"At South Kensington" (he says), "where I lost myself in a Cretan labyrinth of military ironmongery, advertis.e.m.e.nts of spring blinds, model fish-farming, and plaster bathing nymphs with a year"s s.m.u.t on the noses of them; and had to put myself in charge of a policeman to get out again."
Indeed, in its vast size, its involved construction, and its encyclopaedic scope, the South Kensington Museum much resembles a maze, and, once inside it, it is difficult indeed to know the points of the compa.s.s. Yet, everything can be seen here, if only you know where to look for it. It is, itself, a "General Exhibition" on no mean scale. And here is more than ever exemplified the great truth, that the most beautiful objects lose in effect in proportion to the unsuitableness of their immediate surroundings. Even the model of the Pisan pulpit, crowded as it is among so many incongruous objects, seems here a sort of glorified stove-pipe, while the carved front of Sir Paul Pindar"s old house almost suggests a magnified dolls"-house awaiting sale, and plaster casts jostle on all sides with the valuable treasures of antiquity. Here again are the groups of feminine students with their guides, and also many isolated toilers, "working up" some special branch of knowledge in the different sections, such as Ivories, Porcelain, Lace, Musical Instruments, or Italian woodwork.
(The students are here, I may add, a trifle better dressed than those at the British Museum; they are also, on an average, a thought cleaner, and their hair has, perhaps, a tendency to be neater.) The "omnium-gatherum," as it has been called, of South Kensington, should, like any other Exhibition, be taken piecemeal, and on the first visit the stranger should merely try, if possible, to see the historic Raphael cartoons, and those most interesting pictures of the British School that form the famous "Sheepshanks" collection.
The neighbouring Natural History Museum, Waterhouse"s vast edifice of terra-cotta, is, internally, a most beautifully planned building, and the arrangement of its various cla.s.ses of specimens is no less excellent. Nothing could be better done, either for purposes of entertainment or of instruction, than the groups in the Great Hall of the building, where animals, birds, and insects, are shown charmingly mounted and in their own natural surroundings; and where, by careful and well-selected ill.u.s.tration, such strange living mysteries as "melanism" and "albinism" are demonstrated and explained. One of the most striking gla.s.s cases of all is that which ill.u.s.trates "Protective Resemblances and Mimicry," a subject which is attracting much notice at the present day among naturalists (see the late Professor Henry Drummond"s _Tropical Africa_ for further curious information on this interesting subject). Some of the strange natural imitations shown here, such as of dead leaves by b.u.t.terflies, or of bits of straw by insects, are wonderful indeed.
The new Tate Gallery, raised by the munificence of one of our merchant princes for the enshrinement of modern British Art, is a building of quite another kind. This edifice, in the Greek style, was built by the late Sir Henry Tate, on the site of old Millbank Prison, at Westminster. When this Gallery was first opened, in July, 1897, its approaches were always thronged by private carriages, and powdered footmen waited in the muddy, half-finished roads (for the whole locality was then in a state of incompleteness). But this was in the early days of its fame; the vagaries of fashion are of short duration, and although even yet "smart" people are to be met with occasionally in the Tate Gallery, they are now in a decided minority; they have, most likely, betaken themselves to the still newer exhibition of Hertford House.
It is the artisan, the small shopkeeper, the great "lower middle-cla.s.s," that frequent chiefly the Tate Gallery. Not by any means the same cla.s.s, for instance, that you see at the National Gallery; the visitors to the Tate Gallery are mainly the lovers of "the human interest" in a picture, and not the earnest students. Here the sightseers roam, like b.u.t.terflies, from flower to flower; not so much to gather the honey, as just to enjoy the moment. Therefore, at Millbank, they are but rarely gowned in angular "art serge," and are but seldom be-spectacled and be-catalogued. Neither are the Hypatia-like girl-lecturers at all evident. Sir Henry Tate used to take an evident pleasure in walking about the galleries that his munificence had provided. Only a short time before his death, he was to be seen there, benevolent and urbane as ever, the type of what Mr.
Ruskin has called "the entirely honest merchant."
The Tate Gallery is considered, administratively, as part of the National Gallery; and many pictures of the modern British school have, as every one knows, been removed to Millbank from the older collection. But the earlier pictures of the British School, and the Turners, are still in Trafalgar Square.
The wealth of foreign pictures now to be seen in the National Gallery of London renders it the Mecca of every visitor, both from our own country, and from overseas. The National Gallery, fine as it is, is but a comparatively modern growth. Founded in 1824 by the purchase of the Angerstein Collection, it slowly, very slowly at first, crept into fame and distinction. Only some forty-five years ago, Mr. Ruskin said of it that it was "an European jest!" Since 1887 its pictures have nearly doubled in number and it is now, if not one of the finest, at least one of the most representative, collections in the world. The internal arrangement of the Gallery leaves little to be desired, and its s.p.a.cious entrance hall and staircase, adorned with coloured marbles, has a solid dignity, with a cheerfulness and brightness usually somewhat lacking in London. A fine bust of Egyptian porphyry, called the "Dying Alexander," (a copy of one in the Uffizi), presented by Mr. Henry Yates Thompson, forms an effective centre-piece for the Entrance Vestibule.
Once inside the magic portals of the National Gallery, a very paradise is opened to the art-loving visitor. He will soon forget, revelling in those soft Italian skies, that glowing southern colour, that outside his shelter hums the London of the twentieth century. The pictures are finely arranged, and they are not crowded. A hint has been taken from the Louvre, and the famous "Blenheim Raphael," the _Ansidei Madonna_ (bought by the nation for such a tremendous price from the Duke of Marlborough), greets the entering visitor from the far end of a long vista. The walls on which the pictures are hung are covered in Pompeian red or sober green, with a wall-covering that has the soothing effect of rich Venetian brocade, and that even improves in tone with years.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Recruiting Serjeants by the National Gallery._]
The National Gallery cannot be seen in one visit. For any real appreciation of the vast collections, ten, twenty visits rather are needed; visits that need never, now, be other than a pleasure; the improved conditions making the place itself attractive, and whatever light is obtainable in London finding its way to those large and lofty galleries. The ma.s.s of "the People" mainly frequent the British Schools; and, even in the larger portion of the building occupied by the Foreign Schools, every room has usually, like the London collections generally, its special votaries. For instance, in the little room devoted to the Early Sienese painters, you will nearly always find a few earnest students, making pencil marks on note-books or in elaborate catalogues; in the long Italian Gallery they are, perhaps, just a trifle less severe, but are still more or less of the same type, sitting in rapt contemplation and still with catalogues; but the Dutch School is already more flippant, and but few catalogues survive into the Spanish and French Schools.
The romance of the National Gallery,--what volumes might not be written on the fascinating subject! If, here again, old pictures could tell stories of their past, what adventures could they not relate! The long corridors of the National Gallery, filled with masterpieces from all nations and ages, would of themselves furnish as copious records as many a shelf in the British Museum Library. What stories might these pictures tell: of their painting, their owners, the generations to which they have served as the Lares and Penates, the families whose vicissitudes they have shared! This, maybe, had hung for years, blackened and tarnished, in a p.a.w.nbroker"s shop till some vigilant eye rescued it from its oblivion; that, perhaps, had saved its owner"s life, or redeemed the fortunes of a nation. This, again, formed the "wedding-chest" of a beautiful dark-eyed bride, dust long ago; that caused the imprisonment, almost the death, of its author. Unhappily, old pictures are "silent witnesses" of history. We can, indeed, discover, through much searching in dusty archives, the _provenance_ of a few of our most celebrated pictures, or read, perhaps, one or two of the stories relating to them; but how many are there of which we have not been able to find a record? It depends mainly on chance what stories survive, and what do not. Then, such as are known are often not widely known; they lie hidden, for the most part, in musty blue-books, or in tomes of ancient lore, attainable by the student only. The mere t.i.tle, _The Cornfield_ or _The Repose_, tells so little. Does it not add to our interest in the pictures to know that the one was thought by Constable to be his best work, and that the scene of the other was laid among the hills of t.i.tian"s own country?
In connection with the inscriptions on the frames, most visitors, I fancy, will share the disappointment I felt, when on revisiting the Gallery one day I found the familiar "Raphael" disguised as "Sanzio,"
"Tintoret," as "Robusti" and so forth; but this somewhat pedantic innovation has now been partially remedied.
The early Italian pictures were usually painted to adorn particular places; some, perhaps, to decorate a wooden chest for the furnishing of a room, as Benozzo Gozzoli"s _Rape of Helen_; others to consecrate an altar, as Raphael"s _Madonna_; many to a.s.sist in the carrying out of some architectural design, as in Crivelli"s pictures, or Fra Filippo Lippi"s _Vision of St. Bernard_. All, at any rate, were painted, not to hang in rows in a gallery, but for particular persons, places, and occasions, far removed from the present environment of them. Perhaps our only pictures specially painted with a view to the Gallery which they now adorn, are those in which Turner"s rivalry with Claude is immortalised. Visitors may wonder why, in a room devoted to the French School of Painting, they are suddenly confronted with two large canvases of Turner"s. The fact is that Turner painted them in direct compet.i.tion with Claude. The great modern landscape-painter determined to beat the ancient on his own cla.s.sical ground. Whether he has conquered is indeed a question; but the pictures still hang side by side in unconscious rivalry, telling the pathetic story of the dead man"s ambition. Turner, who left these two pictures, among many others, to the nation, expressly stipulated that they should hang between those two by Claude. In vain, during his life, large sums were offered for them; he steadily refused to sell. "What in the world, Turner, are you going to do with it?" his friend Chantrey asked, referring to the _Carthage_. "Be buried in it," Turner replied grimly, keeping its real destination a secret.
There are in the National Gallery some pictures actually painted for the sitters to be buried in. These are the early Graeco-Egyptian portraits, which glare down upon us in the vestibule. A few years ago a workman"s spade, digging in the Fayoum, accidentally struck against a mummy-case. Affixed to the outside covering, in a position corresponding to the head of the corpse, was a portrait of a man in his habit as he lived. That "find" led to others. Some dozen tombs, closed 1,500 years ago, were rifled in order to supply a fresh link in the historical development of art as exhibited in our National Gallery.
Just above these old-world pagans hangs Spinello Aretino"s _Fall of the Rebel Angels_, with devils and dragons galore. If you gaze at the mummy faces long enough, you can quite imagine the dead men"s faces looking at you; as Spinello, who was an imaginative Florentine, used to think his devils did. Spinello"s picture was painted to decorate the church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli, in his native town of Arezzo; and he laboured hard to make the chief fiend, Lucifer, as hideous as possible. So much did this idea prey upon him, that one night he had a terrible dream. The demon he had painted appeared to him in his sleep, demanding to know why the painter had made him so ugly. Spinello, it is said, did not survive the shock, which is a warning to those who take liberties with the devil. The Greek painter, who, when confronted with an unpleasing sitter, said frankly, "Paint you? Who would paint you, when no one would even look at you?" was wiser.
Seeing the pictures in the National Gallery is like reading bits of old biographies. All true artists put their life into their work, and leave it there. Take Marco Marziale"s work--_The Circ.u.mcision of Christ_ (No. 803)--it is wonderful in respect of the faithful labour put into things that the modern painter would generalise as mere accessories. An amateur embroideress could easily copy the elaborate cross-st.i.tch of Marziale"s lectern border, and find no st.i.tch in its wrong place. He who did this was only a second-rate Venetian painter, and a label painted on the canvas fixes the date and makes it probable that this was his first important commission; therefore, Marco spared no trouble, and crowded his picture with all the most beautiful textures and patterns known to the Venice of his day. People did not scamp work in those times.
The painter-poet, William Blake, with his charming insanity, has left us glimpses of his strangely warped mind in his mysterious painting of _Pitt Guiding Behemoth_, which hangs on the walls in another part of the gallery. The more one looks at this little picture, the more its green and gold hues and the tongues of its flames have fascination. It is dark and unattractive at a first glance: but, to show how fatally easy it is to attract a "following," and also how much in need the average visitor is of a pilot to the Gallery, one only has to draw up a chair and seat one"s self before this small canvas to collect an inquisitive crowd. People, even educated people, are strangely imitative! Besides this picture, there are only one or two minor works by Blake in our National Gallery. Instead of his _Canterbury Pilgrims_, we have here that of his contemporary Stothard, who took the idea from Blake and supplanted him. Stothard"s _Canterbury Pilgrims_ caused a quarrel between himself and Blake; a quarrel which was never healed; and Blake criticised his rival"s painting freely on its exhibition. Hoppner, the artist, praised it; adding that Stothard had "contrived to give a value to a common scene, and very ordinary forms." Thereupon Blake, in criticising the critic, said that this was Hoppner"s only just observation; "for it is so, and very wretchedly so indeed. The scene of Mr. S."s picture," he adds, "is by Dulwich hills, which is not the way to Canterbury; but perhaps the painter thought he would give them a ride round about, because they were a burlesque set of scarecrows, not worth any man"s respect or care." _Tantaene animis caelestibus irae?_
Among the works of the Lombard School is a picture by Parmigiano, _The Vision of St. Jerome_ (No. 33), which shows how the artist can forget himself in his work. For Parmigiano was engaged on this very picture, in Rome, during the German sack of the city in 1527. Vasari says that the painter was so intent on his work that, even while his own dwelling was filled with the German invaders, he continued undisturbed; and that when they arrived in his room and found him so employed they stood amazed at the beautiful paintings, and wisely permitted him to continue. Parmigiano"s picture is thus, in the truest sense, historical.
There is another cla.s.s of pictures that is a.s.sociated with incidents in history. First, we have that priceless little painting by Gerard Terburg, _The Peace of Munster_ (896), mentioned before in connection with Hertford House. It hangs in the Dutch Room, and is so small that one might easily overlook it. Small as it is, it cost at its last sale 8,800; 24 for every square inch of canvas. The Dutch painter has represented one of the turning-points of his country"s history; the ratification, in 1684, of the Treaty of Munster, by which the long war between Spain and the United Provinces was ended. The numerous heads are all portraits, and, in the background, the painter has introduced himself. There is about this painting a photographic truth, a minute fidelity, which makes it doubly interesting. Terburg would not part with it during his life. Afterwards, amid many vicissitudes, it pa.s.sed into the possession of Prince Talleyrand, and was actually hanging in the room of his hotel, under the view of the Allied Sovereigns, at the signing of the Treaty of 1814. Not less interesting in its way is the painting by Holbein of the d.u.c.h.ess Christina of Denmark. Among Holbein"s duties, as Court painter and favourite of Henry VIII., was that of taking the portraits of the ladies whom the King proposed to wed. This young Christina was prime favourite after the death of Jane Seymour, and Holbein was despatched to Brussels to paint her. The picture pleased his Majesty; but, for political reasons, the match was broken off. The story of Christina"s message to the King, that she had but one head, but that if she "had two one should be at the service of his Majesty," is now discredited; but the d.u.c.h.ess seems to have had a character of her own.
_Peace and War_, by Rubens, an allegorical canvas (46), is another picture designed to sway the fate of nations. Rubens painted it when he came over to England, in 1630, as amba.s.sador to negotiate a peace with Spain. He produced an elaborate allegory showing forth the Blessings of Peace, and presented it, with much diplomacy, to Charles I. It was sold, after the King"s death, for 100; to be bought back again for 3,000. With regard to Charles I."s pictures generally, much might be said of the strange irony of history. The large equestrian picture of the King by Vandyck (1172), bought for the nation at the Blenheim sale for 17,000, was, after his death, sold by Parliament, for a paltry sum; and Correggio"s famous _Mercury, Venus, and Cupid_, (10), also included in Charles"s collection, was sold and bought again by successive Parliaments.
Among the early Florentine pictures in the Gallery, Botticelli"s _Nativity of Christ_ (1034), is history in the sense of showing the force of the religious revival in Savonarola"s time. Botticelli, at the age of forty, fell under the preacher"s influence, and, forsaking the world"s pleasures, made a "mourner" of himself until his death.
This is the picture that, as Mr. Lang says, was:
"Wrought in the troublous times of Italy By Sandro Botticelli, when for fear Of that last judgment, and last day drawn near, To end all labour and all revelry, He wept and prayed in silence."
The painting is full of theological symbolism, and its Greek inscription, being translated, runs: "This, I, Alexander, painted at the end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy, in the half-time after the time during the fulfilment of the eleventh of St. John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, in the loosing of the Devil for three years and a half. Afterwards he shall be chained, and we shall see him trodden down, as in this picture." Botticelli had already, earlier in life, got into religious trouble by his reforming tendencies. When quite a young man, he had painted, for a Florentine citizen, Matteo Palmieri, a large picture called _The a.s.sumption of the Virgin_, which also hangs in our Gallery (No. 1126). Palmieri had adopted Origen"s strange heresy that the human race was an incarnation of those angels who, in the revolt of Lucifer, were neither for G.o.d nor for his enemies; and, as he and Botticelli, in working out the design of the picture, had made amendments in theology, they fell into disgrace. Suspected of heresy, Botticelli"s work was covered up; and the chapel for which it had been painted was closed until the picture left Florence for the Duke of Hamilton"s collection and was bought by the nation in 1882. "The story of the heresy interprets," Mr. Pater says, "much of the peculiar sentiment with which Botticelli infuses his profane and sacred persons, neither all human nor all divine."
Most interesting, too, is Carpaccio"s Venetian painting of the Doge Giovanni Mocenigo (750), which faithfully represents a page of the history of Venice. The doge is shown kneeling before the Virgin, and begging her protection, on the occasion of the plague in 1478.
Medicaments and nostrums against the epidemic are contained in a gold vase on the altar before the throne; and a blessing (according to the inscription below) is asked on them: "Celestial Virgin, preserve the City and Republic of Venice, and the Venetian State, and extend your protection to me, if I deserve it." Simple and modest indeed was Venice in the good days of her prosperity! Compare with this kneeling, crownless doge, the new and elaborate frescoes in the Vatican, where the Pope is represented in his grandest robes, benevolently granting to the Madonna an audience, with masters of the ceremonies standing by, and obsequious pages holding his gold-laced train.
Some of the greatest ornaments of our Gallery are those which have been thrown off easily in the magnanimity of art. Chief of these is the Veronese called _The Family of Darius_ (294). This large painting, with its splendid architecture, gem-like colour, and wonderful composition, was painted while Veronese was detained by an accident at the Pisani Villa at Este. Having left it behind him there, he sent word that he had left wherewithal to defray the expense of his entertainment; and his words were more than verified. The picture, whose golden tones Smetham, the artist, so much admired, turned really to gold afterwards. The Pisani family sold it to the National Gallery, in 1857, for 13,650. Veronese"s lavishness in giving away his masterpieces was almost equalled, however, by our own Gainsborough, who gave his _Parish Clerk_ (760) to a carrier who had conveyed his pictures from Bath to the Royal Academy.
The wanderings and vicissitudes of celebrated pictures have been many indeed. The celebrated Van Eyck, _Jan Arnolfini and his Wife_ (186), painted five hundred years ago, has had, for instance, an eventful history. At one time a barber-surgeon at Bruges presented it to the Queen Regent of the Netherlands, who valued it so highly that she pensioned him in consideration of the gift. At another, it must have pa.s.sed again into humbler hands; for General Hay found it in the room at Brussels to which he was taken in 1815 to recover from the battle of Waterloo. The story of Michael Angelo"s _Entombment_ is also curious. It was once in the gallery of Cardinal Fesch, which was sold and dispersed after the cardinal"s death. Being in a neglected condition and unfinished it attracted little attention, and was bought very cheaply by Mr. Macpherson, a Scotchman sojourning in Rome. After the dirt had been removed, it was submitted to competent judges, who p.r.o.nounced it to be by Michael Angelo. This caused a great sensation; and a lawsuit was inst.i.tuted against Mr. Macpherson for the recovery of the picture, a suit which ultimately ended in his favour. He removed the picture to England, and sold it to the National Gallery for 2,000.
The pictures that were the favourites of great men gain an additional value in our eyes from that fact. Vandyck"s _Portrait of Rubens_ (49), Ba.s.sano"s _Good Samaritan_ (277), and Bourdon"s _Return of the Ark_ (64), were all owned and much-prized by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who would often admire, to his Academy pupils, the "poetical style" of the Bourdon. Vandyck himself singled out the _Portrait of Gevartius_ as his masterpiece, and used to "carry it about from court to court and from patron to patron, to show what he could do as a portrait-painter." There is, too, a pretty story of how Sir George Beaumont valued a little landscape by Claude (61), so highly that he made it his travelling companion. He presented it to the National Gallery in 1826; but, unable to bear its loss, begged it back for the rest of his life. He took it with him into the country; and on his death two years later, his widow restored it to the nation.
I might go on multiplying picture-stories for ever; for the romance of the National Gallery is inexhaustible. Times, and men, change; we live our little day, and are gone; but here, upon our walls, live souls embodied in canvases, monuments of human spirits which from age to age are still instinct with life. "Paul Veronese," James Smetham writes, "three hundred years ago, painted that bright Alexander, with his handsome flushed Venetian face, and that glowing uniform of the Venetian general which he wears; and before him, on their knees, he set those golden ladies, who are pleading in pink and violet; and there is he, and there are they in our National Gallery; he, flushed and handsome, they, golden and suppliant as ever. It takes an oldish man to remember the comet of 1811. Who remembers Paul Veronese, nine generations since? But not a tint of his thoughts is unfixed; they beam along the walls as fresh as ever. Saint Nicholas stoops to the Angelic Coronation, and the solemn fiddling of the Marriage at Cana is heard along the silent galleries of the Louvre ("Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter")! yes; and will be so when you and I have cleaned our last palette, and, "in the darkness over us, the four-handed mole shall sc.r.a.pe.""
Paul Veronese and his contemporaries knew how to make their works last. We in our day are not so fortunate. It is sad to think how many pictures of our own English School are gradually fading away; how many men have put their best powers into pictures which are now (among them some of Sir Joshua Reynolds"s most beautiful creations) rapidly becoming "ghosts of ghosts." With Turner the general wreck is more complete. "Turner," Constable said, "seems to paint with tinted steam,--so evanescent, and so airy." Alas! evanescent indeed. Reynolds devoted much time and attention to finding out durable pigments.
Trying to discover the secret, he even cut up some old Italian pictures. It was a vain quest. The old masters are long ago buried, and they have carried their secret to the grave.
Sadder still is the case of those artists whose pictures themselves have not faded, but the fashion for whose pictures has gone. Sir Benjamin West, who died some sixty odd years ago, enjoyed very great fame during his life. He painted many large historical canvases, all painstaking, and, in their way, of undoubted merit. They gained high prices in their day, and are now mostly consigned either to cellars or to the darkest rooms of suburban galleries.
Time is, after all, the greatest of art critics, and its judgment is sure. The best of all the centuries adorns the walls of the National Museum. It is the best only that survives. To us, in all our painful twentieth-century newness, it is given to inherit the mystery and magic of the old Greeks and Egyptians; the charming imagery of Raphael, filled with simple faith and sweet imagination; the quaint beauty of Botticelli, and of the early Florentines, whose art was a part of their life; the gay voluptuousness of the later Venetians; "the courtly Spanish grace" of Velasquez; the charming affectations of Sir Joshua Reynolds, shown in the fair ladies whose portraits, in their beauty, once filled the halls of England. All is given to us, unsparingly. For us and for the enrichment of the walls of our National Gallery, did the rude barbarians, in the sack of Italian cities, stay the hand of destruction; for us the treasures of art were wrested from many a palace of antiquity; it was for the delight of thousands of modern Londoners that the monasteries of the Middle Ages were plundered. Altar-pieces painted for adoration in the private chapel of some patron saint are now seen dimly, through London fog and smoke, hanging, maybe, next to some pagan _Bacchus and Ariadne_, or _Venus and the Loves_. For our sake were battles fought, to include masterpieces among the spoils; for us did the Italian n.o.bles sell their treasures into the hands of money-lenders. Could Botticelli, that fervent follower of Savonarola, he who "worked and prayed in silence," have guessed that his beloved _Nativity of Christ_ would, centuries hence, be removed to barbarous London, and be stared at by crowds of wondering Philistines, who should see in it only the curious uncouthness of its gestures,--he would, surely, have held his hand.
The National Gallery is the natural haunt of such dreams. Sitting there in the quickly-growing twilight, how easily it becomes peopled with ghosts, ghosts even more intangible than Reynolds"s. Our thoughts wander back into the past, the walls grow dim, they seem to melt away into distance; we hear the sound of music, and see the glimmer of gay banners, as Cimabue"s Madonna is carried past, amid the acclamation of a mult.i.tude; or a gay court appears before our eyes, filled with fine ladies, grandees, and inquisitors; and, apart from all, a great King conversing eagerly with a little dark painter, whose only ornament, beyond his lace ruffles, is the red cross of the Order of Santiago on his breast; or we seem to be in Italy, in a poetic "Romeo and Juliet"
time and atmosphere, in a rich n.o.ble"s house, bright with splendid hangings and works of art; a painted wedding-chest, or _ca.s.sone_, has just been presented, on the occasion of a marriage, and the young bride herself gazes down lovingly into its depths, which she has just stored with rich silks and brocaded velvets, and all her treasures; just such a chest as Ginevra might have hid and perished in; just such a bride as Ginevra herself. Or the scene changes again to a dusty gallery in a dingy street, with a little ugly old man mounted high on a stool, painting furiously away amid a horde of tailless cats; and anon a transformation, and we see a brilliant illumination of Queen Mab"s Grotto, with fairies in wonderful gondolas, gliding to and fro; a ball in Venice.... We, too, are invited, but, as we hesitate to trust ourselves to Turner"s airy structures, a voice sounds in our ear,--a prosaic voice, however: "Closin" time, ma"am, closin" time!"
CHAPTER XV
HISTORIC HOUSES AND THEIR TENANTS
"I have seen various places ... which have been rendered interesting by great men and their works; ... I seem to have made friends with them in their own houses; to have walked and talked, and suffered and enjoyed with them.... Even in London I find the principle hold good in me.... I once had duties to perform which kept me out late at night, and severely taxed my health and spirits. My path lay through a neighbourhood in which Dryden lived; and though nothing could be more commonplace, and I used to be tired to the heart and soul of me, I never hesitated to go a little out of my way purely that I might pa.s.s through Gerrard Street, and so give myself the shadow of a pleasant thought."--_Leigh Hunt._
"Our houses shape themselves palpably on our inner and outer natures. See a householder breaking up and you will be sure of it. There is a sh.e.l.lfish which builds all manner of smaller sh.e.l.l into the walls of its own. A house is never a home until we have crusted it with the spoils of a hundred lives besides those of our own past. See what these are and you can tell what the occupant is."--_Oliver Wendell Holmes._
[Ill.u.s.tration: _At the Club._]
The most curious thing about London houses, and especially characteristic of our national reserve, is the fact that we can, as a rule, tell nothing at all about them until we get inside the sacred enclosure. A Londoner"s house is the sh.e.l.l that hides him from the world; our houses are, to the foreigner, as enigmatic and as exclusive as we ourselves. But, once past the magic gateway, once past the Cerberus at the door, you come upon an interior often unguessed and undreamed of. The contrast is striking. What can be more dully monotonous, more unromantic, than the row of brick and stucco house-fronts that face the average large square or street? Yet it is ten to one that, inside, hardly one of these will exactly resemble the other, either in taste, architecture, or even general plan. Even the "long unlovely street" of Tennyson"s disapproval may, and does, often hide unsuspected treasures. Who, for instance, would suspect the existence of the Greek bas-reliefs, the painted ceilings, the colonnades and statues in some of the old Bloomsbury houses? Who would imagine the curious "Soane Museum" in the quiet house in Lincoln"s Inn Fields? the dignified Georgian s.p.a.ciousness in the old mansions of Bedford Square? the gorgeous interior of the sombre houses of Bruton Street? the picture-galleries of Piccadilly and Mayfair? or the Eastern magnificence and opulence of some of the Park Lane mansions?
For in London, as a rule, there are but few external signs to denote wealth. Even in our riches, we do not wear our heart on our sleeve.
From a survey of these, as a rule, unimposing facades, we can imagine the uninitiated foreigner wondering where in the world the people of the richest city in the universe live. He may, even if intelligent, wander at large through London, and notice nothing of beauty, or even of interest. Was it not Madame de Stael who, lodged as she was in uninspiring Argyll Street, said unkindly, but not, perhaps, without some reason, with regard to her immediate surroundings that "London was a province in brick"? But London houses have other and deeper a.s.sociations than those of mere riches; the a.s.sociation with mighty spirits of the past, poets dead and gone, great men of action, kings, warriors, statesmen; the infinite mult.i.tude of those who, "being dead, yet live." And in some cases, even though the houses themselves have vanished, yet the places where they stood are still sacred.
Thus,--though it is perhaps difficult to define the exact boundaries of the old Stuart Palace of Whitehall, or to say where was the special site of the historic c.o.c.kpit,--yet, do they not lend a glory and an attraction to all the district of Westminster? Do not the purlieus of the unromantic Borough High Street, murky as these often are, recall Chaucer"s famous Tabard Inn, of Canterbury pilgrims" fame? and does not the much-abused Griffin, on its Temple Bar pedestal, memorialise the older and too obstructive arch, where of old the dreadful heads of political scapegoats were displayed?
Vanished, and every year still vanishing, treasures! Sooner or later, no doubt, the edifices made sacred by history and a.s.sociation must go the way of all brick and masonry; yet even such landmarks as Turner"s poor riverside cottage at Chelsea, or Carlyle"s modest abode in Cheyne Walk, it will be sad to part with. That curious humanity that Charles d.i.c.kens gave to houses makes itself again felt in their fall; dwellings are not immortal, any more than were their great occupants.
There is no picturesque decay in London; what is not of use must go: it dare not c.u.mber the precious ground. Therefore, the few remaining timbered fronts of London are gone or going; only recently some picturesque old red-roofed houses, in the close vicinity of New Oxford Street, were condemned and destroyed; Staple Inn, indeed, has been saved and patched up, owing to the prompt action of a band of public benefactors. Blocks of houses, forming whole streets, are continually washed away in the tide of progress; Parliament Street has disappeared; the old Hanway Street, as it once was, has lately gone; Holywell Street is of the past; the demolition of this latter, though, indeed, urgently needed for the widening of the "straits" of the Strand, was not without its special sadness. The decay of houses that are at once picturesque and historical is, of course, doubly afflicting; yet even ugly houses often retain the charm of a.s.sociation to those who know what memories are bound up with them. Here romance and history serve to lend the beauty that is lacking. Thus, Ruskin"s prosaic home in Hunter Street, Thackeray"s commonplace mansion in Onslow Square; the house in Half Moon Street where Sh.e.l.ley sat "like a young lady"s lark," in a projecting window, "hanging outside for air and song;" even that dark corner in Mecklenburgh Square where Sala kept his curios and bric-a-brac, all have their peculiar charm. Dr.
Johnson"s house in Gough Square, Fleet Street; the so-called "Old Curiosity Shop" in Lincoln"s Inn Fields; John Hunter"s house in Leicester Square--are all threatened with demolition. And, even apart from historic interest, how sad is the frequent fall of London"s old landmarks! Tottering buildings, mere derelicts of time, old houses----
"whose ancient cas.e.m.e.nts stare, With sad, dim eyes, at the departing years."
Instinct as they are with the pathos of humanity, the sword of Damocles hangs over them all.
If great men"s houses, or the houses that great men have ever, temporarily, lived in, could all be designated by some un.o.btrusive memorial tablet, such, for instance, as the Carlyle bas relief at Chelsea,--or even a plain inscription such as those recently placed on John Ruskin"s birthplace in Hunter Street, Reynolds"s house in Leicester Square, and Sir Isaac Newton"s in St. Martin"s Street,--what an interest would it not lend to even "long and unlovely" London streets! For the romance of houses is not divined by instinct; and even the taste of a Morris or a Rossetti has not always left its mark on their London abodes. That d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, John Leech, Darwin, the Rossettis, William Morris, have all lived in and about Bloomsbury, is not patent to the casual visitor. Does not even the plain inscription, "Poeta Inglese, Sh.e.l.ly," (_sic_) lend an added glamour to the Lung" Arno of Pisa?
The dividing line between history and fiction is not always very strongly marked; and this leads us to consider yet another aspect of the question. A curious literary interest sometimes attaches to certain houses, an interest hardly less deep for being partly, or even purely, fict.i.tious. Among the many novelists who have made themselves responsible for this, none, perhaps, have been more prominent than Charles d.i.c.kens. d.i.c.kens, whose knowledge of London was, like his own Sam Weller"s, "extensive and peculiar," has invested certain houses, certain localities, with an almost human sentiment and pathos.