Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected Volume I Part 2

MEDON.

Then what, in Heaven's name, _have_ you learned?

ALDA.

Not much; but I have learned to sweep my mind of some ill-conditioned cobwebs. I have learned to consider my own acquired knowledge but as a torch flung into an abyss, making the darkness visible, and showing me the extent of my own ignorance.

MEDON.

Then give us--give _me_, at least--the benefit of your ignorance; only let it be all your own. I honour a profession of ignorance--if only for its rarity--in these all-knowing times. Let me tell you, the ignorance of a candid and not uncultivated mind is better than the second-hand wisdom of those who take all things for granted; who are the echoes of others' opinions, the utterers of others' words; who _think_ they know, and who _think_ they think: I am sick of them all. Come, refresh me with a little ignorance--and be serious.

ALDA.

You make me smile; after all, 'tis only going over old ground, and I know not what pleasure, what interest it can impart, beyond half an hour's amus.e.m.e.nt.

MEDON.

Sceptic! is that nothing? In this harsh, cold, working-day world, is half an hour's amus.e.m.e.nt nothing? Old ground!--as if you did not know the pleasure of going over old ground with a new companion to refresh half-faded recollections--to compare impressions--to correct old ideas and acquire new ones? O I can suck knowledge out of ignorance, as a weazel sucks eggs!--Begin.

ALDA.

Where shall I begin?

MEDON.

Where, but at the beginning? and then diverge as you will. Your first journey was one of mere amus.e.m.e.nt?

ALDA.

Merely, and it answered its purpose; we travelled _a la milor Anglais_--a _partie carree_--a barouche hung on the most approved principle--double-cus.h.i.+oned--luxurious--rising and sinking on its springs like a swan on the wave--the pockets stuffed with new publications--maps and guides _ad infinitum_; English servants for comfort, foreign servants for use; a chess-board, backgammon tables--in short, surrounded with all that could render us entirely independent of the amus.e.m.e.nts we had come to seek, and of the people among whom we had come to visit.

MEDON.

Admirable--and Englis.h.!.+

ALDA.

Yes, and pleasant. I thought, not without grat.i.tude, of the contrast between present feelings and those of a former journey. To abandon oneself to the quickening influence of new objects without care or thought of to-morrow, with a mind awake in all its strength; with restored health and cheerfulness; with sensibility tamed, not dead; possessing one's soul in quiet; not seeking, nor yet shrinking from excitement; not self-engrossed, nor yet pining for sympathy; was not this much? Not so interesting, perhaps, as playing the _Ennuyee_; but, oh! you know not how sad it is to look upon the lovely through tearful eyes, and walk among the loving and the kind, wrapped as in a death-shroud; to carry into the midst of the most glorious scenes of nature, and the divinest creations of art, perceptions dimmed and troubled with sickness and anguish: to move in the morning with aching and reluctance--to faint in the evening with weariness and pain; to feel all change, all motion, a torment to the dying heart; all rest, all delay, a burthen to the impatient spirit; to s.h.i.+ver in the presence of joy, like a ghost in the suns.h.i.+ne, yet have no sympathy to spare for suffering. How could I remember that all this _had been_, and not bless the miracle-worker--Time? And _apropos_ to the miracles of time--I had on this first journey, one source of amus.e.m.e.nt, which I am sorry I cannot share with you at full length; it was the near contemplation of a very singular character, of which I can only afford you a sketch.

Our CHEF _de voyage_, for so we chose to ent.i.tle him who was the planner and director of our excursion, was one of the most accomplished and most eccentric of human beings: even courtesy might have termed him old, at seventy; but old age and he were many miles asunder, and it seemed as though he had made some compact with Time, like that of Faust with the devil, and was not to surrender to his inevitable adversary till the very last moment. Years could not quench his vivacity, nor "stale his infinite variety." He had been one of the prince's wild companions in the days of Sheridan and Fox, and could play alternately blackguard and gentleman, and both in perfection; but the high-born gentleman ever prevailed. He had been heir to an enormous income, most of which had slipped through his fingers _unknownst_, as the Irish say, and had stood in the way of a coronet, which, somehow or other, had slipped over his head to light on that of his eldest son. He had lived a life which would have ruined twenty iron const.i.tutions, and had suffered what might well have broken twenty hearts of common stuff; but his self-complacency was invulnerable, his animal spirits inexhaustible, his activity indefatigable. The eccentricities of this singular man have been matter of celebrity; but against each of these stories it would be easy to place some act of benevolence, some trait of lofty gentlemanly feeling, which would at least neutralize their effect. He often told me that he had early in life selected three models, after which to form his own conduct and character; namely, De Grammont, Hotspur, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury; and he certainly _did_ unite, in a greater degree than he knew himself, the characteristics of all three. Such was our CHEF, and thus led, thus appointed, away we posted on, from land to land, from city to city--

MEDON.

Stay--stay. This is galloping on at the rate of Lenora, and her phantom lover--

"Tramp, tramp across the land we go, Splash, splash across the sea!"

Take me with you, and a little more leisurely.

ALDA.

I think Bruges was the first place which interested me, perhaps from its historical a.s.sociations. Bruges, where monarchs kissed the hand to merchants, now emptied of its former splendour, reminded me of the improvident steward in scripture, that could not dig, and to beg was ashamed. It had an air of grave idleness and threadbare dignity; and its listless, thinly-scattered inhabitants looked as if they had gone astray among the wide streets and huge tenantless edifices. There is one thing here which you must see--the tomb of Charles the Bold, and his daughter, Mary of Burgundy. The tomb is of the most exquisite workmans.h.i.+p, composed of polished bra.s.s and enamelled escutcheons; and there the fiery father and the gentle daughter lie, side by side, in sculptured bronze, equally still, cold, and silent. I remember that I stood long gazing on the inscription, which made me smile, and made me think. There was no mention of defeat and ma.s.sacre, disgraceful flight, or obscure death. "But," says the epitaph, after enumerating his t.i.tles, his exploits, and his virtues, "fortune, who had hitherto been his good lady, ungently turned her back upon him on such a day of such a year, and _oppressed_ him"--an amusing instance of mingled courtesy and _navete_.

Ghent was our next resting place. The aspect of Ghent, so familiarized to us of late by our travelled artists, made a strong impression upon me, and I used to walk about for hours together, looking at the strange picturesque old buildings coeval with the Spanish dominion, with their ornamented fronts and peaked roofs. There is much trade here, many flouris.h.i.+ng manufactories, and the ca.n.a.ls and quays often exhibited a lively scene of bustle, of which the form, at least, was new to us. The first exposition, or exhibition, of the newly-founded Royal Academy of the Netherlands was at this season open. You will allow it was a fair opportunity of judging of the present state of painting, in the self-same land, where she had once found, if not a temple, at least a home.

MEDON.

And learned to be homely--but the result?

ALDA.

I can scarce express the surprise I felt at the time, though it has since diminished on reflection. All the attempts at historical painting were bad, without exception. There was the usual a.s.sortment of Virgins, St. Cecilias, Cupids and Psyches, Zephyrs and Floras;--but such incomparable atrocities! There were some cabinet pictures in the same style in which their Flemish ancestors excelled--such as small interior conversation pieces, battle pieces, and flowers and fruit; some of these were really excellent, but the proportion of bad to good was certainly fifty to one.

MEDON.

Something like our own Royal Academy.

ALDA.

No; because with much which was quite as bad, quite as insipid, as coa.r.s.e in taste, as stupidly presumptuous in attempt, and ridiculous in failure, as ever shocked me on the walls of Somerset House, there was nothing to be compared to the best pictures I have seen there. As I looked and listened to the remarks of the crowd around me, I perceived that the taste for art is even as low in the Netherlands as it is here and elsewhere.

MEDON.

And, surely, not from the want of models, nor from the want of facility in the means of studying them. You visited, of course, Schamp's collection?

ALDA.

Surely; there were miracles of art crowded together like goods in a counting-house, with wondrous economy of s.p.a.ce, and more lamentable economy of light. Some were nailed against doors, inside and out, or suspended from screens and window-shutters. Here I saw Rubens' picture of Father Rutseli, the confessor of Albert and Isabella: one of those heads more suited to the crown than to the cowl--grand, sagacious, intellectual, with such a world of meaning in the eye, that one almost shrunk away from the expression. Here, too, I found that remarkable picture of Charles the First, painted by Lely during the king's imprisonment at Windsor--the only one for which he sat between his dethronement and his death: he is still melancholy and gentlemanlike, but not quite so dignified as on the canva.s.s of Vand.y.k.e. This is the very picture that Horace Walpole mentions as lost or abstracted from the collection at Windsor. How it came into Schamp's collection, I could not learn. A very small head of an Italian girl by Correggio, or in his manner, hung close beside a Dutch girl by Mieris: equally exquisite as paintings, they gave me an opportunity of contrasting two styles, both founded in nature--but the nature, how different! the one all life, the other life and soul. Schamp's collection is liberally open to the public, as well as many others; if artists fail, it is not for want of models.

MEDON.

Perhaps for want of patronage? Yet I hear that the late king of the Netherlands sent several young artists to Italy at his own expense, and that the Prince of Orange was liberal and even munificent in his purchases--particularly of the old masters.

ALDA.

When I went to see the collection of the Prince of Orange at Brussels, I stepped from the room in which hung the glorious Vand.y.k.es, perhaps unequalled in the world, into the adjoining apartment, in which were two unfinished portraits disposed upon easels. They represented members of the prince's family; and were painted by a native artist of fas.h.i.+onable fame, and royally patronised. These were pointed out to my admiration as universally approved. What shall I say of them? Believe me, that they were contemptible beyond all terms of contempt! Can you tell me why the Prince of Orange should have sufficient taste to select and appropriate the finest specimens of art, and yet purchase and patronize the vilest daubs ever perpetrated by imbecility and presumption?

MEDON.

I know not, unless it be that in the former case he made use of others'

eyes and judgment, and in the latter, of his own.

ALDA.

I might have antic.i.p.ated the answer; but be that as it may, of all the galleries I saw in the Netherlands, the small but invaluable collection he had formed in his palace pleased me most. I remember a portrait of Sir Thomas More, by Holbein. A female head, by Leonardo da Vinci, said to be one of the mistresses of Francis I., but this is doubtful; that most magnificent group, Christ delivering the keys to St. Peter, by Rubens, once in England; about eight or ten Vand.y.k.es, masterpieces--for instance, Philip IV. and his minister Olivarez, and a Chevalier le Roy and his wife: all that you can imagine of chivalrous dignity, and lady-like grace. But there was one picture, a family group, by Gonsalez, which struck me more than all the rest put together. I had never seen any production of this painter, whose works are scarcely known out of Spain; and I looked upon this with equal astonishment and admiration.

There was also a small, but most curious collection of pictures, of the ancient Flemish and German schools, which it is now the fas.h.i.+on to admire, and, what is worse, to imitate. The word _fas.h.i.+on_ does not express the national enthusiasm on this subject which prevails in Germany. I can understand that these pictures are often most interesting as historic doc.u.ments, and often admirable for their literal transcripts of nature and expression, but they can only possess comparative excellence and relative value; and where the feeling of ideal beauty and cla.s.sic grace has been highly cultivated, the eye shrinks involuntarily from these hard, grotesque, and glaring productions of an age when genius was blindly groping amid the darkness of ignorance. To confess the truth, I was sometimes annoyed, and sometimes amused, by the cant I heard in Germany about those schools of painting which preceded Albert Durer. Perhaps I should not say _cant_--it is a vile expression; and in German affectation there is something so very peculiar--so poetical, so--so _natural_, if I might say so, that I would give it another name if I could find one. In this wors.h.i.+p of their old painters, I really could sympathize sometimes, even when it most provoked me. Retzsch, whom I had the delight of knowing at Dresden, showed me a sketch, in which he had ridiculed this mania with the most exquisite humour: it represented the torso of an antique Apollo (emblematical of ideal grace), mutilated and half buried in the earth, and subject to every species of profanation; it serves as a stool for a German student, who, with his s.h.i.+rt-collar turned down, and his hair dishevelled, and his cap stuck on one side, _a la_ Rafaelle, is intently copying a stiff, hard, sour-looking old Madonna, while Ignorance looks on, gaping with admiration. No one knows better than Retzsch the value of these ancient masters--no one has a more genuine feeling for all that is admirable in them; but no one feels more sensibly the gross perversion and exaggeration of the wors.h.i.+p paid to them. I wish he would publish this good-humoured little bit of satire, which is too just and too graceful to be called a caricature.

I must tell you, however, that there were two most curious old pictures in the Orange Gallery, which arrested my attention, and of which I have retained a very distinct and vivid recollection; and that is more than I can say of many better pictures. They tell, in a striking manner, a very interesting story: the circ.u.mstances are said to have occurred about the year 985, but I cannot say that they rest on any very credible authority.