DUTCH TILES.
O priceless art! O princely state,
E'en while by sense of change opprest,
Within to antedate
Heaven's age of fearless rest.
--J. H. Newman.
There are many disconnected pictures in Dorothea Vanborough's gallery,
drifting and following each other like the images of a dissolving-view.
There are voices and faces changing, people whom she hardly knows to be
the same appearing and disappearing. Looking back now-a-days through a
score or two of years, Dorothea can see many lights crossing and
reflecting one another, many strange places and persons in
juxtaposition. She can hear, as we all can, a great clamour of words and
of laughter, cries of pain and of sorrow and anger, through all of which
sound the sacred voices that will utter to her through life--and beyond
life she humbly prays.
Dorothea's pictures are but mist and fancy work, not made of paint and
canvas as is that one which hangs over the fire-place in the wainscot
dining-room at Church House in Kensington, where my heroine passed so
much of her life. It is supposed by some to be a Van der Helst. It
represents a golden brown grandmother, with a coiffe and a ruffle and a
grand chain round her neck, and a ring on her forefinger, and a
double-winged house in the background. This placid-faced Dutchwoman,
existing two centuries ago, has some looks still living in the face of
the Dorothea Vanborough of these days. Her descendants have changed
their name and their dress, cast away their ruffles, forgotten the story
of their early origin; but there is still a something that tells of it:
in Dolly's slow quaint grace and crumpled bronze hair, in her brother
George's black brows, in their aunt Lady Sarah Francis's round brown
eyes and big ears, to say nothing of her store of blue Dutch china. Tall
blue pots, with dragon handles, are ranged in rows upon the
chimney-board under the picture. On either side of the flame below are
blue tiles, that Lady Sarah's husband brought over from the Hague the
year before he died. Abraham, Jonah, Noah, Balaam tumbling off his blue
ass; the whole sacred history is there, lighted up by the flaring flame
of the logs.
When first George and Dolly came to live in the old house, then it was
the pictures came to life. The ass began to call out Balaam! Balaam! The
animals to walk two by two (all blue) into the ark. Jonah's whale
swallowed and disgorged him night after night, as George and Dolly sat
at their aunt's knee listening to her stories in the dusk of the
'children's hour;' and the vivid life that childhood strikes even into
inanimate things, awakened the widow's dull heart and the silent house
in the old by-lane in Kensington.
The lady over the fire-place had married in King Charles's reign; she
was Dorothea Vanborough and the first Countess of Churchtown. Other
countesses followed in due course, of whom one or two were engraved in
the passage overhead; the last was a miniature in Lady Sarah's own room,
her mother and my heroine's grandmother; a beautiful and wilful person,
who had grievously offended by taking a second husband soon after her
lord's demise in 1806. This second husband was himself a member of the
Vanborough family a certain Colonel Stanham Vanborough, a descendant of
the lady over the chimney-piece. He was afterwards killed in the
Peninsula. Lady Sarah bitterly resented her mother's marriage, and once
said she would never forgive it. It was herself that she never forgave
for her own unforgiveness. She was a generous-hearted woman, fantastic,
impressionable, reserved. When her mother died soon after Colonel
Vanborough, it was to her own home that Lady Sarah brought her little
step-brother, now left friendless, and justly ignored by the peerage,
where the elder sister's own life was concisely detailed as 'dau. John
Vanborough, last Earl of Churchtown, b. 1790, m. 1807, to Darby Francis,
Esq., of Church House, Kensington.'
Young Stanham Vanborough found but a cold welcome from Mr. Francis, but
much faithful care and affection, lavished, not without remorse, by the
sister who had been so long estranged. The boy grew up in time, and went
out into the world, and became a soldier as his father had been. He was
a simple, straightforward youth, very fond of his sister, and loth to
leave her, but very glad to be his own master at last. He married in
India, the daughter of a Yorkshire baronet, a pretty young lady, who had
come out to keep her brother's house. Her name was Philippa Henley, and
her fortune consisted chiefly in golden hair and two pearly rows of
teeth. The marriage was not so happy as it might have been; trouble
came, children died, the poor parents, in fear and trembling, sent their
one little boy home to Lady Sarah to save his life. And then, some three
years later, their little daughter Dolly was making her way, a young
traveller by land and by sea coming from the distant Indian station,
where she had been born, to the shelter of the old house in the old
by-lane in Kensington. The children found the door open wide and the
lonely woman on her threshold looking out for them. Mr. Francis was
dead, and it was an empty house by this time, out of which a whole home
had passed away. Lady Sarah's troubles were over, leaving little behind;
the silence of mid-life had succeeded to the loving turmoils and
jealousies and anxieties of earlier days, only some memories remained of
which the very tears and words seem wanting now and then, although other
people may have thought that if words failed the widow, the silent deeds
were there that should belong to all past affection.
One of the first things Dolly remembers is a landing-place one bitter
east-winded morning, with the white blast blowing dry and fierce from
the land, and swirling out to sea through the leafless forest of
shipping; the squalid houses fast closed and double-locked upon their
sleeping inmates: the sudden storms of dust and wind; the distant
clanking of some awakening pail, and the bewildered ayah, in her rings
and bangles, squatting on the ground and veiling her face in white
muslin.
By the side of the ayah stands my heroine, a little puppy-like girl,
staring as Indian children stare, at the strange dismal shores upon
which they are cast; staring at the lady in the grey cloak, who had come
on board with her papa's face, and caught her in her arms, and who is
her Aunt Sarah; at the big boy of seven in the red mittens, whose
photograph her papa had shown her in the verandah, and who is her
brother George; at the luggage as it comes bumping and stumbling off the
big ship; at the passengers departing. The stout little gentleman, who
used to take her to see the chickens, pats Dolly on the head, and says
he shall come and see her; the friendly sailor who carried her on shore
shakes hands, and then the clouds close in, and the sounds and the faces
disappear....
Presently, into Dolly's gallery come pleasanter visions of the old house
at Kensington, to which Lady Sarah took her straight away, with its
brick wall, and ivy creepers, and many-paned windows, and the stone
balls at either side of the door--on one of which a little dark-eyed
girl is sitting, expecting them.
'Who is dat?' says little three-year-old Dolly, running up, and pulling
the child's pinafore, to make sure that she is _real_.
Children believe in many things, in fairies, and sudden disappearances;
they would not think it very strange if they were to see people turn to
fountains and dragons in the course of conversation.
'That is a nice little girl like you,' said Lady Sarah, kindly.
'A nice little girl lite me?' said Dolly.
'Go away,' says the little strange girl, hiding her face in her hands.
'Have you come to play wiss me? My name is Dolliciavanble,' continues
Dolly, who is not shy, and quite used to the world, having travelled so
far.
'Is that your name? What a funny name,' says the little girl, looking
up. 'My name is Rhoda, but they call me Dody at our house. I'se four
years old.'
Dolly was three years old, but she could not speak quite plain; she took
the little girl's hand and stood by the ayah, watching the people
passing and repassing, the carriage being unpacked, Lady Sarah directing
and giving people money, George stumping about in everybody's way, and
then, somehow, everything and everybody seems going up and down stairs,
and in confusion; she is very tired and sleepy, and forgets all the
rest.
Next day Dolly wakes up crying for her papa. It is not the ship any
more. Everything is quite still, and her crib does not rock up and down.
'I sought he would be here,' said poor little Dolly, in a croaking,
waking voice, sitting up with crumpled curls and bright warm cheeks. It
is not her papa, but Aunt Sarah, who takes her up and kisses her, and
tries to comfort her, while the ayah, Nun Comee, who has been lying on
the floor, jumps up and dances in her flowing white garment and snaps
her black fingers, and George brings three tops to spin all at once.
Dolly is interested, and ceases crying and begins to smile and to show
all her little white teeth.
Lady Sarah rarely smiled. She used to frown so as not to show what she
felt. But Dolly from the first day had seemed to understand her; she was
never afraid of her; and she used to jump on her knee and make her
welcome to the nursery.
'_Is_ you very pretty?' said little Dolly one day, looking at the grim
face with the long nose and pinched lips. 'I think you is a very ugly
aunt.' And she smiled up in the ugly aunt's face.
'O Dolly! how naughty!' said Rhoda, who happened to be in Dolly's
nursery.
Rhoda was a little waif _protegee_, of Lady Sarah's. She came from the
curate's home close by, and was often sent in to play with Dolly, who
would be lonely, her aunt thought, without a companion of her own age;
Rhoda was Mr. Morgan's niece, and a timid little thing; she was very
much afraid at first of Dolly; so she was of the ayah, with her brown
face and earrings and monkey hands; but soon the ayah went back to India
with silver pins in her ears, taking back many messages to the poor
child-bereft parents, with a pair of Dolly's shoes, as a remembrance,
and a couple of dolls for herself as a token of good-will from her young
mistress. They were for her brothers, Nun Comee said, but it was
supposed that she intended to worship them on her return to her native
land.
The ayah being gone, little Rhoda soon ceased to be afraid of Dolly, the
kind, merry, helpful little playmate, who remained behind, frisking
along the passages and up and down the landing-places of Church House.
She was much nicer, Rhoda thought, than her own real cousins the Morgans
in Old Street.
As days go by, Dolly's pictures warm and brighten from early spring into
summer-time. By degrees they reach above the table and over and beyond
the garden roller. They are chiefly of the old garden, whose brick walls
seem to enclose sunshine and gaudy flowers all the summer through; of
the great Kensington parks, where in due season chestnuts are to be
found shining among the leaves and dry grasses; of the pond, where the
ducks are flapping and diving; of the house, which was little Rhoda's
home. This was the great bare house in Old Street, with plenty of noise,
dried herbs, content, children without end, and thick bread-and-butter.
There was also cold stalled ox on Sundays at one.
In those days life was a simple matter to the children, their days and
their legs lengthened together; they loved, they learned, and they
looked for a time that was never to be--when their father and mother
should come home and live with them again, and everybody was to be
happy. As yet the children thought they were only expecting happiness.
George went to school at Frant, near Tunbridge Wells, and came home for
the holidays. Dolly had a governess too, and she used to do her lessons
with little Rhoda in the slanting school-room at the top of Church
House. The little girls did a great many sums, and learnt some French,
and read little Arthur's _History of England_ to everybody's
satisfaction.
Kind Lady Sarah wrote careful records of the children's progress to her
brother, who had sent them to the faithful old sister at home. He heard
of the two growing up with good care and much love in the sunshine that
streamed upon the old garden; playing together on the terrace that he
remembered so well; pulling up the crocuses and the violets that grew in
the shade of the white holly-tree. George was a quaint, clever boy,
Sarah wrote; Dolly was not so quick, but happy and obedient, and growing
up like a little spring flower among the silent old bricks.
Lady Sarah also kept up a desultory correspondence with Philippa, her
sister-in-law. Mrs. Vanborough sent many minute directions about the
children; Dolly was to dine off cold meat for her complexion's sake, and
she wished her to have her hair crimped; and George was to wear
kid-gloves and write a better hand; and she hoped they were very good,
and that they sometimes saw their cousin Robert, and wrote to their
uncle, Sir Thomas Henley, Henley Court, Smokethwaite, Yorkshire: and she
and dear papa often and often longed for their darlings. Then came
presents--a spangled dress for Lady Sarah, and silver ornaments for
Dolly, and an Indian sword for George, with which he nearly cut off
Rhoda's head.