Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Tuesday, May 10. C. and I were to go to-day, with Mrs. Cropper and Lady Hatherton, to call on the poet Rogers. I was told that he was in very delicate health, but that he still received friends at his house. We found the house a perfect cabinet collection of the most rare and costly works of art—choicest marbles, vases, pictures, gems, and statuary met the eye every where. We spent the time in examining some of these while the servant went to announce us. The mild and venerable old man himself was the choicest picture of all. He has a splendid head, a benign face, and reminded me of an engraving I once saw of Titian. He seemed very glad to see us, spoke to me of the gathering at Stafford House, and asked me what I thought of the place. When I expressed my admiration, he said, "Ah, I have often said it is a fairy palace, and that the duchess is the good fairy." Again, he said, "I have seen all the palaces of Europe, but there is none that I prefer to this." Quite a large circle of friends now came in and were presented. He did not rise to receive them, but sat back in his easy chair, and conversed quietly with us all, sparkling out now and then in a little ripple of playfulness. In this room were his best beloved pictures, and it is his pleasure to show them to his friends.

By a contrivance quite new to me, the pictures are made to revolve on a pivot, so that by touching a spring they move out from the wall, and can be seen in different lights. There was a picture over the mantel-piece of a Roman Triumphal Procession, painted by Rubens, which attracted my attention by its rich coloring and spirited representation of animals.

The coloring of Rubens always satisfies my eye better than that of any other master, only a sort of want of grace in the conception disturbs me. In this case both conception and coloring are replete with beauty. Rogers seems to be carefully waited on by an attendant who has learned to interpret every motion and anticipate every desire.

I took leave of him with a touch of sadness. Of all the brilliant circle of poets, which has so delighted us, he is the last—and he so feeble! His memories, I am told, extend back to a personal knowledge of Dr. Johnson. How I should like to sit by him, and search into that cabinet of recollections! He presented me his poems, beautifully illustrated by Turner, with his own autograph on the fly leaf. He writes still a clear, firm, beautiful hand, like a lady's.

After that, we all went over to Stafford House, and the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland went with us into Lord Ellesmere's collection adjoining. Lord Ellesmere sails for America to-day, to be present at the opening of the Crystal Palace. He left us a very polite message. The Duchess of Argyle, with her two little boys, was there also. Lord Carlisle very soon came in, and with him—who do you think? Tell Hattie and Eliza if they could have seen the noble staghound that came bounding in with him, they would have turned from all the pictures on the wall to this living work of art.

Landseer thinks he does well when he paints a dog; another man chisels one in stone: what would they think of themselves if they could string the nerves and muscles, and wake up the affections and instincts, of the real, living creature? That were to be an artist indeed! The dog walked about the gallery, much at home, putting his nose up first to one and then another of the distinguished persons by whom he was surrounded; and once in a while stopping, in an easy race about the hall, would plant himself before a picture, with his head on one side, and an air of high-bred approval, much as I have seen young gentlemen do in similar circumstances. All he wanted was an eyeglass, and he would have been perfectly set up as a critic.

As for the pictures, I have purposely delayed coming to them. Imagine a botanist dropped into the middle of a blooming prairie, waving with unnumbered dyes and forms of flowers, and only an hour to examine and make acquaintance with them! Room, after room we passed, filled with Titians, Murillos, Guidos, &c. There were four Raphaels, the first I had ever seen. Must I confess the truth? Raphael had been my dream for years. I expected something which would overcome and bewilder me. I expected a divine baptism, a celestial mesmerism; and I found four very beautiful pictures—pictures which left me quite in possession of my senses, and at liberty to ask myself, am I pleased, and how much? It was not that I did not admire, for I did; but that I did not admire enough. The pictures are all holy families, cabinet size: the figures, Mary, Joseph, the infant Jesus, and John, in various attitudes. A little perverse imp in my heart suggested the questions, "If a modern artist had painted these, what would be thought of them? If I did not know it was Raphael, what should I think?" And I confess that, in that case, I should think that there was in one or two of them a certain hardness and sharpness of outline that was not pleasing to me. Neither, any more than Murillo, has he in these pictures shadowed forth, to my eye, the idea of Mary. Protestant as I am, no Catholic picture contents me. I thought to myself that I had seen among living women, and in a face not far off, a nobler and sweeter idea of womanhood.

It is too much to ask of any earthly artist, however, to gratify the aspirations and cravings of those who have dreamed of them for years unsatisfied. Perhaps no earthly canvas and brash can accomplish this marvel. I think the idealist must lay aside his highest ideal, and be satisfied he shall never meet it, and then he will begin to enjoy. With this mood and understanding I did enjoy very much an Assumption of the Virgin, by Guido, and more especially Diana and her Nymphs, by Titian: in this were that softness of outline, and that blending of light and shadow into each other, of which I felt the want in the Raphaels. I felt as if there was a perfection of cultivated art in this, a classical elegance, which, so far as it went, left the eye or mind nothing to desire. It seemed to me that Titian was a Greek painter, the painter of an etherealized sensuousness, which leaves the spiritual nature wholly unmoved, and therefore all that he attempts he attains. Raphael, on the contrary, has spiritualism; his works enter a sphere where at is more difficult to satisfy the soul; nay, perhaps from the nature of the case, impossible.

There were some glorious pieces of sunshine by Cuyp. There was a massive sea piece by Turner, in which the strong solemn swell of the green waves, and the misty wreathings of clouds, were powerfully given.

There was a highly dramatic piece, by Paul de la Roche, representing Charles I. in a guard room, insulted by the soldiery. He sits, pale, calm, and resolute, while they are puffing tobacco smoke in his face, and passing vulgar jokes. His thoughts appear to be far away, his eyes looking beyond them with an air of patient, proud weariness.