Wonders of Portraits.
How wonderful is the art which can impress upon canvas and so preserve from generation to generation and from century to century, a lifelike presentment of men and women whose flesh and blood realities have long since mouldered dust with dust! The canvas endures; the man dies?—Ah, no! he has but shuffled off the earth-garment and left it earth with earth; he lives.
The Van Dyke portraits of Queen Henrietta Maria, Charles I. and the children of Charles I. are mutely eloquent. The well-known picture, “Baby Stuart”, a detail from the group, “Children of Charles I.” suggests the high tide of love and happiness in the life of Queen Henrietta Maria. She was then surrounded by everything that heart could desire,—wealth, honor, power, a husband’s unbounded love and confidence and three beautiful and most promising children. They were Mary, who later married William, Prince of Orange; Charles, who, at the Restoration, became the “Merry Monarch” of England, and James, the baby Stuart, who later became the unfortunate James II., the monarch who lost his crown, and whose daughter Mary, wedded to her cousin, William, Prince of Orange, son of that sister Mary, who, in the portrait, stands at his side, abetted the deposition of her father and wore his crown.
There is something eloquently pathetic in the portraits of men and women who have fallen victims to a tragic fate. The principle of contrast is, doubtless, here at work, setting side by side with the hour of portrayal that other hour of bitter death. Marie Antoinette and her children, as fixed upon canvas by the court painter, Madame Vigee LeBrun, derive their rich tonal qualities—warm grays and reds, their charm of evanescence, their magically somber fascination, from the shadows of the Conciergerie and the guillotine.
The portrait of Charles I. as painted by Van Dyke, must ever suggest to the thoughtful student of history that scene, disgraceful alike to the English nation and to human nature which took place on the scaffold just outside Whitehall Palace.
Yes; there are two sides to every question, and one is a ruler exercising arbitrary power and impregnated with belief in the divine right of kings and claiming it his prerogative to break up his parliament and govern alone; the other is an assembly of men, nominally a parliament, so narrowly fanatic and steeped in human hate that they demanded as condition under which they would agree to levy taxes for Charles I. to use in aid of Protestant Holland, that he should first order every Catholic priest in his own realm to be put to death and the property of all Catholics to be confiscated. Charles refused. This side of the cause of the rupture between Charles I. and his Parliament has not the historic prominence of the other side. Why? Not very hard to tell why if one considers attentively the writers of the history of that period.
“I hope to meet my end with calmness. Do not let us speak of the men into whose hands I have fallen. They thirst for my blood, they shall have it. God’s will be done, I give Him thanks. I forgive them all sincerely, but let us say no more about them”—these words addressed to Bishop Juxon by Charles a few days before his death attest the inherent nobility of his nature. Whatever the life of Charles I. may have been, his death was kingly; and if death is the echo of life then, too, his life must have been vocal with virtues. But what virtue can outshine or even illumine the black chaos of creed-fanaticism, odium, obloquy? What power can break up and restore to their original settings the half-truths, untruths, errors and lies glitteringly crystalized in history, drama, story and song? Does time right ancient wrongs, readjust and make-whole torn, century-scattered truths? We dream so; we say so; but at deepest heart we whisper No.
With unruffled calmness, with dignity, with kingly grace, Charles I. stepped from the opening of what had been in happier days his banqueting hall and advanced upon the scaffold. In the words of Agnes Strickland:
“It was past 1 o’clock before the grisly attendants and apparatus of the scaffold were ready. Colonel Hacker led the king through his former banqueting hall, one of the windows of which had originally been contrived to support stands for public pageantries; it had been taken out and led to the platform raised in the street. The noble bearing of the King as he stepped on the scaffold, his beaming eyes and high expression, were noticed by all who saw him. He looked on all sides for his people, but dense masses of soldiery only presented themselves far and near. He was out of hearing of any persons but Juxon and Herbert, save those who were interested in his destruction. The soldiers preserved a dead silence; this time they did not insult him. The distant populace wept, and occasionally raised mournful cries in blessings and prayers for him. The king uttered a short speech, to point out that every institute of the original constitution of England had been subverted with the sovereign power. While he was speaking someone touched the axe, which was laid enveloped in black crepe on the block. The king turned round hastily and exclaimed, ‘Have a care of the axe. If the edge is spoiled it will be the worse for me.’
“The king put up his flowing hair under a cap; then, turning to the executor asked, ‘Is any of my hair in the way?’ ‘I beg your majesty to push it more under your cap,’ replied the man, bowing. The bishop assisted his royal master to do so and observed to him: ‘There is but one stage more, which, though turbulent and troublesome, is yet a very short one. Consider, it will carry you a great way—even from earth to heaven.’ ‘I go,’ replied the king, ‘from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown.’