J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Architectural and Other Subjects c.1797 ... > Swans Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Poetry 1798-9

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Poetry’ 1798-9 (Inside back cover of sketchbook)
Inside back cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Back Cover:
Inscription by Turner: Poetry 1798–9
D41426
Pen and ink on buff laid paper, 174 x 125 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink with lines of verse (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, lines of verse inscribed in pen and ink take up the whole page:
Tell me Babbling Echo why
Babbling Echo tell me why
You return me sigh for sigh
When I of Slighted Love complain
You delight to Mock my Pain
                     2
Bold intruder Night and Day
Busy telltale [‘censor’ inserted above] hence away
Me and my care in silence leave
Come not near me while I grieve
                     3                            charms
But should my Swain with all her
Return to Bless my longing arms
I’d call the [sic] from the dark retreat
The Joyfull tidings to repeat.
                     4
Repeat Repeat Repeat thy strain
Tell it o’er and o’er again
From Morn to Night prolong the tale
Let it ring from Vale to Vale
‘Babbling’ is also written the other way up at the bottom right, below the end of the last line.
Although some of the verses written out in this sketchbook are clearly copied from popular songs of the day, this may be Turner’s own attempt to write in the same idiom, as is suggested by the alternative phrases occasionally tried out here. However, these differing versions of some lines may be accounted for simply as mistranscriptions.
These passages are all inverted, and were presumably written working inwards from the back cover. See also folio 70 verso opposite (D41425), and folios 70 recto, 65 verso and recto, and 64 verso (D01815, D01805, D01804, D01803; Turner Bequest XLII 139, 130, 129, 128).

Andrew Wilton
March 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Inscription by Turner: Poetry 1798–9 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-poetry-r1174012, accessed 24 September 2024.