The "tokens," used as a means of identification in those days when children were received indiscriminately in a basket hung at the gate of the hospital, have a dumb eloquence. In a glass case before the windows are the old coins, pieces of ribbon worked in beads, metal hearts, crosses, and buttons which were attached to the persons of the children when they were left behind. On a mother of pearl shield, dated 1757, I noticed inscribed, "James, son of James Concannon, gent.," the "gent." being scratched in as an afterthought apparently.
Those two Jameses have long ago passed away, but human nature is the same, and there are still such James the firsts to father such James the seconds. Probably many of the children we had been watching in the chapel could write "gent." after their father's name. "Breed will out," said Mrs. D., and one could see it in the faces and figures of some of the small boys and girls.
There is an autograph of Queen Elizabeth in one of the cases, and if character can be read by handwriting, this autograph should offer a lifelong study. Mrs. D., who is interested in Elizabeth since she saw her wax effigy, said, "No one but a queen could have the cheek to sign her name like that!" The signature certainly has a regal significance in its largeness and maze-like convolutions. The ink is faded and brown, the flourishes have the shakiness of age. One would give a great deal for an intimate knowledge of the occasion on which it was written. The Earl of Leicester's autograph is close by, and it bears a marked resemblance to Elizabeth's. Did he model it on that of his royal mistress? Did Elizabeth love Leicester? and if she did, was it with a tragic unconsciousness of his self-seeking? A woman as clever as Elizabeth can lose her head and be strangely blind in matters of sex; also, Elizabeth was vain. But no—I don't think Elizabeth was blind. On the contrary, it was her clear-sightedness which prevented her marriage with the man who appealed to the natural instincts of her sex. She was woman enough to like to love and be loved, but shrewd enough to know where to stop.
Outside the birds were singing, and the light falling through the long rows of windows had in it something of the quality of spring. I should have liked to linger in the old rooms for a while—the Stone Hall, the Picture Gallery, and the Secretary's Room—all of which have treasures demanding a great deal more than a cursory glance. One has to live with such things to appreciate them, and these passing glimpses seem to me in the nature of an insult. There is, behind those glimpses, a haunted atmosphere made up of the echoes of laughter long since silenced, of words spoken, and dreams dreamed, and to breathe it is to capture romance. True, it is only a mirage, but actually to set foot in a mirage and stay there awhile is an achievement for which to thank the gods.
It occurred to me after lunch that, instead of sitting over the fire with a novel I would go to the National Portrait Gallery. Sir Walter Scott says that portraits of our ancestors enable us "to compare their persons and countenances with their sentiments and actions," and I wanted to see if the Earl of Leicester's countenance fitted the story of his relations with Elizabeth, whether Nell Gwynne was as attractive as I had been told, if Pepys resembled the bust on his tomb, also to renew acquaintance with dear old Sir Thomas More and some other of those "ancestors" whose haunts I had lately been exploring.
Mrs. Darling excused herself. No power on earth will on a Sunday afternoon draw her from the fireside, where she can, in comfort, study humanity through the pages of "The News of the World".
A visit to the National Portrait Gallery isn't exactly a restful experience. Those long rows of faces, each making its appeal for understanding, have an exhausting effect after a time. They promise so much to Paul Pry, then baffle him with their underlying secretiveness.
Sunday afternoon is not the best time to go. Early on a week-day morning is better, when the gallery is almost deserted, and in the silence you can hear the traffic in the street outside, and the echoes of an attendant's voice in some far room where he gossips to a companion. The rows upon rows of faces staring patiently from its walls give a curiously crowded sense to its emptiness, and one pictures them at closing time when the last visitor has gone, and the attendant has switched off the lights. I think I should give the Duke of Monmouth, painted after his execution, a wide berth then. There are others, too, who would not be cheerful companions—some of those waxen mediæval countenances would glimmer unpleasantly in the dusk, and one would be conscious of a stirring amongst the gathering of kings and queens, poets and statesmen, courtesans and cardinals, at the approach of night.
I found Leicester, next to Elizabeth—a haughty-looking gentleman in his high collar and ruff. I don't like his eyes. They aren't trustworthy—but perhaps that is because I know. Anyhow, he has an air which would win favour with women, and he played a big part in the life of his queen from her girlhood's days until his death. There have been sinister stories told about Leicester. Ben Jonson said the Earl gave his wife "a bottle of liquor which he willed her to use in any faintness, which she, not knowing it was poison, gave him, and so he died". According to the gossip of the times, the Queen's favourite seems to have been accounted a veritable Bluebeard. Well, the secrets of his life were buried with him three hundred years ago and more, and no matter how deep we dig, we shall never discover them.