University of Virginia Library

FAMILY RELIQUES.

Dekker.

An old English family mansion is a fertile subject
for study. It abounds with illustrations of
former times, and traces of the tastes and humours
and manners of successive generations.
The alterations and additions in different styles of
architecture, the furniture, plate, pictures, hangings;
the warlike and sporting implements of
different ages and fancies, all furnish food for
curious and amusing speculation. As the Squire

is very careful in collecting and preserving all
family reliques, the Hall is full of remembrances
of the kind. In looking about the establishment
I can picture to myself the character and habits
that have prevailed at different eras of the family
history. I have mentioned, on a former occasion,
the armour of the Crusader which hangs
up in the Hall. There are, also, several jackboots,
with enormously thick soles and high
heels, that belonged to a set of cavaliers, who
filled the Hall with the din and stir of arms during
the time of the covenanters. A number of
enormous drinking vessels of antique fashion,
with huge Venice glasses, and green hock glasses,
with the apostles in relief on them, remain as
monuments of a generation or two of hard livers,
that led a life of roaring revelry, and first introduced
the gout into the family.

I shall pass over several more such indications
of temporary tastes of the Squire's predecessors;
but I cannot forbear to notice a pair of
antlers in the great Hall, which is one of the
trophies of a hard-riding Squire of former times,

who was the Nimrod of these parts. There are
many traditions of his wonderful feats in hunting
still existing, which are related by Old
Christy, the huntsman, who gets into a terrible
passion if they are in the least doubted. Indeed,
there is a frightful chasm a few miles from
the Hall, which goes by the name of the Squire's
leap, from his having cleared it in the ardour of
the chase; there can be no doubt of the fact, for
Old Christy shows the very dents of the horse's
hoofs on the rocks on each side of the chasm.

Master Simon holds the memory of this
squire in great veneration, and has a number of
extraordinary stories to tell concerning him,
which he repeats at all hunting dinners; and I
am told that they wax more and more marvellous,
the older they grow. He has also a pair
of Rippon spurs, which belonged to this mighty
hunter of yore, and which he only wears on particular
occasions.

The place, however, which abounds most
with mementos of past times, is the picture gallery;
and there is something strangely pleasing,

though melancholy, in considering the long rows
of portraits which compose the greater part of
the collection. They furnish a kind of narrative
of the lives of the family worthies, which I
am enabled to read, with the assistance of the
venerable housekeeper, who is the family chronicler,
prompted occasionally by Master Simon.
There is the progress of a fine lady, for instance,
through a variety of portraits:—one represents
her as a little girl, with a long waist and hoop,
holding a kitten in her arms, and ogling the
spectator out of the corners of her eyes, as if
she could not turn her head. In another, we
find her in the freshness of youthful beauty,
when she was a celebrated belle, and so hard
hearted as to cause several unfortunate gentlemen
to run desperate and write bad poetry. In
another, she is depicted as a stately dame, in the
maturity of her charms, next to the portrait of
her husband, a gallant colonel in full-bottomed
wig and gold laced hat, who was killed abroad;
and finally, her monument is in the church, the
spire of which may be seen from the window;
where her effigy is carved in marble, and represents
her as a venerable dame of seventy-six.

In like manner I have followed some of the
family great men through a series of pictures,
from early boyhood to the robe of dignity or
truncheon of command, and so on by degrees,
until they were garnered up in the common repository,
the neighbouring church.

There is one group that particularly interested
me. It consisted of four sisters of nearly the
same age, who flourished about a century since,
and, if I may judge from their portraits, were
extremely beautiful. I can imagine what a
scene of gayety and romance this old mansion
must have been, when they were in the heyday
of their charms; when they passed like beautiful
visions through its halls, or stepped daintily
to music in the revels and dances of the cedar
gallery; or printed with delicate feet the velvet
verdure of these lawns. How must they have
been looked up to with mingled love, and pride,
and reverence, by the old family servants; and

followed with almost painful admiration by the
aching eyes of rival admirers. How must melody
and song, and tender serenade have breathed
about these courts, and their echoes whispered
to the loitering tread of lovers. How must these
very turrets have made the hearts of the young
galliards thrill as they first discerned them from
afar, rising from among the trees; and pictured
to themselves the beauties casketted like gems
within these walls. Indeed, I have discovered
about the place several faint records of this reign
of love and romance, when the Hall was a kind
of court of beauty.

Several of the old romances in the library have
marginal notes expressing sympathy and approbation,
where there are long speeches extolling
ladies' charms, or protesting eternal fidelity, or
bewailing the cruelty of some tyrannical fair one.
The interviews, and declarations, and parting
scenes of tender lovers, also bear the marks of
having been frequently read, and are scored, and
marked with notes of admiration, and have initials
written on the margins; most of which

annotations have the day of the month and year
annexed to them. Several of the windows too,
have scraps of poetry engraved on them with
diamonds taken from the writings of the fair
Mrs. Philips, the once celebrated Orinda. Some
of these seem to have been inscribed by lovers;
and others, in a delicate and unsteady hand, and
a little inaccurate in the spelling, have evidently
been written by the young ladies themselves, or
by female friends who have been on visits to the
Hall. Mrs. Philips seems to have been their
favourite author, and they have distributed the
names of her heroes and heroines among their
circle of intimacy. Sometimes, in a male hand,
the verse bewails the cruelty of beauty, and the
sufferings of constant love; while, in a female
hand, it prudishly confines itself to lamenting the
parting of female friends. The bow window
of my bed room, which has doubtless been inhabited
by one of these beauties, has several of
these inscriptions. I have one at this moment
before my eyes, called,
And close by it is another, written, perhaps, by
some adventurous lover who had stolen into the
lady's chamber during her absence:

Theodosius. 1700.'

When I look at these faint records of gallantry
and tenderness; when I contemplate the fading
portraits of these beautiful girls, and think too
that they have long since bloomed, reigned,
grown old, died and passed away, and with them
all their graces, their triumphs, their rivalries,
their admirers; the whole empire of love and
pleasure in which they ruled—all dead, all buried,
all forgotten, I find a cloud of melancholy
stealing over the present gayeties around me.

I was gazing, in a musing mood, this very
morning, at the portrait of the lady whose husband
was killed abroad; when the fair Julia entered
the gallery, leaning on the arm of the captain.
The sun shone through the row of windows
on her as she passed along, and she seemed
to beam out each time into brightness, and relapse
into shade, until the door at the bottom of
the gallery closed after her. I felt a sadness at
heart, at the idea that this was an emblem of her
lot. A few more years of sunshine and shade,
and all this life, and loveliness, and enjoyment,
shall have ceased, and nothing shall be left to
commemorate this beautiful being but one more
perishable portrait; to awaken, perhaps, the trite
speculations of some future loiterer, like myself,
when I and my scribblings shall have lived
through our brief existence, and been forgotten.