The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, August 16, 1896, Page 18

18 : THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 1896. FAMOUS PAINTINGS IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY OF ENGLAND The National Portrait Gallery is an ex- tension of the National Gallery itself. It was opened a year sgo. The building, presented to tne Government, now holds | one of the most remarkuble coliections in | existence. Many of them have been taken | from the old permanent exhibitions in the South Kensington and Bethnal Green museums, many have been loaned or pre- sented from private collections. Here we have the heroes of war, of literatore, of science, of painting and of the stage—hung amicabiy in effigy according to the period of their activity. There the noble Duke of Monmouth stares into the face of bis con- queror, William of Orange; there ‘Warren Hastings and Burke and Sheridan coufab- ulate; queens and actresses, and kings and | commopers are reduced to colored illus- | trations from the vivid history of the past three centuries. Upon entering the gallery we come in- | to the great hall sacred to the Chief Jus- tices and Lord High Chancellors, enor- mous portraits, imposing in size and in gorgeous colors, Here are scarlet robes of | office, and gold chains,and ermine mantles, | ana ponderous locks, and the heads under | the great curled wigs have a monumental | seriousness and dignity as becoming these | pillars of the state. There is only one por- | trait really interesting from a painters’ | voint of view and that is one of John, Lord Campbell, Lord Chief Justice, Lord | Chancellor, and author of the *‘Lives” of | many of bis distinguished brothers in | office. The artist is Thomas Woolnoth. The colorof the head issingularly fresh; the paint has the broken vivid effect of a | sketch, in which the eyes, small and liquid. | twinkle with a pale-blue merriment; the | hair is his own and is shaggy and disor- dered; the hand in his coat, the sword he carries, even the frills at neck and sleeves, contribute to the animation of the portrait. Everywhere the light falls and glitters | slightly in little sharp joints or subdued | reflections. Lord Lyndburst, son of John Singleton Copley of Boston, has a grim and lofty | countenance, superior to the ills and mis- | eries, the fauits and failings of poor earth- | born mortals. | The first Lord Denman, one of the Coun- | cil of Queen Caroline, looks more like a | Roman pontiff than a British statesman. His robe is as red as thatof a cardinal. Around his'neck is a small piece of trans- parent lawn, cut in small oblong strips, and in the background is a suggesticn of | columns and a rich blue sky, like the col- onnade of St. Peter's and a bit of an Ital- ian summer. | In the rotunda at the head of the stairs | we find Queen Caroline seated in alarge} chair, with a surprised and expectant ex- | pression. She looks like a tishwife mas- | querading in roval robes and as though | discovery of the deception was imminent. | A red plush hat with a aisheveled feather is clapped down low over her forehead, her red plush gown 1s creased in great folds over her crossed knees, her hands and arms are brawny and red. Opposite hangs the well-known profile | of her royal lord, King George IV. That fresh and vigorous study was made for the | head on the coinage by Sir Thomas Law- | rence. | A careful portrait of Queen Victoria by Angeli, copied from the original in Wind- | sor Castle, occupies the place of honor. In the uext room there is an absurd | little portrait of Admiral Nelson, who | comes mincing forward, ‘“on the light, | fantastic toe,”’ balancing like a dancing master, in very tight knee breeches, and a long, gold-braided scarlet coat and his | cocked hat pulled rakishly awry. One of the most interesting collections is that presented by Frederick Watts, em- bracing many of the celebrities of the last half century. An entire room is given over to them and a few hardly less inter- esting portraits, Here is Walter Scott, by Landseer, and voor young Keats, with his melancholy | profile, bending -over a book, painted after his death by his friend,Joseph Severn. Here also is Lord Byron in his youth, and in the | guise of the *‘Corsair,” with a theatrical and sentimental expression. In the cor- ner, in a dark room, a miserable portrait, MRS. SIDDONS, BY SIR W. BEECHEY, R.A. Charles and Mary Lamb, two funny, bent, little old people; Mary with a cap and bobbing curls, and both dwarfed as pig- mies and with apple-red faces. The beautiful tread of Leigh Hunt and the badly painted portrait of Thackeray | are the only ones that take the atteniion |ing | away from the noble collection painted | thoughtful melancholy. and presented by Frederick Watts. The first is of Dante's Gabriel Rossetti, with | {but full of a quaint interest, we find | golden-red beard and full lips and melan- choly eyes. Mathew Arnold, with his | hard, cold, strong and noble head, pales beside a beautiful portrait ot Lord Tenny- son, cdark and rich in color, the head | modeled against a background of smooth, | dark laurel leaves; the eyes, under droop- eyelids, bave a mysterious and King Arthur or | Lancelot might have had such eyes. | Robert Browning comes next, with a S Aol PHILI? KEMBLE, BY GILBERT STUART. head like a lion, great locks of iron-gra y bair falling over a Jove-like front. The head of the father in the Laocoon group flashes into the memory, and this head has & touch of the same immortal pain. Then we have Cardinal Manning, thin and fine and grave, with a network of lines around his eyes, a face worn to a shadow by along life of thought and labor; the hands, that are tbin and fine and veined and sunken, are no less characteristic. At the entrance is a portrait of Cardinal Newman, painted by Miss Deane. There is a slight indecision about the drawing. It is a matter of doubt whether the Car- dinal is standing er sitting dowe, but the gentie severity of the oid head is very well done. 2 John Stuart Mill has almost the samg characteristics as Cardinal Manning, the same emaciated, worn face, the sunken eyes, the thin, bent nose, and the line of the mouth fine and ascetic and reserved. The portrait of Carlyle by Watts hangs below one of the same subject by Sir Joan Millais. The Watts portrait is like a Socrates, the Millais is like a Diogenes—both are indubitably philosophers, but about the portrait by Watts is an indefinable | Iottiness, as there is about the thick- lipped, stub-nosed, big-browed physiog- nomy of his Athenian intellectual an- cestor. Millais represents him with white, rough hair around a lean, deeply colored countenance, with protruding lips and jaw and strange, fierce blue eyes under straight overhanging brows; his long, cadaverous, claw-like hands grasp the two arms of a chair. The painter has apparently seized a moment when he has just given vent to an amiable senti- ment and regrets it. Next to him we find Lord Lytton, the romantic author of “Lucile” and one time Minister to France. Heis the ideal of a schoolgirl; perhaps the hard, bitter head of the philosopher next to him adds to the force of the impression. He has a senti- mental, dreamy countenance. His large eyes and the ring on his elegant and graceiul hand are of a deep, deep blue. In theotner rooms on this floor are Gains- boroughs and Sir Joshua Reynolds galore, not any of tnem specially remarkable. Most of the portraits have more of his- torical than artistic interest. There are whole regiments of officers—admirals and generals—standing with their hands on their swords, black storms raging in the background and miniature gory battles being fought out behind them. On the first landing are two beautiful portraits, one of John Phinp Kemble as the noble Dane, tbe other of his sister, Mrs. Siddons, reading aloud to an imag- inary audience. The one of Hamlet is striking. The fine, dark bead of Kemble must have needed but little manipulation to have made him the ideal of the gloomy Dane. In another ~oom we have two smaller portraits, one by Gilbert Stuart, the other the well-known portrait of Mrs. Siddons by Beechey. The two heads have a strong family likeness, the eyes very large, long and black as velvet, the nose very deli- cately aquiline, the mouth strongly curved and very rich in color. The one of Mrs. Siddons is taken before the period of ber greatest triumphs, but after that mar- velons performance as Portia in “The Merchant of Venice” with Garrick as Shy- lock. Garrick himself glooms very fat and fierce from under an adjacent frame. Now the heart begins to beat, as every portrait becomes more and more familiar. Here we have the Right Hon. Mr. Pitt, Prime Minister, a beardless youth of 25. Here are Sheridan and Burke and Warren Hastings fighting out their old battles together. Neur them hangs Charles James Fox in a canary waistcoat, with a large shovel hat, and a precious old scoundrel he looks! Here we have a portrait of the Hon. Miss Damer, who married the son of Lord Milton, but, the old chronicles inform us, suddenly left a widow,” whichis certainly a suggestive bit of information. ‘What a company we have here: Wesley “the union was not happy, as she was! NELL GWYNNE, BY SIR PETER LELY. and Hannah More trying to frown down the gay and smiling Lady Hamilton, George Eliot and Elizabeth Fry, and Mary Someryille and Christina Rossetti Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Sarah and | Austen, and Miss Agnes Strickland look- ing like one of the nable and virtuous royal dames she loved to chronicle. On the topmost floor we have a con- fusion of royal portraits and authors and v KING HENRY VI, Wi g \ FROM AN OLD PORTRAIT. ladies of the courts of James and Charle 1L Here is another big portrait of a very small and {frightened looking Warren Hastings, taken from the Government House in Calcutta. He has very delicate sensilive features, and is a very siender, little man, with a mild and timid expres. sion; he shrinks into his chairin all the simplicity of black knee breeches and a checked waistcoat and a very limp frill. Perhaps he looks more diminutive through the overpowering grandeur of. his neigh- bor, Sir Arthur Onslow, who is some nine feet tall, with all the dignity of velvet robes ana gold trimmings- On another wall King James II isren. dered by Sir Godirey Kueller—pose King James, two months after the commence- ment of his reign, with his insolent head held high, in a kind of bitter gayety. Among all the royal personsges we find the King,ieorge Washington, Gilbert Stu- art’s portrait, with a dignity of courage and a nobility of feature remarkable even in this august assembly. Horace Walpole gives a satanic glancs at Philip Stanhope, the epistolary Lord Chesterfield; there are so many Allen Ramsays and Hudsons and Raphael Menys and masterpieces from the hand of Sir Peter Lely that we pass them by with hardly more than a glance. Here are the poor little children of un- happy James II and Mary of Modena; Prince James, the little “Chevalier de St. George,” the *“Old Pretender” and his sister. He is a very young prentender at this time, with his hand on a magnificent greyhound, and the other little gloved fist held out to the diminutive Princess Louise, his little fresh face very grave. his head held with a high childish self-posses= sion. Poor little picturesque, tragic figure! There is Catherine of Braganza, who seems to have consoled herself for the neg- lect she suffered from at the court of King Charles by having her portrait painted with great spirit and frequency. Sheis here represented as Queen Cleopatra in the act of dissolving a pearl. Near her hangs her rival, the popular ‘“Nell Gwynne,” with her attractive, intelligent, animated face. Here all ranks are leveled and we find Nance Oldfield, the immortal Lady Betty | Mbdish, smiling with a delicate brilliancy | over:the head of the Duke of Marlboroush. And, Betty, give this cheek a little red, One would pot, sure, be frightful when one’s dead! The young, rosy cheek needed no red at the time of this portrait; there were no suggestions then of the grewsome day when, white as marble, she would be con- signed to Westminster Abbey all in Brus- sels lace and gloves as she had com- manded. The Duke of Marlborough is painted as a young man, before Blenheim and Ouden- aide anda Ramillies, but next to this por- trait is an apotheosis commemorating the surrender of Flanders and Brabant, with a remarkably fat angel, accompanied by rotund little cupids depositing a laurel crown and flowers on bis curling wig. Henry VIl is a fine old Flemish portrait. It is not hard to see where the highly original Aubrey Beardsley extracts his strange inspirations. The King wears the badge and collar of the *‘Toison d'Or,.” and the long, thin, bony countenance is drawn with the marvelous accuracy of the Flemish masters. It would be impossible even to mention the great originals, who smile or frown or gravely stare from the walls, Addison and Pope, to Congreve and Gay; Peg Woffing- ton from her paralytic bed, and Queens Elizabeth and Mary, and the two Roberts of Essex and Leicester; lords and ladies, writers and actors in a continuous frieze. And outside the bells are ringing for the wedding of Princess Maud. Trafalgar square is deserted, save by the statues; even the beggars have gone up toreapa harvest from the crowds who await the royal procession; and from the black old tower of St. Martin in the Fields the bells sound in memory of Nell Gwynne, who sleep peacefully beneath the sunken pave- ment. Vax Dyck Browx. London, July 25. WHERE SWEET FLOWERS MOST TRULY REFLEG] GOD'S GRAGIOUS SMILE Up on Butter street, drawn modestly back a step or two from the pavement, is a small house with the simple sign, “Fruit and Flower Mission.” All day and nearly all night feet, light and heavy, glad and sorry, pass this un- assuming place, and eyes, seeing or un- seeing, meet the sign. Every Thursday bright-faced girls come out from the house Jaden with heavy baskets, and in twos and threes they goin all directions. For many years there has been & fruit and tower mission and every week the girls bave gone out with baskets on their arms and sweet charity in their bearts. Yet of the great hosts of com- fortable people in the City a very few un- derstand the importance and the breadth of the flower-mission work. The poor and the sick know. It may be that you, whose eyes rest on « these words now, have passed the little cottage as I used to, with tha idea that it was a fad of wealthy young ladies who needed no assistance, and wished to keep the affair exclusive. I had a vague picture in my mind of butterflies fluttering down to the mission with a small bunch of flow- ers, and much purple and fine linen, eat- ing lunch and exchanging society gossip, and sending a basket of flowers by a mes. sencer-boy to a hospital. With the authority of a great newspaper behind me to balance my lack of social prestige, I visited the Fruit and Flower Mission on distributing day. First, I tripped going down an abrupt step and gracefully presented myself in the basement head first. Two women in big aprons and sleeve protectors, who were sorting flowers at a big table, smiled like old friends, and were “so glad I came,’ If I would go upstairs, they said, the sec- retary would tell me all about the work. 1n the front rooms, upstairs, there were perhaps a dozen yonng ladies, all in shirt waists and round hats and all pusy. Such a gabble. Such a pleasant, busy gabble, too. Such an in‘entness in filling “my basket” with just tneright articles. Where was the purple and fine linen and where the elegant ease? The secretary and two older ladies were flying about like mothers at Christmas time, deaiing out supplies and listening to the appeals of the poor who had applied in person for relief. The name of the charity is a pretty one, but I think it misleading. The fruit and flowers are there, but only as the dessert after the more substantial relief. Great bins of flour and oatmeal can hardly be called fruit or flowers, nor can canisters of tea and coffee, barrels of sugar, sacks of potatoes, bottles of beef extract and port wine, shelves full of clothing and rows of shoes, All these and more are in the storerooms of the mission, and the baskets the girls carry are heavy with the neces- saries of life, and invalid dainties. The handful of flowers on the top isonly a touch of beauty to crown the whole. The aim of the Flower Mission is not to make steady pensioners, but to have a constantly changing field. The motto should be, “To help over hard places.” The purpose is to help those who are ill, while they are ill; to take strengthening food, cheerful books, warm clothes and bright flowers into the sickrooms gf the voor, Could you imagine a sweeter charity ? After showing me all the stores and ex- plaining that they were bought with mis- sion money instead of being, as I thought, contributed by merchants, the secretary told me something queer. The Flower Mission needs more flow- ers. Think of that. In thisland of flow- ers, where, if you plant a pine knot, roses will grow from one end and peaches from the otuer, it is difficult to gather in half a dozen basketfuls once a week without pay- ing for them. *‘People forget the Flower Mission,” the secretary said a little sadly as she turned away from the table. I think it is not all from forgetfulness or carelessness, but from ignorance. People do not know how gladly the mission will welcome the blossoms. I felt guilty, re- membering how I had snipped off my sweet peas and dropped them on the ground to keep them from going to seed. ‘Would I like to go visiting with two of the girls to see how they worked? Yes, indeed, and 1 wanted to carry g basket. So my basket was loaded, and with two girls L started on my first mission of charity in San Francisco. One of the girls was a young matron, but that doesn’t matter. If you come from the mission you are a girl. My basket was heavy. It was large, too, and { was awkward in the managing of it, and had to be helped on the dummy. Never mind,”” said the young matron, ‘it is awkward till you get used to it, and the handle makes your arm black and blue, but that is nothing.” We transferred to the little horsecar and went out Fifth street to some side place, where we were to leave the first basket. On the way Ilearned that no promiscuous work 15 done, but that all cases are inves- tigated by the Associatea Charities. “Of course,”’ the younz matron added in her decided way—such a kindly way, too— ‘“‘some of them are not worthy, but they are sick and miserable and that is all we think of.” I was going straight past a big uely house which might long ago have been a mansion, but the girls called me back, 1an up the broad steps, opened the door without ceremony and then went up and up to a room in the rear, The door opened and a broad German “Ach, ja, the dear girls,” welcomed us. In this small room lives, cooks, eats and sleeps an old woman who will die one day from the cancer eating her breast. Some German society pays her rent and for the rest the Flower Mis- sion basket comes every week. I thought the very poor would be very dirty. They often are and I have thought that in tbeir place I might be just so. But this little den was the essence of neatness. The stove, tiny and old, shone and twin- kled, and the floor was fit to use for a table. The firstthing the invalid noticed after answering the inquiries of the girls was the flowers, They were oid - fashioned flowers unknown to me except by the children’s name, ‘ pincushions.” In broken, toothless English she told us how they grew in her garden longago when she was young and not poor. Out -of the basket came a package of coffee and one of su~ gar, a little bag of flour, a layer of pota- toes and a giass of jelly. Notone mite of awe on the face of the old woman—only a sim- ple friendliness on both sides. Did she wantanything in par- ticular for next week? Yes, she would need more rags for ban- dages. “All right,” the young maid said, “Tll hunt some for you, and some more flannel, too, so you will not catch cold.” The next place was near. We went through one house into another in the rear. A young girl gasps with asthma and the air is enough to make a well person gasp. Here, too, the mission girls were welcomed as friends and told all the af- fairs of the family. Port wine and beef extract were pari of the basket's contents, and jelly and a book. For this invalid there was a bunch of long-stemmed roses of creamy tint, and as she held them close she told how last week's flowers had lasted five days. “I was in the country a week once,’’ she told us. “and I could have brought home a plant, bat it would die in this dark place.” A few months ago this was a happy family, with a strong hand to labor. First a baby boy died and the father grieved deeply—so deeply it seemed to tell on his health. Then he took a severe cold, which turned into quick consumption, and in six weeks he had found his little son. Now the two girls and the mother and the coming infant WITH FLOWERS\ AND SYMPATHY. Up the street a little farther and another dive into the rear. In the other places there were no small children, but in this two tiny girls with big blue eyes, too old for child eyes, looked gravely at us and brightened an‘y a little at sight of the candy the young maid had in ber pocket. May the maid from the mission never lack the sweets of life to share with the little sisters who have nonel . have a hard struggle before them for a month or two until the mother is again able to work. They were about to be turned into the street on account of failure to pay the $6 for their miserable rooms, and the little one whose eyes are to open on a world of sadness and struggle would have been still more desti- tute but for the mis- sion. The girls brought a complete wardrobe, and promised a nice heavy basket every Thursday for several weekas. One of the little girls talked to the young maid about her father and how lonely it was at din- ner time because he didn’t come. “I know he won’t ever come,” thelittle voice went on. *‘He’sgone to where baby broth- er is, but I'm lone- some.’’. Take these three cases as a sample of the work of the Frait and Flower Mission and think whether the charity is a small or narrow one. The girls who take the baskets are not poor. Is it not true charity that takes them in person, rain or shine, among the sick every Thursday ? It is easier to throw a dollar at the poor than to take one day out of every week to minister to them. Does it seem a small thing to go once a week? Try it yourself, you who are above want. Give one day out of seven to serving your brothers whose need is great; give it year after year, admitting no excuse, and then an- swer whether it is a little thing to do, +0h, yes,”” said the maid from the mis- sion, ‘‘we go every Thursday. The week would be all wrong1f we did not. Of course all who belong do not go; there are al- ways some in a society who shirk, but the real workers of the mission are very steady.” Before I tell of the hospital work I must lay before you the needs of the mission. There is money on hand from s bequest, but the principal is being used all the time and the expense is considerable. The mission needs fruit. It is a shame that now, while fruit is rotting on the ground and being dumped into the bay or fed to hogs, the Fruitand Flower Mission has to send canned fruit and jellies to the sick or the poor. It is doubly a shame be- cause the charity need cost the donor nothing. ‘Wells-Fargo will take free of all charge any boxes addressed to the mission and will return the boxes afterward. Think of that when your fruit is going to waste, and take time to pack a few boxes. Your purse will not be the emptier for a thought of others. If thetime is too precious set the half-grown children at it and kiil two birds with one stone. It will help the sick and it will be teaching the children the beautiful lesson of unselfishness, of giving of their abundance to the unfortunate. Children are naturally loving and if you tell them the story of sick children in dark rooms who need those juicy pears and peaches, they will trot their little legs weary and take a tender note in their voices as they pack fruit for “poor, sick, little girls and boys.” ‘Wholesale frunit merchants when over- stocked might send many a box, and it woula buy them a penny’s worth of para- dise without in the least decreasing their profits. The fruit would go to a class who could not buy it. Half-worn shoes and outgrown garmen ts for children are always in demand. And baby clothes. This is a tender subject, but truth is tender as well. Helpless childhood in need is one of the greatest of wrongs. The mother whose baby has gone away and left the dainty garments to be bedewed with tears has no rieht to lay them away so long as other babes as pure and innocent yet as hers ure coming into the world tofind no covering. The little clothes seem sacred, and they are sacred—sacred enough for an angel’s mis- sion. Give them away! Take them your- self, if you will, and in drawing the scented folds over the hody of some child born into poverty and sin feel the pain in your heart melting into a broader mother- love for all little ones. Books and cheerful magazines and pa- vers are needed always; and remember that Wells-Fargo will carry them free. The next Thursday, armed with two baskets full of spoils from the garden, 1 again sought the mission with entirely different ideas and sure of a welcome. The same girls were going with fruit, flowers and books to the City and County Hospital. Six baskets of flowers were taken and the fruit and books sent ahead. One basket was especially beautiful with roses. It came from {wo young lady florists up on Sutter street, who are very kind. Do you believe in signs? Ido. I think those roses were a sign of great future success for those florists. I confess I was a little skeptical about the good of hospital visiting with flowers. The bigotry of ignorance! Without any sentiment, but with cheery friendliness, the girls went from bed to bed giving a pear and a few pieces of candy to each patient and offering the books and flowers. Every face turned to them; eyes which were closed opened and brightened; every hand reached for the offered flower. Perhaps when well these men cared nothing for flowers, and, con- sidered merely as flowers, perhaps they cared nothing for them when ill, but there, with the friendly face and the friendly word, the flower was a symbol. It was a sign that ‘“somebody cares.” Many a workingman will, in the future, see in the heart of every flower that grows a pair of brown eyes that looked at him as the maid from the mission hoped he would be well by next week. Every man, except the very ill and the two who were cross, took a flower, and three who were overlooked called the girls back. As long as they were passing up_and down, the wan facesfpllowed them. The manner of the patients was the same all over the place. The girls are welcome '"d,fl’" know it. -“*They are glad to see us,” ex- claimed the young matron, “though they do not gush. Poor men, I don’t wang them to be overwhelmed with gratitude for a little thing like this. The way some of them look up and say ‘thank you’ would pay for more than we can do.” No girl would go out there week after week and walk miles up and down the wards, looking at pale and dying faces aad offer smiles and encouragement, just for effect. The patients know this. They grow used to the faces and look for them, and when they are getting better they are glad to confide it to the decided little matron and hear her hearty, “I'm so glad!” As I rode home with my two big empty market baskets the funny boy may bave grinned at me for going about looking like a peddler. I would rather carry baskets for the Flower Mission than wear the l robes of a society queen. Ouive HevpeN,