detail of Dr. Syntax drawing the waterfall at Ambleside, Thomas Rowlandson, 1812 V&A

I wrote a few months ago about William Gilpin who was  in the words of the  Monthly Review in  April 1799, “the venerable founder and master of the picturesque school.” The problem was that while his travel writings and books about aesthetic theories helped define “picturesque beauty” there’s little doubt that he was more than a bit pompous and self-opinionated, and so very easy to satirise.

There was no better deflater of   the self-important than the cartoonist Thomas Rowlandson. He apparently told a group of friends that he had decided on a tour of his own to the West Country and he felt “in a humour to sketch a series, where the object may be made ridiculous without much thinking.”  Gilpin was an easy target and by 1809  Rowlandson  had invented the character of Dr Syntax.

Like Gilpin,  Syntax is a clergyman, artist and schoolmaster  who travelled to out-of-the way places,  drawing and describing them for publication. The result was  humour  that parodied Gilpin not cruelly but comically, in ways that can still make us laugh today.

The Images come from the 1903 reprint unless otherwise acknowledged

Interest in the Picturesque had grown rapidly  during the second half of the eighteenth century, and led to a spate of  books about tours around Britain, like those of Gilpin. These were often illustrated using new techniques such as aquatinting that allowed the  easy reproduction of  sketches and water-colour drawings. Having got the idea Rowlandson produced  a series of drawings which he offered to Rudolph Ackerman, a prominent print-seller and publisher for possible publication. [Many of these, including those not used,  are now in the V&A] Ackerman, now best remembered for his monthly journal the Repository of Arts, saw the commercial potential  and in a reversal of  the usual  business model of the day, where illustrations were commissioned after the acceptance of the text, he approached William Combe, a prolific writer for hire to produce the words to accompany some of Rowlandson’s sketches.

Dr. Syntax taking wine with a lady in a drawing room. This sketch was not used 

The first appearance of the Reverend Dr Syntax was in The Schoolmaster’s Tour published as a serial in another of Ackerman’s ventures, The Poetical Magazine, in 1810.   He was  identified as someone who fitted Gilpin’s definition of a  “man of taste” because he could  distinguish between “good” and “bad” picturesque compositions [ie he agreed with Gilpin].

Ackerman’s commercial  judgement was right. Coming at a time when England was caught up in war, and domestic tourism was back in fashion, his appeal was enormous. The Schoolmaster’s Tour was republished in book form as The Tour of Dr. Syntax in search of the Picturesque in 1812. Over the next ten years  three more books followed. As you’d expect from the title it recounts  the reverend gentleman’s  adventures around the countryside in search of perfect picturesque scenery.  The book is divided into 26 Cantos,  the first opening with Syntax contemplating the  drudgery of his work as a schoolmaster and curate, his low pay for both, and his lack of chances for  preferment in either…

The Doctor’s Dream

You charm my heart, you quite delight it.”
“I’ll make a Tour—and then I’ll WRITE IT…

I’ll ride and write, and sketch and print,
And thus create a real mint ;
I’ll prose it here, I’ll verse it there,
And picturesque it everywhere.
I’ll do what all have done before ;
I think I shall—and somewhat more.
At Doctor Pompous [ie Gilpin] give a look ;
He made his fortune by a book :
And if my volume does not beat it,
When I return, I’ll fry and eat it.

Dr Syntax sets out

Having convinced his wife  Syntax sets off on his mare Grizzle.  Everything that he does on his journey, the choices of where he goes,  the way he tries to amend and improve the scenery he sees, and of course his intention to publish an account of his journey all echo Gilpin.  Rowlandson’s sketches and Combe’s verse both parody and mock picturesque aesthetics, and instead of Syntax objectively describing what he sees on the tour they make him become the centre of attention instead. 

Of course that may in part be because he  himself is picturesque,  at least according to Gilpin’s  rules.  Gilpin wrote that if you wanted to see  “the human face in its highest form of picturesque beauty, examine that patriarchal head…What is it, but the forehead furrowed with wrinkles? the prominent cheek-bone, catching the light?  Just one glance at Rowlandson’s almost caricature-like figure  is enough to prove the point, but Combe makes it quite explicit having Syntax say:
I am myself, without a flaw
The very picturesque I draw

Dr Syntax loses his way

So what happens on Dr Syntax’s tour?  No sooner has he left home than  he goes into a reverie about the fame that is going to come his way and gets lost. He comes to, and finds himself in a  plain and dull landscape, with just some donkeys and a broken and illegible signpost in view…

Oh what a wide expanse I see,
Without a wood, without a tree…
…How could I come, misguided wretch,
To where I cannot make a sketch”…

But of course this does not stop him inventing a picturesque scene.

…But, as my time shall not be lost,
Ill make a drawing of the post ;
And tho’ a flimsy taste may flout it,
There’s something picturesque about it:
“Tis rude and rough, without a gloss,
And is well cov’red o’er with moss ;

But still the sketch is disappointing so he decides to add a group of cows to his drawing, although there are none in sight, and turns the pond where Grizzle is drinking into a stream, and  the flat horizon into a “flat a shaggy ridge, And o’er the water throw a bridge” because…

Dr Syntax sketching the lake

_ I’ll do as other sketchers do—
Put anything into the view ;
And any object recollect,
To add a grace, and give effect.
Thus, though from truth I haply err,
The scene preserves its character. |
What man of taste my right will doubt, _
To put things in, or leave them out ? *
Tis more than right, it is a duty,
If we consider landscape beauty :
He ne’er will as an artist shine, |
Who copies Nature line by line: |
Whoe’er from Nature takes a view, |
Must copy and improve it too.

“Dr Syntax stopt by Highwaymen”

His journey is full of  incidents which must have been real to travellers at the time but which also allow Rowlandson takes full advantage of the comic possibilities.  One is a  reflection of a rather bizarre comment by Gilpin in his Observations on some parts of England where he explains how  a particular Lakeland view could be improved   by the inclusion of some figures,  in fact  “nothing could suit it better than a group of banditti…the imagination can hardly avoid conceiving a band of robbers lurking under the shelter of some projecting rock; and expecting the traveller, as he approaches the valley below”. Combe and Rowlandson take this literally and have Syntax so busy sketching the landscape that robbers can creep up on him and then steal his money and horse and leave him tied to a tree.  The good doctor thus experiences real terror and dread  as opposed to Gilpin’s depiction of them as picturesque or sublime. Luckily he is rescued by two charming ladies so it ends well.

Dr. Syntax Bound to a Tree by Highwaymen

But still Syntax isn’t disheartened and eventually arrives at Oxford, his alma mater. There he meets with a former fellow student, now the Provost of the university,  enthusiastically telling  him of his plans

‘‘T’m going further, on a scheme,
Which you may think an idle dream ;
At the fam’d Lakes to take a look,
And of my Journey make a Book.”

Could Doctor G—— in chariot ride,
And take each day his wine beside,
If he did not contrive to cook,
Each year, his Tour into a book;
A flippant, flashy, flow’ry style,
A lazy morning to beguile .

Pursued by a Bull; “Syntax, still trembling with affright, Clung to the tree with all his might”

Thereafter something happens to Dr Syntax in every canto of the book, almost all either related to his search for scenes that have picturesque qualities or to his complicated relationship with his good lady wife.  When leaving Oxford he dismounts to sketch the city from a nearby hilltop but doesn’t check for livestock in the field so ends up being chased by a bull and forced to take refuge in a tree.  Next he hears of a ruined castle and goes to inspect it and, of course, sketch it. When he reaches it he is disappointed that there no trees or bushes.

Dr Syntax tumbling into the water

The palace of the feudal victor
Now serves for nought but for a picture….
…Plenty of water here I see,
But what’s a view without a tree ?
There’s something grand in yonder tower,
But not a shrub to make a bower;
Howe’er I’ll try to take the view,
As well as my best art can do.”

His thoughts come straight from Gilpin’s Three Essays: “We must ever reflect that nature is most defective in composition; and must be a little assisted…I take up a tree here, and plant it there. I pare a knoll, or make an addition to it”. Unfortunately for him Syntax’s attempts to use his “best art” lead to disaster…

An heap of stones the Doctor found,
Which loosely lay upon the ground,
To form a seat, where he might trace
The antique beauty of the place:
But, while his eye observ’d the line
That was to bound the mark’d design,
The stones gave way, and, sad to tell,
Down from the bank he headlong fell.

The comic nature of these mishaps is clear enough in Rowlandson’s pictures, but its neatly reinforced by Combe’s satirical verse: Once again the traveller in search of the picturesque becomes the centre of attention rather than the picturesque view he was trying to capture.

Dr. Syntax thrown off his horse while hunting, V&A

Later, invited to go hunting  his continued obsession  takes precedence and he replies

“‘Your sport, my Lord, I cannot take
For I must go and hunt a lake ;
And while you chace the flying deer,
I must fly off to Windermere,
Stead of hallooing to a fox,
I must catch echoes from the rocks;
With curious eye and active scent,
I on the picturesque am bent ;
This is my game, I must pursue it,
And make it where I cannot view it,

Dr. Syntax Drawing From Nature, V&A