G.F. Watts: One Last Time

"Sir Galahad" by G.F. Watts

"G.F. Watts had a presentiment that he would die in the year 1904. On May 16th I saw him in the crowded Queen's Hall when Joachim was receiving the ovation of thousands on the occasion of his jubilee. As I spoke to Watts the feeling came to me that the end was near. It was not that he looked more ill - indeed I have seen him at times look more weary and more exhausted; but there was on that evening the peculiar look of failing life in the face which is unmistakable. Among the stalwart musicians and the vigorous physiques of the important personages gathered together, he looked so very small - so pathetically fragile. He seemed to be conscious of some incongruity, for he began saying to me apologetically, 'No personal motive would have brought me here...' I lost the rest as I had to move on to introduce a friend to Joachim.

I am glad that was not the last time I saw Watts. This was some ten days later, when he was working in his garden on the figure of his equestrian statue, 'Vital Energy.' Very old he looked, but the light in the eye was kindled afresh with the fire of aspiration as he laboured on. Yes, he was right when he wrote but a few weeks before, 'I think aspiration will remain as long as there is consciousness.' 

Every struggling to improve - the hope, the effort seemed to impart new life. Working away in a peasant's smock, he was eager as ever to reach a something which he aspired to as the best, but which seemed to elude him as the mountain summit eludes the traveller - that farthest summit which rises ever beyond the height attained!

There on the same lawn where nearly thirty years ago we had stood together before the design in embryo, which now, when eighty-seven years old, he was trying to improve - on that evening when he had so eagerly exclaimed "...One thing alone I possess, and I never remember the time I was without it - an aim towards the highest, the best, and a burning desire to reach it!' There on the same spot I saw him for the last time."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "G.F. Watts: Reminiscences," 1906, by Mrs. Russell Barrington.)