Besides those
incomparable portraits of Lady Oxford, of Liberti the Organist of
Antwerp, and others better than the best of any other man, there are a
few large and elaborate compositions such as I have never seen
elsewhere. The principal one is the Capture of Christ by Night in the
Garden of Gethsemane, which has all the strength of Rubens, with a more
refined study of attitudes and a greater delicacy of tone and touch.
Another is the Crowning with Thorns, - although of less dimensions, of
profound significance in expression, and a flowing and marrowy softness
of execution. You cannot survey the work of Van Dyck in this collection,
so full of deep suggestion, showing an intellect so vivid and so
refined, a mastery of processes so thorough and so intelligent, without
the old wonder of what he would have done in that ripe age when Titian
and Murillo and Shakespeare wrought their best and fullest, and the old
regret for the dead, - as Edgar Poe sings, the doubly dead in that they
died so young. We are tempted to lift the veil that hides the unknown,
at least with the furtive hand of conjecture; to imagine a field of
unquenched activity where the early dead, free from the clogs and
trammels of the lower world, may follow out the impulses of their
diviner nature, - where Andrea has no wife, and Raphael and Van Dyck no
disease, - where Keats and Shelley have all eternity for their lofty
rhyme, - where Ellsworth and Koerner and the Lowell boys can turn their
alert and athletic intelligence to something better than war.
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
I have sometimes thought that a symptom of the decay of true kinghood in
modern times is the love of monarchs for solitude. In the early days
when monarchy was a real power to answer a real want, the king had no
need to hide himself. He was the strongest, the most knowing, the most
cunning. He moved among men their acknowledged chief. He guided and
controlled them. He never lost his dignity by daily use. He could steal
a horse like Diomede, he could mend his own breeches like Dagobert, and
never tarnish the lustre of the crown by it. But in later times the
throne has become an anachronism. The wearer of a crown has done nothing
to gain it but give himself the trouble to be born. He has no claim to
the reverence or respect of men. Yet he insists upon it, and receives
some show of it. His life is mainly passed in keeping up this battle for
a lost dignity and worship. He is given up to shams and ceremonies.
To a life like this there is something embarrassing in the movement and
activity of a great city. The king cannot join in it without a loss of
prestige. Being outside of it, he is vexed and humiliated by it. The
empty forms become nauseous in the midst of this honest and wholesome
reality of out-of-doors.
Hence the necessity of these quiet retreats in the forests, in the
water-guarded islands, in the cloud-girdled mountains. Here the world is
not seen or heard. Here the king may live with such approach to nature
as his false and deformed education will allow. He is surrounded by
nothing but the world of servants and courtiers, and it requires little
effort of the imagination to consider himself chief and lord.
It was this spirit which in the decaying ripeness of the Bourbon dynasty
drove the Louis from Paris to Versailles and from Versailles to Marly.
Millions were wasted to build the vast monument of royal fatuity, and
when it was done the Grand Monarque found it necessary to fly from time
to time to the sham solitude and mock retirement he had built an hour
away.
When Philip V. came down from France to his splendid exile on the throne
of Spain, he soon wearied of the interminable ceremonies of the
Cas-tilian court, and finding one day, while hunting, a pleasant farm on
the territory of the Segovian monks, flourishing in a wrinkle of the
Guadarrama Mountains, he bought it, and reared the Palace of La Granja.
It is only kings who can build their castles in the air of palpable
stones and mortar. This lordly pleasure-house stands four thousand feet
above the sea level. On this commanding height, in this savage Alpine
loneliness, in the midst of a scenery once wildly beautiful, but now
shorn and shaven into a smug likeness of a French garden, Philip passed
all the later years of his gloomy and inglorious life.
It has been ever since a most tempting summer-house to all the Bourbons.
When the sun is calcining the plains of Castile, and the streets of
Madrid are white with the hot light of midsummer, this palace in the
clouds is as cool and shadowy as spring twilights. And besides, as all
public business is transacted in Madrid, and La Granja is a day's
journey away, it is too much trouble to send a courier every day for the
royal signature, - or, rather, rubric, for royalty in Spain is above
handwriting, and gives its majestic approval with a flourish of the
pen, - so that everything waits a week or so, and much business goes
finally undone; and this is the highest triumph of Spanish industry and
skill.
We had some formal business with the court of the regent, and were not
sorry to learn that his highness would not return to the capital for
some weeks, and that consequently, following the precedent of a certain
prophet, we must go to the mountain.
We found at the Estacion del Norte the state railway carriage of her
late majesty, - a brilliant creation of yellow satin and profuse gilding,
a bovidoir on wheels, - not too full of a distinguished company.
