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The color of one of those Vandykes is as fine as FINE Paul Veronese, and the sentiment beautifully tender and graceful. I saw, too, an exhibition of the modern Belgian artists , the remembrance of whose pictures after a month's absence has almost entirely vanished.
The grounds are exquisite, but I was most charmed by the collection of pictures. Here were the finest Vandykes, Rubens, and Sir Joshua Reynolds which I have seen. Sir Robert Peel is a great connoisseur in art and seemed highly to enjoy them. Altogether it was a truly delightful day: the drive of fifteen miles in open carriages, and through Oxford, being of itself a high pleasure.
I had as yet seen no one in the chair, but I had noted that the table was heavily covered with papers and books, and judged that the room was a library and the table that of a busy man engaged in an endless amount of study and writing. The Vandykes, whom I had questioned on the matter, were very short in their replies.
Heaven knows where they came from, but a whole range of Pendennis portraits presently hung round the Doctor's oak dining-room; Lelys and Vandykes he vowed all the portraits to be, and when questioned as to the history of the originals, would vaguely say they were 'ancestors of his. You could see by his wife's looks that she disbelieved in these genealogical legends, for she generally endeavoured to turn the conversation when he commenced them.
Bareacres Castle was theirs, too, with all its costly pictures, furniture, and articles of vertu the magnificent Vandykes; the noble Reynolds pictures; the Lawrence portraits, tawdry and beautiful, and, thirty years ago, deemed as precious as works of real genius; the matchless Dancing Nymph of Canova, for which Lady Bareacres had sat in her youth Lady Bareacres splendid then, and radiant in wealth, rank, and beauty a toothless, bald, old woman now a mere rag of a former robe of state.
But at the rush of the night air, such a sensation of shame overpowered me that I only thought of retreat; and, declining his offer with a wild shake of the head, I dashed from the house and fled with an incomprehensible sense of relief back to that of the Vandykes. The servants, who had seen me rush towards Mr. Allison's, were still in the yard watching for me. I did not vouchsafe them a word.
A sense of authority and importance began to impress itself upon her as she sat at the head of her own table in her own dining-hall, with all the Vandykes and Holbeins and Gainsboroughs gazing placidly down upon her from their gilded frames, and the flicker of many wax candles in old silver sconces glancing upon the shields, helmets, rusty pikes and crossed swords that decorated the panelling of the walls between and above the pictures.
This was in the morning. At seven o'clock how well I remember the hour! I was sitting again in my window, waiting for the return of the Vandykes, and watching the face which had now reappeared at its usual place in the study.
That I might have time to think, and that I might be saved, if but for one day, contact with one it was almost my duty to hate, I came back to him with the plea that I might spend the day with the Vandykes instead of accompanying him down-town as usual. I think he was glad of the freedom my absence offered him, for he gave me the permission I asked, and in ten minutes I was in my old home. Mrs.
Children in woolen dresses of red retinet, or in calico vandykes and aprons, ran after the ponderous vehicle with cries of delight; the staid, mature contingent of the population shook their heads disapprovingly, while viewing with wonder the great lumbering coach, its passengers inside and out, and, behind, the large wagon with its load of miscellaneous trappings.
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