Catalogue entry
The whole page is taken up with the following lines of verse:
Close to the [?‘hreshold’, i.e. ‘threshold’] way worn stone
Her coifs hang bleaching on the [?spiky] thorn
Her only pride beside the thread & reel
For time had steeld her bosom even to feel
Tho once in May of life that half losed [i.e. ‘closed’] Eye
Had [‘taught’ inserted above] that the proudest of her time to sigh
But mutual impulse only triumph gaind
And homely love to higher thoughts maintaind
But here again the sad concomitant of life
1Interspersed with drawings and the printed pages of Coltman’s
British Itinerary, sixty-nine pages of this sketchbook are given over wholly or partly to these verses which Turner intended as a commentary for publication with the
Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England which he sketched on the 1811 West Country tour (see the introduction to the sketchbook). The first lines are on folio 18 verso (
D08396), and the last on folio 207 verso (
D08736; CXXIII 204a).
The previous passage is on folio 38 verso (
D08434), introducing the character discussed here as a village school-marm. A coif is a thin, close-fitting skullcap; the woman’s neat dress is the last vestige of her self-esteem, having once had a husband, described in the next passage, on folio 45 verso (
D08448). Wilton and Turner read the thorn in line two as ‘spiky’, while Lindsay gives ‘slanting’.
Read full Catalogue entry
