Wraxford, a man of grander ambitions who had recently married an heiress. He immediately set about extending the house and grounds, with a view to entertaining in the grand style, deaf to warnings about its remoteness and difficulty of access. He spent a good part of his wife’s fortune, as well as his own, on this plan, but the great parties never eventuated; the invitations were politely declined, and the newly fitted out rooms remained unoccupied. And then, around 1795, his only son Felix died at the age of ten, in a fall from a gallery above the Great Hall.
Thomas Wraxford’s wife left him soon after the tragedy and went back to her own people. He lived on at the Hall for another thirty years, until one morning, in the spring of 1821, his manservant brought up the hot water at the usual hour and found his master gone. The bed had not been slept in, but there was no sign of struggle or disturbance; the outer doors and windows were all secured as usual; and the only thing missing was the nightshirt he had been wearing when the servant had last seen him the evening before. The house and grounds were thoroughly searched, in vain: Thomas Wraxford had vanished from the face of the earth, and no trace of him was ever found.
It was generally assumed that the old man’s wits had finally given way, and that he had somehow got out of the house in his nightshirt, wandered off into Monks Wood, and fallen into a pit. The area had been mined for tin many centuries before, and some of the old workings still remained, roofed over by bracken and fallen leaves, as snares for the unwary. A year and a day after Thomas’s disappearance, Cornelius Wraxford, his nephew and sole heir, petitioned the county court for a judgment of Thomas Wraxford’s decease, which was granted readily enough. And so Cornelius, a reclusive, unmarried scholar, resigned his fellowship at Cambridge and took possession of the Hall. And that was all that my father could tellme, save that over the years, Cornelius had gradually sold off the land from which the estate had once derived its income, except for Monks Wood and the Hall itself.
I spent a great deal of time, as a young boy, happily plotting with my companions as to how we might make our way through the forest, evade the dogs, and creep into the Hall through the secret passage which was said to lead from the house to a disused chapel in the woods nearby. None of us had seen more than a distant glimpse of Monks Wood, and so our imaginations were free to run wild; the terrors we invoked haunted my dreams for years afterwards. Our plans, of course, came to nothing; I was sent away to school, where I endured the usual brutalities, until the shock of my dear mother’s death left me for a while indifferent to lesser torments.
It was then I think that I began to find refuge in sketching and drawing, for which I possessed a natural facility, although I had never taken it very seriously, or received much in the way of instruction. My forté was natural scenery – the wilder the better – houses, castles and, especially, ruins. Something in me was struggling towards the light, but it seemed to have nothing to do with my destiny, which was to read for the law at Corpus Christi, my father’s old college at Cambridge. This I duly did; and there, in my second year, I met a young man named Arthur Wilmot. He was reading classics but his real passion was for painting, and through him I discovered a new world of which I had been ignorant. It was in his company in London that I saw Turner’s work for the first time, and felt that I understood at last those lines of Keats about stout Cortez gazing upon the ocean with a wild surmise. During that long vacation we spent three weeks painting and sketching in the Highlands, and with Arthur’s encouragement I began to believe that my future might lie in a studio rather than a solicitor’s office.
Arthur was about my own height, but very slightly built, with fair skin of the
Thomas Wraxford’s wife left him soon after the tragedy and went back to her own people. He lived on at the Hall for another thirty years, until one morning, in the spring of 1821, his manservant brought up the hot water at the usual hour and found his master gone. The bed had not been slept in, but there was no sign of struggle or disturbance; the outer doors and windows were all secured as usual; and the only thing missing was the nightshirt he had been wearing when the servant had last seen him the evening before. The house and grounds were thoroughly searched, in vain: Thomas Wraxford had vanished from the face of the earth, and no trace of him was ever found.
It was generally assumed that the old man’s wits had finally given way, and that he had somehow got out of the house in his nightshirt, wandered off into Monks Wood, and fallen into a pit. The area had been mined for tin many centuries before, and some of the old workings still remained, roofed over by bracken and fallen leaves, as snares for the unwary. A year and a day after Thomas’s disappearance, Cornelius Wraxford, his nephew and sole heir, petitioned the county court for a judgment of Thomas Wraxford’s decease, which was granted readily enough. And so Cornelius, a reclusive, unmarried scholar, resigned his fellowship at Cambridge and took possession of the Hall. And that was all that my father could tellme, save that over the years, Cornelius had gradually sold off the land from which the estate had once derived its income, except for Monks Wood and the Hall itself.
I spent a great deal of time, as a young boy, happily plotting with my companions as to how we might make our way through the forest, evade the dogs, and creep into the Hall through the secret passage which was said to lead from the house to a disused chapel in the woods nearby. None of us had seen more than a distant glimpse of Monks Wood, and so our imaginations were free to run wild; the terrors we invoked haunted my dreams for years afterwards. Our plans, of course, came to nothing; I was sent away to school, where I endured the usual brutalities, until the shock of my dear mother’s death left me for a while indifferent to lesser torments.
It was then I think that I began to find refuge in sketching and drawing, for which I possessed a natural facility, although I had never taken it very seriously, or received much in the way of instruction. My forté was natural scenery – the wilder the better – houses, castles and, especially, ruins. Something in me was struggling towards the light, but it seemed to have nothing to do with my destiny, which was to read for the law at Corpus Christi, my father’s old college at Cambridge. This I duly did; and there, in my second year, I met a young man named Arthur Wilmot. He was reading classics but his real passion was for painting, and through him I discovered a new world of which I had been ignorant. It was in his company in London that I saw Turner’s work for the first time, and felt that I understood at last those lines of Keats about stout Cortez gazing upon the ocean with a wild surmise. During that long vacation we spent three weeks painting and sketching in the Highlands, and with Arthur’s encouragement I began to believe that my future might lie in a studio rather than a solicitor’s office.
Arthur was about my own height, but very slightly built, with fair skin of the
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