Late one evening, having left my sketch-book in the gallery, I went to seek it. I made my way up the great stone staircase with considerable intrepidity, passed through one end of the council-chamber without casting a glance through the palpable obscure, the feeble ray of my wax-light just spreading about a yard around me, and lifting aside the tapestry door, stepped into the gallery. Just as the heavy arras fell behind me, with a dull echoing sound, a sudden gust of wind came rushing by, and extinguished my taper. Angels and ministers of grace defend us!—not that I felt afraid—O no! but just a little what the Scotch call "eerie." A thrill, not altogether unpleasant, came over me: the visionary turn of mind which once united me in fancy "with the world unseen," had long been sobered and reasoned away. I heard no "viewless paces of the dead," nor "airy skirts unseen that rustled by;" but what I did see and hear was enough. The wind whispering and moaning along the tapestried walls, and every now and then rattling twenty or thirty windows at once, with such a crash!—and the pictures around just sufficiently perceptible in the faint light to make me fancy them staring at me. Then immediately behind me was the very recess, or rather abyss, where Queen Elizabeth was at that moment settling her farthingale, to sally out upon me; and before me, but lost in blackest gloom, the spectral door, where Mary—not that I should have minded encountering poor Mary, provided always that she had worn her own beautiful head where heaven placed it, and not carried it, as Bertrand de Born carried his "a guisa di lanterna."[ 60] As to what followed, it is a secret. Suffice it that I found myself safe by the fireside in my bedroom, without any very distinct recollection of how I got there.
Of all the scenes in which to moralize and meditate, a picture gallery is to me the most impressive. With the most intense feeling of the beauty of painting, I cannot help thinking with Dr. Johnson, that as far as regards portraits, their chief excellence and value consist in the likeness and the authenticity,[ 61] and not in the merit of the execution. When we can associate a story or a sentiment with every face and form, they almost live to us—they do in a manner speak to us. There is speculation in those fixed eyes—there is eloquence in those mute lips—and, O! what tales they tell! One of the first pictures which caught my attention as I entered the gallery was a small head of Arabella Stuart, when an infant. The painting is poor enough: it is a little round rosy face in a child's cap, and she holds an embroidered doll in her hand. Who could look on this picture, and not glance forward through succeeding years, and see the pretty playful infant transformed into the impassioned woman, writing to her husband—"In sickness, and in despair, wheresoever thou art, or howsoever I be, it sufficeth me always that thou art mine!" Arabella Stewart was not clever; but not Heloise, nor Corinne, nor Madlle. De l'Espinasse ever penned such a dear little morsel of touching eloquence—so full of all a woman's tenderness! Her stern grandmother, the lady and foundress of Hardwicke, hangs near. There are three pictures of her: all the faces have an expression of sense and acuteness, but none of them the beauty which is attributed to her. There are also two of her husbands, Cavendish and Shrewsbury. The former a grave, intelligent head; the latter very striking from the lofty furrowed brow, the ample beard, and regular but care-worn features. A little farther on we find his son Gilbert, seventh earl of Shrewsbury, and Mary Cavendish, wife of the latter and daughter of Bess of Hardwicke. She resembled her mother in features as in character. The expression is determined, intelligent, and rather cunning. Of her haughty and almost fierce temper, a curious instance is recorded. She had quarrelled with her neighbours, the Stanhopes, and not being able to defy them with sword and buckler, she sent one of her gentlemen, properly attended, with a message to Sir Thomas Stanhope, to be delivered in presence of witnesses, in these words—"My lady hath commanded me to say thus much to you: that though you be more wretched, vile, and miserable than any creature living, and for your wickedness become more ugly in shape than the vilest toad in the world; and one to whom none of any reputation would vouchsafe to send any message; yet she hath thought good to send thus much to you, that she be contented you should live, (and doth noways wish your death,) but to this end: that all the plagues and miseries that may befall any man, may light on such a caitiff as you are," &c.; (and then a few anathemas, yet more energetic, not fit to be transcribed by "pen polite," but ending with hell-fire.) "With many other opprobrious and hateful words which could not be remembered, because the bearer would deliver it but once, as he said he was commanded; but said, if he had failed in any thing, it was in speaking it more mildly, and not in terms of such disdain as he was commanded." We are not told whether the gallantry of Stanhope suffered him to throw the herald out of the window, who brought him this gentle missive. As for the termagant countess, his adversary, she was afterwards imprisoned in the Tower for upwards of two years, on account of Lady Arabella Stuart's stolen match with Lord Seymour. She ought assuredly to have "brought forth men-children only;" but she left no son. Her three daughters married the earls of Pembroke, of Arundel, and of Kent.
The portraits of James V. of Scotland and his Queen, Mary of Guise, are extremely curious. There is something ideal and elegant about the head of James V.—the look we might expect to find in a man who died from wounded feeling. His more unhappy daughter, poor Mary, hangs near—a full length in a mourning habit, with a white cap, (of her own peculiar fashion,) and a veil of white gauze. This, I believe, is the celebrated picture so often copied and engraved. It is dated 1578, the thirty-sixth of her age, and the tenth of her captivity. The figure is elegant, and the face pensive and sweet.[ 62] Beside her, in strong contrast, hangs Elizabeth, in a most preposterous farthingale, and a superabundance of all her usual absurdities and enormities of dress. The petticoat is embroidered over with snakes, crocodiles, and all manner of creeping things. We feel almost inclined to ask whether the artist could possibly have intended them as emblems, like the eyes and ears in her picture at Hatfield; but it may have been one of the three thousand gowns, in which Spenser's Gloriana, Raleigh's Venus, loved to array her old wrinkled, crooked carcase. Katherine of Arragon is here—a small head in a hood: the face not only harsh, as in all her pictures, but vulgar, characteristic I never saw in any other. There is that peculiar expression round the mouth, which might be called either decision or obstinacy. And here too is the famous Lucy Harrington, Countess of Bedford, the friend and patroness of Ben Jonson, looking sentimental in a widow's dress, with a white pocket handkerchief. There is character enough in the countenance to make us turn with pleasure to Ben Jonson's exquisite eulogium on her.
"I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet,
Hating that solemn vice of greatness, pride:
I meant each softest virtue there should meet,
Fit in that softer bosom to reside.
Only a learned and a manly soul
I purposed her; that should with even powers
The rock, the spindle, and the sheers controul