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The Collected English Letters of Henry Fuseli
685 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
About the author
Henry Fuseli
71 books3 followersHenry Fuseli RA was a Swiss painter, draughtsman, and writer on art who spent much of his life in Britain. Many of his works depict supernatural experiences, such as The Nightmare. He painted works for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery and created his own "Milton Gallery". He held the posts of Professor of Painting and Keeper at the Royal Academy. His style had a considerable influence on many younger British artists, including William Blake.
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December 20, 2019
George Richmond reported the following exchange between William Blake and the sculptor John Flaxman:
What ‘swearing’ meant at this point is difficult to say – it might simply have been a matter of saying ‘d—d’ a lot, as he often does in reported anecdotes (although he did once refer to David Hume as a cunt). One of his former pupils at the Royal Academy, Margaret Patrickson, commented on this habit too:
That this letter, sent by Patrickson to the author of Lives of the British Painters, appears in this book at all tells you something of its method. It does not just include all the surviving letters written by Fuseli, nor even those written to him, but also any letters between contemporaries which even mention him. We therefore have the pleasure of reading, for example, the letters sent to Frances Burney by her friend Federica Lock after Fuseli had stayed with them, reporting on the after-dinner stories he told. We can also eavesdrop on correspondence between William Roscoe, one of Fuseli's closest friends, and Roscoe's wife Jane, who was one of the very few people not won over by Fuseli's manner.
And he was certainly difficult. Fuseli loathed competition, either in painting or in learning; on the few occasions when he found himself at dinner with someone as well-read, or as sharp in conversation as himself, he would fall into a massive sulk and find an excuse to leave early.
The only problem with hearing all these wonderful hearsay anecdotes is that – once again – I have the sense only of hearing Fuseli at second-hand. His own letters are relatively few, and his words get lost in other people's impressions. Though they are unmistakable when you see them – his phrasing is ornate and vigorous, and he chucks in words like ‘obelize’, ‘calamophobia’ and ‘potatophage’ without a second thought.
This volume confines itself to correspondence in English, a language Fuseli did not adopt definitively until he was in his late thirties. So his early life is a blank here; for that, you need to turn to his letters in German (which electrified Goethe and Herder when they read them). The bulk of Fuseli's own letters here are from the nineteenth century, when he was an established name – the crucial early period, when he was forming his ‘Joseph Johnson circle’ and painting works like The Nightmare, is very underrepresented. Sometimes this is deliberate – as when it comes to his mysterious relationship with Mary Wollstonecraft, judging from letters like the following from his biographer to a third party:
There are no letters to or from his wife, Sophia, who remains extremely insubstantial in the historical records.
Despite all these frustrations and quibbles, the book does represent a pretty amazing effort in research, ranging far and wide to collect everything of relevance. Your primary problem, if you want to read it, will be finding a copy: you'll need to join a very good library. It's never been reissued, and I couldn't find a second-hand copy for sale anywhere. Printed in 1982, it shows a zeal for early computing that has not served it well. ‘This book was formatted and copy-set using the IBM Document Composition Facility (Script/VS) in conjunction with the AMDAHL 470/V7 computer. The master was printed on the IBM 3800 Laser printer,’ Weinstein informs us.
There is a better reason for wishing it would be revised and reissued, however, which is the hope that more material might have surfaced in the interim. Fresh correspondence from Joseph Johnson was discovered in 2000; who knows what else is out there, perhaps published in some minor academic journal? For the moment, despite Weinstein's efforts, Fuseli remains the most intriguingly elusive of eighteenth century personalities.
Flaxman: How do you get on with Fuseli? I can't stand his foul-mouthed swearing. Does he swear at you?
Blake: He does.
Flaxman: And what do you do?
Blake: What do I do? Why—I swear again! and he says astonished, “Vy Blake, you are svaring!” But he leaves off himself!
What ‘swearing’ meant at this point is difficult to say – it might simply have been a matter of saying ‘d—d’ a lot, as he often does in reported anecdotes (although he did once refer to David Hume as a cunt). One of his former pupils at the Royal Academy, Margaret Patrickson, commented on this habit too:
There is no giving Fuseli without swearing. Why is it that swearing in him never gave offence? At least, I never heard that it did. In my own opinion, it was accompanied by no profanity of mind. His feeling vented themselves in the most energetic language he could meet with […]. Fuseli drew no stronger than he felt; his feelings and his mind are alike upon his canvas.
That this letter, sent by Patrickson to the author of Lives of the British Painters, appears in this book at all tells you something of its method. It does not just include all the surviving letters written by Fuseli, nor even those written to him, but also any letters between contemporaries which even mention him. We therefore have the pleasure of reading, for example, the letters sent to Frances Burney by her friend Federica Lock after Fuseli had stayed with them, reporting on the after-dinner stories he told. We can also eavesdrop on correspondence between William Roscoe, one of Fuseli's closest friends, and Roscoe's wife Jane, who was one of the very few people not won over by Fuseli's manner.
…to be on terms of Friendship with Fuseli there is a degree of Servility necessary, don't be angry my dear R—but I never can think his merit as an artist adequate to the defects of his character in other points…
And he was certainly difficult. Fuseli loathed competition, either in painting or in learning; on the few occasions when he found himself at dinner with someone as well-read, or as sharp in conversation as himself, he would fall into a massive sulk and find an excuse to leave early.
The only problem with hearing all these wonderful hearsay anecdotes is that – once again – I have the sense only of hearing Fuseli at second-hand. His own letters are relatively few, and his words get lost in other people's impressions. Though they are unmistakable when you see them – his phrasing is ornate and vigorous, and he chucks in words like ‘obelize’, ‘calamophobia’ and ‘potatophage’ without a second thought.
This volume confines itself to correspondence in English, a language Fuseli did not adopt definitively until he was in his late thirties. So his early life is a blank here; for that, you need to turn to his letters in German (which electrified Goethe and Herder when they read them). The bulk of Fuseli's own letters here are from the nineteenth century, when he was an established name – the crucial early period, when he was forming his ‘Joseph Johnson circle’ and painting works like The Nightmare, is very underrepresented. Sometimes this is deliberate – as when it comes to his mysterious relationship with Mary Wollstonecraft, judging from letters like the following from his biographer to a third party:
The letters of Mrs Woolstonecraft are chiefly if not entirely amatory, and for the sake of all parties had better be consigned to oblivion.
There are no letters to or from his wife, Sophia, who remains extremely insubstantial in the historical records.
Despite all these frustrations and quibbles, the book does represent a pretty amazing effort in research, ranging far and wide to collect everything of relevance. Your primary problem, if you want to read it, will be finding a copy: you'll need to join a very good library. It's never been reissued, and I couldn't find a second-hand copy for sale anywhere. Printed in 1982, it shows a zeal for early computing that has not served it well. ‘This book was formatted and copy-set using the IBM Document Composition Facility (Script/VS) in conjunction with the AMDAHL 470/V7 computer. The master was printed on the IBM 3800 Laser printer,’ Weinstein informs us.
The results are god-awful: it's printed in a fixed-width font and resembles something run off on a dot-matrix printer from days of yore.
There is a better reason for wishing it would be revised and reissued, however, which is the hope that more material might have surfaced in the interim. Fresh correspondence from Joseph Johnson was discovered in 2000; who knows what else is out there, perhaps published in some minor academic journal? For the moment, despite Weinstein's efforts, Fuseli remains the most intriguingly elusive of eighteenth century personalities.
Displaying 1 of 1 review