The Awful Affliction of the Fairy Fellow

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nPity Poor Richard.

n Richard, in this case, being Richard Dadd, who wasnborn at Chatham in 1817. In 1834, the family moved to London, where three yearsnlater Richard entered the Royal Academy School. Young Richard was an excellentndraughtsman and won a series of medals for drawing at the Academy school, andnbegan a promising career by exhibiting and selling his early paintings, many ofnwhich are now lost. Two that are still known, Titania Sleeping and Puckn(both c. 1841), show his early poetic imagination and fondness for fantasynsubjects, and the following year he was commissioned to illustrate RobinnGoodfellow for S C Hall’s Book of British Ballads.

Richard Dadd – Robin Goodfellow – Book of British Ballads – 1842

nAs his reputationngrew, Dadd was commissioned to accompany Sir Thomas Phillips, a South Walesnsolicitor, on his Grand Tour of Europe, to record the sights seen (these were,nremember, the days before photography).

Richard Dadd – Robin Goodfellow – Book of British Ballads – 1842

nPhillips had been mayor of Newportnduring the Newport Rising of 1839, the last large scale armed rebellion on thenBritish mainland, when Chartists attacked the Westgate Hotel in an attempt tonfree their imprisoned colleagues. There was a violent gun battle as troopsnfired on the rebels and Phillips was seriously wounded when the Chartistsnreturned fire. The rebellion was suppressed, over twenty Chartists were killed,nand Phillips became a national hero, being knighted by Queen Victoria just sixnweeks later.

Richard Dadd – Thomas Phillips in Arab Costume

nAt the somewhat advanced age of 41, he and Dadd departed on anbelated Grand Tour on July 16^th 1842, travelling first to Ostend andnthen, by rail, caliche, horse, mule, foot, steamboat, char-à-banc, vettura andnrowing boat, through France and Northern Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and thenHoly Land. All the while, Dadd sketched what he could of the sights and sites,nrecording as best he could the exotic peoples and places, but feeling that henhad insufficient time to do them justice.

Richard Dadd – The Artist’s Halt in the Desert

nThe pace was unrelenting and the twonmen stayed where they found lodgings, everywhere from Maronite convents tonpeasant mud huts. In Egypt, Dadd was tremendously impressed by the scale andngrandeur of the ancient monuments and temples, and began a fateful, life-long interestnin the mythology of the Ancient Egyptians. The rigour of the tour began tontell, even on Phillips, who hired a boat with a crew of sixteen to navigate thenNile, and it was at this time that Dadd began to suffer from what was thennthought to be sunstroke. On the return journey home, Dadd began to suffer fromnincreasing periods of depression and delusions, and began to quarrel withnPhillips, severely straining the relationship. Phillips thought that Dadd should seeknmedical help for his condition and the two parted in Paris, as Dadd returnednback to London alone.

Richard Dadd – The Temple of the Caliphs

nIt quickly became obvious that there was somethingnseriously wrong with him; in his youth he had been noted for his calm, kind,nconsiderate and affectionate nature, full of humour and mirth, but now he wasngloomy and reserved, unpredictable and occasionally violent, convinced he wasnbeing watched by unknown enemies, haunted by devils, and that his actions werengoverned by the will of Osiris. His descent into insanity undoubtedly had annhereditary element (four of the seven children born to Dadd’s father and firstnwife died insane), but his condition was also worsened by the hardship of thenjourney in the Middle East and the things he saw there. His behaviour becamenmore and more erratic – in his rooms at Newman St, three hundred eggs andnquantities of ale were found, his only diet then being boiled eggs and ale –nand his father, Robert, took him to see Dr Alexander Sutherland of St Luke’snHospital, a leading specialist in mental illness.

Richard Dadd – working on Contradiction; Oberon and Titania

nSutherland’s opinion was thenRichard was non compos mentis and should be placed under restraint butnRobert was devoted to his son and determined to care for him himself. Two ornthree days later, Richard asked his father to accompany him to Cobham, anfavourite childhood haunt, where he promised to ‘unburden his mind’, andnafter resting at the Ship Inn and booking rooms in the village, they walked tonCobham Park, where near a chalk pit named Paddock Hole, at about 11 PM, Richardndrew a razor and first tried to cut his father’s throat before stabbing him tondeath with a spring knife he had bought especially for the purpose. Richard rannaway to Dover and took a ship to Calais, from where he departed for Paris, butnwas overpowered and detained when he attempted to cut the throat of a fellowntraveller with a razor. He was detained in a French asylum before beingnextradited to England, where after a brief spell in Maidstone gaol, he wasntransferred to Bethlem Hospital.

Bethlem Hospital

nThe early Bethlem hospital had, rightly, beennthe linguistic and factual origin of Bedlam, a chaotic hell of clamour andnmadness. By the 1840s, those days were long gone and a much more enlightenedntreatment of the mentally ill prevailed, (relatively speaking, of course). Dadd was transferred there in anstraitjacket, but was never physically restrained again. He told doctors thatnhe had killed his father because he thought he was a servant of the devil andnthat Osiris, his true father, had commanded him to destroy all of the infernalnagents in the world. He had, he said, been told to kill the Pope and thenEmperor of Austria, amongst others, and in addition to the eggs and ale foundnin his rooms were portraits of his friends, all depicted with their throatsncut. A list of names found in his pocket had that of his father at the top.

Richard Dadd – Portrait of a Young Man (possibly W C Hood)

nFrom 1852, Bethlem was controlled by Dr William Charles Hood, a man of visionnand compassion, who introduced larger windows to the hospital, and had eachnward furnished with an aviary of singing birds, flowers, pictures, statues andnbooks, to provide the inmates with distractions, interests and amusement. Hisnsteward, George Henry Haydon, a similarly enlightened man, assisted Hood andnthey encouraged Dadd’s return to painting.

Richard Dadd – Jerusalem from the Palace of Herod

nAt first he worked up the sketchesnin his sketchbooks done on the Tour, producing Orientalist landscapes andnfigure paintings, but in 1854, he began the first of his remarkable fairynpaintings, Contradiction; Oberon and Titania, a subject taken from AnMidsummer Night’s Dream.

Richard Dadd – Contradiction; Oberon and Titania

nDadd dedicated it to Hood and spent four yearsnworking on it – in the only photograph of Dadd, he is seen at work on thisnpainting. It is, arguably, his finest work although not his most famous, whichnwas painted for Haydon, who admired Contradiction so much that he askednDadd to paint another fairy picture for him – The Fairy Feller’snMaster-Stroke.

Richard Dadd – The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke

nThis is the strangest picture ever painted in England, maybeneven the strangest picture ever painted anywhere. The eponymous leather-cladnfairy feller lifts an axe over a hazelnut and is about to attempt to split itnopen with a single blow. He is surrounded by all manner of other fairy folk,nsome of whom look on in interest whilst others turn away in distraction. Thenwork is painted in microscopic detail, in the manner of a miniature, jewel-likenand glittering. Its power lies in its strangeness, we have no idea what isnreally going on and why. Something strange is happening, but we have stumblednacross it and we know, deep down, that we have no place here. This is most definitelynnot for mortal eyes to see but we gaze in fascination, draw in by the magic,nminutely scrutinising the details and always finding something new, somethingnhidden, something secret. We do not know what will happen when that nut isncleft apart with that one fell blow but it will terrible, that much we feel innour bones. It is an utterly alien world that does not concern us, there arenpowers at play here that we can never hope to understand. It is, in everynmeaning of the word, magic.

Richard Dadd – Sketch for The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke

nThe work remains unfinished but Dadd continued tonpaint for the rest of his life. After twenty years at Bethlem, he wasntransferred to the new hospital at Broadmoor, which was much more convivial andnfreer, and although he remained severely mentally ill, he found a kind of peacenin the surroundings there.

Richard Dadd – Mad Jane

nHe had periods when he was free from the voices innhis head and was lucid; he painted stage scenery for the theatre in Broadmoor,nhe played the violin, on which he was very skilled, read classical literature,nhistory and poetry and was kept informed of all the new developments in the artnworld.

Richard Dadd’s scenery paintings at Broadmoor (now lost)

nAnd then Osiris returned with a terrible vengeance, ordering Richard tonsuddenly attack his fellow inmates, to act outrageously and disagreeably, tonrave and to rant incoherently. And so he remained incarcerated until, in 1885,nhe became seriously ill with consumption. Richard Dadd died at Broadmoor onnJanuary 8^th 1886, and was buried in the little cemetery there. Pitynpoor Richard.

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