Part 13

"You were a mother! at your bosom fed The babes that loved you. You, with laughing eye, Each twilight thought, each nascent feeling read, Which you yourself created."

Alas, that such a beginning should have such an end!

Both these are whole-lengths, by Sir Joshua Reynolds: the middle tints are a little flown, else they were perfect; they suffer by being hung near the glowing yet mellowed tints of Vandyke.

We have here a whole bevy of the heroines of De Grammont, delightful to those who have what Walpole used to call the "De Grammont madness" upon them. Here is that beautiful, audacious termagant, Castlemaine, very like her picture at Windsor, and with the same characteristic bit of storm gleaming in the background.--Lady Denham,[76] the wife of the poet, Sir John Denham, and niece of that Lord Bristol who figures in Vandyke's picture above mentioned--a lovely creature, and a sweet picture.--Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, who so long ruled the heart and councils of Charles the Second, in Lely's finest style; the face has a look of blooming innocence, soon exchanged for coarseness and arrogance.--The indolent, alluring Middleton, looking from under her sleepy eyelids, "trop coquette pour rebuter personne."--"La Belle Hamilton," the lovely prize of the volatile De Grammont; very like her portrait at Windsor, with the same finely formed bust and compressed ruby lips, but with an expression more vivacious and saucy, and less elevated.--Two portraits of Nell Gwyn, with the fair brown air and small bright eyes they ought to have; _au reste_, with such prim, sanctified mouths, and dressed with such elaborate decency, that instead of reminding us of the "parole sciolte d'ogni freno, risi, vezzi, giuochi"--they are more like Beck Marshall, the puritan's daughter, on her good behaviour.[77]

Here is that extraordinary woman Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, the fame of whose beauty and gallantries filled all Europe, and once the intended wife of Charles the Second, though she afterwards intrigued in vain for the less (or more) eligible post of _maitresse en titre_. What an extraordinary, wild, perverted, good-for-nothing, yet interesting set of women, were those four Mancini sisters! all victims, more or less, to the pride, policy, or avarice, of their cardinal uncle; all gifted by nature with the fervid Italian blood and the plotting Italian brain; all really _aventurieres_, while they figured as duchesses and princesses. They wore their coronets and ermine as strolling players wear their robes of state--with a sort of picturesque awkwardness--and they proved rather too scanty to cover a multitude of sins.

This head of Hortense Mancini, as Cleopatra dissolving the pearl, is the most spirited, but the least beautiful portrait I have seen of her. An appropriate pendant on the opposite side is her lover, philosopher, and eulogist, the witty St. Evremond--Grammont's "Caton de Normandie;" but instead of looking like a good-natured epicurean, a man "who thought as he liked, and liked what he thought,"[78] his nose is here wrinkled up into an expression of the most supercilious scorn, adding to his native ugliness.[79] Both these are by Kneller. Farther on, is another of Charles's beauties, whose _sagesse_ has never been disputed--Elizabeth Wriothesley, Countess of Northumberland, the sister of that half saint, half heroine, and _all_ woman--Lady Russell.

There is also a lovely picture of that magnificent brunette, Miss Bagot. "Elle avait," says Hamilton, "ce teint rembruni qui plait tant quand il plait." She married Berkeley Lord Falmouth, a man who, though unprincipled, seems to have loved her; at least, was not long enough her husband to forget to be her lover: he was killed, shortly after his marriage, in the battle of Southwold-bay. This is assuredly one of the most splendid pictures Lely ever painted; and it is, besides, full of character and interest. She holds a cannon-ball in her lap, (only an airy emblematical cannon-ball, for she poises it like a feather,) and the countenance is touched with a sweet expression of melancholy: hence it is plain that she sat for it soon after the death of her first husband, and before her marriage with the witty Earl of Dorset.--Near her hangs another fair piece of witchcraft, "La Belle Jennings," who in her day played with hearts as if they had been billiard balls; and no wonder, considering what _things_ she had to deal with:[80] there was a great difference between her vivacity and that of her vivacious sister, the Duchess of Marlborough.--Old Sarah hangs near her. One would think that Kneller, in spite, had watched the moment to take a characteristic likeness, and catch, not the Cynthia, but the Fury of the minute; as for instance, when she cut off her luxuriant tresses, so worshipped by her husband, and flung them in his face; for so she tosses back her disdainful head, and curls her lip like an insolent, pouting, spoiled, grown-up baby. The life of this woman is as fine a lesson on the emptiness of all worldly advantages, boundless wealth, power, fame, beauty, wit, as ever was set forth by moralist or divine.

"By spirit robb'd of power--by warmth, of friends-- By wealth, of followers! without one distress, Sick of herself through very selfishness."[81]

And yet I suspect that the Duchess of Marlborough has never met with justice. History knows her only as Marlborough's wife, an intriguing dame d'honneur, and a cast-off favourite. Vituperated by Swift, satirized by Pope, ridiculed by Walpole--what angel could have stood such bedaubing, and from such pens?

"O she has fallen into a pit of ink!"

But glorious talents she had, strength of mind, generosity, the power to feel and inspire the strongest attachment,--and all these qualities were degraded, or rendered useless, by _temper_! Her avarice was not the love of money for its own sake, but the love of power; and her bitter contempt for "knaves and fools" may be excused, if not justified. Imagine such a woman as the Duchess of Marlborough out-faced, out-plotted by that crowned cypher, that sceptred commonplace, queen Anne! It should seem that the constant habit of being forced to serve, outwardly, where she really ruled,--the consciousness of her own brilliant and powerful faculties brought into immediate hourly comparison with the confined trifling understanding of her mistress, a disdain of her own forced hypocrisy, and a perception of the heartless baseness of the courtiers around her, disgusting to a mind naturally high-toned, produced at length that extreme of bitterness and insolence which made her so often "an embodied storm." She was always a termagant--but of a very different description from the vulgar Castlemaine.

Though the picture of Colonel Russell, by Dobson, is really fine as a portrait, the recollection of the scene between him and Miss Hamilton[82]--his love of dancing, to prove he was not old and asthmatical,--and his attachment to his "_chapeau pointu_," make it impossible to look at him without a smile--but a good-humoured smile, such as his lovely mistress gave him when she rejected him with so much politeness.--Arabella Churchill, the sister of the great Duke of Marlborough, and mistress of the Duke of York, has been better treated by the painter than by Hamilton; instead of "La grande creature, pale et decharnee," she appears here a very lovely woman. But enough of these equivocal ladies. No--before we leave them, there are yet two to be noticed, more equivocal, more interesting, and more extraordinary than all the rest put together--Bianca di Capello, who, from a washerwoman, became Grand Duchess of Florence, with less beauty than I should have expected, but as much _countenance_; and the beautiful, but appalling picture of Venitia Digby, painted after she was dead, by Vandyke: she was found one morning sitting up in her bed, leaning her head on her hand, and lifeless; and thus she is painted. Notwithstanding the ease and grace of the attitude, and the delicacy of the features, there is no mistaking this for slumber: a heavier hand has pressed upon those eyelids, which will never more open to the light: there is a leaden lifelessness about them, too shockingly true and real--

"It thrills us with mortality, And curdles to the gazer's heart."

Her picture at Windsor is the most perfectly beautiful and impressive female portrait I ever saw. How have I longed, when gazing at it, to conjure her out of her frame, and bid her reveal the secret of her mysterious life and death!--Nearly opposite to the dead Venitia, in strange contrast, hangs her husband, who loved her to madness, or was mad before he married her, in the very prime of life and youth. This picture, by Cornelius Jansen, is as fine as any thing of Vandyke's: the character expresses more of intellectual power and physical strength, than of that elegance of face and form we should have looked for in such a fanciful being as Sir Kenelm Digby: he looks more like one of the Athletae than a poet, a metaphysician, and a "squire of dames."

There are three pictures of Waller's famed Sacharissa, the first Lady Sunderland: one in a hat, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, gay and blooming; the second, far more interesting, was painted about the time of her marriage with the young Earl of Sunderland, or shortly after--very sweet and lady-like. I should say that the high-breeding of the face and air was more conspicuous than the beauty; the neck and hands exquisite. Both these are Vandyke's. A third picture represents her about the time of her second marriage: the expression wholly changed--cold, sad, faded, but pretty still: one might fancy her contemplating, with a sick heart, the portrait of Lord Sunderland, the lover and husband of her early youth, who hangs on the opposite side of the gallery, in complete armour: he fell in the same battle with Lord Falkland, at the age of three-and-twenty. The brother of Sacharissa, the famous Algernon Sidney, is suspended near her; a fine head, full of contemplation and power.

Among the most interesting pictures in the gallery is an undoubted original of Lady Jane Grey. After seeing so many hideous, hard, prim-looking pictures and prints of this gentle-spirited heroine, it is consoling to trust in the genuineness of a face which has all the sweetness and dignity we look for, and ought to find. Then, by way of contrast, we have that most curious picture of Diana of Poitiers, once in the Crawfurd collection: it is a small half-length; the features fair and regular; the hair is elaborately dressed with a profusion of jewels; but there is no drapery whatever--"force pierreries et tres peu de linge," as Madame de Sevigne described the two Mancini.[83] Round the head is the legend from the 42d Psalm--"Comme le cerf braie apres le decours des eaues, ainsi brait mon ame apres toi, O Dieu," which is certainly an extraordinary application. In the days of Diana of Poitiers, the beautiful mistress of Henry the Second of France, it was the court fashion to sing the Psalms of David to dance and song tunes;[84] and the courtiers and beauties had each their favourite psalm, which served as a kind of _devise_: this may explain the very singular inscription on this very singular picture. Here are also the portraits of Otway and Cowley, and of Montaigne; the last from the Crawfurd collection.

I had nearly omitted to mention a magnificent whole-length of the Duc de Guise--who was stabbed in the closet of Henry the Third--whose life contains materials for ten romances and a dozen epics, and whose death has furnished subjects for as many tragedies. And not far from him that not less daring, and more successful chief, Oliver Cromwell: a page is tying on his sash. There is a vulgar power and boldness about this head, in fine contrast with the high-born, fearless, chivalrous-looking Guise.

In the library is the splendid picture of Sofonisba Angusciola, by herself: she is touching the harpsichord, for like many others of her craft, she excelled in music. Angelica Kauffman had nearly been an opera-singer. The instances of great painters being also excellent musicians are numerous; Salvator Rosa could have led an orchestra, and Vernet could not exist without Pergolesi's piano. But I cannot recollect an instance of a great musician by profession, who has also been a painter: the range of faculties is generally more confined.

Rembrandt's large picture of his mother, which is, I think, the most magnificent specimen of this master now in England, hangs over the chimney in the same room with the Sofonisba.

The last picture I can distinctly remember is a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, with all his perfections combined in their perfection. It is that of a beautiful Frenchwoman, an intimate friend of the last Lady Spencer--with as much intellect, sentiment, and depth of feeling as would have furnished out twenty ordinary heads; all harmony in the colouring, all grace in the drawing.

Here then was food for the eye and for the memory--for sweet and bitter fancy--for the amateur, and for the connoisseur--for antiquary, historian, painter, and poet. Well might Horace Walpole say that the gallery at Althorpe was "endeared to the pensive spectator." He tells us in his letters, that when here, (about seventy years since,) he surprised the housekeeper by "his intimate acquaintance with all the faces in the gallery." I was amused at the thought that we caused a similar surprise in our day. I hope his female cicerone was as civil and intelligent as ours; as worthy to be the keeper of the pictorial treasures of Althorpe. When we lingered and lingered, spell-bound, and apologized for making such unconscionable demands on her patience, she replied, "that she was flattered; that she felt affronted when any visitor hurried through the apartments." Old Horace would have been delighted with her; and not less with the biblical enthusiasm of a village glazier, whom we found dusting the books in the library, and who had such a sublime reverence for old editions, unique copies, illuminated MSS., and rare bindings, that it was quite edifying.

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END OF VOL. II.

LONDON: IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.

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FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: In the throne-room at the Buckingham Palace the idea of grandeur is suggested by a vile heraldic crown, stuck on the capitals of the columns. Conceive the flagrant, the vulgar barbarity of taste!! It cannot surely be attributed to the architect?]

[Footnote 2: There is a very pretty little edition of his lyrical poems, rendered into the modern German by Karl Simrock, and published at Berlin in 1833.]

[Footnote 3: See a very interesting account of Walther von der Vogelweide, with translations of some of his poems in "The Lays of the Minnesingers," published in 1825.]

[Footnote 4: See a very learned and well-written article on the ancient German and northern poetry in the Edinburgh Review, vol. 26.]

[Footnote 5: The legend of this charming saint, one of the most popular in Germany, is but little known among us. She was the wife of a margrave of Thuringia, who was a fierce, avaricious man, while she herself was all made up of tenderness and melting pity. She lived with her husband in his castle on the Wartsburg, and was accustomed to go out every morning to distribute alms among the poor of the valley: her husband, jealous and covetous, forbade her thus to exercise her bounty; but as she regarded her duty to God and the poor, even as paramount to conjugal obedience, she secretly continued her charitable offices. Her husband encountered her one morning at sunrise, as she was leaving the castle with a covered basket containing meat, bread, and wine, for a starving family. He demanded, angrily, what she had in her basket! Elizabeth, trembling, not for herself, but for her wretched proteges, replied, with a faltering voice, that she had been gathering roses in the garden. The fierce chieftain, not believing her, snatched off the napkin, and Elizabeth fell on her knees.--But, behold, a miracle had been operated in her favour!--The basket was full of roses, fresh gathered, and wet with dew.]

[Footnote 6: See Taylor's "Historic Survey of German Poetry." Herman was afterwards murdered by a band of conspirators, and Thusnelda, on learning the fate of her husband, died brokenhearted.]

[Footnote 7: The notices which follow are abridged from the essay "on Ancient German and Northern Poetry," before mentioned--from the preface to the edition of the Nibelungen Lied, by M. Von der Hagen--and the analysis of the poem in the Illustrations of Northern Antiquities. My own first acquaintance with the Nibelungen Lied, I owed to an accomplished friend, who gave me a detailed and lively analysis of the story and characters; and certainly no child ever hung upon a tale of ogres and fairies with more intense interest than I did upon her recital of the adventures of the Nibelungen.]

[Footnote 8: Dietrich of Bern (i. e. Theodoric of Verona,) is the great hero of South Germany--the King Arthur of Teutonic romance, who figures in all the warlike lays and legends of the middle ages.]

[Footnote 9: See the Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 213.]

[Footnote 10: In the altercation between the two queens, Chrimhilde boasts of possessing these trophies, and displays them in triumph to her mortified rival; for which indiscretion, as she afterwards complains, "her husband was in high anger, and _beat her black and blue_." This treatment, however, which seems to have been quite a matter of course, does not diminish the fond idolatry of the wife,--rather increases it.]

[Footnote 11: This list will be subjoined at the end of these Sketches.]

[Footnote 12: Sofonisba Augusciola, one of the most charming of portrait painters. She died in 1626, at the age of ninety-three.]

[Footnote 13: I regret that I omitted to note the _name_ of the artist of this magnificent work. There is a still more admirable monument of the same period in the church at Inspruck, the tomb of the archduke, Ferdinand of Tyrol, consisting, I believe, of twelve colossal statues in bronze.]

[Footnote 14: The first stone of the Valhalla was laid by the King of Bavaria, on the 18th of October 1830.]

[Footnote 15: The Einheriar are the souls of heroes admitted into the Valhalla.]

[Footnote 16: Daniel.]

[Footnote 17: Lithography was invented at Munich between 1795 and 1798, for so long were repeated experiments tried before the art became useful or general. Senefelder, the inventor, was an actor, and the son of an actor. The first occasion of the invention was his wish to print a little drama of his own, in some manner less expensive than the usual method of type. The first successful experiment was the printing of some music, published (1796) by Gleissner, one of the king of Bavaria's band: the first drawing attempted was a vignette to a sheet of music. In the course of his attempts to pursue and perfect his discovery, Senefelder was reduced to such poverty, that he offered himself to enlist for a common soldier, and, luckily, was refused. He again took heart, and, supported through every difficulty and discouragement by his own strong and enthusiastic mind, he at length overcame all obstacles, and has lived to see his invention established and spread over the whole civilized world. Hitherto, I believe, the stone used by lithographers is found only in Bavaria, whence it is sent to every part of Europe and America, and forms a most profitable article of commerce. The principal quarries are at Solenholfen, on the Danube, about fifty miles from Munich.

Senefelder has published a little memoir of the origin and progress of the invention, in which he relates with great simplicity the hardship, and misery, and contumely, he encountered before he could bring it into use. He concludes with an earnest prayer, "that it may contribute to the benefit and improvement of mankind, and that it may never be abused to any dishonourable or immoral purpose."

If I remember rightly, a detailed history of the art was given in one of the early numbers of the Foreign Review.]

[Footnote 18: The population of Munich is estimated at about 60,000. It does not enter into my plan, at present, to give any detailed account of the public institutions, whether academies, schools, hospitals, or prisons; yet I cannot but mention the prison at Munich, which more than pays its own expenses, instead of being a burthen to the state; the admirable hospital for the poor, in which all who cannot find work elsewhere, are provided with occupation; two large hospitals for the sick poor, in which rooms and attendance are also provided for those who do not choose to be a burthen to their friends, nor yet dependent on charity; the orphan school; the female school, endowed by the king; the foundling and lying-in hospitals, establishments unhappily most _necessary_ in Munich, and certainly most admirably conducted. These, and innumerable private societies for the assistance, the education, and the improvement of the lower classes, ought to receive the attention of every intelligent traveller.

There are no poor laws in operation at Munich, no mendicity societies, no tract, and soup and blanket charities; yet pauperism, mendicity, and starvation, are nearly unknown. For the system of regulations by which these evils have been repressed or altogether remedied, I believe Bavaria is indebted to the celebrated American, Count Rumford, who was in the service of the late king, Max-Joseph, from 1790 to 1799.

Several new manufactories have lately been established, particularly of glass and porcelain, and the latter is carried to a high degree of perfection.]

[Footnote 19: Ida of Saxe-Meiningen, sister of the queen of England.]

[Footnote 20: It is difficult to translate this laconic proverb, because we have not the corresponding words in English: the meaning may be rendered--"_according to the country, so are the manners_."]

[Footnote 21: When the city was besieged by Wallenstein in 1632.]

[Footnote 22: Born at Nuremberg in 1494.]

[Footnote 23: See the admirable "Essay on the Early German and Northern Poetry," already alluded to.]

[Footnote 24: Anthony, the present king of Saxony. He is, however, in his dotage, being now in his eighty-fifth year.]

[Footnote 25: The description of Dresden and its environs, in Russel's Tour in Germany, is one of the best written passages in that amusing book--so admirably graphic and faithful, that nothing can be added to it _as a description_, therefore I have effaced those notes which it has rendered superfluous. It must, however, be remembered by those who refer to Mr. Russel's work, that a revolution has taken place, by which the king, now fallen into absolute dotage, has been removed from the direct administration of the government, and a much more popular and liberal tone prevails in the Estates: the two princes, nephews of the king, whom Mr. Russel mentions as "persons of whom scarcely any body thinks of speaking at all," have since made themselves extremely conspicuous;--Prince Frederic has been declared regent, and is apparently much respected and beloved; and Prince John has distinguished himself as a speaker in the Assembly of the States, and takes the liberal side on most occasions. A spirit of amelioration is at work in Dresden, as elsewhere, and the ten or twelve years which have elapsed since Mr. Russel's visit have not passed away without some salutary changes, while more are evidently at hand.

Mr. Russel speaks of the secrecy with which the sittings of the Chambers were then conducted: they are now public, and the debates are printed in the Gazette at considerable length.]

[Footnote 26: Augustus II. abjured the Protestant religion in 1700, in order to obtain the crown of Poland.]