Miss Campion, 1667.
The quaint tassel or rosette or feather on the cap of the Padishal child was a fashion of the day. It is seen in many Dutch portraits of children. In a curious old satirical print of Oliver Cromwell preaching are the figures of two little children drawn standing by their mother’s side. One child’s back is turned for our sight, and shows us what might well be the back of the gown of the Padishal child. The cap has the same ornament on the crown, and the hanging sleeves—of similar form—have, at intervals of a few inches apart from shoulder to heel, an outside embellishment of knots of ribbon. There is also a band or strip of embroidery or passementerie up the back of the gown from skirt-hem to lace collar, with a row of buttons on the strip. This proves that the dress was fastened in the back, as the stiff, unbroken, white stomacher also indicates. The other child is evidently a boy. His gown is long and fur-edged. His cap is round like a Scotch bonnet, and has also a tuft or rosette at the crown. On either side hang long strings or ribbon bands reaching from the cap edge to the knee.
These portraits of these little American children display nothing of that God-given attribute which we call genius, but they do possess a certain welcome trait, which is truthfulness; a hard attention to detail, which confers on them a quality of exactness of likeness of which we are very sensible. We have for comparison a series of portraits of the same dates, but of English children, the children of the royal and court families. I give [here] a part of the portrait group of the family of the Duke of Buckingham; namely, the Duchess of Buckingham and her two children, an infant son and a daughter, Mary. She was a wonderful child, known in the court as “Pretty Moll,” having the beauty of her father, the “handsomest-bodied” man in court, his vivacity, his vigor, and his love of dancing, all of which made him the prime favorite both of James and his son, Charles.
A letter exists written by the duchess to her husband while he was gone to Spain with his thirty suits of richly embroidered garments of which I have written in my first chapter. The duchess writes of “Pretty Moll,” who was not a year old:—
“She is very well, I thank God; and when she is set to her feet and held by her sleeves she will not go softly but stamp, and set one foot before another very fast, and I think she will run before she can go. She loves dancing extremely; and when the Saraband is played, she will get her thumb and finger together offering to snap; and then when “Tom Duff” is sung, she will shake her apron; and when she hears the tune of the clapping dance my Lady Frances Herbert taught the Prince, she will clap both her hands together, and on her breast, and she can tell the tunes as well as any of us can; and as they change tunes she will change her dancing. I would you were here but to see her, for you would take much delight in her now she is so full of pretty play and tricks. Everybody says she grows each day more like you.”
Can you not see the engaging little creature, clapping her hands and trying to step out in a dance? No imaginary description could equal in charm this bit of real life, this word-picture painted in bright and living colors by a mother’s love. I give another merry picture of her childhood and widowhood in a later chapter. Many portraits of “Pretty Moll” were painted by Van Dyck, more than of any woman in England save the queen. One shows her in the few months that she was the child-wife of the eldest son of the Earl of Pembroke. She is in the centre of the great family group. She was married thrice; her favorite choice of character in which to be painted was Saint Agnes, who died rather than be married at all.
