every stately chamber, every haunted nook, every secret door, curtained
with heavy arras, and every winding stair, became familiar to me. What
a passion our ancestors must have had for space and light! and what an
ignorance of comfort! Here are no ottomans of eider down, no spring
cushions, no "boudoirs etroits, ou l'on ne boude point," no "demijour
de rendezvous;" but what vast chambers! what interminable galleries!
what huge windows pouring in floods of sunshine! what great carved
oak-chests, such as Iachimo hid himself in! now stuffed full of rich
tattered hangings, tarnished gold fringes, and remnants of embroidered
quilts! what acres--not yards--of tapestries, once of "sky-tinctured
woof," now faded and moth-eaten! what massy chairs and immovable tables!
what heaps of portraits, the men looking so grim and magnificent, and
the women so formal and faded! Before I left the place I had them all by
heart; there was not one among them who would not have bowed or curtsied
to me out of their frames.
But there were three rooms in which I especially delighted, and passed
most of my time. The first was the council-chamber described by Walpole:
it is sixty-five feet in length, by thirty-three in width, and
twenty-six feet high. Rich tapestry, representing the story of Ulysses,
runs round the room to the height of fifteen or sixteen feet, and above
it the stag-hunt in ugly relief. On one side of this room there is a
spacious recess, at least eighteen or twenty feet square; and across
this, from side to side, to divide it from the body of the room, was
suspended a magnificent piece of tapestry, (real Gobelin's,) of the time
of Louis Quatorze, still fresh and even vivid in tint, which from its
weight hung in immense wavy folds; above it we could just discern the
canopy of a lofty state-bed, with nodding ostrich plumes, which had been
placed there out of the way. The effect of the whole, as I have seen
it, when the red western light streamed through the enormous windows,
was, in its shadowy beauty and depth of colour, that of a "realized
Rembrandt"--if, indeed, even Rembrandt ever painted any thing at once
so elegant, so fanciful, so gorgeous, and so gloomy.
From this chamber, by a folding-door, beautifully inlaid with ebony,
but opening with a common latch, we pass into the library, as it is
called. Here the Duke of Devonshire generally sits when he visits
Hardwicke, perhaps on account of the glorious prospect from the windows.
It contains a grand piano, a sofa, and a range of book-shelves, on
which I found some curious old books. Here I used to sit and read
the voluminous works of that dear, half-mad, absurd, but clever and
good-natured Duchess of Newcastle,[58] and yawn and laugh alternately;
or pore over Guillim on Heraldry;--fit studies for the place!
In this room are some good pictures, particularly the portrait of Lady
Anne Boyle, daughter of the first Earl of Burlington, the Lady Sandwich
of Charles the Second's time. This is, without exception, the finest
specimen of Sir Peter Lely I ever saw--so unlike the usual style of his
half-dressed, leering women--so full of pensive grace and simplicity--the
hands and arms so exquisitely drawn, and the colouring so rich and so
tender, that I was at once surprised and enchanted. There is also a
remarkably fine picture of a youth with a monkey on his shoulder, said
to be Jeffrey Hudson, (Queen Henrietta's celebrated dwarf,) and painted
by Vandyke. I doubt both.
Over the chimney of this room there is a piece of sculptured bas-relief,
in Derbyshire marble, representing Mount Parnassus, with Apollo and the
Muses; in one corner the arms of Queen Elizabeth, and in the other her
cypher, E. R., and the royal crown. I could neither learn the meaning
of this nor the name of the artist. Could it have been a gift from
Queen Elizabeth? There is (I think in the next room) another piece of
sculpture representing the Marriage of Tobias; and I remember a third,
representing a group of Charity. The workmanship of all these is
surprisingly good for the time, and some of the figures very graceful.
I am surprised that they escaped the notice of Horace Walpole, in his
remarks on the decorations of Hardwicke.[59] Richard Stephens, a Flemish
sculptor and painter, and Valerio Vicentino, an Italian carver in
precious stones, were both employed by the munificent Cavendishes of
that time; and these pieces of sculpture were probably the work of one
of these artists.
When tired of turning over the old books, a door concealed behind the
arras admitted me at once into the great gallery--my favourite haunt
and daily promenade. It is near one hundred and eighty feet in length,
lighted along one side by a range of stupendous windows, which project
outwards from so many angular recesses. In the centre pier is a throne,
or couch of state, on a raised platform, under a canopy of crimson and
gold, surmounted by plumes of ostrich feathers. The walls are partly
tapestried, and covered with some hundreds of family pictures; none
indeed of any superlative merit--none that emulate within a thousand
degrees the matchless Vandykes and glorious Titians of Devonshire House;
but among many that are positively bad, and more that are lamentably
mediocre as works of art, there are several of great interest. At each
end of this gallery is a door, and, according to the tradition of the
place, every night, at the witching hour of twelve, Queen Elizabeth
enters at one door, and Mary of Scotland at the other; they advance to
the centre, curtsey profoundly, then sit down together under the canopy
and converse amicably,--till the crowing of the cock breaks up the
conference, and sends the two majesties back to their respective
hiding-places.
Somebody who was asked if he had ever seen a ghost? replied, gravely,
"No; but I was once _very near_ seeing one!" In the same manner I was
once _very near_ being a witness to one of these ghostly confabs.
Late one evening, having left my sketch-book in the gallery, I went to
seek it. I made my way up the great stone staircase with considerable
intrepidity, passed through one end of the council-chamber without
casting a glance through the palpable obscure, the feeble ray of my
wax-light just spreading about a yard around me, and lifting aside the
tapestry door, stepped into the gallery. Just as the heavy arras fell
behind me, with a dull echoing sound, a sudden gust of wind came rushing
by, and extinguished my taper. Angels and ministers of grace defend
us!--not that I felt afraid--O no! but just a little what the Scotch
call "eerie." A thrill, not altogether unpleasant, came over me: the
visionary turn of mind which once united me in fancy "with the world
unseen," had long been sobered and reasoned away. I heard no "viewless
paces of the dead," nor "airy skirts unseen that rustled by;" but what I
did see and hear was enough. The wind whispering and moaning along the
tapestried walls, and every now and then rattling twenty or thirty
windows at once, with such a crash!--and the pictures around just
sufficiently perceptible in the faint light to make me fancy them
staring at me. Then immediately behind me was the very recess, or rather
abyss, where Queen Elizabeth was at that moment settling her
farthingale, to sally out upon me; and before me, but lost in blackest
gloom, the spectral door, where Mary--not that I should have minded
encountering poor Mary, provided always that she had worn her own
beautiful head where heaven placed it, and not carried it, as Bertrand
de Born carried _his_ "a guisa di lanterna."[60] As to what followed, it
is a secret. Suffice it that I found myself safe by the fireside in my
bedroom, without any very distinct recollection of how I got there.
Of all the scenes in which to moralize and meditate, a picture gallery
is to me the most impressive. With the most intense feeling of the
beauty of painting, I cannot help thinking with Dr. Johnson, that as
far as regards portraits, their chief excellence and value consist
in the likeness and the authenticity,[61] and not in the merit of the
execution. When we can associate a story or a sentiment with every face
and form, they almost live to us--they do in a manner speak to us. There
is speculation in those fixed eyes--there is eloquence in those mute
lips--and, O! what tales they tell! One of the first pictures which
caught my attention as I entered the gallery was a small head of Arabella
Stuart, when an infant. The painting is poor enough: it is a little
round rosy face in a child's cap, and she holds an embroidered doll in
her hand. Who could look on this picture, and not glance forward through
succeeding years, and see the pretty playful infant transformed into the
impassioned woman, writing to her husband--"In sickness, and in despair,
wheresoever thou art, or howsoever I be, it sufficeth me always that
thou art mine!" Arabella Stewart was not clever; but not Heloise, nor
Corinne, nor Madlle. De l'Espinasse ever penned such a dear little
morsel of touching eloquence--so full of all a woman's tenderness! Her
stern grandmother, the lady and foundress of Hardwicke, hangs near.
There are three pictures of her: all the faces have an expression of
sense and acuteness, but none of them the beauty which is attributed to
her. There are also two of her husbands, Cavendish and Shrewsbury. The
former a grave, intelligent head; the latter very striking from
the lofty furrowed brow, the ample beard, and regular but care-worn
features. A little farther on we find his son Gilbert, seventh earl of
Shrewsbury, and Mary Cavendish, wife of the latter and daughter of Bess
of Hardwicke. She resembled her mother in features as in character.
The expression is determined, intelligent, and rather cunning. Of her
haughty and almost fierce temper, a curious instance is recorded. She
had quarrelled with her neighbours, the Stanhopes, and not being able
to defy them with sword and buckler, she sent one of her gentlemen,
properly attended, with a message to Sir Thomas Stanhope, to be
delivered in presence of witnesses, in these words--"My lady hath
commanded me to say thus much to you: that though you be more wretched,
vile, and miserable than any creature living, and for your wickedness
become more ugly in shape than the vilest toad in the world; and one to
whom none of any reputation would vouchsafe to send any message; yet
she hath thought good to send thus much to you, that she be contented
you should live, (and doth noways wish your death,) but to this end:
that all the plagues and miseries that may befall any man, may light on
such a caitiff as you are," &c.; (and then a few anathemas, yet more
energetic, not fit to be transcribed by "pen polite," but ending with
_hell-fire_.) "With many other opprobrious and hateful words which could
not be remembered, because the bearer would deliver it but once, as he
said he was commanded; but said, if he had failed in any thing, it was
in speaking it more mildly, and not in terms of such disdain as he was
commanded." We are not told whether the gallantry of Stanhope suffered
him to throw the herald out of the window, who brought him this gentle
missive. As for the termagant countess, his adversary, she was afterwards
imprisoned in the Tower for upwards of two years, on account of Lady
Arabella Stuart's stolen match with Lord Seymour. She ought assuredly to
have "brought forth men-children only;" but she left no son. Her three
daughters married the earls of Pembroke, of Arundel, and of Kent.
The portraits of James V. of Scotland and his Queen, Mary of Guise, are
extremely curious. There is something ideal and elegant about the head
of James V.--the look we might expect to find in a man who died from
wounded feeling. His more unhappy daughter, poor Mary, hangs near--a
full length in a mourning habit, with a white cap, (of her own peculiar
fashion,) and a veil of white gauze. This, I believe, is the celebrated
picture so often copied and engraved. It is dated 1578, the thirty-sixth
of her age, and the tenth of her captivity. The figure is elegant, and
the face pensive and sweet.[62] Beside her, in strong contrast, hangs
Elizabeth, in a most preposterous farthingale, and a superabundance
of all her usual absurdities and enormities of dress. The petticoat is
embroidered over with snakes, crocodiles, and all manner of creeping
things. We feel almost inclined to ask whether the artist could possibly
have intended them as emblems, like the eyes and ears in her picture
at Hatfield; but it may have been one of the three thousand gowns,
in which Spenser's Gloriana, Raleigh's Venus, loved to array her old
wrinkled, crooked carcase. Katherine of Arragon is here--a small head
in a hood: the face not only harsh, as in all her pictures, but vulgar,
a characteristic I never saw in any other. There is that peculiar
expression round the mouth, which might be called either decision or
obstinacy. And here too is the famous Lucy Harrington, Countess of
Bedford, the friend and patroness of Ben Jonson, looking sentimental in
a widow's dress, with a white pocket handkerchief. There is character
enough in the countenance to make us turn with pleasure to Ben Jonson's
exquisite eulogium on her.
"I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet,
Hating that solemn vice of greatness, _pride_:
I meant each softest virtue there should meet,
Fit in that softer bosom to reside.
Only a learned and a manly soul
I purposed her; that should with even powers
The rock, the spindle, and the sheers controul
Of destiny, and spin her own free hours!"
Farther on is another more celebrated woman, Christian Bruce, the second
Countess of Devonshire, so distinguished in the reigns of Charles I.
and Charles II. She had all the good qualities of Bess of Hardwicke:
her sense, her firmness, her talents for business, her magnificent and
independent spirit, and none of her faults. She was as feminine as she
was generous and high-minded; fond of literature, and a patroness of
poets and learned men:--altogether a noble creature. She was the mother
of that lovely Lady Rich, "the wise, the fair, the virtuous, and the
young,"[63] whose picture by Vandyke is at Devonshire-house, and there
are two pictures at Hardwicke of her handsome, gallant, and accomplished
son, Charles Cavendish, who was killed at the battle of Gainsborough.
Many fair eyes almost wept themselves blind for his loss, and his mother
never recovered the "sore heart-break of his death."
There are several pictures of her grandson, the first Duke of
Devonshire--the patriot, the statesman, the munificent patron of letters,
the poet, the man of gallantry, and, to crown all, the handsomest man of
his day. He was one of the leaders in the revolution of 1688--for be it
remembered that the Cavendishes, from generation to generation, have
ennobled their nobility by their love of liberty, as well as their love
of literature and the arts. One picture of this duke on horseback, _en
grand costume a la Louis Quatorze_, is so embroidered and bewigged, so
plumed, and booted, and spurred, that he is scarcely to be discerned
through his accoutrements. A cavalier of those days in full dress must
have been a ponderous concern; but then the ladies were as formidably
vast and aspiring. The petticoats at this time were so discursive, and
the head-dresses so ambitious, that I think it must have been to save
in canvass what they expended in satin or brocade, that so many of the
pretty women of that day were painted _en bergere_.
Apropos to the first Duke of Devonshire: I cannot help remarking the
resemblance of the present duke to his illustrious ancestor, as well
as to several other portraits, and particularly to a very distant
relative--the first Countess of Burlington, who was, I believe, the
great-grandmother of his grace's grandmother;--in both these instances
the likeness is so striking as to be recognized at once, and not without
a smiling exclamation of surprise.
Another interesting picture is that of Rachael Russell, the second
Duchess of Devonshire, daughter of that heroine and saint, Lady Russell:
the face is very beautiful, and the air elegant and high-bred--with
rather a pouting expression in the full red lips.
Here is also the third duchess, Miss Hoskins, a great city heiress.
The painter, I suspect, has flattered her, for she had not in her day
the reputation of beauty. When I looked at this picture, so full of
delicate, and youthful, and smiling loveliness, I could not help
recurring to a passage in Horace Walpole's letters, in which he alludes
to this sylph-like being, as the "ancient grace," and congratulates
himself on finding her in good-humour.
But of all the female portraits, the one which struck me most was that
of Lady Charlotte Boyle, the young Marchioness of Hartington, in a
masquerade habit of purple satin, embroidered with silver; a fanciful
little cap and feathers, thrown on one side, and the dark hair escaping
in luxuriant tresses; she holds a mask in her hand, which she has just
taken off, and looks round upon us in all the consciousness of happy and
high-born loveliness. She was the daughter and heiress of Richard Boyle,
the last Earl of Burlington and Cork, and Baroness Clifford in her own
right. The merits of the Cavendishes were their own, but their riches
and power, in several instances, were brought into the family by a
softer influence. Through her, I believe, the vast estates of the Boyles
and Cliffords in Ireland and the north of England, including Chiswick
and Bolton Abbey, have descended to her grandson, the present duke.[64]
There are several pictures of her here--one playing on the harpsichord,
and another, small and very elegant, in which she is mounted on a
spirited horse. There are two heads of her in crayons, by her mother,
Lady Burlington,[65] ill-executed, but said to be like her. And another
picture, representing her and her beautiful but ill-fated sister, Lady
Dorothy, who was married very young to Lord Euston, and died six months
afterwards, in consequence of the brutal treatment of her husband.[66]
All the pictures of Lady Hartington have the same marked character of
pride, intellect, vivacity, and loveliness. But short was her gay and
splendid career! She died of a decline in the sixth year of her marriage,
at the age of four-and-twenty.
Here is also her father, Lord Burlington, celebrated by Pope, (who has
dedicated to him the second of his epistles "on the use of riches,")
and styled by Walpole, "the Apollo of the Arts," which he not only
patronised, but studied and cultivated; his enthusiasm for architecture
was such, that he not only designed and executed buildings for himself,
(the villa at Chiswick, for example,) but contributed great sums to
public works; and at his own expense published an edition of the designs
of Palladio and of Inigo Jones. In one picture of Lord Burlington
there is a head of his idol, Inigo Jones, in the background. There is
also a good picture of Robert Boyle, the philosopher, a spare, acute,
contemplative, interesting face, in which there is as much sensibility
as thought. He is said to have died of grief for the loss of his
favourite sister, Lady Ranelagh; and when we recollect who and what
_she_ was--the sole friend of his solitary heart--the partner of his
studies, and with qualities which rendered her the object of Milton's
enthusiastic admiration, and almost tender regard, we scarce think less
of her brother's philosophy, that it afforded him no consolation for the
loss of _such_ a sister.
On the other side hangs another philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, of Malmsbury,
whose bold speculations in politics and metaphysics, and the odium
they drew on him, rendered his whole life one continued warfare with
established prejudices and opinions. He was tutor in the family of the
first Earl of Devonshire, in 1607--remained constantly attached to the
house of Cavendish--and never lost their countenance and patronage in
the midst of all the calumnies heaped upon him. He died at Hardwicke
under the protection of the first Duke of Devonshire, in 1678. This
curious portrait represents him at the age of ninety-two. The picture
is not good as a picture, but striking from the evident truth of the
expression--uniting the last lingering gleam of thought with the
withered, wrinkled, and almost ghastly decrepitude of extreme age.
It has, I believe, been engraved by Hollar.
I looked round for Henry Cavendish, the great chemist and natural
philosopher--another bright ornament of a family every way ennobled--but
there is no portrait of him at Hardwicke. I was also disappointed not to
find the "limned effigy," as she would call it, of my dear Margaret of
Newcastle.
There are plenty of kings and queens, truly not worth "sixpence
a-piece," as Walpole observes; but there is one picture I must not
forget--that of the brave and accomplished Earl of Derby, who was
beheaded at Bolton-le-Moor, the husband of the heroic "Lady of Lathom,"
who figures in Peveril of the Peak. The head has a grand melancholy
expression, and I should suppose it to be a copy from Vandyke.
Besides these, were many others calculated to awaken in the thoughtful
mind both sweet and bitter fancies. How often have I walked up and down
this noble gallery lost in "commiserating reveries" on the vicissitudes of
departed grandeur!--on the nothingness of all that life could give!--on
the fate of youthful beauties who lived to be broken-hearted, grow old,
and die!--on heroes that once walked the earth in the blaze of their
fame, now gone down to dust, and an endless darkness!--on bright faces,
"petries de lis et de roses," since time-wrinkled!--on noble forms since
mangled in the battle-field!--on high-born heads that fell beneath the
axe of the executioner!--O ye starred and ribboned! ye jewelled and
embroidered! ye wise, rich, great, noble, brave, and beautiful, of all
your loves and smiles, your graces and excellencies, your deeds and
honours--does then a "painted board circumscribe all?"
ALTHORPE.
A FRAGMENT.
It was on such a day as I have seen in Italy in the month of December,
but which, in our chill climate, seemed so unseasonably, so ominously
beautiful, that it was like the hectic loveliness brightening the eyes
and flushing the cheek of consumption,--that I found myself in the
domains of Althorpe. Autumn, dying in the lap of Winter, looked out with
one bright parting smile;--the soft air breathed of Summer; the withered
leaves, heaped on the path, told a different tale. The slant, pale sun
shone out with all heaven to himself; not a cloud was there, not a breeze
to stir the leafless woods--those venerable woods, which Evelyn loved
and commemorated:[67] the fine majestic old oaks, scattered over the
park, tossed their huge bare arms against the blue sky; a thin hoar
frost, dissolving as the sun rose higher, left the lawns and hills
sparkling and glancing in its ray; now and then a hare raced across the
open glade--
"And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, which glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run."
Nothing disturbed the serene stillness except a pheasant whirring from a
neighbouring thicket, or at intervals the belling of the deer--a sound
so peculiar, and so fitted to the scene, that I sympathized in the
taste of one of the noble progenitors of the Spencers, who had built
a hunting-lodge in a sequestered spot, that he might hear "the harte
bell."