Chapter VI: Part 6

The leading trait of Walpole’s intellectual temperament was evidently a quick and delicate perception of the truth of things, moral and material, in nature and art. The true and unerring tact, that innate endowment by which the ridiculous as well as the false (and the ridiculous is but an amusing set-off of the false) is always rapidly got at, lost nothing of its perfection by his education having been begun and finished in the closet of one of the shrewdest and cleverest ministers that England ever possessed. Shut up with old Sir Robert, _tête-à-tête_,[65] he learned “to laugh at the madness of political ambition,” and discovered that “happiness did not depend on administration and victories.” In the galleries of Houghton, amidst the trophies of a palace, his early taste for the arts was developed, which testified its exquisite justness in the learned and clever preface, written almost in boyhood, to his “_Ædes Walpolianæ_.”[66] It was there too he learnt “what a monarch a man was, who wanted nothing;”[67] and, governed by a conviction which would have best become a stoic, and by a taste and contempt which were evidently those of an epicurean, he settled down in early life an intellectual voluptuary, preferring enjoyment to fame, yet acquiring the latter, which he so well deserved, while simply occupied in pursuit of the former. So early as his return from Italy, and during his travels, his vocation to _virtù_, or “_l’amour pour l’enquitaille_,” as Rabelais terms it, unequivocally declared itself; but his floating capital of taste, which was for a time devoted to the classic antique, properly so called, was soon thrown, for want of a “quick return” in England (where Roman antiquities are few and bad), into that fund, so rich and yielding in Great Britain, the antiquities of the middle ages. England then abounded in relics of the times of the Chaucers, the Spensers, the Sidneys, and the Shakspeares, relics then neglected and unappreciated. The “betweenity” which occurred in the interval when the charming Gothic had declined, and the Palladian had not crept in, was in every respect a Bœotian age. Then gardens were built, not planted; and the disciples of Kent, Brown, and Southcote, were still struggling through “clipt hedges and cockle-shell avenues:” while Sir William Temple’s “natural walls” and lead-covered grottos, were not yet quite out of fashion, and wildernesses were still composed of straight walks, and caverns were lined with looking-glasses.[68] The furniture of aristocratic mansions was then half German, half French; cumbrous, not venerable—with all the inconveniences of the antique, without its picturesqueness. While ponderous stuffed chairs and china monsters filled the apartments of the descendants of the worthies of Elizabeth’s court, carvings by Gibbons, and portraits by Holbein, were consigned to lumber-rooms; beds embroidered by the Queen of Scots, and sweet-bags worked by her maids, were left to moulder, while a stiff-backed _bergère_, from some _miroitier’s_ shop in the Rue de Bac, or a china sconce from Sevres, brought any price. Such were the neglected treasures, which discovered themselves to the most ardent of antiquarians and collectors, in his various and delightfully recorded “pilgrimages to the holy lands of Gothic castles and abbeys,” the hereditary seats of the Byrons, the Howards, the Seymours, the Russels, the Cavendishes, the Rutlands, the mansions of “Old Bess of Hardwicke,”[69] and the palace-prisons of captive royalty. It was in the low-roofed chambers, and nests of closets of Monceaux, Haddon, Hatfield, Newstead,[70] Althorpe, Hinchinbrook, and Chatsworth, that Walpole drew “deeper and deeper still” from the stream of antiquarianism, and was led to unearth those tangible records of past times, which fill up the blanks in history, with details of society, infinitely more interesting than any thing the scene-painting pencil of the historian can preserve: for it is curious to think what a _philosophie des mœurs_ may be drawn from an inquiry into a china-closet, or an inquisition held on a lumber-room!—what epochs in commerce and manufactures may be fixed by the dimensions of a coffee-can, or by the fragments of a suit of hangings!—what traits of manners and morals may be furnished by hoops of whalebone and bodices of buckram, by the low-cut stomacher of a Cleveland, or the _négligé_ of a Pompadour—and what lights and illustrations may be thrown on such works as Grammont, Pepys, and Evelyn, by the plunder of a Dowager Duchess’s tall-boy, or the _exploitation_ of the coffers and clothes-presses, the cupboards and dark-closets, in which the old mansions of old families always abound.

It was in such pictorial and historical mansions that Horace Walpole imbibed the desire of having a Gothic castle of his own; and, with his imagination full of the proportions and traceries of Winchester, the fretted roofs of Netley, the cross-legged knights and the piked-horn dames, that started from tombs, or walked out of picture frames,[71] he began to look out for a spot, where he might found a new school for old things, and arrange around him those objects so early associated in his mind,—relics, which the arts and history of ages had contributed to fill his crowded cabinet. He at last found a site whereon to place this long-built “castle in the air” of his antiquarian dreams; but he neither sought nor found it amidst the romantic shades of Cumberland, nor the old feudal territory of Yorkshire; he simply picked it up, accidentally, with other _bijoux_, at Mrs. Chenevix’s toy-shop, then the _petit Dunkirk_ of London. His own account of the acquisition is too pleasant to need an apology for quoting it:—

“You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything house, that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix’s shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges:

‘A small Euphrates through the piece is roll’d,
And little fishes wave their wings in gold.’

Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises: barges, as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer, move under my window: Richmond Hill and Ham walks bound my prospect; but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry. Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around; and Pope’s ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight. I have about land enough to keep such a farm as Noah’s, when he set up in the ark with a pair of each kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I believe his was, after they had been cooped up together forty days. The Chenevixes had tricked it out for themselves; up two pair of stairs is what they call Mr. Chenevix’s library, furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without any glasses. Lord John Sackville predecessed me here, and instituted certain games called Cricketalia, which have been celebrated this very evening, in honour of him, in a neighbouring meadow. You will think I have removed my philosophy from Windsor, with my tea-things, hither; for I am writing to you in all this tranquillity while a parliament is bursting about my ears.”

The little tenement so playfully described, had already a fine antique cast of character, and was rich in all the advantages of dark closets, and “passages that led to nothing.” It had been built in 1698, had been tenanted alternately by a profane comedian and a reverend divine—for there Talbot, Bishop of Durham, had written his Homilies, and Cibber his play of “The Refusal, or Lady’s Philosophy.” The site, too, abounded in agreeable associations, consonant to the habits and tastes of the elegant proprietor—the air still breathed of Pope, Swift, and Gay; the villas still bloomed where the witty Lady Mary, the charming Lady Hervey, and “Grammont’s daughter,”[72] had recently resided. Still it must be owned, that, judged by modern ideas of the picturesque in villas, by the dictum of Price or Knight, “the capabilities” of Strawberry were few. It wanted space and prospect, and sometimes made its Gothic reformer sigh “with Chute, that Battel Abbey had not been to be sold at Mrs. Chenevix’s toy-shop, as Strawberry was.” Yet its defects, such as they were, harmonized with the style of the old-English villa or country-house, whose high walls, deep moats, and dismal clipt hedges excluded all view but of their own dreariness. Even the narrow dusty avenues, and little green lanes, that led to Strawberry, both from Twickenham and the Thames, were all in keeping; for such were “the crack-skull roads” leading to the rural residences of the great, in former times—by-ways which obliged _La superbe Hamilton_ and _La belle Muskerry_ to mount their palfreys, and jog on behind their gentlemen ushers on pillions, when they left the court at Whitehall, to visit their friends in the country, or to participate in the gaieties of Newmarket and “the Wells.”

Many Palladian palaces, even of a more recent day, were chosen with a view to security and shelter, rather than to taste and views. The spacious and splendid Mereworth, “though it had some prospect, was built in the centre of a moat, and sprinkled with little ponds.” The shades of Strawberry, however, soon began to extend beyond their original five acres. The square-built little toy-house swelled out more nearly to the dimensions of a feudal mansion, and was angled into cabinets, and rounded into towers, lengthened by galleries, and raised by battlements; and finally became the repertory of all those treasures that the taste, learning, and research of its owner could rescue from the depredations of time, and the neglect of tasteless and high-born ignorance.

“My collection” (says Walpole, in excuse for his passion for building and Gothicism) “is too great to be humbly lodged.” The castle, however, as now existing, did not raise its towers all of a sudden, like those of Bagatelle. It was reformed, at different times, by alterations and additions “to the old small house.” The library, and refectory, or great parlour, were entirely new-built in 1753; the gallery, round tower, great cloister, and cabinet, in 1760 and 1761; the north bed-chamber in 1770; and the Beauclerc tower, with the hexagon closet, in 1776.

The greatest hold over the imagination, the most powerful tie which time in its course lets fall upon the feelings and the mind, is that which comes of early associations; and even the book read, the picture gazed on, in that epoch of life when all is seen decked in prismatic hues, are never forgotten, and are always over-rated in the fondness of old recollections. It happened that at such an epoch, Strawberry Hill and the “Walpoliana” were the picture and the book, to which the writer of this rapid sketch was indebted for some of those new and delightful impressions, which such objects are calculated to make on the young and the imaginative, to whom pictures and books are such novelties and such enjoyments; and being then the resident of an Irish country-house, where a blind Irish harper was her _Magnus Apollo_, and the _fadaises_ of Della Crusca her _ne plus ultra_ of literary acquirement, Strawberry Hill and the “Walpoliana” became her Mecca and her Talmud. To visit Strawberry Hill was a vow, made rather in devotion than in hope; while to peruse the works of its master was a desire, which time, and an intimate acquaintance with their delightful pages, has rather sharpened than diminished. Years swept on, some feathered with bird of paradise wings, and others heavily and slowly, like the sailing flight of birds of less happy omen; but still they swept on: and scenes far more distant and sites far more remote than the “show-box of Twickenham” were visited.

“The Alps, the Apennines, and river Po,” and other lands and streams as classic, were traversed and navigated, till they had become as familiarized to the Irish wanderer’s mind as her own native Howth or Liffey,—the Tiber and Soracte of her national partiality in less travelled days; and yet the vow to visit Strawberry, though not accomplished, was not forgotten, and it still held its place, while other vows had faded away, with the airy nothings of which they were the objects. The day, however, at last arrived,[73] when Strawberry was visited, and with an interest as intense as the Vatican ever excited in the breast of some long-vowed pilgrim to St. Peter’s shrine. It was just such a day as the founder himself would have selected for “showing off” to the “Bedford court,” and “Princess Emily,” or the “De Bouffiers and De Beaumonts,” when the noble host was wont to draw his bed-curtains, and ask “Harry if the sun shone?”[74] and beheld with a rapture he so pleasantly ridiculed himself (as indeed he did all his own peculiarities), that Strawberry was all “green and gold.” Who ever has left England to visit the finest scenery in the finest climes, and returned to glide along the shores of the Thames on such a day (days in England “few and far between,”) will scarcely hesitate to admit, what it is impossible not to feel, that, compared to those shores, there is nothing equal in beauty and richness in the river scenery of any other country in Europe. The pilgrimage to Strawberry was performed by water, in preference “to one of those two delightful roads that might be called dusty;” and the barge was anchored in one of those little creeks, where, after “holding a chapter with Chute,” the antiquarian and his friend were wont to watch the arrival of the boat, which was “freighted with old window-frames, old tombs, and old chairs, of the time of Edward the Sixth.” A freight was expected with an interest as intense as any Antonio of the Rialto ever felt as he watched the entrance of “his argosie” into the Lagunas of Venice: for the passion, not the object, is the thing, and there is a fanaticism in collecting, which “none but collectors know,” or can appreciate. From this little creek and its stepping-stone landing-place, a scrubby sort of a bank on one side, a high dull wall on the other, (but, still a wall, “castellated after the manner of that which surrounded Aston House,”) and some thirty or forty yards of a narrow rutted road, led to one of the gates of the castle, which, truth to tell, seemed from this point to be built like the towers of Monceaux, for the purpose of “seeing nothing at all.” All around, the modern antique had the true characteristic feudal air of loneliness—the silence (though not the waste) which despotic power ever creates around it, and which the temporary absenteeism of the great lords of great mansions, even in England, so well represents in its effects. This, however, but deepened an illusion, which was soon dispelled by the appearance of the _custode_ of the castle, who replied to the tolling of the porter’s bell:—no grim gruff porter of the olden times, with staff and scutcheon, and beard and belt, and buff coat and bluff air, but a smart, comely, _rondelette_ little housekeeper, all frills and falbalas, welcomed our arrival, of which she had been previously forewarned,[75] and playing with her keys, as the ladies in the Spectator played with their fans, alertly and civilly proceeded to do the honours of Strawberry—not a little surprised, from the first starting, to find that one of the sight-seers at least had a _catalogue raisonné_ in her head, which superseded the necessity of any other, and who inquired for the “Holbein chamber,” and the “Star chamber,” and the “Cabinet,” with a familiarity that astonished the housekeeper of Strawberry, full as much as the lord of Strawberry himself, on a similar visit, surprised the housekeeper of Althorpe.[76] On entering the north gate, (to those well read in the legends of Strawberry,) the “Abbot’s garden” may be at once recognised, to the right, parted off by an iron skreen-work. The “Abbot’s garden” has been often sneered at for its miniature dimensions, and, indeed, it is not much larger than an old lady’s flower-knot in Bloomsbury;[77] but it is quite as large as St. Francis’s garden in the magnificent abbey of Ancisa, and larger than the little garden allotted to the friars and monks of that spacious and beautiful monastery, the Certosa of Pavia. It is in strict keeping with the order of things it is meant to represent: some few and fine flowers were struggling through the crusted earth, covered with dust, probably the _dernier rejetton_ of the “seeds from Sunbury,” sown by that hand, which, like them, is now itself but dust. The iron skreen, though so carelessly passed by the uninitiated as an old gate, is nevertheless a fine copy from the tomb of Roger Niger, Bishop of London, in old St. Paul’s; even the common-looking blue and white china vase, in the adjoining little cloister, which looks like an old cracked foot-pail of a lady’s dressing-room, has its interest, in being the vase on whose verge the “pensive Selina reclined,” whose death is immortalized by the muse of Gray;[78] and the half-defaced bas-relief head in marble, inserted in the wall, though modern sight-seers scarcely pause to look upon it, once rivetted the enamoured Tasso: it is the portrait of the object of his love and his misfortune, Eleanor D’Este. The hall of the castle is small and gloomy, paved with tiles, and lighted by arched painted-glass windows: its dimensions are in utter contradiction to the generally received ideas of Gothic halls, as taken from those described in the romances of Mrs. Radcliffe and her imitators; but Gothic apartments were not capacious. The royal chamber where the Queen of Scots took her last supper, was scarcely larger than a modern clothes-press; and a hall sixty by forty, in one of the finest old castles in England, “was deemed so spacious that, like a leviathan, it swallowed up all the other chambers.” Even “the great old gallery at Woburn” was but a “bad room, powdered with little stars;” and low roofs, nests of closets, mural cabinets, and slips of galleries, were much more consonant to the manners of times when society only collected _en petits pelotons_, under the influence of friendship or fear. In modern days, on the contrary, every great mansion must have a room large enough, at least, to hold its five hundred select friends, and halls, for flambeaux and footmen, of proportionate dimensions.

On the left of the hall, (approached by a narrow passage, lighted by a painted glass window, with the arms of Queen Elizabeth, and the date 1567 carved in wood above it) is the Refectory, or “great parlour”—a great parlour thirty feet by twenty! Still this great parlour (scarcely large enough to serve for a _salon-à-boire_ after dinner in a modern mansion) is quite as large as the _salas_ of the old Lombardy castles, or as the _sals-à-manger_ of the ancient châteaux of France. It has many interesting if not precious pictures; such as “the Conversation,” by Reynolds, which represents the old library at Strawberry, and the group round the table in its centre, consisting of the witty George Selwyn, Lord Edgecomb, and Mr. Williams; the second Lady Walpole (the Moll Skerrett of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu), as a shepherdess, and a group of the Waldegrave beauties. Here, too, beakers of Indian porcelain, pails of Chelsea china, and vases of Roman _faïence_ mingle their remote epochs in amicable confusion, against all rule and chronological _virtù_; while skreens, worked and embroidered by celebrated coronetted beauties, (though interesting to the noble owner, to whom so many of such tributes were presented) now only look like the rubbish furnished from the looms of the Minervas of a Paddington boarding-school to the parlours of their parents in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The ancient bellows and altar candlestick of the ante-room, have their own charms for the antiquarian, as Dryden’s head and Cibber’s bust[79] possess for the dramatic amateur. The china closet, at the first glimpse, looks like any body’s china-closet, and, to the unlearned, is neither striking nor interesting; but to those who can trace in its little ceiling the roof of the pretty room at the Borghese Villa at Frescati, or a chimney-piece copied from an old window at the ancient seat of the Grimstones (Broadfield Hall, in Essex), it is not unimportant. Regiments of Worcester china bowls, phalanxes of Sevres mustard-pots, with cups, and dishes, and narrow-necked bottles, and wide-mouthed ewers, and mugs, and jugs, of no very striking appearance, are turned from with a sneer, by those who know not the history of this frail but venerable collection. But when cups have been painted by Pietro Cortona, and plates by Raffael, and dishes by Giulio Romano; when green-glass bottles turn out to be Roman lacrymatories, and a china figure to be Michael Angelo’s Bacchus, then the China-closet becomes a precious museum: and one regrets that its dimmed stained-glass windows do not throw more light upon treasures consecrated alike by the hand of time and of genius. The Yellow bed-chamber would be simply a yellow bed-chamber (an unbecoming colour, _par parenthèse_, for a “sleeping beauty,” if a brunette, who should always choose _couleur de rose_,) but for its pictures; among which those always amusing portraits (_pour le moins_) of the heroes and heroines of the Grammont memoirs, long detain spectators, who, like Walpole, and the writer of this sketch, have “the Grammont madness upon them.”[80] The principal of these worthies is that modernly white-washed insolvent in morals, Charles the Second himself, with some half dozen of his own and his brother’s sultanas, the Sedley, the Richmond, the Portsmouth, the Cleveland, the Churchill, and “Mistress Philadelphia Saunders.” This group, nineteen in number, (Sacharissa excepted) made a part of the collection of Jervas, the friend and laureate-painter of Pope.

The Breakfast-parlour, with its hangings of blue and white paper, and its draperies of blue and white linen, has, according to the sumptuousness of modern furniture, a very ordinary appearance. But when its interesting miniatures catch the eye, its “Venitia, Lady Digby, that extraordinary beauty of an extraordinary fame,” its Mary Lepell (Lady Hervey), its _belle des belles_ (the Duchess de Montbazon), and its Princess Palatine (of Madame de Sévigné’s letters), its unfortunate Earl of Essex, and its heroic Charlotte de la Trémouille, with a score of other historical heads; then the little blue and white breakfast-room is lingered in with pleasure, and left with regret, even for the green closet, with its multitude of curious pictures, or for the great armoury, whose chief relic is the suit of mail worn by the great Earl of Warwick, when he marched upon Westminster-hall, in that happy epoch when parliaments were to be awed by a man in armour, and laws submitted to spears and quivers—the good old times!

The Library has all the antique caste and sombre colouring of a private room (once called closet) of the great men, and the studious ones of the middle ages. The books are ranged in pierced Gothic arches; the chimney-piece a tomb from Westminster Abbey; and shields, arms, and lozenges, fill up every corner. The pictures are curious and historical, and the fine old silver-gilt clock, the gift of Henry the Eighth to Anna Boleyn, presents a piece of ponderous gallantry, very different from the _bijou_ of _or moulu_ (often a poem in design, a picture in combination) which a modern _merveilleux_ offers to the object of his lukewarm devotions, showy and light as the times it represents, and the hours of her whose actions it does _not_ govern. Among the rare books in the splendid collection of this fine library, “The Book of the French Portraits in the Time of Francis the First,” which belonged to Brantome, who has written in the precious pages, in his own precious autograph, the names of many of the originals of the pictures, is _the_ book!

The Star-Chamber! with its horrible name of fearful associations (the boudoir of the Stuarts, where, alas, their subjects _boudoient beaucoup_)—the Star-Chamber of Strawberry is only an innocent little room, with green walls powdered with little stars, like a modern French paper. Its treasures consist of a fine collection of medals, and it leads by a “trunked ailed” passage to the Holbein Chamber, which looks like a pet-room of Catherine of Arragon; small, gloomy, and magnificent, with chairs from Glastonbury Abbey, and the red hat of her great enemy Wolsey, lying beside that royal-looking bed, whose velvet hangings and waving plumes put one in mind of the restless nights and uneasy dreams which the crowned heads who slept on such couches were wont to endure, when the heads themselves were never very sure upon the shoulders of the despots who bore them. There are too few pictures of the “great original” whose name gives interest to this room to entitle it to such a distinction; what there are, however, are fine, and all the historical pictures are curious and interesting.

The Gallery, long and narrow, in spite of its ceiling from Henry the Eighth’s Chapel, will remind the Italian traveller of the gallery in the royal palace at Turin. Its hangings of crimson damask have no better effect than the crimson damask paper of the present day. It has doors from the Abbey at St. Albans, and recesses from the tomb of Archbishop Bourchier at Canterbury, and yet it is a light, splendid, and cheerful apartment. Its pictures, busts, &c. would fill a tolerably sized catalogue; and besides “Mrs. Keppel in white,” and “Lady Dysart in pink,” and a hundred other such rainbow-dressed “Cynthias of the minute,”[81] there are a number of the works of the best masters, particularly of Zucchero, Vandyke, Jansen, Poussin, &c.; but here, as in the whole collection, the pictures are more interesting as historical portraits, than rare or valuable as paintings, and many of them would curl the critical nose of the modern virtuosi, who, having posted through Italy, return to buy Rembrandts and Raphaels, manufactured for the markets at Amsterdam or the fairs of Leipsic.

The Round Room, which leads to the _sanctum sanctorum_ of the edifice, (the Tribune,) is not to be passed through with careless glance or rapid step, like an ordinary antechamber. It has the merit of all the apartments of Strawberry, in offering an ample study to the antiquarian, or to the curious in the economy of furniture. Its chairs of Aubusson tapestry, its chimney-piece from the tomb of Edward the Confessor, its ceiling from old St. Paul’s, and surbases from the monument of Queen Eleanor in Westminster Abbey, have each their specific merit and interest; while the wreck of Lady Betty Germaine’s collection, and the plunder of Penshurst (from the apartments of Sidney “and Sidney’s sister”) have contributed largely to enrich and adorn it, and to awaken pleasant associations by its inspection. From the former, are the silver chenets, vases, and sconces, which ornament the chimney-piece; from the latter is the fine portrait, by Vandyke, of Lady Dorothy Percy, Countess of Carlisle, and others.

Over the door is a most characteristic picture of Vandyke’s celebrated love, “Mistress Lemon,” painted _con amore_ by the enamoured artist; she represents Judith, and brandishes a sword, but

“There lurks more peril in those eyes,
Than twenty of such swords.”

Here, too, is Salvator Rosa’s fine[82] picture of Jacob travelling from Laban. Whatever was consecrated by the pencil of that great master was precious to the lord of Strawberry, who first acquired a knowledge and professed an adoration of his genius, while yet a boy, in the gallery of his own paternal Houghton.[83] When Lord Orford designed his tribune, he doubtless had the tribune of the Imperial Gallery at Florence in his head. The tribune at Strawberry is, however, of a less simple form. It is a square, with semi-circular recesses in the middle of each side, difficult to describe, but very effective to look at; its sober stone-coloured walls are admirably relieved by its rich gold ornaments, and other splendid decorations of every kind, and every age in the history of the arts. The beautiful Gothic architecture of St. Albans has furnished the models for its windows and niches; and its finely-fretted roof, borrowed from the Chapter-house at York, is terminated by a star of yellow glass, which throws a sort of Claude Lorraine tint over the whole precious apartment. Amidst a number of fine antique busts and statues, is raised a simple Gothic altar of black and gold; it is the tomb of the children of Edward the Third in Westminster Abbey, and its slab of black marble is covered with precious relics and _objets d’art_ of every time and description, silver filigree dishes, vases of amethyst, and sconces of agate, with carved ivory by Verskovis; while a cabinet of rose-wood, with panels and sculpture by Germaine of Paris, curiously carved, rises above it, and contains one of the finest collections of enamels and miniatures perhaps in England: some are by Lens, Carlo Dolce, Boit, Zink, Groth, Isaac Oliver,[84] Petitot, Liotard, &c.;—many are original portraits of the historical characters they represent, and others are fine copies from Luca Giordano, Vanloo, and Holbein; some set in the exquisitely little carved frames of Lejarée, and others mounted in brilliants or precious stones. Here, in the immortal bloom of enamel, still smiles the coarse but beautiful Cleveland, the intriguing but _piquante_ Portsmouth, “Mistress Godfrey, of the York seraglio,” and the lovely Countess d’Olonne (one of the heroines of De Retz’s Memoirs) who had a seraglio of her own, though she is here represented as Diana. Here, too, leers and lours the royal _petit-maître_ of despotism, as he was wont to do at Versailles, in the midst of profligate mistresses and slavish courtiers—Louis the Fourteenth, surrounded by De Fontanges, De la Vallière, _et tutte quante_; while the wives of England’s Blue Beard are to be found with all their heads on; and the lovely Madame Mazarin, looking as if she had just escaped from St. Evremont’s letters, accounts for the passion of the enamoured philosopher, in loveliness far more bewitching than regular. Vases, cups, and chalices, in gems, jewels, and chrystals, the great seals of great kings, and the pretty _bijoux_ of great ladies, fill up this beautiful _répertoire_ of all that is precious and curious, with rings to satisfy an alderman’s wife, and snuff-boxes in number and beauty _à faire crever d’envie_ Beau B, or Lord P; while vessels of wrought silver, and cups scooped out of amethysts, or set with brilliants, recall the treasures of the _guarda roba_ of the Medici, when Benvenuto Cellini worked for their amusement, and had (as it sometimes fares with talent patronized by grandeur) his labour for his pains. Pictures,[85] lamps, and bronzes, fill up every part of this interesting room, and one leaves it with dazzled eyes, and sated curiosity, by the sombre little passage and small closet adjoining, (full to stuffing, like every other part of the edifice, with objects of curiosity or of art) for that great north bed-chamber, where the readers of French memoirs, and the adorers of Grammont, (or rather of Antoine Hamilton,) may feast their eyes and associations to satiety. The Great North Bed-chamber, considered as a bed-chamber, is _en grande tenue_, according to the old style of magnificence; its royal canopied bed is plumed with ostrich feathers, and hung with rich tapestry of Aubusson, surrounded by a carpet of curious needlework, and flanked by chairs of ebony and gold, too heavy to move, and too fine to sit in. Its crimsoned damask walls are covered with the most precious portraits. Over the chimney is a great picture of Henry the Eighth, and his children,[86] and a bust of Francis the Second, the boy-husband of the unfortunate Queen of Scots. Immediately opposite to the bed stands that figure, which occasioned so many sleepless nights to the _gallants_ of Whitehall, “La belle Jennings,” afterwards Duchess of Tyrconnel, whose _bon mot_ to James the Second, when, as Lady Lieutenant, she received him at the Castle of Dublin, shows her not to have been of the order of stupid beauties, or like Mademoiselle Stuart, _aussi bête que belle_; her friend, Mademoiselle Hamilton, (Countess de Grammont,) is placed near her. There is also in this chamber an admirable group, the rehearsal of an opera, with the famous Mrs. Toft, the _prima donna_ of her day, at the harpsichord. Its _pendant_ is a scene from the “Beggar’s Opera,” by Hogarth, with portraits of the original performers.[87] The charming portraits of Ninon de l’Enclos,[88] Hortense Mancini, and Madame de Maintenon, long detain the attention, even from the wonders of the “glass closet,” where a silver perfume box, by Benvenuto Cellini, wedding-gloves of the patriot Hampden’s bride, and the trunked ones of King James, with Von Trump’s tobacco-box, and “a silver-gilt apostle spoon,” belonging to Lord knows who, offer a curious and heterogeneous variety, and mark the successful and arduous researches of the collector after all that was rare and old. The Beauclerc closet, dedicated to the elegant works of the accomplished Lady Diana Beauclerc, the round bed-room, and the great cloister, follow in sight-seeing succession, and each has its separate interest and character. In the second are some fine portraits, and many very pleasing ones: among the latter may be reckoned the portraits of Lady Suffolk, the mistress _titré_ of George the Second, Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Clive, the tragic and comic muses of their time;—there is also a fine head of Oliver Cromwell’s mother. But the Round Bedroom is to Strawberry, what Naples is to the rest of Italy, the _ne plus ultra_ of curiosity: attention is exhausted, eyes are dazzled, and expectation satiated by the time it is reached;[89] and it is with a pleasure unspeakable, that one passes through the great cloister, into the refreshing grounds and gardens, without even stopping to examine those gate-piers, which are taken from the tomb of William de Luda in the cathedral of Ely. The Shell Seat, at the end of the pretty winding shaded walk, which is within view of the Gothic chapel, offers a _bel riposo_ after the fatigue which pleasure ever imposes. This shell seat is a very curious carving in oak, designed by the celebrated Bentley. The shell is a _chama_. Here the three Graces of the Paphos of Strawberry[90] were wont to repose, to the delight of their flattered and elegant host, who saw even his friends with the eye of an artist. There is but little in the grounds of Strawberry to detain the steps of the visitor, except its beautiful little Chapel in the garden: an edifice of as true Gothic taste and design, as its being copied, _à la rigueur_, from particular parts of the Cathedral of Salisbury, and the Abbey of St. Edmundsbury, can make it. The interior has all the character of the cells or oratories appertaining to churches or monasteries in Catholic countries:—its altar-piece and altar-picture are curious from their antiquity; the beautiful windows of painted glass are emblazoned with saints and arms and the effigies of kings and queens; a superb shrine faces the door of entrance. In the front stands a superb crucifix, inlaid with mother-of-pearl; on either side, a King of France, and the Virgin Mary, in bronze and _faïence_, stand upon consoles. The story of the marvellous “trasferimento” of this “holy house” is thus told on a tablet over the door. “The shrine in front was brought, in the year 1768, from the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, when the new pavement was laid there. This shrine was erected in the year 1256, over the bodies of the holy martyrs, Simplicius, Faustina, and Beatrix, by John James Capoccio and Vinia his wife; and was the work of Peter Cavalini, who made the tomb of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.”

Such is Strawberry, the cabinet, the toy, the retreat of the gifted son of a great minister, whose talents, intellect, and observation, well fitted him to run the career of his ambitious father: and who, had he been an ambitious or an interested man, had eminent opportunities of indulging either passion to their fullest extent. “I am unambitious, I am disinterested, but I am vain,” observes Mr. Walpole, in a letter to Lord Chatham. Into this frankly acknowledged foible, Strawberry Hill, audits precious collection, entered largely; but the vanity of possessing and showing off this monument of his taste, and knowledge, and industry, and the objects of art they had gathered round him, did not blind Mr. Walpole to the incongruities of the whole, nor to the objections which the pedantry of _archi-virtu_ and the cant of criticism would eventually level at the _hochet_ of one, who had shown so little mercy to the unfounded pretensions and presumptuous mediocrity of that numerically powerful body, in all communities, whose claims to distinction are unsupported by those endowments which should alone command it:—

“In a house, affecting not only obsolete architecture, but pretending to an observance of the custom even in the furniture, the mixture of modern portraits and French porcelaine, and Greek and Roman sculpture, may seem heterogeneous. In truth, I did not mean to make my home so gothic as to exclude convenience and modern luxury. But I do not mean to defend, by argument, a small capricious house. It was built to please my own taste, and realize my own visions. Could I describe the gay but tranquil scene where it stands, and add the beauty of the landscape to the romantic cast of the mansion, it would raise more pleasing sensations than a dry list of curiosities can excite: at least the prospect would recal the good humour of those who might be disposed to condemn the fantastic fabric, and to think it a very proper habitation—as it was the scene that inspired—the author of ‘The Castle of Otranto!’”

ARTS AND ARTISTS.

I never raise my head from my writing-desk and look around me, without being struck by the conviction, that though our inferiors may admire, and our superiors notice us, for some quality of intellect which has contributed to their ease, or their amusement, it is by our equals only, or those who have pursued the same objects by the same efforts, (in various degrees) that we are truly appreciated. The apartment in which I usually scribble, is a little repository of precious objects, offered by those, who, like myself (but in a far more eminent and successful career) have owed their celebrity to their own efforts and genius. There are few eminent artists in Europe whom I have numbered on the list of my personal friends, to whom I do not stand indebted for some gracious and generous offering of good will and esteem: and who in return for the idle hour’s amusement afforded them by some trifling production of mine, have not repaid me twenty times over, by works of art or literature, which mark their feeling to merit (real or supposed), and are monuments of their own superior abilities: Canova, Denon, Gerard, Robert Le Fevre, David, Lawrence, Cosway, Berthon, Bartolini, Raphael Morghen, Mayer, Stroeling, Davis, Turnerelli, Bate, Behnes, and many other younger friends,[91] who have already given their promise to posterity, though yet unknown to that fame, which can only come through time and industry, the true and best friends of even the highest genius.

Such are _the great_, to whom alone talent should stand indebted; and these are glorious times, when patronage is reduced to a party given and returned by the man of rank to the man of letters; and when the mutually exchanged rites of hospitality, replace the literary dependance of the Spencers and the Savages, or the insolent protection of the Medici and D’Este.

“NO ONE A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY.”

An immensity has been written on absenteeism, (I have written a volume on it myself,) yet it remains pretty much where it was. Every body sees and feels, (at least every body who resides in Ireland does so,) that the absence of the rich proprietors of the soil works misery for the country which endures it. Yet Macculloch’s logic is very close, if not very convincing. Under these circumstances, argument will do nothing. The deficiency is in facts. The whole data for arriving at a satisfactory conclusion have not yet been obtained; and one observation or experiment, judiciously conducted, is worth an hundred _ergos_. Let Mr. Macculloch, therefore, come and pay us a visit, somewhat longer than the few days he bestowed upon us at his last _avatar_, and his truly national perspicacity will not long remain at fault. Let me take this opportunity of recommending Ireland “to all and every one whom it may concern,” as one of the richest _cadavres_ that ever offered itself to the inspection of the morbid anatomist,—one of the best furnished elaboratories for political analysis. No where will the suckling statesman and political economist find a richer harvest of elementary instruction, in all that it is necessary for a legislator and a citizen to avoid.

Without, however, pausing to consider what are the effects of absenteeism on the country, it may be worth while to inquire what are its consequences on the individual himself,—a theme of some importance, that has but seldom been touched upon. It is ordinarily, and in some degree justly, said, that the absentee loses immeasurably by expatriation. Unquestionably the person who derives all his importance and consequence from the possession of “lands and beeves,” will sink into the class of non-proprietors, in a foreign country; and with all his expenditure, will find it very difficult to impress on his continental acquaintance a proper respect for his title-deeds and his manors. I remember a noble lord, who held a high office in the British revenue, being much surprised, and more mortified, by finding that his official dignity procured him neither respect nor forbearance from the administrators of the French Douane. The same must pretty generally be the case with our travelling Justice Shallows, who, however capable of committing themselves, can commit no body else, beyond the boundaries of their own county. The case, however, is something different with those whose qualifications are more personal, and whose titles to esteem may be transplanted more readily than the family oaks. Man is no where an apostle in his own country; but the proverb is only true, in all its intensity, in Ireland. In a country where every one is morbidly desirous of distinction, and where the master caste has so long been every thing, personal qualities are disregarded by the privileged few, and are objects only of jealousy and dislike with the degraded many. In Ireland, there is as little affection for merit, as there is market; nor could it possibly be otherwise, in a country so governed as Ireland has been. It is not so much the fault, as the misfortune of the people; but whether fault or misfortune, it is a very good reason for rendering absentees every individual who feels within himself the desire for personal consideration, and the talent to command it by other means than “taking the trouble,” as Figaro says, “to be born to an estate.” It is not alone that such is the disposition of the public in Ireland. Were it a theatre as well disposed to reward and appreciate great endowments, as it is precisely the contrary, it would still be too limited in extent, to afford that exciting and intoxicating approbation, which rewards the labours of genius in other and happier countries.

To those who have established claims on the public, or have been fortunate enough to captivate its good will, absenteeism from Ireland is almost a duty to self; and nearly all the eminent individuals, born and educated in that country, have thought themselves justified in leaving it. Swift himself, the patriot _par excellence_ among Irish literary characters, was a resident in his own land from necessity; and the sense of that necessity pressed for ever on his mind, embittering his latter days, and discolouring all his views, if it were not among the immediate causes of his deplorable insanity. For my own part, small as are my claims on public attention, I have every reason, perhaps, to be satisfied with whatever portion of esteem I may in any country be honoured with; but in all things there are degrees, and it is not vanity to feel and to appreciate the superior kindness of strangers, and to be sensible to distinctions, of which the worthiest and the wisest might be proud.

Upon the score of pleasure also, the absentee, it must be allowed, has a decided advantage. Divided and distracted by parties, a prey to constant turbulence, and to frequent insurrections, Ireland could never have offered much attraction, to stay the foot of the absentee. In the best times, the pleasures of the Irish capital were derived more from the hilarity and social temperament of the people, than from the physical resources of refined and enlightened amusement. Since the union, even these have “made themselves air, into which they vanished;” and the transfer of the Irish legislature to London, and the importation of British methodism to Dublin, have left the latter city nothing but a short and fitful season of balls and assemblies. All public places of amusement have closed, or have dwindled into insignificance and neglect; and however much it may be lamented, it cannot be wondered, that those who are masters of their own time, and have wealth at their disposal, should _promener leur ennui ailleurs_, and seek in foreign countries for those agreeable sensations and exciting pleasures which are not to be found at home.

To the student, the artist, and the philosopher, the resources of Ireland are still more limited. The libraries and collections which draw this class of persons to the greater capitals of Europe, are wholly wanting; nor is there a sufficiency of congenial talent to make society, to excite emulation, and encourage zeal. The Irish gentleman, who has been blessed or cursed with a superior education and a refined taste, is compelled to emigrate, or to mortify and place in abeyance his natural impulses. It is not, therefore, so much a matter of reproach to the absentee, as of praise and admiration to him, who from patriotism, devotes his time and his faculties to his own country, that the one resides in foreign countries, and the other at home. It is idle and vain to talk of duties, and to insist that the holders of estates are bound by their tenure to stand by the country that feeds them. Duties are only respected as far as they carry with them their own reward; and a nation has no right to claim the residence of its proprietors, if it will not, or cannot, cultivate the arts of peace, and make that residence desirable in itself. Whenever the misfortunes of Ireland have become matter of legislative discussion, British statesmen have coolly turned round upon the friends of that country and reproached them with its absenteeism, as if that were the sole and exclusive cause of all that it has suffered, and all that it must still continue to suffer. But, if even this were the truth, to whom does Ireland owe this plague spot in her social condition? I speak it not in anger, or in a spirit of wanton reproach, but the cause of all this calamity is to be found in antecedents, of which the policy of England is the first link. Long and persevering acts of national benevolence and of legislative wisdom are requisite, to do away the fatal injury of her proconsular regime, and to wipe away the stain which her character has acquired, through her wanton neglect and wilful destruction of the resources of Ireland.

PATRICK’S DAY.

“St. Patrick was a jontlemon,
And came of dacent people.”

IRISH SONG.

I was awakened this morning at daylight by the cry under my windows, of “Green shamrock, fine shamrock;” and the cry has been repeated as incessantly and as annoyingly the whole day, as that of “hot cross buns” is in London on a Good Friday. The Irish, by the bye, with all their catholicism, do not eat cross buns; which is as exclusively a protestant, as it is a cockney fashion of idolatry.

The national festival in Ireland, with the supremacy of the saint, to whom it is dedicated, is still maintained with unabated devotion and conviviality throughout the kingdom, from the castle to the cabin. For a week before it arrives, the beggars wish you “many happy Patrick’s days;” Patrick’s crosses are sold in every street; every field in the vicinity of the metropolis is crowded with searchers after “green shamrocks;” and the dealers in this national emblem (most appropriate to a people accustomed to be trodden on) carry on a bustling and a thriving trade, till the whole population comes forth like “Birnham wood to Dunsinane’s high hill.” From the lowest mendicant to the lord lieutenant,[92] all are supplied with shamrocks. Not only “bishops, priests, and deacons,” of the church, as by law established, decorate their consecrated persons with the venerable emblem of a catholic saint; but the law itself, and its great conservators, “prank it in green,” like the “merry men” of Sherwood forest. From the protestant keeper of the king’s conscience to the papistical attorney, who has no conscience to keep, all are adorned, though not distinguished by the shamrock.

As soon as the domestic day begins, and breakfast is announced, the head servant in every house makes his appearance with a salver of shamrocks, each tied up into a _bouquet_, presenting one to each of the family, and usually receiving a _buona mano_, “to drown his shamrock in St. Patrick’s pot.” The fumes of whiskey punch, the proper libation to the patron saint, arise from every kitchen and servants’ hall, throughout the country; and the court ball given at the Castle of Dublin, in that noble temple dedicated at once to the saint, and to Terpsichore, St. Patrick’s hall, surpasses in numbers and in splendour even the like celebration of the king’s birthday. Feathers wave, lappets flutter, diamonds sparkle; and the red bench still presents the descendants of the Geraldines, the De Burgos, and the Brien Borrus, with six hundred years’ nobility at their backs, upholding the patron saint of their ancient dynasties, in the very face of the protestant church, and of the constitution of 1688.

When all are seated, (and what an amphitheatre of beauty presents itself to the eye of the lucky stranger, who chances to visit the Irish court on a Patrick’s day,) and when the vice-regal procession has passed up the centre of the hall, and the representatives of majesty have taken their seats on the throne, once consecrated by the august person of majesty itself; then the national air is struck up with an enlivening influence, to which even Lord F——’s protestant heart might beat responsively. Chamberlains and masters of the ceremony, officiating as high priests on this most catholic festival, arrange the “office” to be celebrated, in honour of the merriest saint in the calendar; to whose glory, and to whose tune, the beautiful youths of his own Ireland dance, with a devotional ardour, far beyond the saltatory piety of the zealous jumpers of Wales, or of the dancing dervishes of Constantinople. None of the cold forms and still-life movements of the quadrille, invented by philosophers, “atheists and politicians,” neutralize its fervour. Fifty couples, danced down in dislocating springs and hops, attest the fanaticism of the devotees; and every joyous face and glittering eye, seems to say, with the disciples of a certain Italian saint, “plead for us, we dance with you.”

St. Patrick’s day is the saturnalia of all the elderly gentlemen, who have not “forgot themselves to stone.” Many veterans _de la vieille roche_, go through a course of champooing for the occasion, and anoint their joints, like the athletes of old, to attest their adherence to the creed of their fathers, and preach the doctrine of Paddy O’Rafferty, and of the Cameronian rant, in opposition to the heresy and schism of _Di tanti palpiti_, _dos-à-dos_, and “_cavalier seul_.” This, too, is the hegira of ladies of a certain age, who, taking flight from the fatal pre-eminence to which Time had consigned them, bring the _weight_ of their personal consequence to the support of an oppressed faith; and yielding to the flattering proposition of some young aid-de-camp on service, (and very hard service too,) drag the “feathered mercury” after them, down the middle, and up again, to the interesting intonations of “go to the devil and shake yourself,” or, “Patrick’s day in the morning.”[93]

At last arrives the _media noche_ of the well worshipped saint, who for once sees the religious acrimony and christian animosity of the country he vainly protects, laid at the feet of national gaiety and sociality. Supper is announced; and the feast of the _cocagne_ in France, or Naples, was but a luncheon, to this truly catholic entertainment. Hands that never met before, meet now on the necks of flasks and decanters. Fingers habitually raised in mutual scorn, are now busy in the same pie; while protestant nods at papist, in a tolerant hob-nob from “humble port to imperial tokay.” Sir Harcourt takes wine with the author of “Florence Macarthy,” and Counsellor O’Connell is helped to the wing of a pheasant by a protestant archbishop, with a mental reservation against all other “wings,” in all other places.