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The roof was of bark, and the whole interior was stained by the smoke into a rich dark brown, such as Teniers or our own beloved Cattermole would delight in. You entered by a door in one of the long sides, and saw that the whole of the end on your right was taken up by a large fireplace, on which blazed a pile of timber.
It was a busy and cheerful scene. The Church of the Nativity, with the adjoining convents, forms a vast and noble Christian structure. It was such a scene as Cattermole might paint. Knights and Crusaders may have witnessed a similar one. You could fancy them issuing out of the narrow little portal, and so greeted by the swarms of swarthy clamorous women and merchants and children.
In later years, especially in the last half of the eighteenth century, we have Copley Fielding; Prout, with his picturesque sepia drawings, the detail of his architecture in brown ink; Harding; Bonnington, really a great man; Clarkson Stanfield; Rowbotham; David Roberts; James Holland; Cattermole, who declined a knighthood and whose intimates were Dickens, Disraeli, and Thackeray; and so on down to the men of to-day, who are so well and ably represented in the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy and the present English Water Color Societies.
. . . Our other guests were Miss Henney, Forster, Cattermole, Browning, and Mr. Munro. Mr. Browning was very popular with the whole party; his simple and enthusiastic manner engaged attention, and won opinions from all present; he looks and speaks more like a youthful poet than any man I ever saw. This New-Year's-Eve visit brought Browning and Forster together for the first time.
But if the outside was like a barn, the inside was like a beautiful mediæval interior by Cattermole an interior abounding in rich and costly detail; in heavy crimson draperies, precious old Italian cabinets, damascened armor, carved chairs with upright backs and twisted legs, old paintings in massive Florentine frames, and strange quaint pieces of Elizabethan furniture, like buffets, with open shelves full of rare and artistic things bronzes, ivory carvings, unwieldy Majolica jars, and lovely goblets of antique Venetian glass laced with spiral ornaments of blue and crimson and that dark emerald green of which the secret is now lost for ever.
Cattermole kept in a genteel fashion in a basement three doors from his rooming-house on Tavistock Place. After his night of fear and tragic portents he resented the general flowered-paper-napkin aspect of Mrs. Cattermole's establishment.
Griffiths afterwards translated his laconism for me as an invitation to come to see him if I ever came back to England, and added that though he was in the worst of tempers when he came in, and made him expect that I should be insulted, he was in fact unusually cordial, and he had never seen him receive a stranger with such friendliness except in the case of Cattermole, for whom he had a strong liking.
My father brought home one day, as a gift to my mother, a handsome quarto called ``The Gallery of British Artists. It contained engravings from pictures by Turner, Stanfield, Cattermole, and others, mainly representing scenes from Shakspere, Scott, Burns, picturesque architecture, and beautiful views in various parts of Europe. Of this book I never tired.
"Oh!" said Wyndham, who had been one of the combatants, "he gave Watkins and Cattermole a hiding, and swore he'd allow no removes from the Limpets' eleven to the school second this term if there was any more row." This reply by no means added to Riddell's comfort. "Gave Cattermole and Watkins a hiding." Fancy his attempting to give Cattermole and Watkins a hiding!
The oak panelling was painted white, a barbarity on the part of those modern Goths the West End decorators, but a charming background for quaint Venetian mirrors, hanging shelves of curious old china, dainty little groups of richly-bound duodecimos, brackets, bronzes, freshest flowers in majolica jars; water-colour sketches by Hunt, Prout, Cattermole, and Edward Duncan; sage-green silk curtains; black and gold furniture, and all the latest prettinesses of the new Jacobean school.
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