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235
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
·
George Gissing
71
As
a
child
I
used
to
sleep
in
a
room
hung
round
with
prints
after
English
landscape
painters--those
steel
engravings
so
common
half
a
century
ago,
which
bore
the
legend,
"From
the
picture
in
the
Vernon
Gallery."
Far
more
than
I
knew
at
the
time,
these
pictures
impressed
me;
I
gazed
and
gazed
at
them,
with
that
fixed
attention
of
a
child
which
is
half
curiosity,
half
reverie,
till
every
line
of
them
was
fixed
in
my
mind;
at
this
moment
I
see
the
black-and-white
landscapes
as
if
they
were
hanging
on
the
wall
before
me,
and
I
have
often
thought
that
this
early
training
of
the
imagination--for
such
it
was--has
much
to
do
with
the
passionate
love
of
rural
scenery
which
lurked
within
me
even
when
I
did
not
recognize
it,
and
which
now
for
many
a
year
has
been
one
of
the
emotions
directing
my
life.
Perhaps,
too,
that
early
memory
explains
why
I
love
a
good
black-and-white
print
even
more
than
a
good
painting.
And--to
draw
yet
another
inference--here
may
be
a
reason
for
the
fact
that,
through
my
youth
and
early
manhood,
I
found
more
pleasure
in
Nature
as
represented
by
art
than
in
Nature
herself.
Even
during
that
strange
time
when
hardships
and
passions
held
me
captive
far
from
any
glimpse
of
the
flowering
earth,
I
could
be
moved,
and
moved
deeply,
by
a
picture
of
the
simplest
rustic
scene.
At
rare
moments,
when
a
happy
chance
led
me
into
the
National
Gallery,
I
used
to
stand
long
before
such
pictures
as
"The
Valley
Farm,"
"The
Cornfield,"
"Mousehold
Heath."
In
the
murk
confusion
of
my
heart
these
visions
of
the
world
of
peace
and
beauty
from
which
I
was
excluded--to
which,
indeed,
I
hardly
ever
gave
a
thought--touched
me
to
deep
emotion.
But
it
did
not
need--nor
does
it
now--the
magic
of
a
master
to
awake
that
mood
in
me.
Let
me
but
come
upon
the
poorest
little
woodcut,
the
cheapest
"process"
illustration,
representing
a
thatched
cottage,
a
lane,
a
field,
and
I
hear
that
music
begin
to
murmur.
It
is
a
passion--Heaven
be
thanked--that
grows
with
my
advancing
years.
The
last
thought
of
my
brain
as
I
lie
dying
will
be
that
of
sunshine
upon
an
English
meadow.
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