A Love Story. William Harvey Christie
of the Spanish school! Would I could ransack their ancient monasteries, and bring a few of them to light!
"You are a chess player! Pass not by this check-mate of Caravaggio's. What undisguised triumph in one countenance! What a struggle to repress nature's feelings in the other! Here is a Guido! sweet, as his ever are! He may justly be styled the female laureat. What artist can compete with him in delineating the blooming expression, or the tender, but lighter, shades of female loveliness? who can pause between even the Fornarina, and that divine effort, the Beatrice Cenci of the Barberini?"
The party were by this time assembled. Besides our immediate friends, there was his Grace the Duke of Gatten, a good-natured fox-hunting nobleman, whose estate adjoined Mr. Græme's; there was the Viscount Chambéry, who had penned a pamphlet on finance--indited a folio on architecture--and astonished Europe with an elaborate dissertation on modern cookery; there was Charles Selby, the poet and essayist; Daintrey, the sculptor--a wonderful Ornithologist--a deep read Historian--a learned Orientalist--and a novelist, from France; whose works exhibited such unheard of horrors, and made man and woman so irremediably vicious, as to make this young gentleman celebrated, even in Paris--that Babylonian sink of iniquity.
Dinner was announced, and our host, giving his arm very stoically to Mrs. Glenallan, his love of former days, led the way to the dining-room. Round the table were placed beautifully carved oaken fauteuils, of a very old pattern. The service of plate was extremely plain, but of massive gold. But the lamp! It was of magnificent dimensions! The light chains hanging from the frescoed ceiling, the links of which were hardly perceptible, were of silver, manufactured in Venice; the lower part was of opal-tinted glass, exactly portraying some voluptuous couch, on which the beautiful Amphitrite might have reclined, as she hastened through beds of coral to crystal grot, starred with transparent stalactites. In the centre of this shell, were sockets, whence verged small hollow golden tubes, resembling in shape and size the stalks of a flower. At the drooping ends of these, were lamps shaped and coloured to imitate the most beauteous flowers of the parterre. This bouquet of light had been designed by Mr. Græme. Few novelties had acquired greater celebrity than the Græme astrale. The room was warmed by heating the pedestals of the statues.
"Potage à la fantôme, and à l'ourika."
"I will trouble you, Græme," said my Lord Chambéry, "for the fantôme. I have dined on la pritannière for the last three months, and a novel soup is a novel pleasure."
Of the fish, the soles were à la Rowena, the salmon à l'amour. Emily flirted with the wing of a chicken sauté au suprême, coquetted with perdrix perdu masqué à la Montmorenci, and tasted a boudin à la Diebitsch. The wines were excellent--the Geisenheim delicious--the Champagne sparkling like a pun of Jekyll's. But nothing aroused the attention of the Viscount Chambéry so much as a liqueur, which Mr. Græme assured him was new, and had just been sent him by the Conte de Desir. The dessert had been some time on the table, when the Viscount addressed his host.
"Græme! I am delighted to find that you at length agree with me as to the monstrous superiority of a French repast. Your omelette imaginaire was faultless, and as for your liqueur, I shall certainly order a supply on my return to Paris."
"That liqueur, my dear lord," replied Mr. Græme, "is good old cowslip mead, with a flask of Maraschino di Zara infused in it. For the rest, the dinner has been almost as imaginaire as the omelet. The greater part of the recipes are in an old English volume in my library, or perhaps some owe their origin to the fertile invention of my housekeeper. Let us style them à la Dorothée."
"Capital! I thank you, Græme!" said his Grace of Gatten, as he shook his host by the hand, till the tears stood in his eyes.
The prescient Chambéry had made a good dinner, and bore the joke philosophically. Coffee awaited the gentlemen in a small octagonal chamber, adjoining the music room. There stood Mr. Græme's three favourite modern statues:--a Venus, by Canova--a Discobole, by Thorwaldson--and a late acquisition--the Ariadne, of Dannecker.
"This is the work of an artist," said Mr. Græme, "little known in this country, but in Germany ranking quite as high as Thorwaldson. This is almost a duplicate of his Ariadne at Frankfort, but the marble is much more pure. How wonderfully fine the execution! Pray notice the bold profile of the face; how energetic her action as she sits on the panther!"
Mr. Græme touched the spring of a window frame. A curtain of crimson gauze fell over a globe lamp, and threw a rich shade on the marble. The features remained as finely chiselled, but their expression was totally changed.
They adjourned to the music-room, which deserved its title. Save some seats, which were artfully formed to resemble lyres, nothing broke the continuity of music's tones, which ascended majestically to the lofty dome, there to blend and wreath, and fall again. At one extremity of music's hall was an organ; at the other a grand piano, built by a German composer. Ranged on carved slabs, at intermediate distances, was placed almost every instrument that may claim a votary. Of viols, from the violin to the double bass,--of instruments of brass, from trombones and bass kettledrums even unto trumpet and cymbal,--of instruments of wood, from winding serpents to octave flute,--and of fiddles of parchment, from the grosse caisse to the tambourine. Nor were ancient instruments wanting. These were of quaint forms and diverse constructions. Mr. Græme would descant for hours on an antique species of spinnet, which he procured from the East, and which he vehemently averred, was the veritable dulcimer. He would display with great gusto, his specimens of harps of Israel; whose deep-toned chorus, had perchance thrilled through the breast of more than one of Judea's dark-haired daughters. Greece, too, had her representatives, to remind the spectators that there had been an Orpheus. There were flutes of the Doric and of the Phrygian mode, and--let us forget not--the Tyrrhenian trumpet, with its brazen-cleft pavilion. But by far the greater part of his musical relics he had acquired during his stay in Italy. He could show the litui with their carved clarions--the twisted cornua--the tuba, a trumpet so long and taper,--the concha wound by Tritons--and eke the buccina, a short and brattling horn.
Belliston Græme was an enthusiastic musician; and was in this peculiar, that he loved the science for its simplicity. Musicians are but too apt to give to music's detail and music's difficulties the homage that should be paid to music's self: in this resembling the habitual man of law, who occasionally forgetteth the great principles of jurisprudence, and invests with mysterious agency such words as latitat and certiorari. The soul of music may not have fled;--for we cultivate her assiduously,--worship Handel--and appreciate Mozart. But music now springs from the head, not the heart; is not for the mass, but for individuals. With our increased researches, and cares, and troubles, we have lost the faculty of being pleased. Past are those careless days, when the shrill musette, or plain cittern and virginals, could with their first strain give motion to the blythe foot of joy, or call from its cell the prompt tear of pity. Those days are gone! Music may affect some of us as deeply, but none as readily!
Mr. Græme had received from Paris an unpublished opera of Auber's. Emily seated herself at the piano--her host took the violin--Clarendon was an excellent flute player--and the tinkle of the Viscount's guitar came in very harmoniously. By the time refreshments were introduced, Charles Selby too was in his glory. He had already nearly convulsed the Orientalist by a theory which he said he had formed, of a gradual metempsychosis, or, at all events, perceptible amalgamation, of the yellow Qui Hi to the darker Hindoo; which said theory he supported by the most ingenious arguments.
"How did you like your stay in Scotland, Mr. Selby?" said Sir Henry Delmé.
"I am a terrible Cockney, Sir Henry,--found it very cold, and was very sulky. The only man I cared to see in Scotland was at the Lakes; but I kept a register of events, which is now on the table in my dressing-room. If Græme will read it, for I am but a stammerer, it is at your service."
The paper was soon produced, and Mr. Græme read the following:--
"The Brahmin.
"A stranger arrived from a far and foreign country. His was a mind peculiarly humble, tremblingly alive to its own deficiencies. Yet, endowed with this mistrust, he sighed for information, and his soul thirsted in the pursuit of knowledge. Thus constituted, he sought the city he had long dreamingly looked up