peculiar plaiting of the shirt. In a short time a special messenger arrived bringing information that the old gentleman was dead.
Sarah, wife of James Smith, of Peckham, Russia merchant, and herself a descendant of General Monk and mother-in-law of John Dennis, the brother of Prebendary Jonas, saw a female friend’s apparition at the foot of her bed. Next day a letter arrived announcing the dying anxiety of the party for an interview with Mrs. Smith, to entreat her kind attention to her surviving orphans. The moment of dissolution coincided with that of the apparition. Mrs. Burrow, aunt of Baron Giffard, informed the author that going up Fore Street, Exeter, one night, she saw, walking at a little distance before her, an intimate acquaintance named Jones, a retired silversmith. Perceiving him to halt at the door of the house where he had been formerly established in business, she hurried her pace to catch him up, when he vanished as she reached the spot. Next morning a messenger arrived to announce his death, which had occurred at the very time of her seeing the spectre.
Mrs. Woodall, of Dartmouth, a widow, blind, was informed by letter from her daughter-in-law in November, 1797, of the death of her cousin, her sister-in-law; Miss Sarah Woodall replied through an amanuensis that she had previously known of the death, by feeling the clay-cold hand of her cousin clasp her own as she lay in bed.
The late Lady Rolle was reported to have been seen after her decease by the gardener at Bicton, at the gate of the Dutch garden.
The gardener of Franklyn, in St. Thomas by Exeter, then in the possession of a family named Jones, said that he saw his father’s ghost whilst he was at work in one of the gardens of the mansion.
Mr. Pearce, of Exeter, a retired wine merchant, informed the author that his little child had been wont in the mornings to leave his crib in the nursery and run to his father’s room and cuddle into his bed. Once when the child was very ill Mr. Pearce saw him come in as usual in his nightshirt, whereat he shouted angrily to the nurse in another room to rebuke her for allowing the child to leave its crib whilst so ill. The child had not left it – at that moment it had died.
A male servant of the late Colonel Templer, of Teignmouth, in November, 1810, during an incessant fall of rain, swelling the rivers and carrying away bridges, had three successive dreams the same night, in which he thought that some one, in danger of death on the Dawlish road, was calling to him to come to his aid. So persuaded was the man that he was truly summoned, that he hastily dressed, saddled and mounted one of his master’s horses, and proceeded along the road in the darkness, till his horse suddenly drew up and refused to proceed. Dismounting, he found a woman apparently dying in a channel of water furrowed deep across the highway. By this means her life was preserved.
The late Mr. Smith, of Exeter, proprietor of a muslin warehouse, in three successive dreams in the same night, which he separately repeated to his wife, was summoned to go at once to Bodmin. He obeyed, and on arriving there, heard that the assizes were being held. Out of curiosity he went into the court and heard the judge ask whether any one had seen the prisoner on the day and at the hour at which he was charged with having committed a murder in the west of Cornwall. Looking at the accused, Mr. Smith exclaimed, “Why! he was in my shop in Exeter on that very day.” Through such conclusive evidence an alibi was established, and the prisoner was acquitted and discharged.
