Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

When lunch was announced, the Duke of Sutherland gave me his arm, and led me through a suite of rooms into the dining hall. Each room that we passed was rich in its pictures, statues, and artistic arrangements; a poetic eye and taste had evidently presided over all. The table was beautifully laid, ornamented by two magnificent épergnes, crystal vases supported by wrought silver standards, filled with the most brilliant hothouse flowers; on the edges of the vases and nestling among the flowers were silver doves of the size of life. The walls of the room were hung with gorgeous pictures, and directly opposite to me was a portrait of the Duchess of Sutherland, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, which has figured largely in our souvenirs and books of beauty. She is represented with a little child in her arms; this child, now Lady Blantyre, was sitting opposite to me at table, with a charming little girl of her own, of about the same apparent age. When one sees such things, one almost fancies this to be a fairy palace, where the cold demons of age and time have lost their power.

I was seated next to Lord Lansdowne, who conversed much with me about affairs in America. It seems to me that the great men of the old world regard our country thoughtfully. It is a new development of society, acting every day with greater and greater power on the old world; nor is it yet clearly seen what its final results will be. His observations indicated a calm, clear, thoughtful mind—an accurate observer of life and history.

Meanwhile the servants moved noiselessly to and fro, taking up the various articles on the table, and offering them to the guests in a peculiarly quiet manner. One of the dishes brought to me was a plover's nest, precisely as the plover made it, with five little blue speckled eggs in it. This mode of serving plover's eggs, as I understand it, is one of the fashions of-the day, and has something quite sylvan and picturesque about it; but it looked so, for all the world, like a robin's nest that I used to watch out in our home orchard, that I had it not in my heart to profane the sanctity of the image by eating one of the eggs.

The cuisine of these West End regions appears to be entirely under French legislation, conducted by Parisian artists, skilled in all subtle and metaphysical combinations of ethereal possibilities, quite inscrutable to the eye of sense. Her grace's chef, I have heard it said elsewhere, bears the reputation of being the first artist of his class in England. The profession as thus sublimated bears the same proportion to the old substantial English cookery that Mozart's music does to Handel's, or Midsummer Night's Dream to Paradise Lost.

This meal, called lunch, is with the English quite an institution, being apparently a less elaborate and ceremonious dinner. Every thing is placed upon the table at once, and ladies sit down without removing their bonnets; it is, I imagine, the most social and family meal of the day; one in which children are admitted to the table, even in the presence of company. It generally takes place in the middle of the day, and the dinner, which comes after it, at eight or nine in the evening, is in comparison only a ceremonial proceeding.

I could not help thinking, as I looked around on so many men whom I had heard of historically all my life, how very much less they bear the marks of age than men who have been connected a similar length of time with the movements of our country. This appearance of youthfulness and alertness has a constantly deceptive influence upon one in England. I cannot realize that people are as old as history states them to be. In the present company there were men of sixty or seventy, whom I should have pronounced at the first glance to be fifty.

Generally speaking our working minds seem to wear out their bodies faster; perhaps because our climate is more stimulating; more, perhaps, from the intenser stimulus of our political régime, which never leaves any thing long at rest.

The tone of manners in this distinguished circle did not obtrude itself upon my mind as different from that of highly-educated people in our own country. It appeared simple, friendly, natural, and sincere. They talked like people who thought of what they were saying, rather than how to say it. The practice of thorough culture and good breeding is substantially the same through the world, though smaller conventionalities may differ.

After lunch the whole party ascended to the picture gallery, passing on our way the grand staircase and hall, said to be the most magnificent in Europe. All that wealth could command of artistic knowledge and skill has been expended here to produce a superb result. It fills the entire centre of the building, extending up to the roof and surmounted by a splendid dome. On three sides a gallery runs round it supported by pillars. To this gallery you ascend on the fourth side by a staircase, which midway has a broad, flat landing, from which stairs ascend, on the right and left, into the gallery. The whole hall and staircase, carpeted with a scarlet footcloth, give a broad, rich mass of coloring, throwing out finely the statuary and gilded balustrades. On the landing is a marble statue of a Sibyl, by Rinaldi. The walls are adorned by gorgeous frescos from Paul Veronese. What is peculiar in the arrangements of this hall is, that although so extensive, it still wears an air of warm homelikeness and comfort, as if it might be a delightful place to lounge and enjoy life, amid the ottomans, sofas, pictures, and statuary, which are disposed here and there throughout.

All this, however, I passed rapidly by as I ascended the staircase, and passed onward to the picture gallery. This was a room about a hundred feet long by forty wide, surmounted by a dome gorgeously finished with golden palm, trees and carving. This hall is lighted in the evening by a row of gaslights placed outside the ground glass of the dome; this light is concentrated and thrown down by strong reflectors, communicating thus the most brilliant radiance without the usual heat of gas. This gallery is peculiarly rich in paintings of the Spanish school. Among them are two superb Murillos, taken from convents by Marshal Soult, during the time of his career in Spain.