In writing Falling Rocket, I had the great good fortune of spending time, and, in a sense, working with, two of the great characters of the nineteenth century: characters in the fullest sense of the term. As actors in a drama—the drama of both their courtroom conflict in 1878, and in the lifelong battle between the two to define and to shape the course of modern art—they filled out and played their roles handsomely, with their equally massive egos and their profound ability to express themselves. But more than this, they were both incredible personalities, both acknowledged in their own time as one of a kind: in talent, of course, but also in eccentricity. Following their stories meant encountering surprises at every turn.
And if Whistler and Ruskin made for magnificent protagonists, their story was bolstered by an equally magnificent supporting cast, one consisting, essentially, of the great social, cultural, and historical figures of London and Paris in the second half of the 19th century: Oscar Wilde and Queen Victoria, Lillie Langtry and the Prince of Wales, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward-Burne Jones, Courbet, Manet, and Monet, Gladstone and Disraeli—and so on. But among all the great knowns of this cast is a relative unknown who is second to none in the magnificent character—again in the fullest sense of the term—that he brings to Falling Rocket.
And I was equally fortunate, in writing the story of their conflict, in having an unbeatable supporting cast: a cast, essentially, made up of the great social, cultural, and historical figures in London and Paris towards the end of the century: Lillie Langtry and the Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria and Oscar Wilde, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones, Courbet, Manet, and Monet, Gladstone and Disraeli…and so on. And among that group there is one true character—again in both senses of the term—who is hardly remembered today but deserves to be. Certainly, he is the great scene-stealer of Falling Rocket—the ever-glib factotum to London’s cultural elite, the serial fabulist and crafty opportunist, the friend-become enemy to Whistler, Ruskin, and virtually everyone around him: the pre-Raphaelite parasite, Charles Augustus Howell.
Born in Portugal to an English wine-merchant father and a Portuguese woman he claimed to have given him some sort of standing on the lower rungs of the Portuguese nobility, Charles Howell had by the mid-1860s emerged into the heart of the Victorian art world, taking his place at Tudor House, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Chelsea home on the bank of the Thames and the favored meeting-place for Pre-Raphaelite painters, their aesthetic fans and hangers-on, the poet Algernon Swinburne, James Whistler, and John Ruskin. Howell entertained with his Munchausen stories, Howell kept them all entertained. And by willingly assisting them in any number of ways, he found endless opportunity for profiting from them. He reputedly shared in Algernon Swinburne’s shady pleasures—until Swinburne suspected him of involvement in a plot to extort him. He was instrumental in helping Rossetti recover the handwritten collection poems that Rossetti, in an act of ghoulish sentimentality, had buried with the corpse of his wife, Elizabeth Siddall. And, after the death of John Ruskin’s father, he involved himself as a sort of personal almoner in dispersing the fortune that Ruskin inherited and felt compelled to give away. Ruskin’s mother apparently saw through Howell from the start, responding to one of his tall tales by crying out “How can you…sit there and listen to such a pack of lies!” Her son took much longer to catch on, happily setting Howell upon all sorts of curious personal errands until in 1868, for reasons that remain mysterious but clearly reflect a complete disillusionment, Ruskin abruptly broke with him.
All this time Howell was well-acquainted with Whistler, but he stayed largely out of Whistler’s affairs until a decade later, when, living with a mountain of debt and facing certain bankruptcy, Whistler found himself deeply dependent upon Howell’s wheeling-dealing ability to squeeze funds out of virtually any situation. Howell quickly provided Whistler with a steady income by digging out Whistler’s old lithographic plates and churning out copies, many of which he pilfered to make his own profit. Howell brokered deals with patrons and dealers, obtaining loans on the security of Whistler’s work—or simply on the false promise of Whistler’s work. And when Whistler was at his most desperate, Howell shamelessly took advantage, offering Whistler paltry sums for his art, in one case snapping up Whistler’s Arrangement in Black, No. 3: Sir Henry Irving as Philp II of Spain for ten pounds and a sealskin coat. Whistler, no fool, realized that Howell was exploiting him more than he was exploiting Howell. But for as long as Howell kept the bailiffs from seizing his property, Whistler didn’t care.
By the early 1880s, though, after declaring his insolvency and having begun anew in Venice, Whistler had soured on Howell. And when in 1881 he discovered Howell’s involvement in a three-year scheme to defraud him, Whistler, broadcast Howell’s perfidy in a published pamphlet—and never spoke to him again.
Howell lived for another nine years. When he died in 1890, the tall tales about him lived on. While he actually died in the hospital after a long illness, the story arose that he had, according to a newspaper in 1917, “been found murdered outside a public-house, with a half-sovereign held so tightly between his teeth that it was removed only by a dental-operation.”
Charles Augustus Howell: he certainly deserves more attention than he’s gotten. I’ve tried to give him some of that in Falling Rocket. And as it happens, he’s getting even more attention to that, these days: as the protagonist in his own film. Making the festival rounds at this moment is The Worst Man in London, the Portuguese director Roderigo Areias’s take on Howell’s years exploiting Rossetti and Ruskin. (His years exploiting Whistler will have to wait for the sequel.) Catch it if you can!