Sir Joshua Reynolds Part 8

It is perhaps after some such escapade as this that we see him in the picture, link in hand, pausing to look back with a smile of suppressed amus.e.m.e.nt at some of his victims. It seems very odd to find Cupid in such surroundings, and especially to see the little G.o.d hampered by the clumsy garments of mortals. They are old and ragged, the cast-off finery such as is picked up by street gamins. The child's hair is tossed about his head in unkempt locks, and altogether he looks the part to perfection.

Yet there are unmistakable signs of his ident.i.ty in the wings spread from his shoulders. If you look closely, too, you can see through the rip in his sleeve the quiver of arrows which the sly fellow thought to hide under his coat. The face and expression could belong alone to Cupid. The mouth is shaped in a genuine Cupid's bow, and the pointed chin shows his astuteness. Mischief lurks in the corners of the eyes and in the curve of his mouth.

The Cupid as Link Boy is one of a number of fancy pictures which Sir Joshua Reynolds painted for his own pleasure. His portrait orders were nearly all from the wealthy and aristocratic cla.s.ses, and the artist would not have been content without a greater variety of subjects than this work afforded. He had a fertile imagination for ideal or "fancy"

subjects, particularly for those of a humorous nature. Often when he chanced to be driving through the streets his attention would be attracted by some little waif, and he would take the child back to his studio for a model. Our picture is from one of these mischievous London street boys, whose face reappears in several other works.

XIII

THE HON. ANNE BINGHAM

Miss Anne Bingham was one of the many aristocratic ladies whose portraits Reynolds painted, and one of the most interesting of this cla.s.s of sitters. Her vivacious face looking into ours wins us at once, and we should be glad to know more of the charming original.

Anne Bingham was the youngest daughter of Sir Charles Bingham, who in 1776 was created Baron Lucan. Her mother, Lady Lucan, was a remarkably talented woman, trying her hand with success at modelling, painting, and poetry. She was ambitious to be an intellectual leader, and like several other ladies of the time entertained after the fashion of the French salons, inviting people of wit and learning to meet in her drawing-room for discussion. Her artistic work was really remarkable.

Encouraged by the advice and help of Horace Walpole, she became a skilful copyist, and it is said imitated the works of some earlier painters with a genius that fairly depreciated the originals!

It was thus in exceptionally artistic and intellectual surroundings that Anne grew out of girlhood. Her oldest sister, Lavinia, who afterwards became Countess Spencer, inherited the mother's artistic tastes, and was likewise a favorite with Horace Walpole.

The two daughters were both charming in appearance, and there was a certain sisterly resemblance between them. If Lavinia's eyes were a bit more sparkling, judged by the portraits, Anne's mouth was smaller and more daintily modelled. As a frequent guest in their mother's drawing-room, Sir Joshua must have known both the young ladies. Of the elder he painted several portraits; of the younger, but this one, executed in 1786.

It was a natural and appropriate idea that Miss Anne's portrait should be made in a style similar to one of her sister, as a companion picture. Both were represented in half-length figure, wearing white kerchiefs and broad-brimmed hats.

Those must have been pleasant sittings which gave the veteran portrait painter Miss Anne for a subject.[17] Plainly there was a perfect sympathy between sitter and painter. The smile the lady turns towards the easel is as nave as that of Miss Bowles herself. She watches his clever work with an artist's delight, and with the simple spirit of a child.

[Footnote 17: When her father was created an earl in 1795, she became Lady Anne.]

Nothing could be more distasteful to such a character than the affected pose of a woman of fashion. She has dropped into a chair with a careless grace all her own, and tells the painter she is ready. He takes up his brush, and lo, the very essence of her smile is transferred to his canvas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HON. ANNE BINGHAM]

We praise the delicate rendering of the gauzy kerchief veiling her neck, but it is far less wonderful than the delicate interpretation of her expression. The fine sensitiveness of her nature, her lively fancy and sense of humor, her playfulness, her coquetry, her impulsiveness, her volatile temperament--all this we read in the shining eyes and the smiling mouth, though no one can say how they were made to tell so much. The signs of her birth and breeding are in every line, yet she is something of a Bohemian too. There is a delightful sense of camaraderie in her smile.

There is a certain portrait by Leonardo da Vinci known as the Mona Lisa, and famous for its baffling smile. There is a tantalizing quality about it which makes one forever wonder what the lady is thinking about and why she is smiling. Nothing could be more in contrast than this smile of Miss Bingham. There is no mystery in it, but rather it takes us into her confidence in the most winning way.

The costume interests us not only as a reminder of bygone fashions, but for its picturesqueness. The bodice is ornamented only by the big b.u.t.tons by which it is laced. A narrow belt finishes it at the waist, with a small buckle in front.

The hair is frizzed in puffy ma.s.ses about the face, escaping in a few curls which fall over the shoulders. This was evidently the favorite coiffure in the year 1786, as the portrait of the d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire with her Child, painted in the same year, shows precisely the same style. Both ladies also wear low-cut bodices with kerchiefs arranged in the same manner. The finishing touch of Miss Bingham's costume is the big straw hat worn aslant on the back of the head.

It has been a favorite device of great portrait painters to dress their sitters in all sorts of fanciful headwear. Rembrandt's portraits show an endless variety of caps, turbans, and hats. Rubens was fond of painting broad-brimmed hats shading the face, one of his celebrated pictures being a study of this kind called Le Chapeau de Paille (The Straw Hat).

Now Reynolds was to some extent an imitator of these two men, and it may be he learned something from their pictures about hats. However that may be, we see how the hat here proves very effective in bringing the head into harmonious relation with the whole composition. The brim describes a diagonal line parallel with the line made by the kerchief over the left shoulder. The kerchief on the right shoulder falls in a line parallel with the left arm.

A composition based on short diagonal lines like these is as different as possible in character from one of long flowing curves like Hope.

Each one is appropriate to its own subject.

XIV

THE STRAWBERRY GIRL

Village life in England before the time of railroads had a picturesque charm which it has since lost except in remote districts. We learn something about it in Miss Mitford's sketches of "Our Village" and in Miss Edgeworth's "Tales." From such books it is delightful to reconstruct in imagination some of these rural scenes; the wide meadows where the cowslips grow, the brooks running beneath the hawthorns and alders, the lanes winding between hedgerows, the green common where the cricketers play, the low cottages covered to the roof with vines, and the trim gardens gay with pinks and larkspur. These villages are connected with the outside world only by the postcart and chapman. Here modest little girls like Miss Mitford's Hannah and Miss Edgeworth's Simple Susan move about their daily tasks and run on their errands of mercy.

Now Sir Joshua Reynolds was a native of Devonshire, a beautiful English district which all born Devons love with peculiar devotion, as we may see from Charles Kingsley's descriptions in "Water-babies."

From time to time in his busy life the painter returned to his home for a breath of country air. On one of these visits he brought back to London with him his young niece Theophila Palmer, whose father had just died. Offy, as she was called, soon became the pet of her bachelor uncle's household, of which she long remained a member. As she flitted about the house the little country-bred girl with her fresh healthy beauty was a constant reminder to the painter of the woods and fields. Perhaps one day as he was looking at her with special pleasure the picture suddenly flashed upon his fancy of Offy in the character of a village maid. The idea developed into the Strawberry Girl, for which Offy sat as model.

A little girl has been sent on an errand along a lonely road leading out of the village. It may be that like little Red Riding Hood in the nursery tale she is carrying some dainties to her grandmother. A basket of strawberries hangs on her arm, and her ap.r.o.n also seems to be filled with something, for it is gathered up in front like a bag, the corners dropping over the arm.

Twilight begins to fall as she comes to a turn of the road overshadowed by a high rock. There are all sorts of queer noises and shadows here, and she steals timidly past the eerie place, peering forward with big eyes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE STRAWBERRY GIRL]

Yet she is a womanly child, who will not easily be turned back. She feels the importance of her errand, and is worthy of the trust. The simple low-cut gown is that of a village maid. An odd cap, something like a turban, covers her head and adds a trifle to her height and dignity. Her round face and chubby neck would be the envy of the puny city child who knows not the luxury of big porringers of bread and milk. If her hands are rather too delicately moulded for those of a country child we must remember again that Reynolds was painting from his own little niece.

In imagination we follow the little maid about the simple round of her childish pursuits. Every morning she goes demurely to school to fix her thoughts on "b.u.t.ton holes and spelling books." Perhaps it is a dame school like that in "Water Babies," with a "shining clean stone floor and curious old prints on the wall and a cuckoo clock in the corner," Here some dozen children sit on benches "gabbling Chris-cross," while a nice old woman in a red petticoat and white cap hears them from the chimney corner.

Our little girl has duties at home as well, and is sometimes seen, a pitcher in one hand and a mop in the other, making the house tidy. She can boil potatoes, sh.e.l.l the beans, feed the hens, and make herself useful in many ways.

On rare occasions she has a holiday in the fields, and then what joy it is in spring and early summer to find the haunts of the wild flowers which grow in such abundance in the English country. Miss Mitford writes of a wonderful field where bloomed in season, "primroses, yellow, purple, and white, violets of either hue, cowslips, oxlips, arums, orchises, wild hyacinths, ground ivy, pansies, strawberries, and heart's ease, covering the sunny open slope under a weeping birch."

A favorite game is making cowslip b.a.l.l.s. The tufts of golden flowerets are first nipped off with short stems, until a quant.i.ty are gathered.

Then the ribbon is held ready and the cl.u.s.ters are nicely balanced across it until a long garland is made, when they are pressed closely together and tied into a sweet golden ball.

When we remember that the little Offy, who was the original Strawberry Girl, was transplanted from her Devonshire home to the great city of London, we are interested to know something of her after life. She grew to be as dear as a daughter to her uncle. In the dreary days when he could not use his eyes she was his reader and amanuensis. The many distinguished guests who enjoyed his hospitality were charmed with her sweet manners. In the course of time she married Richard Lovell Gwatkin, a Cornish gentleman in every way worthy of her. "Her happiness was as great as her uncle could wish. She lived to be ninety, to see her children's children, and, intelligent, cheerful, and affectionate to the last, vividly remembered her happy girlhood under her uncle's roof, and the brilliant society that found a centre there."

XV

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON

The eccentric figure of Dr. Samuel Johnson was one of the familiar sights of London during the middle of the eighteenth century. He was a man of great learning, a voluminous writer, and an even more remarkable talker. He was born in 1709, and, the son of a poor bookseller, he struggled against poverty for many years. Literary work was ill paid in those days, and Johnson gained his reputation but slowly. He contributed articles to the magazines, and twice he conducted short-lived periodicals of his own--the "Rambler" and the "Idler." He wrote, besides, a drama, "Irene"; a tale, "Ra.s.selas"; a book of travel, a "Journey to the Hebrides"; and many biographies, including the "Lives of the Poets." His largest undertaking was an English dictionary, upon which he spent eight years of labor.

At length his pecuniary troubles came to an end when, in 1762, the government awarded him a pension of 300 a year. By this time his great intellectual gifts had begun to be appreciated, and he was the first man of letters in England. In Thackeray's phrase, he "was revered as a sort of oracle."

Johnson was now too old to acquire the graces of polite society, even had he wished them. His huge, uncouth figure and rolling walk, his countenance disfigured by scrofula, his blinking eyes, his convulsive movements, his slovenly dress and boorish manners made him a strange figure in the circles which entertained him.

His appet.i.te was enormous, and he ate "like a famished wolf, the veins swelling on his forehead, and the perspiration running down his cheeks." He usually declined wine, but his capacity for tea was unlimited. Many funny stories are told of the number of cups poured for him by obliging hostesses, for, oddly enough, he was a great favorite with the ladies, and knew how to turn a pretty compliment.

His temper was at times very irritable and morbid, and he occasionally had violent fits of rage. Yet, with all these peculiarities, he had a kind heart and was sincerely religious. His devotion to his wife and his aged mother[18] was very touching, and the poor and infirm knew his charities. In his own lodgings he provided a home for an oddly a.s.sorted family of dependents, consisting of an old man, a blind woman, a negro boy, and a cat. All the details of his daily life and habits are minutely described in a biography written by his admiring friend, Boswell, who was intimately a.s.sociated with him for many years. The book he wrote after Johnson's death tells us not only all about the learned doctor, but much also about his friends.

[Footnote 18: His wife died in 1752, and his mother in 1759 at the age of ninety.]