Part 13
But Potsdam is the great paradise of this neighbourhood, as we may be allowed to call it, for though nearly twenty English miles distant, a railway conveys you there in forty minutes. Here the scene is indeed changed! Here, instead of sand and monotony, you have hills, water, woods, every thing which is attractive in nature. What a splendid situation were this for a capital! The city on the plain, backed by these beautiful hills, with every possible variety of site for villas and pleasure gardens. What woods and hills, and the beautiful river Havell spreading itself broad and winding, like a succession of fine lakes! Why was not Berlin placed where Potsdam is? Possibly the Havell, broad as it looks, may not be so navigable as the Sprey, and there may lie the secret, or what a capital would it be here!
[Illustration: SANS SOUCI, GERMANY.]
Frederick the Great, however, duly appreciated the beauty of this neighbourhood. Here he delighted to retire. Steam has now converted Potsdam into a suburb of Berlin, and pours on all holidays its thousands into it, without which Potsdam were a retirement and a solitude still, for grass grows in its streets. But who cares for Potsdam itself, as it lies in its hollow, with its great old palace, and great old public buildings and barracks, and avenues of great trees, except that its old church contains the tomb of Frederick the Great, on which Napoleon heaped the incense of his praise, and from which he stole the old warrior’s sword. But the hills on the Havell, and the views of the Havell from them, the rich meadows, the wild forest scenes--these are what justify Frederick’s fondness for this spot, and who can enough enjoy them? That Frederick enjoyed them, the palaces which he has scattered through them with an extraordinary prodigality, sufficiently testify: the Palace in Potsdam, the Palace of Sans Souci, the Marble Palace, the New Palaces. That the present race enjoy them, various lovely villas, as the Charlottenhof, Grünecke, and others shew. That the last king enjoyed them, the Pfauen-Insel is a charming proof. If any one wishes to find the lost fairy-land, he must steer his course along the Havell, through a wilderness of pine woods to the Pfauen-Insel, and there he will acknowledge that he has discovered it. Around amid hills shaggy with forests the Havell pours its deep and dark waters like an inland sea. The world is shut out by the bosky shores and deep pine woods of unknown regions, and in the embracing floods lies the most delicious region which a poet’s fancy could conjure up, or which nature and art, in mutual labour, can construct from the ordinary materials of the earth. Shores of softest green, most ravishing lawns, flowers of superbest dyes and in gorgeous masses, trees of stateliest growth and gracefullest beauty of pendant boughs, invite you ever to scenes where you may wander for hours, and every few moments encounter some new surprise. Here feudal towers rise above the flood, with heraldic banners flapping over the battlements; here stately barge and light shallop lie anchored in some lonely creek; here slope sunny uplands under scattered oaks, where the shepherd watches his flock. Here you come upon a noble conservatory, beautiful with the palms and dates and glorious blossoms of tropical regions, and aromatic with their odours. If you would have any illusion to persuade you, beyond the charms of nature and of summer, that you are in a region of enchantment, you have it. You hear the roar of the lion, the cry of the jackal, and the scream of birds unknown in these climates. You imagine that some scene in Tasso or Ariosto is about to be repeated, and find actually wild beasts of all sorts in different dens and cages in various parts of the island. Such were the amusements of a king here, after he had helped to bind the great wild beast of the age on the rocks of St. Helena; and a more enchanting scene for a day’s excursion he could not have left for the pleasure of his subjects.
Amongst the numerous royal palaces we must say a good word for the New Palace, as it is called, although it has been often and much abused. If not in the purest taste, it still possesses a certain grandeur in its enormous extent, and prodigality of colonnades, porticoes, and statues connected with it. It lies low, in the meadow below Potsdam, but has a fine solitude of woods and quaint gardens about it. It is itself a good and cheerful house, and contains many paintings of much merit and beauty. It has also a theatre, in which have recently been represented, before the court, some of the dramatic pieces of Tieck. If this palace were inhabited by the king, with a full and gay court, it would, with the necessary life and bustle about it, produce far from a despicable impression.
Then there is, in the wood near, that little temple containing the second and most beautiful reposing figure of the late Queen by Rauch. We had heard this effigy much praised for its beauty; but the beauty is that of mind and heart. Representatives of far higher physical beauty we have often seen. The somewhat high cheek bones, the shape of the nose, and the general contour indeed of the countenance, depart from the pure ideal of personal beauty, but a still higher beauty distinguishes this charming statue. It is that perfect sweetness of disposition; that spirit baptized in heavenly affection; that wife-like devotion; that high and dauntless, and holy patriotism, dwelling in a meek and lowly nature, which made this excellent queen adored by the people when alive, and which glorify her image here in the cold stone.
Not far from this palace is Charlottenhof, the beautiful little villa in the Herculaneum style built by the present king, when Crown-Prince, for himself. It is fitted up with a simplicity befitting a private gentleman, but with a classical purity of taste which makes all beautiful. But Sans Souci is the great attraction of the neighbourhood. It is a mere villa perched on a hill just above Potsdam, and surrounded by the most lovely views over the meadows and wild woody banks of the Havell. The hill on which it stands is crowned with gardens in successive terraces. As you approach through the fine meadows and beneath a noble avenue of trees, broad flights of steps, ascending from terrace to terrace up to the house, and the lower part of the house half concealed from view by the swell of the hill, give a very singular appearance to the whole. It seems as if the house was surrounded by a piazza, and that those flights of steps ascended to the top, instead of to the bottom of the building. As we ascended these long flights of steps, successive terraces of the garden shewed themselves right and left, with their vines and fig-trees loaded with fruit, and with quantities of golden gourds, each perfectly round, large enough to fill a wheelbarrow, lying about; and flowers, in richest autumnal hues, glowed around. Arrived on the summit, nothing can be conceived more delicious. The fine views over the lovely country; the gardens all below you; the space before the palace full of beds of gayest flowers, and orange trees standing everywhere in blossom, diffusing through the whole air their delicious aroma. Trees of splendid growth added their beauty to the spot; the mill of the sturdy old miller shewing itself amongst them; and from a circular colonnade, on the other side of the house, a brownish, wildish, burnt-up sort of a country, with wind-mills, and an artificial ruin of a Grecian temple on a woody hill opposite, constructed with better effect than such things generally are, presented a fit landscape for an old painter.
Every part of this place abounds with recollections of the victorious old Fritz. At each end of the garden, in a green plot, are the graves of his horse and dogs, eleven in number, he having ordered himself to be laid there to complete the dozen; an order not complied with. In the house remain many memorials of him; ’mongst them the clock, which stopped exactly as he died, and his library, in which his own works are conspicuous. One volume of his poems stood open at this curious passage:
Mais, quels sont ces cries d’ Alegresse! Quels Chants! Quelles acclamations! Les Français plein de son yvresse Semble vainqueur des Nations. Il l’ est; et voilà qui s’ avance La Pompe du jeune Louis: L’Anglais a perdu sa Balance, L’Autricien, son insolence, Et la Balave encore surpris En grondant bénit La Clemence De ce Héros, dont l’ indulgence----
The wall of the room occupied here by Voltaire is painted all over monkeys and parrots. They tell you that Frederick, being desirous to have a portrait of the ugly old Frenchman, to which he would not consent, the king employed a painter to observe him by stealth from the next room whenever the door was opened, which Voltaire becoming aware of, clapped a screen before his table; and Frederick to mortify him, caused the whole of the walls of his room, the first opportunity, to be thus adorned with monkeys and parrots, as indicative of his person and loquacity. Poor Frederick paid dearly in his lifetime, in annoyance, for his propensity to French philosophy; and his country paid still more so for it after his death.
WHITEHALL PALACE
LEIGH HUNT
The whole district containing all that collection of streets and houses, which extends from Scotland Yard to Parliament Street, and from the river side, with its wharfs, to St. James’s Park, and which is still known by the general appellation of Whitehall, was formerly occupied by a sumptuous palace and its appurtenances, the only relics of which, perhaps the noblest specimen, is the beautiful edifice built by Inigo Jones, and retaining its old name of the Banqueting-House.
As this palace was the abode of a series of English sovereigns, beginning with Henry the Eighth, who took it from Wolsey, and terminating with James the Second, on whose downfall it was destroyed by fire, we are now in the very thick of the air of royalty.
[Illustration: WHITEHALL PALACE, ENGLAND.]
The site of Whitehall was originally occupied by a mansion built by Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent and Chief Justice of England in the reign of Henry the Third, one of the ancestors of the present Marquess of Clanricarde. De Burgh bequeathed it to the brotherhood of the Black Friars, near “Oldborne,” in whose church he was buried; the Brotherhood sold it to Walter Gray, Archbishop of York, who left it to his successors in that see as the archiepiscopal residence, which procured it the name of York Place; and under that name, two centuries and a half afterwards, it became celebrated for the pomp and splendour of the “full-blown” priest, Wolsey, the magnificent butcher’s son. Wolsey, on highly probable evidence, is thought to have so improved and enlarged the mansion of his predecessors, as to have in a manner rebuilt it, and given it its first royalty of aspect: but, as we shall see by and by, it was not called Whitehall, nor occupied anything like the space it did afterwards, till its seizure by the Cardinal’s master.
On the Cardinal’s downfall, Henry seized his house and goods, and converted York Place into a royal residence, under the title of Westminster Place, then, for the first time, called also Whitehall.
“It is not impossible,” says Mr. Brayley (Londiniana Vol. II., p. 27), “that the Whitehall, properly so called, was erected by Wolsey, and obtained its name from the newness and freshness of its appearance, when compared with the ancient buildings of York Place. Shakespeare in his play of _King Henry VIII._, makes one of the interlocutors say, in describing the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn:--
‘So she parted, And with the same full state paced back again To York Place, where the feast is held.’
To this is replied--
‘Sir, you Must no more call it York Place--that is past. For since the Cardinal fell, that title’s lost. ’Tis now the King’s, and called Whitehall.’”
It was in Whitehall that Henry made his ill-assorted marriage with Anne Boleyn; Dr. Lingard says in a “garret”; Stowe says in the royal “closet.” It is likely enough that the ceremony was hurried and sudden;--a fit of will, perhaps, during his wine; and if the closet was not ready, the garret was. The clergyman who officiated was shortly afterwards made a bishop.
Henry died in Whitehall; so fat, that he was lifted in and out his chamber and sitting-room by means of machinery.
“He was “_somewhat_ gross, or, as we tearme it, bourlie,” says time-serving Holinshed.
He _laboured_ under the burden of an extreme fit and unwieldy body,” says noble Herbert of Cherbury.
It was under this Prince (as already noticed) that the palace of the Archbishop of York first became the “King’s Palace at Westminster,” and expanded into that mass of houses which stretched to St. James’s Park. He built a gate-house which stood across what is now the open street, and a gallery connecting the two places, and overlooking a tilt-yard; and on the park-side he built a cockpit, a tennis-court, and alleys for bowling; for although he put women to death, he was fond of manly sports. He was also a patron of the fine arts, and gave an annuity and rooms in the palace to the celebrated Holbein, who is said to have designed the gate, as well as decorated the interior.
The reader is to bear in mind that the street in front of the modern Banqueting-House was always open, as it is now, from Charing Cross to King Street, narrowing opposite to the south end of the Banqueting-House, at which point the gate looked up it towards the Cross. Just opposite the Banqueting-House on the site of the present Horse-Guards, was the Tilt-yard. The whole mass of houses and gardens on the river side comprised the royal residence. Down this open street, then, just as people walk now, we may picture to ourselves Henry coming with his regal pomp, and Wolsey with his priestly; Sir Thomas More strolling thoughtfully, perhaps talking with quiet-faced Erasmus; Holbein, looking about him with an artist’s eyes; Surrey coming gallantly in his cloak and feather, as Holbein has painted him; and a succession of Henry’s wives, with their flitting groups on horseback or under canopy;--handsome, stately Catherine of Arragon; laughing Anne Boleyn; quiet Jane Seymour; gross-bodied but sensible Anne of Cleves; demure Catherine Howard, who played such pranks before marriage; and disputatious yet buxom Catherine Parr, who survived one tyrant to become the broken-hearted wife of a smaller one. Down this road, also came gallant companies of knights and squires, to the tilting-yard; but of them we shall have more to say in the time of Elizabeth.
We see little of Edward the Sixth, and less of Lady Jane Grey and Queen Mary, in connection with Whitehall. Edward once held the Parliament there, on account of his sickly condition; and he used to hear Latimer preach in the Privy Garden (still so called), where a pulpit was erected for him on purpose. As there are gardens there still to the houses erected on the spot, one may stand by the rails, and fancy we hear the voice of the rustical but eloquent and honest prelate, rising through the trees.
It was under Elizabeth that Whitehall shone out in all its romantic splendour. It was no longer the splendour of Wolsey alone, nor of Henry alone, or with a great name by his side now and then; but of a Queen, surrounded and worshipped through a long reign by a galaxy of the brightest minds and most chivalrous persons ever assembled in English history.
Here she comes, turning the corner from the Strand, under a canopy of state, leaving the noisier, huzzaing multitude behind the barriers that mark the precincts of the palace, and bending her eyes hither and thither, in acknowledgment of the kneeling obeisances of the courtiers. Beside her are Cecil and Knolles, and Northampton, and Bacon’s father; or, later in life, Leicester, and Burleigh, and Sir Philip Sydney, and Greville, and Sir Francis Drake, (and Spenser is looking on); or, later still, Essex and Raleigh, and Bacon himself, and Southampton, Shakespeare’s friend, with Shakespeare among the spectators. We shall see her, by and by, at that period, as brought to life to us in the description of Hentzner the traveller. At present (as we have her at this moment in our eye) she is younger, of a large and tall, but well-made figure, with fine eyes, and finer hands, which she is fond of displaying. We are too apt to think of Elizabeth as thin and elderly, and patched up; but for a good period of her life she was plump and personable, warranting the history of the robust romps of the Lord Admiral, Seymour; and till her latter days (and even then, as far as her powers went), we are always to fancy her at once spirited and stately of carriage, impulsive (except on occasions of ordinary ceremony), and ready to manifest her emotions in look and voice, whether as woman or Queen; in a word, a sort of Henry the Eighth corrected by a female nature and a better understanding--or perhaps an Anne Boleyn, enlarged, and made less feminine by the father’s grossness. The Protestants have represented her as too staid, and the Catholics as too violent and sensual. According to the latter, Whitehall was a mere sink of iniquity. It was not likely to be so, for many reasons; but neither, on the other hand, do we take it to have been anything like the pattern of self-denial which some fond writers have supposed. Where there is power, and leisure, and luxury, though of the most legitimate kind, and refinement, though of the most intellectual, self-denial on the side of enjoyment is not apt to be the reigning philosophy; nor would it reasonably be looked for in any court, at all living in wealth and splendour.
Imagine the sensations of Elizabeth, when she first set down in the palace at Whitehall, after escaping the perils of imputed illegitimacy, of confinement for party’s sake and for religion’s, and all the other terrors of her father’s reign and of Mary’s, danger of death itself not excepted. She was a young Queen of twenty-five years of age, healthy, sprightly, good-looking, with plenty of will, power, and imagination; and the gallantest spirits of the age were at her feet.
The Court of James the First was a great falling off from that of Elizabeth, in point of decency. It was Sir Toby keeping house after the death of Olivia; or a fox-hunting squire succeeding to the estate of some courtly dame and mingling low life with high.
We have seen court mummeries in the time of Henry the Eighth and pageants in that of Elizabeth. In the time of James, the masquings of the one, and the gorgeous shows of the other, combined to produce the Masque, in its latest and best acceptation; that is, a dramatic exhibition of some brief fable or allegory, uniting the most fanciful poetry and scenery, and generally heightened with a contrast of humour, or an anti-masque. Ben Jonson was their great poetical master in the court of James and Inigo Jones claimed to be their no less masterly and important setter-forth in scene and show. The poet and artist had a quarrel upon this issue, and Inigo’s’ memory suffers from divers biting libels in the works of his adversary. The noble Banqueting-House remains to show that the architect might have had some right to dispute pretensions, even with the author of the _Alchemist_ and the _Sad Shepherd_; for it is a piece of the very music of his art (if we may so speak)--the harmony of proportion. Within these walls, as we now see them, rose, “like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,” the elegant lines of Ben Jonson, breathing court flowers,--the clouds and painted columns of Jones--and the fair faces, gorgeous dresses, and dances, of the beauties that dazzled the young eyesight of the Miltons and Wallers. Ben’s burly body would then break out, as it were, after his more refined soul, in some burlesque anti-masque, now and then not a little coarse; and the sovereign and the poet most probably concluded the night in the same manner, though not at the same table in filling their skins with wine.
The Court of Charles I. was decorum and virtue itself in comparison with that of James. Drunkenness disappeared; there were no scandalous favourites; Buckingham alone retained his ascendency as the friend and assistant; and the king manifested his notions of the royal dignity by a stately reserve. Little remained externally of the old Court but its splendour; and to this a new lustre was given by a taste for painting and the patronage of Rubens and Vandyke. Charles was a great collector of pictures. He was still fonder of poetry than his father, retained Ben Jonson as his laureate, encouraged Sandys, and May, and Carew, and was a fond reader of Spenser and Shakespeare. It was, upon the whole a grave and graceful court, not without an undercurrent of intrigue.
It seems ridiculous to talk of the court of Oliver Cromwell, who had so many severe matters to attend to in order to keep himself on his throne; but he had a court, nevertheless; and however jealously it was watched by the most influential of his adherents, it grew more courtly as his protectorate advanced.
But how shall we speak of the court of Charles II.? of that unblushing seminary for the misdirection of young ladies, which, occupying the ground now inhabited by all which is proper, rendered the mass of buildings by the water’s side, from Charing Cross to the Parliament, one vast--what are we to call it?--
“Chi mi darà le voci e le parole Convenienti a sì nobil soggetto?”
Let Mr. Pepys explain. Let Clarendon explain. Let all the world explain, who equally reprobate the place and its master, and yet somehow are so willing to hear it reprobated, that they read endless accounts of it, old and new, from the not very bashful _exposé_ of the Count de Grammont, down to the blushing deprecations of Mrs. Jameson.
The Court of James II. is hardly worth mention. It lasted less than four years, and was as dull as himself. The most remarkable circumstance attending it was the sight of friars and confessors, and the brief restoration of Popery. Waller, too, was once seen there; the _fourth_ court of his visiting. There was a poetess also, who appears to have been attached by regard as well as office to the Court of James--Anne Kingswill, better known by her subsequent title of Countess of Winchelsea. The attachment was most probably one of feeling only and good nature, for she had no bigotry of any sort. Dryden, furthermore, was laureate to King James; and in a fit of politic, perhaps real, regret, turned round upon the late court in his famous comparison of it with its predecessor.
James fled from England in December, 1688, and the history of Whitehall terminates with its conflagration ten years afterwards.
THE CASTLE OF KRONBORG
HORACE MARRYAT