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DIALOGUE THE SECOND.

ON PAINTING,

AS A FEMALE ACCOMPLISHMENT, OR MODE OF GAINING

SUBSISTENCE OR FORTUNE.

L. What a scene is there? Are you not in raptures with
it? You shall not be a friend of mine, if you do not see more
charms in a scene like this, than in any spell which music can
create.

R. I must be pleased, if that be the condition, and yet, if I
were not seated just here, if my pleasure were not heightened
by sympathy with yours, and by contrast with the noise, sultry-
ness and tiresome monotony of the city I have lately left. I am
afraid my sensations would not rise to transport.

L. Insensible creature that thou art! How shall I make
thee a votarist of colours; as much enamoured of the pencil as
thou pretendest to be of the chords?

R. It is easily done. Only make your good opinion de-
pend upon my taste, and I will instantly set about acquiring
and improving it.

L. That I cannot do. Your application to painting, such
as would make you a proficient, would be far from strengthen-
ing your claims to my esteem.

R. Indeed! How comes it then, that you yourself are so
good an artist?

L. It was, in a very small part, the consequence of inclina-
tion. I believe, nature designed me, if any design she had, to
be a painter. Of all my senses, I exercised none with so much
delight and perseverance as my sight. Impressions, made
through this medium, were stronger, more distinct, more du-
rable, than any other tribe of impressions. I found it easier to
retain in my fancy, and to describe in words, the features of a
face or landscape, once carefully examined, than any person
whose powers, in that respect, I have had opportunity of
knowing.

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I had, likewise, a wonderful dexterity in giving a moral sig-
nificance to lines and shades, especially in faces. Every one's
character was settled with me, when once his face was surveyed.
I was led, at the beginning, you may readily imagine, into
strange mistakes, but the detection of these did not dishearten
me. They merely occasioned a change in the principles on
which I judged of characters.

With all these faculties and habits, it was easy to have made
me an enthusiast in painting, at a very early age, but this did
not happen. While living with my father, I saw nothing to
awaken or direct my wishes in this respect, except now and
then, a few prints of indifferent merit in the houses of my
friends, and these I looked upon, for the most part, with un-
concern.

The materials of the painter, colours, pencils and the like,
the instructions of an artist, time and tables, were all necessary,
and none of these did I enjoy. My father's parsimony, no less
than his notions of what was proper and becoming the female
character, denied me all these means; and to say the truth, I
scarcely regretted the want of them. My pleasure lay in mark-
ing and analysing the forms of nature, or in depicting imagina-
ry scenes in which these forms, without the pencil's aid, were
newly combined and arranged.

I am inclined to believe, that if these advantages had been
possessed, I should not have employed them. I was too vola-
tile, too covetous of pleasure and of time, to lose so much of it,
in the mixing and laying on of colours; in copying the works
of others, and providing for future excellence, by laborious at-
tention to rudiments and sketches.

The hiccory, seen from my summer-house, robed in ver-
dure and luxuriance, was too beautiful, too deserving contem-
plation, to be imperfectly pourtrayed on paper or canvass. I
could not have reconciled my impatient spirit to the drudgery,
and did not then see, what I have since discovered, that the
purpose of copying directs, disciplines, gives accuracy and vi-
gour to attention and fancy, that objects can scarcely be said to

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have been seen, that have not been examined with a view to imi-
tation.

Having lost my father, and returned to my aunt Hollis's in
England, I had new incitements and new opportunities to make
myself a painter. I soon became sensible of my precarious
and dependent condition: on how many slight and casual
events, my mere subsistence depended. My aunt was not with-
out her virtues. I was, in many ways, serviceable to her hap-
piness, ways, indeed, of which she, herself, was unconscious,
and which her pride would not permit her to acknowledge.
This belief enabled me cheerfully to bear numerous inconve-
niencies, but it was, by no means, improbable, that events
would take place….marriage, change of residence or temper,
which would make it impossible for me longer to live with
her, and, in that case, my subsistence must be gained by my
own exertions.

I wanted to discover some profession, to which, as a female,
young, single, unpropertied, I might betake myself. This was
a subject of much reflection. I examined the whole catalogue
of trades, and weighed, with much care, their respective claims
to my choice. You will smile at my presumption, when I tell
you the profession, for which, for some time, I thought myself
best qualified, but the dread of your smile shall not make me
conceal it; especially as I never carried my design into effect.

I had an active fancy. I had ever been a close observer of
faces and manners. I was never satisfied with viewing things
exactly as they rose before me. I was apt to imagine, in their
order, some change, and to ask, what consequences would ensue
if things were so and so, instead of being as they were. I
found little, in my real situation, to gratify or exercise my feel-
ings. My ordinary companions were trite and vulgar charac-
ters, with whom I was incapable of sympathy: yet these I
loved, if I may so say, to explore: to examine their modes of
thinking and acting, and to conjecture in what different shapes
they would have appeared, had they been placed in different
circumstances.

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I had, also, an ease in writing, in putting my thoughts into
words, in describing characters and incidents and objects, that
few of my age possessed. I knew that the world is pleased
with tales of fiction, that this manufacture was considerably
popular; that a price was set upon it, proportioned not merely
to quantity and number, but to the genius and dexterity dis-
played by the artist. Why, thought I, may I not pursue the
footsteps of so many of my sex, from Madm'elle Scuderie
down to Mrs. Bennet, and endeavour to live upon the profits
of my story-telling pen? The tools of this art are cheap. The
time employed in finishing a piece of work, and the perfection
of the workmanship, will much depend upon myself. I am
fond of quiet and seclusion. I wish not to be molested by the
selfishness, the superintendence, the tyranny of masters and
employers. I wish to blend profit and pleasure, health and
purity of conscience. I wish to benefit others by the means of
profiting myself. I wish for intellectual and moral occupation.
Can any calling be more favourable to all these ends than the
writing of Romances?

I had always used myself, from a very early age, in setting
down my thoughts and adventures, daily, upon paper. This
was a kind of religious duty, the omission of which was as in-
excusable as that of my nightly hymn. To preserve some re-
cord of the past, to state my employments during the day, and
my progress in useful knowledge, in however few words, I
conceived to be my duty, and this, unless in extraordinary cir-
cumstances, I have never omitted.

To this practice I ascribe my facility in writing, in painting
emotions of the heart, and recounting dialogues, and this, I
came at length to regard as a kind of education or apprentice-
ship to the trade which now appeared most deserving to be fol-
lowed.

Full of this new scheme, I began to tutor my invention to
settle plans and discipline my taste. I looked about for a mo-
del, whose style and manner I might assiduously copy, and
began sketches of different works.

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While thus busied, I became acquainted with Mrs. Eckstein,
the widow of an artist who came from Saxony, and settled
with his wife in London many years before my return thither.
This man acquired decent subsistence by portrait miniature
painting. His wife had a genius for the same art, and under
her husband's instructions became no mean proficient. She
employed her skill to increase the common fund, first, by occa-
sionally copying her husband's pictures, when copies were re-
quired, and, at length, by painting from female originals.

Gradually, the business was divided between them, and the
female faces were constantly transferred by Eckstein to his
wife. Her skill came into fashion and repute, and the gains
of the wife were little inferior to those of the husband. They
had no offspring, and mere domestic avocations were unsuited
to her taste.

Though their gains were considerable, they lived without
much foresight or economy. All they gained during the year,
they spent before the end of it, and hence, at Eckstein's death,
his wife was left without any means of support but her pro-
fession.

She possessed much general literature, of an independent
though improvident spirit, had little respect for the ordinary
maxims of the world and of her sex; and when you had sur-
mounted your punctilios, and reconciled yourself to a few
seeming, for they were not real, infractions of decorum, you
found her a valuable friend.

Our acquaintance began after her husband's death, and
quickly ripened into confidence and intimacy. I paid her fre-
quent visits at her lodgings, was, of course, prompted to exam-
ine her arrangements and performances, and to reason on the
nature of her art.

Every thing that I saw coincided with my early propensities,
and my new schemes for employment and subsistence. Here
was an example of one who pursued no servile or dishonoura-
ble trade, and who, with a little difference of character, with
more attention to the delicacies of her sex, with more neatness
in her household, more economy in her expense, might, in a few

―133―

years, acquire such opulence as to dispense with daily applica-
tion. Might not this example deserve to be studied and fol-
lowed?

As soon as my friend discovered my thoughts, she expressed
great eagerness to encourage and assist me in my undertaking;
expatiated, with great zeal, on the advantages of her pursuit,
offered me the use of her models, her colours and apartments,
and even importuned me to take up my abode with her, and
form a kind of partnership.

To this, however, there were obstacles, arising partly, from
certain dissonances and disparities between our characters and
manners, and partly, from the temper and views of my aunt,
which were not to be surmounted. I was willing, so far, to
profit by her offers, as to take, daily, her instructions in the
art. For nearly two years I was an assiduous scholar, and my
zeal being seconded by inclination and by interest, I made no
despicable progress.

R. Did you confine yourself merely to the face?

L. Chiefly to the face. I sought for, and laboured after
excellence in no other branch of the art. No object, in the
circle of nature, more merits to be looked upon and studied
than the human countenance, and never is there any danger of
exhausting its varieties. My observation was thus rendered
acute, vivid, and limited to one class of objects, and my source
of pleasure was augmented in a degree surprising to myself.

R. Had you ever any need of lucratively applying your
skill?

L. Never. Fortunately, I have passed my life, hitherto,
without the necessity of purchasing my food with my labour.

R. What use then have you made of your skill?

L. Chiefly for my own gratification, and for that of my
friend. I was lately counting up the faces, real and imaginary,
which I had sketched during three years, and dividing them
into classes. What, think you, was the number?

R. I should be glad to know.

L. The number is three hundred and fourteen, which, on
an average, is hardly less than one in three days, but in truth,

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I applied myself to painting with much regularity. Some por-
tion of almost every day I bestowed upon it.

R. But how could you procure subjects for such constant
occupation.

L. There never could be want of subjects as long as I lived
in human society; while faces met my eye, there was always
some among them singular, and striking by their novelty and
their significance. If real faces were wanting, I tasked my
fancy, and forming a scale, which included every possible mo-
dification of features, had always a subject for my pencil.

My pictures were of several kinds. The first were such as
were drawn at the request of my friends, and for their use, as
tokens or memorials of affection or respect.

The second were such as were executed for my own, either
those whom I loved, and who sat while I drew, or others whom
their characters, their adventures, or their countenances ren-
dered any wise remarkable, and whose faces were drawn ei-
ther from casual inspection or from memory.

A third kind consisted of imaginary faces. As my favour-
ite employment always was to feign characters and incidents, I
of course, was prone to create suitable forms and faces, and these
frequently I pencilled with great care.

I perceive, intuitively, relations between the intellectual
character and the outward form. My experience has sup-
plied me with great number of materials to work with. Hav-
ing always particularly noted faces, being attentive to the de-
meanor and inquisitive into the history of those to whom they
belong, I may, perhaps, rely with some degree of confidence
on my physiognomical decisions. At any rate, every face
makes a strong, and vivid, and distinct impression on my
fancy. I can trace the features upon paper, even in its ab-
sence, with tolerable fidelity.

My fancy is wont to exert itself in two ways. First, to
conjecture the history and character of those whose faces only
have been seen, and, secondly, to conjecture the lineaments and
form of one, whose history and character only are known.
These processes have afforded me many an instructive, or, if

―135―

you please, many an amusing hour. Hence, I have amassed
a large stock of those images which revisit me in solitude, and
give celerity and pleasure to those moments that would other-
wise be vacant and wearisomely slow.

R. And what estimate do you form of the advantages flow-
ing from your application to the pencil. Was the choice of
this profession the best that could have been made? Was
there no other pursuit, in which the same application would not
have produced more delightful consequences?

L. These are questions more easy to be put than answered.
As a calling, I cannot hesitate to prefer this to any other. I
could not make myself lawyer, physician, merchant, or divine.
The necessary trades of building, tayloring and cooking, were
only to be followed through necessity. Music, painting, and
needle-work were all that remained, and these were useful to
subsistence, either as being practised or taught.

To teach an art to others, is, without doubt, unspeakably
worse than to practice it: more toilsome, more degrading, less
favourable to cultivation of the understanding and the temper,
and to liberty, and less gainful.

Needle-work and pencil-work have some things in common,
but their differences are those which subsist between forming a
statue with a wooden mallet and a steel chissel, between the
sport of an hour and the task of a year. The pencil is alive,
active, creative, and a wonder-worker, but the needle is slug-
gish, inanimate and dead; the enemy of all zeal, the obstacle
to all progress; the mother and the emblem of plodding and
stupid perseverance. I merely speak of the needle, as the tool
of fancy, the agent of embellishment. In all useful works, we
cannot overrate its value, or the importance of every female
being thoroughly mistress of it.

Music has its charms: but to gain a living by the practice
is to shew ourselves at concerts and the theatres: to forfeit all
esteem and trample upon delicacy, and to set at naught a good
name.

R. But, are music, needle-work and painting, the only paths
open to ingenious females? You mentioned, that you first de-

―136―

signed to become an authour. Your sex did not exclude you
from this. Your education and your genius were remarkably
adapted to it. The implements and materials were cheap, easy,
and to be wrought up with less exposure to the world, less per-
sonal exertion, and less infringement of liberty, than in Eck-
stein's vocation.

The passion for fame, the fervours of pathetic, or the bril-
liance of sportive eloquence, the sense of contributing to the
benefit and pleasure of remote nations and distant generations,
all invited you to take up the pen, and yet you took up the pen-
cil instead.

L. I am not unaware of the manifold advantages which a
moral fiction has over a portrait. I regret, now, that I look
back upon the past, that so many hours were not given to
books and the pen. My portraits have benefitted and delighted
me, but when I think upon the progress which a different de-
votion of my time would have enabled me to make, in useful
and delightful knowledge, I have no terms to convey the sense,
not merely of my folly, but my guilt. How many volumes
might I not have read, might I not have written; how might
my knowledge of man and nature, of poetry and science have
been enlarged, if all those days, and all that zeal, which, during
five years, were absorbed by painting, had been dedicated to the
poets, historians and philosophers! But, thanks to my wiser
years, the infatuation is now at an end, and the pencil is laid
aside forever.

R. Forever? Do you mean never to paint again?

L. Never: unless, upon some very extraordinary exigence.
The truth is, that the end of application, the ability to figure to
ones self, and to retain, in memory, the features of another, was
long ago accomplished. To form a definite image, it is no
longer requisite to paint it. To recal it to view, it is no longer
necessary to turn to my port feuille. Having not to paint for
subsistence, but for pleasure, and every pleasurable purpose
being attained, without the actual use of the pencil, I must lay
it aside.

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But, if its aid were as indispensable as ever, I would not use
it again.

R. Why?

L. Because my time can be more usefully employed with a
book. Formerly, I spent a precious hour stooping over a table,
with eyes rivetted to the whitened surface, my reason at a stand,
and my fancy fixed upon a single set of features. If permitted
to wander, it was only by fits, at random, through the maze
of vague and discontented recollections, whence my mind re-
turned exercised, but not improved, weary and bewildered.

Now, that hour enables me to traverse a league of this va-
riegated surface, to cheer my mind, and strengthen my frame,
by passing through an half score vallies, and ascending an half
score hills. I examine twenty faces or landscapes of nature's
forming, whose lines and colours I can never hope to emulate,
instead of producing one uniform, perishable, and imperfect
creature of my own.

If I choose to betake myself to books, what a world is open
before me: how worthy of minute and never tired contempla-
tion. How many structures of poets and philosophers may be
examined in the time mis-devoted to a picture. What insight
may be gained into the mechanism of human society and the
laws of human action, by pursuing the vicissitudes of individuals
or of nations from their hour of birth to their hour of extinc-
tion.

I once, while living with a friend in Hampshire, employed
three hours one morning in copying a head of Raphaelle; having
tired my fingers at this work, I went into a closet where there
were a few books, and thought to amuse myself with whatever
chance should offer.

I lighted on Dryden's Virgil, and opened at the fourth book
of the Æniid. I read it through in about an hour, and was so
much pleased, and so conscious of the many things unobserved
or unreflected on at the first perusal, that I immediately began
again. I went through it and could not resist the inclination to
begin it a third time.

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It was a favourable moment; my mind was active and my
attention vigorous. It is impossible to describe the number
and vividness of my conceptions; my new views of composi-
tion, morality and manners and government, all rapidly flow-
ing from this source. My enthusiasm prompted me to read
aloud, and not my intellectual powers merely but my physical
and vocal powers, my eye and my ear, were beneficially exer-
cised. The incidents, images, phrases and epithets impressed
themselves with remarkable force upon my memory. There
are few of the lines contained in this book, which have not
many times, casually or in consequence of efforts to recall
them been repeated. The pleasures and benefits flowing from
the employment of these three hours, are indeed, endless
in variety and number, and they form a sort of bright spot
in the scene of my past existence, on which I meditate with a
nameless kind of satisfaction.

On a similar occasion afterwards, I opened accidentally,
Robertson's Scottish History, and read for three hours. During
this time I had deliberately perused the whole story of Mary's
sufferings, from her flight across the Tweed till her death.

I cannot describe the effect of this narrative upon my mind.
It deeply affected me. I wept plentifully, and yet my emotions
were not painful, they were solemn, ecstatic and divine. The
sudden influx of new ideas, seemed like an addition to my men-
tal substance. I began to live a new existence, and was sensible
of faculties for virtue and happiness, of which before I had not
had a glimpse.

How often have I since compared the occupation of these
hours, with those consigned to painting, and regretted that I
did not sooner awaken from my dream.

Then, however, these delights had no other effect than to
make me attempt to draw, merely from fancy, a portrait first of
Dido and then of Mary. I afterwards met with a fine portrait
of the mother queen at Holyrood house, and with a bust of the
infelix Eliza, in a gallery at Naples. The emotions with which
I contemplated these pieces, were wholly owing to my know-
ledge of their history, and were so different from any which my

―139―

own performances had given, that I wonder at my still adhering
to the pencil.

Now, instead of delineating the eyes, nose and lips of him or
her whose adventures I have just read or heard, I put down all
my reflections on the story upon paper, and where I formerly
sketched the face of another, I now exhibit my thoughts, en-
lightened, methodized, extended by the very act of putting them
into words.

R. But here, I may make the same remark which I formerly
made as to your music. The mind necessarily demands relief
from variety and change. Why may not painting and music
be admitted to diversify the scene, and at intervals, however
rare and brief?

L. I have no intervals to spare. I find no satiety, nor decay
of curiosity or languor of spirits, except from the intermission
of my favourite employments. I do not spend my whole time
in writing or reading, or in lonely musing. I have personal
and household occupations to attend to. I have visits to pay
and to receive; conversations to sustain and rambles to take.
My present and absent friends lay claim to some of my time,
and I practise, I assure you, not a slight degree of self denial,
in withholding myself from the pen and the book as much as
I do.

R. Pry'thee, tell me exactly, how you distribute your time.

L. I will tell you how I wish to distribute; to what rule I
endeavour, as far as circumstances will permit, to adhere.
Now that I am more mistress of my time, than I ever was. I
adhere to it with considerable punctuality. But enough for the
present. We have done with painting, I suppose, and we'll
have done for the present with talk.