I took care to secure a more substantial carriage than that of yesterday, and drove very comfortably to Wilton, the beautiful seat of the Earl of Pembroke. Here is a valuable collection of antiques, tastefully arranged by the deceased Earl, who was a great lover of art. It is placed in a broad gallery running round the inner court, communicating with the apartments on the ground-floor, and finely lighted from one side. It affords a most interesting walk, winter and summer, and is within a few steps of every room. The windows are ornamented with the coats of arms, in coloured glass, of all the families with which the Earls of Pembroke have been allied by marriage,—a rich collection, which includes even the royal arms of England. In the halls are placed the coats of armour of the old warriors of the family, and those of their most distinguished prisoners; among them, the Grand Constable Montmorenci, a French Prince of the blood, and several others. Unquestionably these old recollections of a high and puissant aristocracy have their poetical side.
The Châtelaine who conducted me about seemed herself to have crept out of a colossal coat of armour: she was full six feet high, and of a very masculine aspect, nor could anybody be better versed in the history of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, she murdered the names of Roman emperors and Grecian sages most barbarously. She explained some rather equivocal subjects quite circumstantially, and in very droll connoisseur language.
One of the adjoining rooms is filled with family portraits, which derive more of their value and splendour from the hand of Holbein or Vandyke than from the personages they represent. After a certain lapse of time, the nobility of genius outshines that of birth, ‘comme de raison.’ The house contains several other valuable pictures; among which an Interment of Christ by Albrecht Dürer, executed in the most finished manner in water-colours, was the most striking.
The Countess’s garden, upon which the library opens, is laid out in the old French style, and is terminated by a small very richly ornamented temple, which has one great singularity. It was built by Holbein, but does no credit to his taste: it is, on the contrary, an ugly overloaded thing. The garden is extremely pretty and elegant: it reflects honour on English women of rank, that most of them are distinguished for their taste and skill in this beautiful art. We should fall into a great mistake if we hoped that any English gardener whatever were capable of producing such master-pieces of garden decoration as I have described to you in my former letters.[160] These all owe their existence to the genius and the charming taste for the embellishment of home which characterize their fair owners.
As it was positively forbidden to admit any stranger without a written order from the possessor, I should not have obtained a sight of the house had I not practised a stratagem, which the lord of the mansion will of course forgive, if he ever knows it. I announced myself to the Châtelaine as a Russian relative of the family, with a name she could neither read nor speak.—It is really too annoying to drive four miles for an express purpose, and then to turn back without accomplishing it: I therefore lay my obligé falsehood entirely at the door of these inhuman English manners. With us, people are not so cruel; and never will an Englishman have to complain of similar illiberality in Germany.
On the other side of the town lies an interesting place, Langford, the seat of the Earl of Radnor; an extensive park, and very old castle of strange triangular form, with enormously massy towers whose walls are like mosaic. In insignificant, low and ill-furnished rooms I found one of the most precious collections of pictures; master-pieces of the greatest painters; hidden treasures, which nobody sees and nobody knows of,—of which so many exist in English private houses. There is a Sunrise and a Sunset by Claude. The morning exhibits Æneas with his followers landing on the happy shores of Italy, and makes one envy the new-comers to the paradise which this picture discloses to them. In the evening scene, the setting sun gilds the magnificent ruins of temples and palaces, which are surrounded by a solitary wild country;—they are allegorical representations of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Water, clouds, sky, trees, the transparent quivering atmosphere,—it is all, as ever in Claude, Nature herself. It is difficult to imagine how a man in his five-and-thirtieth year could be a cook and a colour-grinder, and in his five-and-fortieth give to the world such unequalled productions. The wondrously beautiful head of a Magdalen by Guido, whose tearful eyes and warm rosy mouth certainly seem to invite rather to a thousand kisses than to repentance; a Holy Family by Andrea del Sarto, brilliant in all the pomp of colour; and many other ‘chef-d’œuvres’ of the most illustrious masters, riveted me for many hours. A portrait of Count Egmont would have served but ill as a frontispiece to Göthe’s tragedy; for the joyous-hearted, magnificent visionary, here appears a corpulent man of forty, with a bald pate and a thoroughly every-day physiognomy. His friend of Orange, hanging near him, exhibited a face of far different intellectual character. Between them hung the gloomy Alba, who pursued cruelty as a luxury.
Besides the pictures and some antiques, this seat contains a rare and precious curiosity,—a chair or throne of steel, which the city of Augsburgh gave to the Emperor Rudolph the Second, which Gustavus Adolphus stole, and an ancestor of Lord Radnor’s bought at Stockholm. The workmanship is admirable. How do all the fine steel works of our day,—those of Birmingham, or the Berlin iron ornaments—fade before this splendid piece of art into miserable trifles and toys! You think you see before you a work of Benvenuto Cellini; and know not which to admire most, the fine execution and the elegance of the details, or the tasteful and artist-like disposition of the whole.
London, December 31st.
Yesterday I was obliged to sacrifice to my hereditary foe ‘migraine:’ to-day I travelled in continual rain to the metropolis, and shall depart to-morrow morning for France.—The country had little in it attractive; but the conversation on the outside of the coach was the more animated. It turned, during nearly the whole day, on a famous ‘boxing-match,’ in which a Yankee had, it seemed, cheated a John Bull; and, bribed by the principal patrons of the art, had won ten thousand pounds. Cheating, in every kind of ‘sport,’ is as completely in the common order of things in England, among the highest classes as well as the lowest, as false play was in the time of the Count de Grammont. It is no uncommon thing to hear ‘gentlemen’ boast of it almost openly; and I never found that those who are regarded as ‘the most knowing ones’ had suffered in their reputation in consequence;—‘au contraire,’ they pass for cleverer than their neighbours; and you are only now and then warned with a smile to take care what you are about with them. Some of the highest members of the aristocracy are quite notorious for their achievements of this description. I heard from good authority, that the father of a nobleman of sporting celebrity, to whom some one was expressing his solicitude lest his son should be cheated by a ‘Blacklegs,’ answered, “I am much more afraid for the Blacklegs than for my son!” To every country its customs![161]—Another characteristic trait of England, though in a lower step in society, was, that the coachman who drove us had lost two hundred pounds in this same unlucky match, and only laughed at it; giving us significantly to understand that he should soon find another dupe, who should pay it him back with interest. What advances must the ‘march of intellect’ make on the continent before the postillions of the Prince of Tour and Taxis, or the Eilwagen drivers of the Herr von Nagler will be able to lay such bets with their passengers!
Some miles from Windsor we passed through a sort of country uncommon in England, consisting only of sand and pebbles. A magnificent building, with a park and garden, has been erected here,—the New Military College, which is fitted up with all the luxury of a princely residence. The sand and stones made me feel at home,—not so the palace. While I was eyeing the soil with looks of tender affection, ‘car a toute âme bien née la patrie est chère,’ we saw a gray old fox, which with sweeping brush galloped across the heath. Our bet-loving coachman saw him first, and cried out, “By God, a fox! a fox!” “It’s a dog,” replied a passenger. “I bet you five to four ‘tis a fox,” rejoined the steed-compelling hero. “Done!” replied the doubter—and soon had to pay; for it was indeed an indubitable fox, though of extraordinary size. Several hounds, who had lost the scent, now ran in sight, and a few red coats were also visible. All the passengers on the mail screamed and hallooed to them which way the fox was gone, but could not make them understand. The time of the mail is rigorously fixed, and all unnecessary delays forbidden: but here was a national calamity impending; the pack and the hunters had lost the fox! The coachman drew up, and several sprang down to show the party, which now every moment increased, the right way. We did not get afloat again till we saw the whole hunt once more in full pursuit; whereupon we all waved our hats, and shouted ‘Tally-ho!’ As soon as our consciences were thus entirely set at ease, and the fox delivered over to his inevitable fate, the coachman whipped on his horses to make up for the delay, and the rest of the way we dashed along at a rattling gallop, as if the Wild Huntsman himself were at our heels.