A PEEP INTO A PICTURE BOOK

A PEEP INTO A PICTURE BOOK

It is a fine, warm, sultry day, just after dinner. I am at Thornton Hotel. The General is enjoying his customary nap; and while the serene evening sunshine reposes on his bland features and unruffled brow, an atmosphere of calm seems to pervade the apartment.

What shall I do to amuse myself? I dare not stir lest he should awake; and any disturbance of his slumbers at this moment might be productive of serious consequences to me: no circumstance would more effectually sour my landlord’s ordinarily bland temperament. Hark! There is a slight, light snore, most musical, most melancholy: he is firmly locked in the chains of the drowsy god.

At the opposite end of the room three large volumes that look like picture books lie on a sideboard; their green watered-silk quarto covers and gilt backs are tempting, and I will make an effort to gain possession of them. Softly, softly: there, I have thrown down a silver fruit knife and a piece of orange peel! He stirs! I must pause awhile or he will certainly awake. Hem! the worthy gentleman settles down to his former tranquillity; the incipient frown which contracted his forehead is past away; and the rest of a good conscience, the calm of a mental and corporeal healthiness, sleeps there again.

With zephyr-step and bosomed breath I glide onward to the sideboard, I seize my prize, and being once more safely established in my chair I open the volumes to see if the profit be equivalent to the pains.

Eureka! Eureka! ‘Tree’s Portrait Gallery of the Aristocracy of Africa’! Why, here is cent. per cent. indeed! The very thing; the beau-ideal of provision for an after-dinner’s amusement! However languid and unfitted for exertion, the veriest gourmand could not turn with disgust from such placid entertainment as is here prepared for him; the sleepiest eye might wander unwearied over the silent visions that here follow each other in a succession so dreamy and voiceless.

I am no gourmand after dinner; I am as active as before; but just now the pleasure of hanging over forms that speak without sound, of gazing into motionless eyes that search your very heart, is more attractive to me than sprightlier employments.

The second volume is nearest to my hand, and I will raise first from the shadow of gossamer paper, waving as I turn it like a web of woven air, the spirit whosoever it be, male or female, crowned or coroneted, that animates its frontispiece.

A mighty phantom has answered my spell: an awful shape clouds the magic mirror! Reader, before me I behold the earthly tabernacle of Northangerland’s unsounded soul! There he stands: what a vessel to be moulded from the coarse clay of mortality! What a plant to spring from the rank soil of human existence! And the vessel is without flaw: polished, fresh, and bright from the last process of the maker. The flower has sprung up to mature beauty, but not a leaf is curled, not a blossom faded. This portrait was taken ere the lights and shadows of twenty-five summers had fallen across the wondrous labyrinth of Percy’s path through life. At this moment a gleam of sunlight, real deep gold in hue, comes through the kindled window-panes, and falls richly and serenely on the picture. It is a softened glory, for the sun is far west and its amber rays shed inexpressible tranquillity wherever they descend. How sweetly they sleep on that brow! and on those Ionic features! Percy! Percy! never was humanity fashioned in a fairer mould. The eye follows delighted all those classic lines of face and form: not one unseemly curvature or angle to disturb the general effect of so much refined regularity; all appears carved in ivory. The grossness of flesh and blood will not suit its statuesque exactness and speckless polish. A feeling of fascination comes over me while I gaze on that Phidian nose defined with such beautiful precision; that chin and mouth chiselled to such elaborate perfection; that high, pale forehead, not bald as now, but yet not shadowed with curls, for the clustering hair is parted back, gathered in abundant wreaths on the temples and leaving the brow free for all the gloom and glory of a mind that has no parallel to play over the expanse of living marble which its absence reveals. The expression in this picture is somewhat pensive, composed, free from sarcasm except the fixed sneer of the-lip and the strange deadly glitter of the eye whose glance—a mixture of the keenest scorn and deepest thought—curdles the spectator’s blood to ice. In my opinion this head embodies the most vivid ideas we can conceive of Lucifer, the rebellious archangel: there is such a total absence of human feeling and sympathy; such a cold frozen pride; such a fathomless power of intellect; such passionless yet perfect beauty—not breathing and burning, full of tightening blood and fiery thought and feeling like that of some others whom our readers will recollect,—but severely studied, faultlessly refined, as cold and hard and polished and perfect as the most priceless brilliant. And in his eye there is a shade of something, words cannot express what. The sight may catch, but not fix it. A gleam, scarcely human, dark and fiend-like, it steals away under the lash, quivers sometimes with the mysterious tremor of a northern light, fixes stedfastly on some luckless bystander, who shrinks from the supernatural aspect, and then is all at once quenched. Once that marvellous light fell on me; and long after I beheld it vanish its memory haunted me like a spirit. The sensation which it excited was very singular. I felt as if he could read my soul; and strange to tell there was no fear lest he should find sinful thoughts and recollections there, but a harassing dread lest anything good might arise which would awake the tremendous power of sarcasm that I saw lurking in every feature of his face. Northangerland has a black drop in his veins that flows through every vessel, taints every limb, stagnates round his heart, and there in the very citadel of life the albinous blood of the patrician is the bitterest, rankest gall. Let us leave him in that shape, ‘bright with beauty, dark with crime.’ He has sailed over many seas, wandered in many lands; just so with that look buried in profound meditation I can imagine him pacing the silent quarter-deck of his own Red Rover, his eyes fixed on the sullen sea that moans round him on every side, watching the mighty plunges of the waves rushing on as if they had an aim in their journey, as if they would bound on before his gallant ship, and were seeking the land she sought with emulous intent to outstrip the wanderer of their green wilderness, and to teach her that ocean would not brook her haughty defiance. Farewell, Percy!

I turn the leaves and behold—his countess!

Hum! hum! I am not on very good terms with this celebrated lady, as all the world knows; yet plain truth compels me to confess that she is a very fine woman, a superb daughter of Verdopolis; and Frederick de Lisle has done her justice; so has Edward Findan. A mere blue ought not to be so handsome. What eyes! What raven hair! What an imposing contour of form and countenance!

She is perfectly grand in her velvet robes, dark plume, and crown-like turban. The lady of Ellrington House, the wife of Northangerland, the prima donna of the Angrian Court, the most learned woman of her age, the modern Cleopatra, the Verdopolitan de Staël: in a word, Zenobia Percy! Who would think that that grand form of feminine majesty could launch out into the unbridled excesses of passion in which her ladyship not unfrequently indulges? There is fire in her eyes, and command on her brow; and some touch of a pride that would spurn restraint in the curl of her rich lip. But all is so tempered with womanly dignity that it would seem as if neither fire nor pride nor imperiousness could awaken the towering fits of ungoverned and frantic rage that often deform her beauty. Her hands, look at them, they are well formed and small, white and sparkling with rings; is it natural that such hands should inflict the blows that sometimes tingle from them? I think not; but my scarlet ears and aching bones have more than once borne incontestable witness how the case stands! The truth is her fingers though slender are long and like those of Zamorna, and like his they possess more vigour than their fragile structure would seem to indicate. She can spar, I verily believe, with her own husband, one of the best boxers on record, though now a little disabled by a tormenting complaint from long-continued exertion. Her employment, however, as here represented is of a higher order than pugilistic achievement. She leans on a large clasped volume, another of equal size lies open before her, and: one taper forefinger directs the spectator’s attention to the page while her eye looks into his with an earnest and solemn air as if she were warning him of the mighty treasures contained in the maxims of ancient lore to which she points. As I turn from this pictured representation of the countess I must say she is a noble creature both in mind and body, though full of the blackest defects: a flawed diamond; a magnificent landscape trenched with drains; virgin gold basely adulterated with brass; a beautiful intellectual woman, but an infidel.

The next portrait is that of His Grace the Duke of Fidena. I feel as if awaking from a feverish dream, a distempered vision of troubled grandeur and stormy glory, as I raise my eyes from the lord and lady of Pandemonium, from Sin and Satan, and let them fall on Prince John, the Royal Philosopher. How grave! what severe virtue! what deep and far-sought and well-treasured wisdom! what inflexible uprightness! Integrity that Death could not turn from the path of right; Firmness that would stoop to the block rather than yield one jot of its just, mature, righteous resolution; Truth from which the agonies of the wheel would be powerless to wring a word of equivocation; and to speak verity, Pride that could no more be thawed than the icebergs of Greenland or the snows of his own Highland hills. There is a look too of prejudice in his rather stern forehead, a something which tells us that Fidena could be an unforgiving, almost a vindictive, enemy, if stubbornly opposed or wantonly insulted. An air of reserve, of stiffness, which warns us that the son of Alexander,—all good, wise, and just, as he is,—lays emphasis on the forms of Courts, the usages of high circles. He will brook no breach of them, however trivial, in those under his authority. That cold eye and aristocratic mien say that jealousy would be quickly aroused by any mingling of ranks, any inroads of plebeians on the rights of patricians, any removing of landmarks or undermining of old institutions. He looks chill, almost forbidding. Something like a cold feeling of restraint creeps over us whilst we gaze: the virtues pictured in his stately features seem of that high and holy order which almost exempt their possessor from sympathy with mankind. Thoughts of martyrs or patriots, a zealous but stern prophet chosen in evil times to denounce judgment, not to proclaim mercy, recur to our minds. Yet John is not altogether what he appears; or rather he is that and more too. I have seen him in private life in moments of relaxation when surrounded by his family and one or two bosom friends. Nothing in such circumstances can be more fascinating than his winning, easy manner, his calm cheerfulness, his pleasing, philosophical gravity of aspect and demeanour. For hours I have watched him while he sat on a sofa with his lovely wife beside him, and the beautiful Marchioness of Douro sitting at his feet; and heard the benignant simplicity with which he poured out the stores of his varied and extensive erudition, answering so kindly and familiarly each question of the fair listeners, mingling an air of conjugal tenderness in his manner to his wife, and earnest melancholy gentleness in that to Marian such as always characterized his treatment of her. Poor thing! she looked on him as her only friend,—her brother, her adviser, her unerring oracle; with the warm devotedness that marked her disposition she followed his advice as if it had been the precept of inspired revelation. Fidena could not err; he could neither think nor act wrongly: he was perfect. Those who thought him too proud were very much mistaken. She never found him so. Nobody had milder and softer manners; nobody spoke more pleasantly. Thus she would talk; then blush with anger if any one contradicted her too exclusively favourable opinion. Prince John, I believe, regarded Marian as a delicate flower planted in a stormy situation; as a lovely, fragile being that needed his careful protection; and that protection he would have extended to her at the hazard of life itself. To the last he tried to support her. Many lone days he spent in watching and cheering her during her final lingering sickness; but all the kindness, all the tenderness in the world were insufficient to raise that blighted lily so long as the sunshine of those eyes which had been her idolatry was withered; and so long as the music of that voice she had loved so fondly and truly sounded too far off to be heard. Fidena was in the house when she died. He had left the chamber but a few minutes before Zamorna entered it. On quitting the bedside, as he hung over his adopted sister for the last time, a single large tear, the only one anguish, bodily or mental, ever wrung from the exalted soul of the Christian philosopher, dropped on the little worn hand he held in his; and he muttered half aloud: ‘Would to God I had possessed this treasure; it should not thus have been thrown away.’

Marian’s portrait comes next to Fidena. Every one know what it is like: the small delicate features, dark blue eyes full of wild and tender enthusiasm, beautiful curls, and frail-looking form, are familiar to all; so I need not pause on a more elaborate detail.

After her the frank face of General Thornton looks out on the gazer with a hearty, welcoming aspect. You almost hear his doric accents exclaiming: ‘Well, how do you do, this evening? Fine, summer weather! I’m taking a bit of a stroll to Girnington Hall. Will ye come with me and see how the cattle thrive?’ Honest, honest Thornton! there are few men so worthy as thyself in the world. Thou hast been wronged, vilely and shamefully wronged; yet not a shadow of discontent in that smooth, broad brow, with its dashing swirl of hair, intimates that thou art an ill-used man. Never did a word of complaint fall from those fresh-coloured, well-formed lips. Hearty execrations have often poured from them, but not a single whine. Thornton bears a resemblance to Prince John; faint indeed and rather uncertain as to its locality, but still sufficient to point out their relationship. The complexions of both are fair and northern; the eyes are of similar colour: a clear and lively grey; and the nose not unlike in contour. Their forms, however, are very different, the general’s being middle-sized and somewhat stout, the duke’s tall, thin, and stately. But their minds! There the great distinction lies; no wonder they hate each other! Fire and flint could no more amalgamate than them.

Lady Maria Sneachy, a real, dazzling, brilliant, smiling beauty! What large, imperial eyes; what a magnificent neck and brow; and how haughtily she lifts her fair head with its weight of glancing black ringlets! She seems to scorn the earth which her small foot presses, and to look round in supreme contempt of beggarly man and all his trifling concerns. He may gaze at her, worship her, but let him aspire no higher. The laugh of satire that can burst from those lips is cutting to the last degree. I have seen many a wretch writhing under it, and pitied the despair with which he turned away from the royal coquette to seek happiness in a less splendid and less disdainful form. People say that Maria has found her tamer now. I know not how that is, but I think the King of Angria is too well satisfied with his present Queen, who fits herself to him and all his proud strange ways more perfectly every day, to choose even so grand a successor as Maria Sneachy would be.

Augustus, Marquis of Rosendale—young Highland Red-Deer! Fidena may be proud of his son. I never saw a child who better merited the epithet, ‘handsome,’ than does this juvenile prince. All his limbs and features are so round and regular. Look at those fleshy, plump arms naked to the shoulder; on that fair and florid face with its fearless blue eye, and the curly grace of his plentiful light hair; on that bold white forehead which will be bared yet to the mountain winds of his fatherland when he fronts them in the storm of the chase, and to the keener gales of war when he follows the sound of the trumpet and charges either to the rescue or ruin of that banner whose orb is rising, but which ere then will be in its glowing noontide. Prince John should watch Augustus; let him not follow his young god-father in infancy or he will do it hereafter in manhood.

Here the second volume closes. I now take up the first.

Fire! Light! What have we here? Zamorna’s self, blazing in the frontispiece like the sun on his own standard. De Lisle has given him to us in full regimentals—plumed, epauletted, and sabred (I wish the last were literally true, by-the-bye!). All his usual insufferableness or irresistibleness, or whatever the ladies choose to call it, surrounding him like an atmosphere, he stands as if a thunderbolt could neither blast the light of his eyes nor dash the effrontery of his brow. Keen, glorious being! tempered and bright and sharp and rapid as the scimitar at his side when whirled by the delicate yet vigorous hand that now grasps the bridle of a horse to all appearance as viciously beautiful as himself. O Zamorna! what eyes those are glancing under the deep shadow of that raven crest! They bode no good. Man nor woman could ever gather more than a troubled, fitful happiness from their kindest light, Satan gave them their glory to deepen the midnight gloom that always follows where their lustre has fallen most lovingly. This, indeed, is something different from Percy. All here is passion and fire unquenchable. Impetuous sin, stormy pride, diving and soaring enthusiasm, war and poetry, are kindling their fires in all his veins, and his wild blood boils from his heart and back again like a torrent of new-sprung lava. Young duke? Young demon! I have looked at you till words seemed to issue from your lips in those fine electric tones, as clear and profound as the silver chords of a harp, which steal affections like a charm. I think I see him bending his head to speak to the Countess Zenobia or the Princess Maria or Lady Julia or perhaps Queen Henrietta, while he whispers words that touch the heart like a ‘melody that’s sweetly played in tune.’ A low wind rises and sighs slowly onward. Suddenly his plumes rustle; their haughty shadow sweeps over his forehead; the eye, —the full, dark, refulgent eye,—lightens most gloriously; his curls are all stirred; smiles dawn on his lip. Suddenly he lifts his head, flings back the feathers, and clusters of bright hair, and, while he stands erect and god-like, his regards (as the French say) bent on the lady, whoever it be, who by this time is of course seriously debating whether he be man or angel, a momentary play of indescribable expression round the mouth, and elevation of the eyebrows, tell how the stream of thought runs at that moment; the mind which so noble a form enshrines! Detestable wretch!—I hate him!

But just opposite, separated only by a transparent sheet of silver paper, there is something different: his wife, his own matchless Henrietta! She looks at him with serene eyes as if the dew of placid thought could be shed on him by the influence of those large, clear stars. It reminds me of moonlight descending on troubled waters. I wish the parallel held good all the way, and that she was as far beyond the reach of sorrows arising from her husband’s insatiable ambition and fiery impetuosity as Dian is above the lash of the restless deep. But it is not so: her destiny is linked with his; and however strange the great river of Zamorna’s fate may flow; however awful the rapids over which it may rush; however cold and barren the banks of its channel; however wild, however darkly beached and stormily billowed the ocean into which it may finally plunge, Mary’s must follow. Fair creature! I could weep to think of it. For her sake, I hope a bright futurity for her lord; pity that the shadow of grief should ever fall where the light of such beauty shines. Every one knows how like the duchess is to her father: his very image cast in a softer—it could not be a more refined—mould. They are precisely similar, even to the very delicacy of their hands. As Byron says, her features have all the statuesque repose, the calm classic grace, that dwells on the Earl’s. She, however, has one advantage over him: the stealing, pensive brilliancy of her hazel eyes, and the peaceful sweetness of her mouth, impart a harmony to the whole which the satanic sneer fixed on the corresponding features of Northangerland’s face totally destroys. The original paintings of these two engraved portraits, namely, Zamorna’s and his lady’s, hang in the grand refectory at Wellesley House. Five hundred guineas was the sum paid for each. They are de Lisle’s, and rank amongst his most splendid chefs-d’œuvre. I know of no parallels to them, except those of Percy and Zenobia in the central saloon at Ellrington Hall. Search all the world from Iceland to Australia, and you will not find four human beings, male and female, to compare with them.

Hector Mirabeau Montmorency, Esq.! These features are somewhat stern to gaze on after such a continuation of the beautiful. They are far, however, from being harsh and disagreeable. A great deal of stuff was written some years ago about the exaggerated and grotesque character of this gentleman’s physiognomy. I remember several libellous assertions to that effect in the long since exploded catch-penny of Captain Tree’s denominated: ‘The Foundling.’^* But, indeed, where all the rest was a compound of the grossest falsehood, where Lord and Lady Ellrington, Mr. Sydney, the Duke of Wellington, the whole concern of the Philosopher’s Island,—tutors, masters of colleges, students and all,—were hashed up into one wild farrago of bombast, fustian and lies, why should the Lord of Derrinane escape more than others? It is not to be wondered at that this same work, which gave a detailed account of Zenobia Percy’s declaring in solemn soliloquy that she hated her husband—abhorred, loathed, detested her own Alexander—which afterwards showed her daring him in the most insolent language to his fate, glorifying the young Marquis of Douro, and anathematizing him; and which, to crown all, made Percy offer to commit an act that certainly was more than excusable—almost justifiable after such provocation,—namely, the final settling of so shrewish and shameless a wife, introduced a third person to prevent the deed, and made his interference successful. The volume which contained all this, I say, should excite but small accession of wonder by the few lines that describe Montmorency as a broad, low man, bandy-legged, squinting, his head covered with a shock of shaggy black hair, and his eyes of the consistency of boiled gooseberries: green, glassy, and ghost-like. The fact is Hector is a tall, well-proportioned, robust figure, with red hair, a florid complexion, an expression of eye which indicates good humour, powerful talent, and no small degree of ferocity. His countenance is certainly not so femininely elegant as that of Northangerland, nor so fierily magnificent as that of Zamorna, but it is the countenance of a gentleman and a Glass-towner, not of a brownie and a bear.

Hist! Thornton is awakening!

‘Heigho, Charles, what are ye about there?’

‘Looking at pictures.’

‘Looking at pictures? Aye, that ye are with a vengeance! Do ye see what you’ve done? Daubed your hands with ink, and then rubbed them over every other portrait in the book. Well, child, thou dost try my patience! Take away your fingers this minute. There! he’s drawn a scrawl across Lady Julia Sydney’s bonny face and spoiled the handsomest lass in the book! Leave the room and get me The Cook’s Guide: you shall learn a page of recipes for this business before ever you have a morsel of supper. Poor Julia! she’s fairly changed into a blackamoor; and there’s John with an ink mark across his forehead that makes him frown like death. Faith, that was a lucky hit! I’ve a’most a good mind to forgive you for it; but I willn’t either: there’s a hundred pounds thrown away, and I won’t have such work.’

All this was very true. While examining the portraits I had been jotting down the few remarks here contained. The ink had been communicated by the pen to my fingers, and by them to each leaf as I turned it over. If crime can be expiated by punishment, however, my sin was soon washed away. Till ten o’clock that night I was engaged in lifting up my voice over the pathetic pages of The Cook’s Guide, or, Every Man his own Housekeeper—(I think that is the title of the abomination); and, let me assure the reader, such a penalty as this might be the guerdon of graver guilt.

C. Brontë,

May 30th, 1834.