An Angler at Large/Chapter 31

by William Caine (1873-1925)

XXXI

Of the Names of Pictures

I have painted a very beautiful picture. It is undoubtedly the most lovely thing I have yet done. Nobody, however rude, could mistake its meaning. A thick belt of trees crosses it from one side to the other. The foreground indubitably slopes downwards to the wood. Beyond, further trees stretch into astonishing distance. There would seem to be one hundred miles of trees. The sky is obviously composed of folded clouds, with glimpses of the ultimate blue between. The foreground alone is dubious. I know what it is because I was there; but I cannot lay my hand on my heart and declare that everybody would guess rightly. Yet I have not spared the ochre and dragon's blood, and there are some cunningly-placed shadows such as large stones or bricks would throw. One thing is quite certain about it. It is a foreground, and I defy my most hypercritical victim to dispute the assertion.

This picture is so beautiful that it must have a title. But again, it is so beautiful that a fit title is very hard to find. I have been wearying my brain to make one.

Landscape painters, I have always observed, are extraordinarily well-educated men. Whenever I have had occasion to look into the catalogue of a picture exhibition, I have found that most of the landscapes and seascapes have a few lines of verse attached to them by way of title. Thus:—

No. 1909.	Johnson Williams.
For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.
No. 2846.	Crowle Harbinger.
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homewards plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

More, the poetry always fits the picture to admiration.

Now, it is evident that men who are able to do this sort of thing have an astonishing knowledge of their poets. I can imagine Johnson Williams, for instance, painting away at his little stream while, through his memory, the poesy of rivers, miles of it, millions of gallons of it, passes, until, at a given moment, the lines inevitable present themselves before him and he knows the title found. It can only be thus, by a long-continued and indefatigable process of consideration and reflection, that so perfect a harmony between picture and verse is to be established. For it is impossible to suppose that all these titles can be flukes. Such a thing might happen once or twice. It might chance that, of the twenty or thirty pieces of poetry which I know, one absolutely fitted this picture of mine, this composition of trees and sky and distance. But it does not so chance. I am quite sure that such a subject as I have chosen has inspired several poets, and that their utterances are somewhere to be found. But where? Johnson Williams could tell me. But I do not know Johnson Williams. Not knowing him, and not having his peculiar familiarity with English verse, I am reluctantly compelled to abandon the idea of a poetic title.

But (while I am on this subject) if Johnson Williams causes me to form a low estimate of my own education, what kind of a figure do I cut beside certain lady and other novelists, who find an apt quotation not merely to head each book that they write, but to serve as keynote to each chapter of each book that they write, and not merely from the limited source of English verse, but from the boundless ocean of a World's Literature. Such a range of knowledge is unbearable for the contemplation of a small spirit like mine. I can only grovel before it as before a mystery. The fact that to-day everybody is competent to write a novel, and does, is often adduced in proof of the high standard of modern education. But surely this is nothing to the learning indicated by these novelists' chapter-headings. And their prodigality! Here is a first chapter four thousand words long which is concerned with the meeting of the hero and heroine in a railway carriage. Nothing whatever is established beyond this certainly important fact. Both are described. Paddington Station is also unerringly portrayed, and the destination of the heroine is indicated. But with the exit of the train from the terminus the chapter closes. And with what does it begin? A passage from the Shi King. If I knew what the Shi King was it would be enough for me. I would presume upon no further acquaintance, for I know my own level and I am not man enough for that kind of thing. This lady, however, treats the Shi King with a high hand. Needing an appropriate quotation for her first chapter, she has only to reflect for a moment and her complete knowledge of the Shi King affords her the absolutely right words. For the next stage of her story she borrows from Emerson, for the next from Boulmier (three lines from a virelai), for the next the Book of the Dead serves her turn, and then Epictetus and Gogol and Drummond of Hawthornden and the Saga of Erik the Red (if there is such a Saga), and Voltaire and Heine and Tasso and Montesquieu (assuredly Montesquieu), and Old Play and Anon.

When I think that I compete with such giantesses!

But I was worrying about a name for my picture.

Some painters, less highly endowed than the others, fall back upon what may be called the pseudo-poetic; that is to say, not having at their command a line or lines of genuine authenticated verse which will describe what they have painted, they take some form of words which ring with a well-established sentimentality, thus—

No. 7.	Evening Shadows.	Arthur Struggles.
No. 603.	The Trysting Tree.	Arthur Struggles.
No. 9001.	Leafy June.	Arthur Struggles.
No. 9002.	The Workhouse Door.	Arthur Struggles.

But I am so dull that nothing of the kind occurs to me in connection with my picture. This landscape is bathed, obviously, in bright sunlight. There are a number, a great number of trees in it, but none so outstanding and important that it could be dignified into a special feature, and certainly none that has the appearance of a trysting tree, which is always of a peculiar and easily-recognisable shape. Leafy June would do, had I not been so unwise as to employ Burnt Sienna rather generously, which has made the foliage decidedly autumnal, wherefore I wish the purple which I have put in the foreground to be taken for heather in full bloom. And there is no Workhouse in the whole composition.

Again, the least imaginative artists simply give to their pictures the names of the places they represent, so—

No. 51.	Wugfrid Westonhaugh.
Clapham Common, from the Bandstand.

But this is mere label-writing ill fitting an artist. I can do as much every time I write an address for the harp in the harp-case. A beautiful water-colour is worthy of a better description. But what? But what?

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A Large Number of Trees suggests itself to me.

This is, I think, a new line in titles. It has the merit, moreover, of giving the beholder a hint, which perhaps, now that I look at the thing again, may be of service to him or her.

This is a good idea. It provides me with an unfailing principle in my choice of titles, and it will save my friends from the pain of asking certain questions. If beneath a sketch, when I exhibit it, I have written, Willows, not Haystacks, those who look at it will be able to concentrate their attention wholly on the treatment and other technical qualities. Their minds will be distracted by no doubts as to its general significance. Again, the words, A Beech in a Grass Field, legibly inscribed, under the study which I showed to Mrs. Slattery the other day, will put the species of tree and the nature of the ground which I have drawn, beyond question. I shall no longer have to explain the absence of reflection. Nor will Slattery cry out, "Oh, come! That's not bad of our pig-stye," when I am showing him my monochrome of the church.