Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected Volume II Part 8

Pluddeman, of Colberg.

T. B. Sonderland, of Dusseldorf. Fairs and merrymakings.

H. Rustige. The same subjects. Both are good artists.

H. Kretzschmar, of Pomerania. His picture of "Little Red Ridinghood,"

(Rothkappchen,) at the Kunstverein, at Dusseldorf, had great merit.

Adolf Scrotte. Rustic scenes in the Dutch manner.

LANDSCAPE.

Dahl, a Norwegian settled at Dresden, esteemed one of the best landscape painters in Germany. There is a very fine sea-piece by this artist in the possession of the Countess von Seebach at Dresden, with, however, all the characteristic _peculiarities_ of the German school.

T. D. Pa.s.savant, of Frankfort.

Friedrich, of Dresden, one of the most _poetical_ of the German landscape painters. He is rather a mannerist in colour, like Turner, but in the opposite excess: his genius revels in gloom, as that of Turner revels in light.

Professor von Dillis, of Munich.

Max Wagenbauer, of Munich. He is called most deservedly, the German Paul Potter.

Jacob Dorner, of Munich. A charming painter; perhaps a little too minute in his finis.h.i.+ng.

Catel, of Dusseldorf. Scenes on the Mediterranean. This painter resides chiefly in Italy; but in the collection of M. de Klenze I saw some admirable specimens of his works.

Biermann, of Berlin, is a fine landscape painter.

Preyer, certainly the most exquisite of modern flower painters.

I believe he is from Dusseldorf.

Rothman, of Heidelberg. I saw some pictures and sketches by this young painter, full of genius and feeling.

Fries, of Munich, a young painter of great promise. He put an end to his own life, while I was at Munich, in a fit of delirium, caused by fever, and was very generally lamented.

Wilhelm Schirmer, of Juliers, an exceedingly fine landscape painter.

Audeas Achenbach, of Dusseldorf: he has also great merit.

There are several female artists in Germany, of more or less celebrity.

The Baroness von Freyberg (born Electrina Stuntz) holds the first rank in original talent. She resides near Munich, but no longer paints professionally.

The Countess Julie von Egloffstein has also the rare gift of original and creative genius.

Luise Seidler, of Weimar; Madlle. de Winkel and Madame de Loqueyssie, of Dresden, are distinguished in their art. The two latter are exquisite copyists.

In architecture, Leo von Klenze and Professor Girtner, of Munich; and Heideloff of Nuremberg, are deservedly celebrated in Germany.

The most distinguished sculptors in Germany are Christian Rauch, and Christian Friedrich Tieck, of Berlin; Johan Heinrich von Dannecker, of Stuttgardt; Schwanthaler, Eberhardt, Bandel, Kirchmayer, Mayer, all of Munich; Reitschel of Dresden; and Imhoff, of Cologne. Those of their works which I had an opportunity of seeing have been mentioned in the course of these sketches.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

HARDWICKE.

Who that has exulted over the heroic reign of our gorgeous Elizabeth, or wept over the fate of Mary Stuart, but will remember the name of the only woman whose high and haughty spirit out-faced the lion port of one queen, and whose audacity trampled over the sorrows of the other--

"Brow-beating her fair form, and troubling her sweet pride!"

But this is antic.i.p.ation. If it be so laudable, according to the excellent, oft quoted advice of the giant Moulineau, to _begin at the beginning_,[41] what must it be to improve upon the precept? for so, in relating the fallen and fading glories of Hardwicke, do I intend to exceed even "mon ami le Belier," in historic accuracy, and take up our tale at a period ere Hardwicke itself--the Hardwicke that now stands--had a beginning.

There lived, then, in the days of queen Bess, a woman well worthy to be her majesty's namesake,--Elizabeth Hardwicke, more commonly called, in her own country, Bess of Hardwicke, and distinguished in the page of history as the _old_ Countess of Shrewsbury. She resembled Queen Elizabeth in all her best and worst qualities, and, putting royalty out of the scale, would certainly have been more than a match for that sharp-witted virago, in subtlety of intellect, and intrepidity of temper and manner.

She was the only daughter of John Hardwicke, of Hardwicke,[42] and being early left an orphan and an heiress, was married ere she was fourteen to a certain Master Robert Barley, who was about her own age. Death dissolved this premature union within a few months, but her husband's large estates had been settled on her and her heirs; and at the age of fifteen, dame Elizabeth was a blooming widow, amply dowered with fair and fertile lands, and free to bestow her hand again where she listed.

Suitors abounded, of course: but Elizabeth, it should seem, was hard to please. She was beautiful, if the annals of her family say true,--she had wit, and spirit, and, above all, an infinite love of independence.

After taking the management of her property into her own hands, she for some time reigned and revelled (with all decorum be it understood) in what might be truly termed, a state of single blessedness; but at length, tired of being lord and lady too--"master o'er her va.s.sals," if not exactly "queen o'er herself"--she thought fit, having reached the discreet age of four-and-twenty, to bestow her hand on Sir William Cavendish. He was a man of substance and power, already enriched by vast grants of abbey lands in the time of Henry VIII.,[43] all which, by the marriage contract, were settled on the lady. After this marriage, they pa.s.sed some years in retirement, having the wisdom to keep clear of the political storms and factions which intervened between the death of Henry VIII. and the accession of Mary, and yet the sense to profit by them. While Cavendish, taking advantage of those troublous times, went on adding manor after manor to his vast possessions, dame Elizabeth was busy providing heirs to inherit them; she became the mother of six hopeful children, who were destined eventually to found two ill.u.s.trious dukedoms, and mingle blood with the oldest n.o.bility of England--nay, with royalty itself. "Moreover," says the family chronicle, "the said dame Elizabeth persuaded her husband, out of the great love he had for her, to sell his estates in the south and purchase lands in her native county of Derby, wherewith to endow her and her children, and at her farther persuasion he began to build the n.o.ble seat of Chatsworth, but left it to her to complete, he dying about the year 1559."

Apparently this second experiment in matrimony pleased the lady of Hardwicke better than the first, for she was not long a widow. We are not in this case informed how long--her biographer having discreetly left it to our imagination; and the Peerages, though not in general famed for discretion on such points, have in this case affected the same delicate uncertainty. However this may be, she gave her hand, after no long courts.h.i.+p, to Sir William St. Loo, captain of Elizabeth's guard, and then chief butler of England--a man equally distinguished for his fine person and large possessions, but otherwise not superfluously gifted by nature. So well did the lady manage _him_, that with equal hardihood and rapacity, she contrived to have all his "fair lords.h.i.+ps in Gloucesters.h.i.+re and elsewhere" settled on herself and her children, to the manifest injury of St. Loo's own brothers, and his daughters by a former union: and he dying not long after without any issue by her, she made good her t.i.tle to his vast estates, added them to her own, and they became the inheritance of the Cavendishes.

But three husbands, six children, almost boundless opulence, did not yet satisfy this extraordinary woman--for extraordinary she certainly was, not more in the wit, subtlety, and unflinching steadiness of purpose with which she ama.s.sed wealth and achieved power, but in the manner in which she used both. She ruled her husband, her family, her va.s.sals, despotically, needing little aid, suffering no interference, asking no counsel. She managed her immense estates, and the local power and political weight which her enormous possessions naturally threw into her hands, with singular capacity and decision. She farmed the lands; she collected her rents; she built; she planted; she bought and sold; she lent out money on usury; she traded in timber, coals, lead: in short, the object she had apparently proposed to herself, the aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of her children by all and any means, she pursued with a wonderful perseverance and good sense. Power so consistently wielded, purposes so indefatigably followed up, and means so successfully adapted to an end, are, in a female, very striking. A slight sprinkling of the softer qualities of her s.e.x, a little more elevation of principle, would have rendered her as respectable and admirable as she was extraordinary; but there was in this woman's mind the same "fond de vulgarite" which we see in the character of Queen Elizabeth, and which no height of rank, or power, or estate, could do away with. In this respect the lady of Hardwicke was much inferior to that splendid creature, Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and c.u.mberland, another masculine spirit in the female form, who had the same propensity for building castles and mansions, the same pa.s.sion for power and independence, but with more true generosity and magnanimity, and a touch of poetry and genuine n.o.bility about her which the other wanted: in short, it was all the difference between the amazon and the heroine. It is curious enough that the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re should be the present representative of both these remarkable women.

But to return: Bess of Hardwicke was now approaching her fortieth year; she had achieved all but n.o.bility--the one thing yet wanting to crown her swelling fortunes. About the year 1565 (I cannot find the exact date) she was sought in marriage by George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.

There is no reason to doubt what is a.s.serted, that she had captivated the earl by her wit and her matronly beauty.[44] He could hardly have married her from motives of interest: he was himself the richest and greatest subject in England; a fine chivalrous character, with a reputation as unstained as his rank was splendid, and his descent ill.u.s.trious. He had a family by a former wife, (Gertrude Manners,) to inherit his t.i.tles, and _her_ estates were settled on her children by Cavendish. It should seem, therefore, that mutual inclination alone could have made the match advantageous to either party; but Bess of Hardwicke was still Bess of Hardwicke. She took advantage of her power over her husband in the first days of their union. "She induced Shrewsbury by entreaties or threats to sacrifice, in a measure, the fortune, interest, and happiness of himself and family to the aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of her and her family."[45] She contrived in the first place to have a large jointure settled on herself; and she arranged a double union, by which the wealth and interests of the two great families should be amalgamated. She stipulated that her eldest daughter, Mary Cavendish, should marry the earl's son, Lord Talbot; and that his youngest daughter, Grace Talbot, should marry her eldest son, Henry Cavendish.

The French have a proverb worthy of their gallantry--"_Ce que femme veut, Dieu veut_:" but even in the feminine gender we are sometimes reminded of another proverb equally significant--"_L'homme propose et Dieu dispose_." Now was Bess of Hardwicke queen of the Peak; she had built her erie so high, it seemed to dally with the winds of heaven; her young eaglets were worthy of their dam, ready plumed to fly at fortune; she had placed the coronet of the oldest peerage in England on her own brow, she had secured the reversion of it to her daughter, and she had married a man whose character was indeed opposed to her own, but who, from his chivalrous and confiding nature was calculated to make her happy, by leaving her mistress of herself.

In 1568 Mary Stuart, flying into England, was placed in the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and remained under his care for sixteen years, a long period of restless misery to the unhappy earl not less than to his wretched captive. In this dangerous and odious charge was involved the sacrifice of his domestic happiness, his peace of mind, his health, and great part of his fortune, His castle was converted into a prison, his servants into guards, his porter into a turnkey, his wife into a spy, and himself into a jailor, to gratify the ever-waking jealousy of Queen Elizabeth.[46] But the earl's greatest misfortune was the estrangement, and at length enmity, of his violent, high-spirited wife. She beheld the unhappy Mary with a hatred for which there was little excuse, but many intelligible reasons: she saw her, not as a captive committed to her womanly mercy, but as an intruder on her rights. Her haughty spirit was continually irritated by the presence of one in whom she was forced to acknowledge a superior, even in that very house and domain where she herself had been used to reign as absolute queen and mistress. The enormous expenses which this charge entailed on her household were distracting to her avarice; and, worse than all, jealousy of the youthful charms and winning manners of the Queen of Scots, and of the constant intercourse between her and her husband, seem at length to have driven her half frantic, and degraded her, with all her wit, and sense, and spirit, into the despicable treacherous tool of the more artful and despotic Elizabeth, who knew how to turn the angry and jealous pa.s.sions of the countess to her own purposes.

It was not, however, all at once that matters rose to such a height: the fire smouldered for some time ere it burst forth. There is a letter preserved among the Shrewsbury Correspondence[47] which the countess addressed to her husband from Chatsworth, at a time when the earl was keeping guard over Mary at Sheffield castle. It is a most curious specimen of character. It treats chiefly of household matters, of the price and goodness of malt and hops, iron and timber, and reproaches him for not sending her money which was due to her, adding, "I see out of sight out of mind with you;" she sarcastically inquires "how his charge and _love_ doth;" she sends him "some _letyss_ (lettuces) for that he loves them," (this common sallad herb was then a rare delicacy;) and she concludes affectionately, "G.o.d send my juill helthe." The incipient jealousy betrayed in this letter soon after broke forth openly with a degree of violence towards her husband, and malignity towards his prisoner, which can hardly be believed. There is distinct evidence that Shrewsbury was not only a trustworthy, but a rigorous jailor; that he detested the office forced upon him; that he often begged in the most abject terms to be released from it; and that hara.s.sed on every side by the tormenting jealousy of his wife, the unrelenting severity and mistrust of Elizabeth, and the complaints of Mary, he was seized with several fits of illness, and once by a mental attack, or "phrenesie," as Cecil terms it, brought on by the agitation of his mind; yet the idea of resigning his office, except at the pleasure of Queen Elizabeth, never seems to have entered his imagination.

On one occasion Lady Shrewsbury went so far as to accuse her husband openly of intriguing with his prisoner, in every sense of the word; and she at the same time abused Mary in terms which John Knox himself could not have exceeded. Mary, deeply incensed, complained of this outrage: the earl also appealed to Queen Elizabeth, and the countess and her daughter, Lady Talbot, were obliged to declare upon oath, that this accusation was false, scandalous, and malicious, and that they were not the authors of it. This curious affidavit of the mother and daughter is preserved in the Record Office.

In a letter to Lord Leicester, Shrewsbury calls his wife "his wicked and malicious wife," and accuses her and "her imps," as he irreverently styles the whole brood of Cavendishes, of conspiring to sow dissensions between him and his eldest son. These disputes being carried to Elizabeth, she set herself with heartless policy to foment them in every possible way. She deemed that her safety consisted in employing one part of the earl's family as spies on the other. In some signal quarrel about the property round Chatsworth, she commanded the earl to submit to his wife's pleasure: and though no "tame snake" towards his imperious lady, as St. Loo and Cavendish had been before him, he bowed at once to the mandate of his unfeeling sovereign--such was the despotism and such the loyalty of those days. His reply, however, speaks the bitterness of his heart. "Sith that her majesty hath set down this hard sentence against me to my perpetual infamy and dishonour, that I should be ruled and overrunne by my wife, so bad and wicked a woman; yet her majesty shall see that I will obey her majesty's commandment, though no curse or plague on the earth could be more grievous to me." * * "It is too much,"

he adds, "to be made my wife's pensioner." Poor Lord Shrewsbury! Can one help pitying him?

Not the least curious part of this family history is the double dealing of the imperious countess. While employed as a spy on Mary, whom she detested, she, from the natural fearlessness and frankness of her temper, not unfrequently betrayed Elizabeth, whom she also detested.

While in attendance on Mary, she often gratified her own satirical humour, and amused her prisoner by giving her a coa.r.s.e and bitter portraiture of Elizabeth, her court, her favourites, her miserable temper, her vanity, and her personal defects. Some report of these conversations soon reached the queen, (who is very significantly drawn in one of her portraits in a dress embroidered over with eyes and ears,) and she required from Mary an account of whatever Lady Shrewsbury had said to her prejudice. Mary, hating equally the rival who oppressed her and the domestic harpy who daily persecuted her, was nothing loath to indulge her feminine spite against the two, and sent Elizabeth such a circ.u.mstantial list of the most gross and hateful imputations, (all the time politely a.s.suring her good sister that she did not believe a word of them,) that the rage and mortification of the queen must have exceeded all bounds.[48] She kept the letter secret; but Lady Shrewsbury never was suffered to appear at court after the death of Mary had rendered her services superfluous.