Joseph Severn, a Life by Brown Sue;

Author:Brown, Sue;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2009-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

10 Self portrait with chalk highlights c. 1840

11 Severn family group in chalks c. 1840. From left to right: Mary, Walter, Henry, Claudia, and Eliza

Eliza’s movements in Britain were a sign of strains to come. ‘I only see you with a silver spoon in your mouth’, he wrote in January as she moved on from one aristocratic house to another. But she did set up his first important portrait commission after his return with a famous beauty and old friend, Lady Wilhelmina Stanhope, and engineered a loan of £150 from her half-brother, cash-strapped though he was after the extravagance of the Eglinton Tournament the previous August. She was less successful with the boys’ schooling and agonized over where to live in London: perhaps Park Lane (Severn thought he could manage the £200 annual rent) or Piccadilly (too noisy and expensive, he replied). Nor could she make up her mind on whether to go back to Rome to help wind up their affairs and bring the girls to England. ‘It seemed so funny to me’, wrote Julia Richmond to her husband, ‘to hear Mrs S making arrangements in the morning to set off instantly as she said to Rome, in the middle of the day accepting invitations at the distance of a week, and in the evening saying she should go to Scotland in a few days, & sometimes making a fourth determination to take lodgings for the boys & herself & remain in London till Mr S came to England … never was there a woman who required the wise direction of a husband as she does.’43

Perhaps Lady Westmorland’s poisonous warning about the danger of a handsome, unsupervised husband, began to work on Eliza. There was a row in December over his new picture, Angelica Being Rescued by Ruggiero from a Sea Monster. He planned to paint from the nude and had found a respectable widow who would attend his studio with her daughter, the model. Eliza put her foot down, appealing to the solemnity of their marriage vows. Severn was outraged: ‘it would be impossible that I could do a thing that would create or raise suspicion in your mind … if I ever heard that you ever believed or even listened to anything against me on this ground, even the shade of a doubt, I think I should never forgive you’.44 He did not protest too loudly. For all the sins of his youth and the vanities of his old age, the sensuality of his middle years was firmly centred on Eliza.

In November George Richmond returned to Rome with his brother, Tom, coming every morning to work at Via Rassella and sometimes dropping in of an evening to exchange unflattering stories of Italian life or talk about the London art world. He was in tetchy mood, missing his wife, disliking Italian food, and giving way to his habitual hypochondria. Severn’s breezy confidence irritated him. ‘Severn is round and complacent as ever talking of doing everything and as far as I can see making very little progress towards each great achievement.

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