W. J. Loftie

“ We have already mentioned the extraordinary freedom and ease of the Flemish work of that period. Every beautiful object was made use of for pictorial effect. Children, birds, jewels, shells, as well as fruit and flowers, are to be found. They particularly excelled in painting pearls. One border is green, with chains and ropes of pearls strewn all over it. The calendar represents domestic scenes, each strongly surrounded with a double gold line, the written part being simply left out in the middle, so that the scene forms its border. ”

“ Again, armour for war was much lighter and less complete than that used for the tilt yard, where protection to the wearer was more considered than his ability to hurt his opponent. The greater substance of such armour and its frequent enrichment with engraving and gilding no doubt led to the preservation of this class of defence. Chain mail suffered extremely by rust and neglect, and even plate armour was subject to the same deterioration. It is consequently not to be wondered at that little or no armour of a date previous to the fifteenth century is to be seen in this collection. ”

“ To the westward of these small and inconvenient apartments, some of which were appropriated for the Queen and her maids of honour, was the great Stone Gallery, which looked on the garden and the bowling green. How far these arrangements were due to Cardinal Wolsey and how far to Henry VIII. we cannot say. Undoubtedly, the whole palace was most inconvenient, even at that day, when men’s ideas of comfort were so different from ours. ”

“ The modern student would do well to remember this. A wide range of colors does not always conduce to bright or good coloring. Harmony is often found to follow from a sparing use of the more brilliant pigments at our disposal, with a careful eye to effect. The beginner too often imagines that he can make his border or his initial look well if he puts enough gold or vermilion on; but he should remember that the more sober and simple his scale of coloring the more splendid will the bright colors look when he does employ them. ”

“ On Henry VIII's death the first inventory of the Royal collection was made, and this includes the armour and arms at Greenwich, and arms and artillery at the Tower of London which, from the time of Henry VIII, was one of the sights for foreigners of distinction. In the troubles of the Civil War the arms were drawn out, and there is no doubt much, both of arms and armour, was used and lost. The Protector took one suit, and it was not till 1660 that the armour, which had meanwhile been brought to London, was collected, and, with the weapons still in the store, were formed into a kind of museum. ”

“ The Charing Cross front being to the north was kept studiously plain. It was not until our own day that an architect put lavish decorations on that side of a building. Wren knew as well as Jones that mass, not ornament, is appropriate to this aspect, and we used to be able to admire his taste in the north transept of Westminster Abbey, now altered. The delicate proportions, the fine central archway, and the arcade at the western end of the façade, make up a very pleasing composition, and, viewed across a wide parade-ground, would have produced a marvellously picturesque effect. ”

“ Every one has not the ability to originate, but without great originality it may still be found possible to avoid servility. "Who would be free himself must strike the blow;" but those who aspire to climb must first be certain that they can walk. The thing that most often offends the eye in modern illumination is that the artist, to conceal his own want of style, mixes up a number of others. ”

“ There is little at first to connect Charles with Whitehall, but towards the end of the coronation year a curious scene took place there. The King, weary of the young Bishop and his twenty-nine priests who had come over with Henrietta Maria, decreed that they must return home. This they were very unwilling to do. With them were also to go an immense crew of attendants, whose vagaries disturbed both Whitehall and St. James’s. They exceeded in numbers even the four hundred who had formed the household of Henry, prince of Wales. Contemporary letters are full of their arrogance and greed. ”

“ The old chapel was burnt in 1512, and the present building erected only in time to receive the bodies of the first victims of the tyranny of Henry VIII. It was considered a Royal Chapel before 1550; the interior is not shown to the public. Here it is, in the memorable words of Stow, writing in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, that there lie before the high altar, "two dukes between two queens, to wit, the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of Northumberland, between Queen Anne and Queen Katharine, all four beheaded." ”

“ Outlining and Finishing.—When the work is at this stage, the colors will have a dull and hopeless appearance; but, as the outline is added, it changes to one more pleasing. The addition of the fine white edging and hair-line finishings (as in fourteenth-century style) , still further heightens the effect, giving the appearance of great elaborateness and brilliancy to the coloring, and beauty and decision to the forms. In the conventional style of treatment in coloring, a careful outline is an imperative necessity, and, in this part of the work, practice in the use of the brush is essential. ”

“ What actually did cause the disuse of armour was the change in ideas as to the movement of troops and the large quantity of armour which was made in the sixteenth century, and consequently the inferior make. In England the disuse of armour seems to have begun earlier than on the Continent, but at no time were the ordinary soldiers covered with metal as seen in Armouries and other places. The weight, and what was more important, the cost, prevented such a thing. It was only the rich who could afford to pay for and had horses to carry armour, who wore much of what we see now. ”

“ The land between was low and marshy, and even at the present day, when there has been so much levelling up, the statue of Charles I. is upon ground ten feet higher than Parliament Street. If, standing on the future site of Whitehall we looked to the westward, we saw nothing but a vast tract of low green meadow-land. If we looked to the south, we might have seen the new buildings of Westminster Abbey, unless when the Danes had been on the warpath. If we looked to the eastward, we found that the Thames washed up close to our feet. ”

“ THE beauty of the work executed in the thirteenth century in England, and that part of what is now France which then belonged to England, can hardly be exceeded. In this Plate are gathered a few examples of the period. They are from two books, both in the British Museum, but one probably written in France and the other at Canterbury. The initials from the French manuscript may be readily distinguished. The scroll-work is irregular and even wild, and in some examples the artist seems to have aimed at nothing less than startling the reader by his eccentricities. ”

“ The present buildings are partly of the Norman period; but architecture of almost all the styles which have flourished in England may be found within the walls. It is well to remember that though the Tower is no longer a place of great military strength it has in time past been a fortress, a palace, and a prison, and to view it rightly we must regard it in this threefold aspect.
It was first built as a fortress, and has a central Keep, called the "White Tower." The Inner Ward is defended by a wall, flanked by thirteen towers, the entrance to it being on the south side under the Bloody Tower. ”

“ Very little of the history of the Great Rebellion concerns Whitehall, at least until Oliver Cromwell assumes possession, and apes royalty in the old halls; but in Rymer’s Fœdera we may observe that, from the beginning of the reign of James I., “Whitehall” gradually and more and more becomes the official designation of the palace. Charles naturally was not there during a long term of years. He was marching and counter-marching in the north, and so mismanaging all his affairs successively that, regarded as a game, the Civil War consisted of a series of alternate military and diplomatic defeats. ”

“ Grotesques have an attraction in spite of their ugliness: but we can hardly expect the most enthusiastic admirer of antiquity to imitate these extraordinary complications of form and color, except as an exercise of skill and patience. ”

“ The concourse of fanatical preachers which disturbed his last moments seems to have been doubled at his death, and Tillotson, the future Archbishop, describes Richard Cromwell as seated at one side of a table with six divines at the other. Cromwell’s funeral took place from Somerset House, not from Whitehall, so it does not specially concern us. Suffice it to say here, that no king or queen has ever been interred at so much cost or so magnificently. ”

“ The letters in one of our other Plates (No. I.) are entirely filled with tracery of the kind, and the patterns principally in use are easily learned. Anything free is preferable to servile imitation and tracing, and these diapers in particular lose more than almost anything else in the whole art of illumination by direct copying. The student should learn to adapt his delicate lines—chiefly in red and blue—to any form of letter, and while drawing them should not let his hand falter or hesitate for a moment. ”

“ In the real or natural treatment of the objects forming the subject of the illumination, an outline is seldom used, everything being colored and shaded as in Nature. Lamp black with a little gum water will be found the best medium, being capable of making a very fine or a firm line, at the same time retaining its intense glossy black appearance. A little practice will enable the learner to know the best consistency to make the ink. As it evaporates, a few drops of water may be added, and rubbed up with the brush or finger. ”

“ We can but conjecture that Inigo wished to have a grand open space before his Charing Cross façade—what the French call a “place d’armes.” On the Westminster side there could not have been much space beyond the Bowling Green. The park, of course, was open, and so was the river. Much thought accordingly was spent on these fronts, and perhaps that to the Thames shows Jones at his very best. No description can do it any kind of justice; but it may be worth while to mention the principal points. The centre was of three storeys, the lowest with rusticated pilasters. ”

“ Several fires had occurred within a short time at Whitehall, the most destructive being that by which in April, 1691, the Duchess of Portsmouth was burnt out, after having had her house three times rebuilt, a subject on which Evelyn enlarges in his usual pious manner. The Duchess went to live in Kensington, and survived until far on in the reign of George II. All these fires did damage, but that of the 4th January, 1698, seems to have been almost or altogether confined to the royal apartments. Macaulay’s account of the fire is enormously exaggerated. ”

“ By the beginning of the thirteenth century the art had risen to the highest pitch it has ever reached. The scriptorium of St. Albans was the most celebrated. The works of Matthew Paris written there are still extant, and testify, by the character of the pictures and colored letters, to a purity of style and to the existence of a living and growing art which has never been surpassed in this country. It is believed that the numerous little Bibles of this period were chiefly written at Canterbury, and certainly, as examples of what could be done before printing, are most marvellous. ”

“ Hubert served the King too well to please the people, and spared the people too much to satisfy Henry. In 1232 he was dismissed, and his ungrateful master, not content with his dismissal, trumped up a series of charges against him, just as Henry’s descendant, Henry VIII., did with regard to Cardinal Wolsey. Hubert had been made Earl of Kent in 1227, and Constable of the Tower of London just before his disgrace—in fact, only a few days before—and during the same month was himself lodged in the Tower as a prisoner. ”

“ The same rule must be laid down for burnishing, which is an art not to be acquired in a day. It might be well to commence with the dotted work, common in the fourteenth century, and when we have learned to make a burnished dot with our agate point we may go on and burnish a larger surface. The effect of burnished leaf gold cannot be given in chromo-lithography, but it may be worth while to remark that all the gilding in the original illumination from which this Plate is copied is burnished on a raised surface, even the small letters in the text. ”

“ Elizabeth made much use of Whitehall, but her buildings and improvements at Windsor must have proved a powerful attraction. She went about a good deal, and her State papers are signed in a great variety of places. She left no mark on Whitehall, although, at the very [Pg 21] end of her reign, instead of Henry the Eighth’s “palace of Westminster,” we have “Whitehall,” pure and simple, one or twice. We have seen how York Place became the Palace of Westminster. How it again changed its name, and became Whitehall, we do not know. ”

“ Illumination did not decline at once with the invention of printing. On the contrary some exquisite borders and initials are found in books printed on vellum, one very well known example being a New Testament in the Lambeth Library, which was long mistaken for a manuscript, though it is, in reality, a portion of the Great Bible supposed to have been printed at Mentz before 1455, and to be the earliest work of the press of Fust and Schoyffer. A few wealthy people had Prayer-books illuminated for their own use down to a comparatively recent period. ”

“ Casting in bronze was a favourite art, and Fanelli, who made the statues of Charles and his Queen at St. John’s College, Oxford, should be named, as well as Le Sœur, who made the King’s equestrian statue which is now at Charing Cross, but which was originally made for Lord Portland and set up at Roehampton. The King’s cabinet pictures were lodged at Whitehall in a chamber expressly built for them by Inigo Jones. Undoubtedly the pictures were, of all his works of art, those which Charles chiefly loved. ”

“ The masses of color or gold are here usually enriched by diapers, while the stems, leaves, &c., are elaborated by being worked over with delicate hair-line finishings on the darker ground. The other method of treating ornamental forms embraces [Pg xvii] a wide range of style of illuminating, approaching more nearly to Nature in treatment, the ornament being more or less shaded naturally, or conventionalized to some extent. It is important to lay the color evenly in painting, not getting it in ridges, or piling it in lumps, as the amateur is apt to do. ”

“ It is very probable that, among the colonels and generals who lodged themselves, or were lodged, in Whitehall after the death of Charles I., Oliver Cromwell was one. Five years elapsed before he came into residence as Lord Protector, but, whether as a military commander or as a minister of state, there were several capacities in which he could have claimed chambers in the great straggling congeries of separate sets of apartments which were comprised in the palace. The amount of his guilt in the King’s murder it is difficult to assess. ”