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Title: Portraits in Plaster
Author: Hutton, Laurence
Language: English
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Obvious typos and punctuation errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in spelling have been retained.
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"White Right Pointing Index" (U+261E) for a right pointing hand. If
the font in use on the reader's device does not support it, this
character, ☞, may not display correctly.
Italic text in the original is represented by underscores surrounding
the _italic text_.
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text.
Superscripted letters are indicated by a preceding ^ character, and
multiple consecutive superscripted characters are surrounded by
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text.
The Index lists an entry "Newton, Sir Isaac, quoted, 5-6." but this
quotation does not seem to exist at those pages or anywhere else in
the text.
The Index lists an entry "Volk, Leonard W., quoted, 237, 238." but this
quotation does not seem to exist at those pages. A reference to Volk
is found on pp. 249-250.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: EDWIN BOOTH]
[See page 38
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Portraits in Plaster
FROM
THE COLLECTION
OF
LAURENCE HUTTON
[Illustration of torch being passed hand to hand]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1894
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
EDWIN BOOTH _Frontispiece_
DANTE 7
TORQUATO TASSO 11
SHAKSPERE—Stratford Bust 15
SHAKSPERE—Kesselstadt Mask 17
DAVID GARRICK 21
EDMUND KEAN 25
JOHN M’CULLOUGH 29
DION BOUCICAULT 31
LAWRENCE BARRETT 35
HENRY EDWARDS 39
EDWIN BOOTH 43
MRS. SIDDONS 47
LOUISE OF PRUSSIA 51
MARIA F. MALIBRAN 55
FREDERICK SCHILLER 59
LUDWIG VON BEETHOVEN—From Life 63
LUDWIG VON BEETHOVEN—From Death 65
FELIX MENDELSSOHN 69
G. R. MIRABEAU 73
JEAN PAUL MARAT 77
MAXIMILIAN ROBESPIERRE 79
SIR ISAAC NEWTON 83
BEN. CAUNT 87
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 89
THOMAS CHALMERS 93
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 97
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 101
JOHN KEATS 107
SAMUEL JOHNSON 111
BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON 115
JEREMY BENTHAM 119
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 123
COUNT CAVOUR 127
PIUS IX 129
GIACOMO LEOPARDI 133
JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY 135
SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE 139
J. M. W. TURNER 143
HIRAM POWERS 147
LOUIS AGASSIZ—From Life 151
LOUIS AGASSIZ—From Death 153
CHARLES SUMNER 155
ANTONIO CANOVA 159
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 161
THOMAS MOORE 165
EDMUND BURKE 169
JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 173
LORD PALMERSTON 175
BENJAMIN DISRAELI 179
JONATHAN SWIFT 183
SIR WALTER SCOTT 189
ROBERT BURNS 193
KING ROBERT THE BRUCE 195
NAPOLEON I 199
NAPOLEON III 203
OLIVER CROMWELL 207
HENRY IV. OF FRANCE 215
CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN 219
FREDERICK THE GREAT 223
U. S. GRANT 227
WILLIAM T. SHERMAN 231
GEORGE WASHINGTON 235
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 239
THOMAS PAINE 243
AARON BURR 247
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 251
DANIEL WEBSTER 255
HENRY CLAY 257
JOHN C. CALHOUN 259
LORD BROUGHAM 263
FLORIDA NEGRO BOY 266
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION.
The story of the beginning of my collection of masks is curious and
perhaps interesting. The half-dozen casts upon which it is based were
found, early in the Sixties, in a dust-bin in one of the old-fashioned
streets which run towards the East River, in the neighborhood of
Tompkins Square, New York. Their owner had lately died; his
unsympathetic and unappreciative heirs had thrown away what they
considered “the horrible things;” a small boy had found them, and
offered them for sale to a dealer in phrenological casts, who realized
their worth, although, in many cases, he did not know whose heads they
represented; and so, by chance, they came into my possession, and
inspired the search for more.
The history of these masks which formed the nucleus of the collection,
or the history of the original collector himself, I have never been able
to discover. They are, however, the casts most frequently described in
the printed lectures of George Combe, who came to America in the winter
of 1838-39, and the inference is that they were left here by him in the
hands of one of his disciples.
The earliest masks in the collection to-day are replicas of those of
Dante, made, perhaps, in the first part of the fourteenth century, and
of Tasso, certainly made at the end of the sixteenth. The latest mask is
that of Edwin Booth, who died only a few months ago. They range from Sir
Isaac Newton, the wisest of men, to Sambo, the lowest type of the
American negro; from Oliver Cromwell to Henry Clay; from Bonaparte to
Grant; from Keats to Leopardi; from Pius IX. to Thomas Paine; from Ben
Caunt, the prize-fighter, to Thomas Chalmers, the light of the Scottish
pulpit.
So far as I have been able to discover, mine is the most nearly complete
and the largest collection of its kind in the world. I have, indeed,
found nothing anywhere to compare with it. Usually, the Phrenological
Museums contain casts of idiots, criminals, and monstrosities, and these
are seemingly gathered together to illustrate what man’s cranial
structure ought not to be. There are but three or four casts of the
faces of distinguished persons in the British Museum, and about as many
in the National Portrait Gallery in London; and all of these I am able
to present here, with the exception of that of James II., who belongs,
perhaps, to the criminal class. In the Hohenzollern Museum are many
casts, but these generally are those of civic or national
celebrities—Berlin aldermen or German warriors, in whom the world at
large has but little interest. The casts of Frederick the Great, Queen
Louise, Schiller, and one or two more in that institution, however, I
was permitted to have reproduced. The others I have gathered after many
years of patient and pleasant research in the studios, the
curiosity-shops, and the plaster-shops of most of the capitals of Europe
and America. The story of this research, with an account of the means
taken to identify the masks when they were discovered, could itself make
a book of this size. I am sure that mine is the actual death-mask of
Aaron Burr, for instance, because I have the personal guarantee of the
man who made the mould in 1836; I am positive of the identity of another
cast, because I saw it made myself; and concerning still another, I have
no question, because I know the man who stole it! In the matter of the
great majority of the masks, however, the difficulties were very great.
Hardly one _per centum_ of the hundreds of biographers whose works I
have consulted ever refer to the taking of a mask in life, or after
death, and there is absolutely no literature which is devoted to the
subject. The cast of Sheridan’s hand is often alluded to, the mask of
his dead face is nowhere mentioned; and yet there appears to be no doubt
that both were taken. The cast of his head has been compared carefully
with all the existing portraits; it has been examined by experts in
portraiture; phrenologists have described the character of the man most
accurately, from its bumps and its physiognomy; it was certainly made
from nature; it is too like Sheridan to have been made from the nature
of any other man; and yet there is no record of its having been made. No
surviving member of the family of Coleridge had ever heard of the
existence of his death-mask until my copy was discovered, but they all
accept it as genuine; and I recognized Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge
once, in the corridor of a London club, by his wonderful resemblance in
features, and in the shape of his head, to the mask of his grandfather.
The mask of Dean Swift which I possess is exactly like the long-lost
cast as it is engraved in Dr. Wilde’s book. The mask of Charles XII.
shows distinctly the marks of the bullet in the temple; and I have
succeeded in tracing the other casts in many and very different ways.
I may mention here that some of these masks, as you now see them, were
broken in the Custom-house in New York, and that the mask of Elihu
Burritt was demolished entirely and without hope of restoration. Upon
these, notwithstanding their condition, and upon all the imported masks,
I paid a duty of fifty-five _per centum_, upon a valuation assessed
usually at twenty-five _per centum_ above what I swore was their value
in Europe; the Custom-house charges of various kinds being, in many
instances, larger than the original cost of the casts themselves. So far
as I can understand, I was taxed in this matter in order to protect the
ghosts of the plasterers of America, who could not have made these casts
even if they had so wished!
The value of a plaster cast as a portrait of the dead or living face
cannot for a moment be questioned. It must, of necessity, be absolutely
true to nature. It cannot flatter; it cannot caricature. It shows the
subject as he was, not only as others saw him, in the actual flesh, but
as he saw himself. And in the case of the death-mask particularly, it
shows the subject often as he permitted no one but himself to see
himself. He does not pose; he does not “try to look pleasant.” In his
mask he is seen, as it were, with his mask off!
Lavater, in his _Physiognomy_, says that “the dead, and the impressions
of the dead, taken in plaster, are not less worthy of observation [than
the living faces]. The settled features are much more prominent than in
the living and in the sleeping. What life makes fugitive, death arrests.
What was undefinable is defined. All is reduced to its proper level;
each trait is in its true proportion, unless excruciating disease or
accident have preceded death.” And Mr. W. W. Story, in writing of the
life-mask of Washington, says of life-masks generally: “Indeed a mask
from the living face, though it repeats exactly the true forms of the
original, lacks the spirit and expression of the real person. But this
is not always the case. The more mobile and variable the face, the more
the mask loses; the more set and determined the character and
expression, the more perfectly the work reproduces it.”
The procedure of taking a mould of the living face is not pleasant to
the subject. In order to prevent the adhesion of the plaster, a strong
lather of soap and water, or more frequently a small quantity of oil, is
applied to the hair and to the beard. This will explain the flat and
unnatural appearance of the familiar mustache and imperial in the cast
of Napoleon III. In some instances, as in that of Keats, a napkin is
placed over the hair. The face is then moistened with sweet-oil; quills
are inserted into the nostrils in order that the victim may breathe
during the operation, or else openings are left in the plaster for that
purpose. A description of the taking of the mould of the face of a Mr.
A—— (condensed from a copy of the _Phrenological Journal_, published in
Edinburgh in January, 1845), will give the uninitiated some idea of the
process: “The person was made to recline on his back at an angle of
about thirty-five degrees, and upon a seat ingeniously adapted to the
purpose. The hair and the face being anointed with a little pure scented
oil, the plaster was laid carefully upon the nose, mouth, eyes, and
forehead, in such a way as to avoid disturbing the features; and this
being set, the back of the head was pressed into a flat dish containing
plaster, where it continued to recline, as on a pillow. The plaster was
then applied to the parts of the head still uncovered, and soon
afterwards the mould was hard enough to be removed in three pieces, one
of which, covering the occiput, was bounded anteriorly by a vertical
section immediately behind the ears, and the other two, which covered
the rest of the head, were divided from each other by pulling up a
strong silken thread previously so disposed upon the face on one side of
the nose.” The account closes with the statement that “Mr. A—— declared
that he had been as comfortable as possible all the time”!
Since these papers originally appeared in HARPER’S MAGAZINE in the
autumn of 1892, they have been revised, enlarged, and virtually
rewritten. Eighteen new masks are here presented, and I have added many
pages to the descriptive text.
The subject-matter of the volume may not be considered very cheerful
reading, but I feel that to those to whom the work appeals at all it
will appeal strongly as an unique portrait gallery of men and women of
all countries and of many ages, distinguished in many walks of life. I
trust that it will lend itself particularly to extra-illustration. And
to all those who make human portraiture a study, or a hobby, it is
cordially inscribed.
LAURENCE HUTTON.
NEW YORK, January 1, 1894.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PORTRAITS IN PLASTER
“The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures.”
—_Macbeth_, act ii., scene 2.
If the creator of Duncan was right in saying that there is no art to
find the mind’s construction in the face, then must the author of the
_Novum Organum_ have been wrong when he declared that “physiognomy ...
discovereth the disposition of the mind by the lineaments of the body;”
and these, curiously enough, are parallel passages never quoted by the
believers in the theory that Bacon was the writer of Shakspere’s plays.
It is not intended here to enter into a discussion of the merits or
demerits of physiognomy. This is an Exhibition of Portraits, not a
Phrenological Lecture. I shall try to show how these men and women
looked, in life and in death, not why they happened to look as they did;
and I shall dwell generally upon their brains, occasionally upon their
bones, but only incidentally upon their bumps.
The ancient Romans are said to have made, in wax, casts of the faces of
their illustrious dead. These masks are believed to have been colored to
represent the originals as they appeared in life, to have been cherished
religiously by their descendants through many generations, and, on the
occasion of a public and formal funeral, it is thought that they were
sometimes worn by professional mourners, as a sort of posthumous tribute
from the dead already to the memory of the latest man who had died. And
recent explorers have satisfied themselves that in the early burials of
many nations it was the custom to cover the heads and bodies of the dead
with sheets of gold so pliable that they took the impress of the form;
and not infrequently, when in the course of centuries the embalmed flesh
had shrivelled or fallen away, the gold retained the exact cast of the
features. Schliemann found a number of bodies “covered with large masks
of gold-plate in _repoussé_-work,” several of which have been reproduced
by means of engraving, in his _Mycenæ_; and he asserted that there can
be no doubt whatever that each one of these represents the likeness of
the deceased person whose face it covered.
When Hamlet said that Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander
returneth to dust, he overlooked the fact that Alexander’s dust, instead
of being converted into loam to stop a beer-barrel, was preserved from
corruption by the process of embalming, and from external injury by
being cased in the most precious of metals. Pettigrew, in his _History
of Egyptian Mummies_, said of the death-mask of Alexander that “it was a
sort of chase-work, and of such a nature that it could be applied so
closely to the skin as to preserve not only the form of the body, but
also to give the expression of the features to the countenance.” He did
not quote his authority for this statement, but it is unquestionably
derived from the account of the death and burial of Alexander written by
Diodorus Siculus, who said: “And first a coffin of beaten gold was
provided, so wrought by the hammer as to answer to the proportions of
the body; it was half filled with aromatic spices, which served as well
to delight the sense as to prevent the body from putrefaction.” Then
follows a description of the funeral chariot, and of the long line of
march from Babylon to Alexandria, where Augustus Cæsar saw the tomb
three hundred years later; but there is no reference to a mask of
Alexander’s face in gold. It is greatly to be regretted that such a mask
does not exist now, that it might be compared with the plaster masks of
Cromwell, Washington, Frederick the Great, Bonaparte, Grant, and
Sherman, and other conquerors of later days here presented to the public
scrutiny.
Among the gold mummy-masks exhibited in the Museum of the Louvre is one,
as Mr. John C. Van Dyke points out, which bears a curious and striking
resemblance not only to Washington, but to the familiar portraits of
Greuze, the painter. It is No. 536 of the Egyptian Collection, and bears
a card with the following inscription: “Masque de Momie trouvé dans le
chambre d’Apis consacré par le Prince Kha-Em-Onas.”
In the collection of antiques presented to the museum at Naples by
Prince Corignano is a wax mask with glass eyes. It was found with four
decapitated bodies in a tomb at Cumæ, and it is evidently a portrait of
the original, who is said to have been a Christian martyr. And Mr. W. M.
Flynders Petrie exhibited in London, in the autumn of 1892, an
exceedingly interesting collection of antiquities brought from
Tel-el-Amarna, the Arab name for the ancient city of Khuenaten, situated
about one hundred and eighty miles south of Cairo. That city was built
about fourteen hundred years before Christ, by Khuenaten, son of
Amenhotep III., who made it the centre of his proposed great revolution
in religion, art, and ethics. The collection comprised, among other
things, a cast from the head of Khuenaten himself, taken after death,
according to Mr. Petrie, for the use of the sculptor who was preparing
the sarcophagus for his tomb. These are among the earliest examples of
death-masks which have come down to us.
At least three copies of the Dante mask, all believed to be authentic,
are known to be in existence. First, that which is called the Torrigiani
cast, which can be traced back to 1750; second, the so-called Seymour
Kirkup mask, given to him by the sculptor Bartolini, who is said to have
found it in Ravenna; and third, a mask belonging, according to Kirkup,
to “the late sculptor Professor Ricci.” “The slight differences between
these,” adds Kirkup, “are such as might occur in casts made from the
original mask.” Concerning the original mask itself, says Mr. Charles
Eliot Norton, there is no trustworthy history to be obtained. On the
very threshold of his inquiry into the matter he was met with the doubt
whether the art of taking casts was practised at the time of Dante’s
death at all, Vasari, in his life of Andrea del Verocchio, who
flourished in the middle of the fifteenth century, having declared that
the art first came into use in Verocchio’s day. It is certain that there
is no record of the Dante mask for three hundred years after Dante died;
but it is equally certain that it resembles nearly all the portraits of
Dante down to the time of Raphael. Mr. Norton believes, from external
evidence, that it is, at all events, a death-mask of some one; and of
this, it seems to me, there can be no question.
There are two masks of Dante now on public exhibition in Florence. One
is in the house built upon the site of the mansion in which Dante was
born; the other is in a small cabinet adjoining the Hall of the
Hermaphrodite in the Uffizi Gallery. The former is a cast of the face
only, and it bears every evidence of recent construction. The latter is
a cast in plaster of the head and shoulders, and is one of the masks of
which Mr. Norton speaks. It has, unfortunately, been painted, the face a
flesh color, the cap and gown red, the waistcoat and the tabs over the
ears green; but it is undoubtedly a very early cast from the mould made
from the actual head. It bears the following inscription, “Effigie di
Dante Alighieri, Maschera Formata sul di lui Cadavere in Ravenna l’Anno
1321,” and to it is attached a card saying that it was bequeathed to the
Museum by the Marquis Torrigiani in 1865. It is here reproduced.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: DANTE]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Why keep you your eyes closed, Signor Torquato?” said a watcher at the
death-bed of Tasso—one of those silly persons who ask silly questions,
even under the most serious circumstances—“Why keep you your eyes
closed?” “That they may grow accustomed to remain closed,” was the
feeble reply. They have been closed to all mortal vision for three
hundred years now, but in the pale, cold plaster of the accompanying
mask his face is still seen as it was seen by the vast and sorrowing
multitudes who lined the streets of Rome to look upon his triumphant
funeral procession. His body was clad in an antique toga, kindled tapers
lighted his way, and his pallid brow was at last encircled by the wreath
of laurel he had waited for so long. And thus at the end of the
Nineteenth Century do we, in the New World, look upon the cast of the
actual face of the great poet of the Old World who died at the end of
the century he adorned. The original mask is preserved, with other
personal relics of Tasso, in the room of the convent of San Onofrio, in
which he died. But the great powder explosion which shook all Rome a few
years ago so shattered this part of the convent that the room and the
mask are no longer shown to the public.
The personal appearance of Tasso has been carefully and minutely
described by his friend and biographer Manso. His broad forehead was
high and inclined to baldness; his thin hair was of a lighter color than
that of his countrymen generally; his eyes were large, dark blue, and
set wide apart; his eyebrows were black and arched; his nose was
aquiline; his mouth was wide; his lips were thin; and his beard was
thick and of a reddish-brown tinge.
Tasso went from Naples to Rome to receive from the hands of the Pope the
crown of bay which had been worn by Petrarch and other laureates of
Italy; and he died upon the day set apart for his coronation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: TASSO]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The head of Shakspere here presented, from the monumental bust in the
chancel of the church at Stratford, like everything else relating to
Shakspere, in life or in death, is shrouded in mystery. It is supposed
to be the work of one Gerard Johnson, and to have been “cut from a
death-mask” shortly after Shakspere’s funeral. The earliest allusion to
it is to be found in a poem of Leonard Digges, written seven years
later. It was certainly in existence during the lifetime of Anne
Hathaway Shakspere, and of other members of his family, who would,
perhaps, have objected or protested if the likeness had not been
considered a good one. Sir Francis Chantrey believed it to have been
worked from a cast of the living or the dead face. “There are in the
original in the church,” he wrote, “marks of individuality which are not
to be observed in the usual casts from it; for instance, the markings
about the eyes, the wrinkles on the forehead, and the undercutting from
the moustachios.” Wordsworth, among others, accepted its authenticity,
and Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps did not hesitate to put himself on record,
more than once, as having every faith in its superiority, in the matter
of actual resemblance, to any of the alleged portraits. He ranked it, in
point of authority, before the Droeshout print, endorsed by Ben Jonson
as perfect; and he called attention to the general resemblance to be
traced between them.
It certainly differs in many respects from the famous plaster cast found
in a curiosity-shop in Germany some years ago, and known as the
Kesselstadt mask, a photograph of which is here reproduced. This mask is
believed, by those who believe in it at all, to have been made from
Shakspere’s dead face, to have been carried to Germany by a German envoy
to England in the reign of James I., to have been cherished as an
authentic and valuable relic for many generations, to have been sold for
rubbish at the death of the last of the race, and to have been recovered
in a most fortuitous way. It bears upon its back the date of Shakspere’s
death, 1616, it has been the subject of more discussion than any piece
of plaster of its size in the world, and even those who believe that it
is not Shakspere have never asserted that it _is_ Bacon!
According to Mr. G. Huntley Gordon, this cast from the Stratford bust
was taken about 1845, stealthily and in the middle of the night, by a
young Stratford plasterer, who was frightened by imaginary noises before
he succeeded in getting a mould of the entire head. After the protest
raised against Malone for whitewashing the bust in 1793, the
authorities, naturally, had put an embargo upon any handling of the
monument, and the operation was fraught with much risk to the aspiring
youth who undertook it. A cast is known to have been taken for Malone,
however, and since then other casts have been made by other artists,
notably one by George Bullock, who made the death-mask of Scott.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: SHAKSPERE—Stratford Bust]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: SHAKSPERE—Kesselstadt Mask]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next to the Stratford bust, the sculptured portrait of Shakspere most
familiar to the world is that which stands in Poets’ Corner, Westminster
Abbey. The artist went to some strange source for the likeness, and
although it was for gentle Shakspere cut, by no means does it outdo the
life. “I saw old Samuel Johnson,” said Cumberland, describing Garrick’s
funeral—“I saw old Samuel Johnson standing at the foot of Shakspere’s
monument, and bathed in tears.” Burke on that occasion remarked that the
statue of Shakspere looked towards Garrick’s grave; and on this stray
hint, as Mr. Brander Matthews believes, Sheridan hung his famous couplet
in the _Monody_:
“While Shakspere’s image, from its hallowed base,
Served to prescribe the grave and point the place.”
Garrick’s face, it is said, was wonderfully under control, and his
features had a marvellous flexibility, which rendered variety and rapid
change of expression an easy matter. The story of his having frightened
Hogarth by standing before him as the ghost of Fielding, assuming the
appearance of the dead novelist in all the fixedness and rigidity of
death, has often been told. There are many original portraits of Garrick
in existence. The Garrick Club in London possesses at least a dozen,
while The Players in New York own two by Zoffany, and one by Reynolds.
A not uncommon print, entitled “The Mask of Garrick taken from the Face
after Death,” is in the Shaksperian Library at Stratford-upon-Avon, and
it is to be found in Evans’s “Catalogue of Engraved Portraits.” It does
not seem, however, to be the portrait of a dead man, being full of
living expression, and it is, perhaps, an enlarged reproduction of the
face in the miniature by Pine of Bath, now in the Garrick Club, the eyes
having the same dilatation of pupil which was characteristic of the
great actor.
The mask here shown was purchased in 1876 from the late Mr. Marshall,
the antiquarian dealer in Stratford, who possessed what he believed to
be its pedigree written in pencil on the back of the plaster, and now
unfortunately defaced. He asserted that it was taken from life, and that
it had come by direct descent from the sculptor’s hands into his. There
is a replica of it in the Shakspere Museum at Stratford, but no history
is attached to it, and the trustees know nothing about it, except that
it was “the gift of the late Miss Wheeler.” It resembles very strongly
the familiar portrait of Garrick by Hogarth, the original of which hangs
in one of the bedrooms of Windsor Castle.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: DAVID GARRICK]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a very early cast of the Garrick mask, still existing in London, the
texture of the skin proves conclusively that it was taken from nature,
and most probably from life.
In the “Guild Hall” of “The City of Lushington,” an ancient and very
unique social club, which has met for many years in a dark and dingy
little back room connected with the Harp Tavern, in Russell Street,
Covent Garden, London, are still preserved the chair of Edmund Kean, the
hole in the wall made by the quart pot he threw once, in a fit of gross
insubordination, at a former “Lord Mayor,” and what is religiously
considered by all the citizens of Lushington to be a death-mask of Kean
himself. This cast is covered with glass and with dust and its history
is lost in the mists of time. There is no record of it in the
metropolitan archives, the corporation will not permit it to be
reproduced, even by photography, and it bears but little resemblance to
Kean, or to the mask in my possession, which also has no history, but
which I believe to be authentic, and which is certainly very like the
sketch of Kean done in oils by George Clint, and now in the possession
of Mr. Henry Irving. This hurried sketch of Clint’s is said to be the
only portrait for which Kean could be induced to sit. It was made in
Kean’s bedroom in a few hours, and it is the groundwork of more than one
finished portrait of the same subject by the same artist. The portrait
of Kean by Neagle, now the property of The Players, has a similar
tradition.
The Lushington cast is perhaps an early life-mask of the elder Kean,
perhaps a life-mask, or a death-mask, of the younger Kean, more probably
the mask of some defunct and commonplace and now forgotten mayor or
alderman of Lushington, who did not even look like Kean.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: EDMUND KEAN]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The eye-witnesses of Kean’s theatrical performances were generally so
much impressed by the force of his acting that they paid little
attention to his personal appearance. We read in Leslie’s
_Autobiography_ that “he had an amazing power of expression in his
face,” and “that his face, although not handsome, was picturesque;” a
writer in the _New Monthly Magazine_ in 1833 spoke of him as “a small
man with an Italian face and fatal eye;” a writer in _Blackwood_, a few
years later, called him “a man of low and meagre figure, of a Jewish
physiognomy, and a stifled and husky voice;” while Miss Fanny Kemble
said that “he possessed particular physical qualifications; an eye like
an orb of light; a voice exquisitely touching and melodious in its
tendencies, but in the harsh dissonance of vehement passion terribly
true.” Barry Cornwall, in his poor _Life of Kean_, spoke of “his thin,
dark face, full of meaning, taking, at every turn, a sinister or
vigilant expression,” and as being “just adapted to the ascetic and
revengeful Shylock.” And Henry Crabb Robinson said in 1814, “Kean’s face
is finely expressive, though his mouth is not handsome, and he projects
his lower lip ungracefully.”
The portrait of Kean by Helen Faucit, Lady Martin, is the best that has
been presented to us. She met him once on the Green at Richmond when she
was a child, and he a broken-down old man. “I was startled, frightened
at what I saw,” she wrote: “a small pale man with a fur cap, and wrapped
in a fur cloak. He looked to me as if come from the grave. A stray lock
of very dark hair crossed his forehead, under which shone eyes which
looked dark, and yet bright as lamps. So large were they, so piercing,
so absorbing, I could see no other features.... Oh, what a voice was
that which spoke! It seemed to come from far away—a long, long way
behind him. After the first salutation, it said, ‘Who is this little
one?’ When my sister had explained, the face smiled; I was reassured by
the smile, and the face looked less terrible.”
Among the English-speaking actors of later days few have been better
known and better liked, in America at all events, than John McCullough,
Dion Boucicault, Lawrence Barrett, Henry Edwards, and Edwin Booth, the
faces of all of whom I am able to present here. John McCullough, the
first of this galaxy of stars to quit the stage of life, was a man of
strong and attractive personality, if not a great actor; he had many
admirers in his profession and many friends out of it. The cloak which
Forrest dropped fell upon his shoulders, and in such parts as Virginius,
Damon, and the Brutus of John Howard Payne, it was nobly worn. He was as
modest, as simple, and as manly in character as are the characters he
represented on the stage. Unhappily, mental disease preceded
McCullough’s death, and during the last few years of his life those who
loved him best prayed for the rest which is here shown on his face. The
_post-mortem_ examination revealed a brain of unusual size and of very
high development. The death-mask was made by Mr. H. H. Kitson, of
Boston.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: JOHN M’CULLOUGH]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: DION BOUCICAULT]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dion Boucicault, worn by age, died in the city of New York in the early
autumn of 1890. He was one of the most remarkably versatile men of the
century. He was a fairly good actor, an excellent stage-manager, an
ingenious stage-machinist, an admirable judge of plays and of the
capacities of the men about him, the most entertaining of companions, a
man of quick wit, of restless personality, and the author and adapter,
perhaps, of more dramatic productions, good and bad, than any man who
ever lived. The cast of the head of Boucicault was made the day after
his death, by Mr. J. Scott Hartley, of New York.
Of the masks of Lawrence Barrett and of Henry Edwards I can hardly trust
myself to speak here or yet. My personal friendship with them was so
intimate, my affection so strong, and their taking away so recent, that
I can only look upon the casts of their dead faces as I looked upon the
dead faces themselves a few months ago, and grieve afresh for what I
have lost.
Mr. William Winter, who knew Barrett long and well, has spoken of “his
stately head silvered during the last few years with graying hair, of
his dark eyes deeply sunken and glowing with intense light, of his thin
visage paled with study and with pain, of his form of grace, and of his
voice of sonorous eloquence and solemn music, one of the few great
voices of this present dramatic generation in its compass, variety, and
sweetness. His head was a grand head; his face beautiful in its spirit,
its bravery, and its strength.” As the Rev. John A. Chadwick finely said
of him in the _Christian Register_, “The noblest part he ever acted was
the part of Lawrence Barrett—an honest, brave, and kindly gentleman.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: LAWRENCE BARRETT]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Barrett was one of the little party who were with Mr. Booth when the
idea of The Players was first conceived, and who helped their friend,
the Founder, to bring that association to its present perfected state.
Mr. Barrett was one of its legal incorporators; from the beginning until
his death he was a member of its governing body, and he was always
enthusiastic in his devotion to it, and to the objects for which Mr.
Booth had endowed it. At the annual celebration of the club, held upon
what is called “Founder’s Night,” December 31, 1890, Mr. Barrett read
aloud, and with a great deal of feeling, in the club-house, Mr. Thomas
Bailey Aldrich’s touching poem upon Mr. John S. Sargent’s portrait of
Mr. Booth, and it was noticed by many present that his voice faltered
when he spoke of
“Others standing in the place
Where save as ghosts we come no more.”
He was himself the first of those present to go to the Land of Shadows.
That his gentle spirit haunts the place, and will haunt it pleasantly
for many years to come, not one who knew and loved him there can for a
moment doubt.
Henry Edwards was not only an actor but a man of science. He was
recognized as a distinguished entomologist by many persons on both sides
of the Atlantic who had never even heard of his theatrical career. He
left a magnificent collection of butterflies, now preserved in one of
the leading museums of America, and he contributed to the press of both
countries a number of valuable books and pamphlets upon the subject he
loved. His work upon the stage was uniformly good. As Mr. Winter said of
him, in a funeral oration, he did not astonish and dazzle; he satisfied.
He excelled in the representation of rough pathos, of bluff good-humor,
and of honest indignation. He had a frank, expressive, cheerful face and
a hearty voice. He was a man of genuine, healthy honesty and simplicity,
who left behind him many warmly attached friends. He was sympathetic and
always interested in anything that interested the men about him. Many a
time has he studied, discussed, and moralized over, the collection which
now, alas! contains the cast of his own dead face. The mask was made by
Mr. J. Scott Hartley.
A death-mask of Booth was taken under the direction of Mr. Augustus St.
Gaudens. Although there is about it nothing which is distressing or
unpleasant, his family and his friends prefer to have it withheld from
the public gaze. The life-mask which, by the courtesy of The Players,
prefaces this volume, was made by Mr. John Rogers in 1864, when Booth
was in the thirtieth year of his age, and in the zenith of his strength
and his beauty.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: HENRY EDWARDS]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mrs. Asia Booth Clarke wrote of her brother in 1857: “He had come back
[from California] older in experience only, for he looked a boy still,
and very fragile; his wild black eyes and long locks gave him an air of
melancholy. He had the gentle dignity and inherent grace that one
attributes to a young prince; yet he was merry, cheerful, and boyish in
disposition, as one can imagine Hamlet to have been in the days before
the tragedy was enacted in the orchard.”
Mr. Barrett, who supported him in New York a few months later, said: “A
slight, pale youth, with black, flowing hair, soft brown eyes, full of
tenderness and gentle timidity, a manner mixed with shyness and quiet
repose, he took his place [at the first rehearsal] with no air of
conquest or self-assertion, and gave his directions with a grace and
courtesy which never left him.”
Mr. Irving, recalling his earliest associations with Booth in
Manchester, in 1861, has told me that the young actor seemed to him at
that time to be the most magnificent specimen of intellectual manhood he
had ever seen. And George William Curtis, writing in 1864, said: “Booth
is altogether princely. His costume is still the solemn suit of sables,
varied according to his fancy of greater fitness; and his small, lithe
form, with the mobility and intellectual sadness of his face, and his
large, melancholy eyes, satisfy the most fastidious imagination that
this is Hamlet as he lived in Shakspere’s time.”
Mrs. M. E. W. Sherwood, speaking of him when he was in his perfect
prime, in the part of Othello alludes to “that dark face to which the
Eastern robe was so becoming, seeming at once to be telling its mighty
story of adventure and conquest. It was a proud and beautiful face.
Desdemona was not worthy of it.”
Booth’s face was to me one of the most beautiful and most lovable that I
ever looked upon.
The only feminine heads in the collection graced once the shoulders of a
trio of queens, a Queen of Tragedy, a Queen of Prussia, and a Queen of
Song. The mask of Mrs. Siddons is in the possession of Mr. Percy
Fitzgerald. It is generally accepted as having been taken from the
actual face of the great actress, but its pedigree or its history Mr.
Fitzgerald does not know.
A bust of Mrs. Siddons by J. Smith, 57 Upper Norton Street, Marylebone,
was exhibited in the Model Room of the Royal Academy in 1813, the year
before she retired from the stage. Mr. Edward W. Hennell has an
autograph letter of Mrs. Siddons, undated and addressed simply “Sir,”
but written, evidently, to this artist and referring to this bust. In it
she says, “The time is drawing near which will bring my labors to an
end, and I shall then hope to be able to indulge myself in many
gratifications of which they have hitherto deprived me, and among which
that of visiting your study will stand very forward.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: EDWIN BOOTH]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is not improbable that Smith made a cast of Mrs. Siddons’s face, a
common occurrence in those days, although unfortunately no such
occurrence is recorded by Mrs. Siddons herself, or by any of her
biographers.
The present cast is believed by experts to have been taken from life,
and at about the time of her retirement. It shows, in a marked degree,
the peculiar thickness of the underlip remembered by persons still
living who remember Mrs. Siddons, and noticeable in the portraits of all
the Kembles of her generation, particularly in those of the great
actress herself. The cast resembles strongly an unfinished sketch of her
in the South Kensington Museum, made in her old age by an unknown
artist, and it is not unlike the bust she made of herself, now in the
Dyce Library in the same institution. Other features of Mrs. Siddons
were as prominent as her under-lip; Gainsborough is said to have
remarked to her once, in a fit of almost inspired courage, “Damn your
nose, madam, there is no end to it!” and she herself is reported to have
said that “the jaw-bone of the Kembles is as notorious as the jaw-bone
used by Samson.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: MRS. SIDDONS]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The personal appearance of Mrs. Siddons has many times been described,
but, curiously enough, none of her contemporaries allude to this unusual
development of the lower lip. Mr. Fitzgerald says of her first
appearance: “The audience saw a frail, delicate-looking, but pretty
creature, tottering towards them rather than walking.... The criticism
of the pit amounted to this, ‘that she was a pretty, awkward, and
interesting creature—frightfully dressed.’” The London _Morning Post_,
speaking of the event, said: “Her figure is a very fine one; her
features are beautifully expressive; her action is graceful and easy,
and her whole deportment that of a gentlewoman.” Thomas Davies wrote
later: “Just rising above the middle stature, she looks, walks, and
moves like a woman of superior rank. Her countenance is expressive, her
eye so full of information that the passion is told from her look before
she speaks.” Madame d’Arblay, in her _Diary_ (December 15, 1782), wrote
that “she behaved with great propriety; very calm, modest, quiet and
unaffected. She has a very fine countenance, and her eyes look both
intelligent and soft.” Leigh Hunt said, “I did not see her, I believe,
in her best days; but she must always have been a somewhat masculine
beauty.” Peter Irving wrote to his brother Washington in 1813: “I was
surprised to find her face, even at the near approach of sitting by her
side, absolutely handsome, and unmarked by any of those wrinkles which
generally attend advanced life. Her form is at present becoming
unwieldy, but not shapeless, and is full of dignity. Her gestures and
movements are eminently graceful.” Two years later George Ticknor wrote:
“She is now, I suppose, sixty years old, and has one of the finest and
most spirited countenances and one of the most dignified and commanding
persons I ever beheld. Her portraits are very faithful as to her general
air and outline, but no art can express or imitate the dignity of her
manner, or the intelligent illumination of her face.” And John Howard
Payne said of her about the same period, 1817: “The grace of her person,
the beauty of her arms, the mental beauty of her face, the tragic
expression of her voice, and the perfect identification with the
character [Mrs. Beverley] left nothing for me to wish for. In these she
was so great that even her unwieldy figure, which at first somewhat
annoyed me, was soon forgotten.”
In 1783 Mrs. Siddons called on Dr. Johnson at Bolt Court, and he gave to
Mrs. Thrale an account of how she impressed him by her “modesty and
propriety.” He says they “talked of plays,” but, unfortunately, he does
not permit himself to say what he thought of her nose or her mouth or
her jaw.
The beautiful Louise of Prussia, mother of the first Emperor William of
Germany, lies in the family mausoleum at Charlottenburg, and the cast of
her dead face, with that of Frederick the Great and of others of their
distinguished countrymen and countrywomen, is preserved in the Museum of
Berlin. Her last illness was severe and painful, but her attendants have
left on record the fact that in her rare intervals of relief from
suffering “she was very tranquil, and lay looking like an angel;” that
“the countenance was beautiful in death, particularly the brow; and that
the calm expression of the mouth told that the struggle was forever
past.”
At the age of sixteen she was thus described: “She was like her sister
Charlotte—had the same loving blue eyes, but the expression changed more
quickly with the feeling or thought of the moment. Her soft brown hair
still retained a gleam of the golden tints of childhood; her fair,
transparent complexion was, in the bloom of its exquisite beauty,
painted by nature as softly as were the roses she gathered and enjoyed.
The princess was tall and slight, and graceful in her movements. This
grace was not merely external; it arose from the inner depths of a pure
and noble mind, and therefore was so full of soul.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: LOUISE OF PRUSSIA]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Madame Malibran, the Queen of Song, died in Manchester, England, in
1836. The mask here reproduced came, perhaps, from the collection of
George Combe, who visited America a few years later.
In _The Memoirs of Malibran_, by the Countess de Merlin, is the emphatic
statement that out of respect to the wishes of M. de Beriot, the husband
of Malibran, no posthumous sketch or cast of her face of any kind was
taken. M. Edmond Cottinet, however, in a private note to Mrs. Clara
Bell, wrote: “When Madame Malibran died I was very young, but I remember
distinctly hearing my mother told that de Beriot, the husband of her
friend, had taken her mask, and that it had helped him to execute the
crowned bust of the great singer which now decorates the private cabinet
of her son. His bust, nevertheless, is not a good likeness, nor is it
agreeable. But it is a touching proof of the love of the widower. Is it
not wonderful that simply by the force of this love a musician should
have been transformed into a sculptor? This was M. de Beriot’s only work
in this line of art.” Later, M. Cottinet, having seen a photograph of
the mask, added: “It is she! The first moment I saw it I recognized it,
with feelings of profound emotion and tender pity. It is she, with her
slightly African type, containing, perhaps, a little negro blood (her
father, Garcia, being of Spanish-Moorish descent). It is she as death
found her, her face ruined by that terrible fall from her horse.... It
is undoubtedly the mask from which her husband made the bust, which did
not seem to be as charming as she was. Mr. Hutton may be perfectly
satisfied that he possesses an authentic cast.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: MARIA F. MALIBRAN]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The head of Schiller has lain as uneasily since his death as if he had
worn a crown, or, like Cromwell, had rejected one. The story of its
posthumous wanderings is very grewsome. It is told at length by Emil
Palleske in his _Life of Schiller_, and at greater length by Mr. Andrew
Hamilton. The poet left a widow and family almost friendless and almost
penniless; his brother-in-law Wolzogen was absent, and Goethe lay very
ill. A cast of Schiller’s head was taken by Klauer; and his body,
hurriedly put into a plain deal coffin of the cheapest kind, was buried
in a public vault, with nothing to designate whose body it was, and
without the utterance of a word or a note of requiem. Twenty-one years
later, as was the custom of the place, this public vault was emptied,
and the bones it contained were scattered to make room for a new
collection. Friends of Schiller, after great and unpleasant labor,
gathered together twenty-three of these dishonored skulls, from which
they selected as Schiller’s that one “which differed enormously from all
the rest in size and shape;” they compared it with Klauer’s cast, and
accepted its identity. It was then deposited, with no little ceremony,
in the hollow pedestal containing Dannecker’s colossal bust of Schiller
in the Grand Ducal Library at Weimar. Goethe, however, desiring to
recover more of the mortal part of his friend, had the head removed
again and fitted to the rest of the bones of the body. These bones were
deposited also in the Library, and the head put back in its pedestal. In
1827, at the suggestion of Louis of Bavaria, the head and the trunk were
reunited and placed in a vault which the grand duke had built for
himself and for his own family; and there, by the side of Goethe, who
joined him in 1832, Schiller still rests.
Palleske, describing Schiller’s death, says: “Suddenly an electric shock
seemed to vibrate through him, the most perfect peace lit up his
countenance, his features were those of one calmly sleeping.” And this
is the impression his death-mask gives.
Carlyle in one of his flash-light pictures thus photographed
Schiller—the negative was found in the Commonplace-book of the late Lord
Houghton—“He was a man with long red hair, aquiline nose, hollow cheeks,
and covered with snuff.”
A strange uneasiness seems to have possessed the bones of many of the
great composers. Mozart’s skull is said to be in the possession of Prof.
Hyrtl, the famous anatomist of Vienna, who proposes to bequeath it to
the Mozarteum at Salzburg. Mozart, like Schiller, was buried by an
impoverished family in a grave unmarked save by a musical grave-digger,
who secured the head—according to what seems to be very vague
tradition—ten years later, and kept it, so long as he himself lived, in
a cupboard in his humble lodgings in the precincts of the Cemetery of
St. Marx. From him it passed to a second grave-digger, also musical,
from whom it came into the possession of the Hyrtls. Those who have
examined it, however, say that it has none of the peculiarities which,
according to the existing theories of phrenology, should mark the
presence of musical genius. And these peculiarities, strangely enough,
are said to have been lacking in the skulls of Haydn, Schubert, and
Beethoven, each of which, like the skulls of Mozart and Schiller and of
Shakspere’s Yorick, had a tongue in it, and could sing once; and each
seems to have been knocked about the mazzard with a sexton’s spade, and
to have been used to point a moral, and, perhaps, even to stop a
bunghole.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: FREDERICK SCHILLER]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Haydn’s skull, it may be mentioned, is believed to be in the possession
of the family of an eminent physician in Vienna. The rest of his body,
originally buried in Hundsthurn church-yard, now lies in the parish
church of Eisenstadt.
Beethoven’s bones seem to have been disturbed but twice. His grave, in
the Währing Cemetery at Vienna, having become almost uninhabitable from
long neglect, he was reburied in the same spot in 1863; and in 1888 he
was removed to the Central Cemetery of Vienna.
Beethoven’s head is described, by those who knew him in life, as having
been uncommonly large. His forehead was high and expanded. His eyes,
when he laughed, seemed to sink into his head, although they were
distended to an unusual degree when one of his musical ideas took
possession of his mind. His mouth was well-formed; his under-lip
protruded a little; his nose was rather broad. According to one
authority “his skull [at the time of the exhumation in 1863] was
discovered to be very compact throughout, and about an inch thick;”
according to another authority it was “a small skull, and might have
been supposed to belong to a man of restricted intellect, rather than to
a genius like the great master.”
Mr. Philip Hale, in _Famous Composers and their Works_, says: “The
dimensions of the forehead were extraordinary; in height the forehead
came next to that of Napoleon, and in breadth it surpassed it. His face
was strong and sombre, and while it was not without ugliness it was
expressive. The head was built stoutly throughout. The nose was thick,
the jaw was broad, the mouth was firm and with protruding lips; the
teeth were white, well-shaped, and sound, and when he laughed he showed
them freely; the square chin rested on a white cravat. The greater
number of pictures of Beethoven are idealized.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: LUDWIG VON BEETHOVEN—From Life]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: LUDWIG VON BEETHOVEN—From Death]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beethoven’s left ear-shell, it is said, is preserved in the cabinet of
curiosities of a musical family in England. The mask of his face is one
of the few casts of notable men to be found in the Museum of the British
Phrenological Association in Ludgate Circus, London. It reposes, in
plaster, in that institution, by the side of the cast of the head of
Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
Two masks of Beethoven are in existence. The first was taken from life
by Franz Klein in 1812, when the subject was in his forty-second year.
Mr. Hale considers this “and the bust made after it by the same artist
as of the first importance in forming a correct judgment of the value of
all the portraits of Beethoven.” The second mask was made by Dannhauser,
on March 28, 1827, two days after Beethoven died. Both casts are here
reproduced.
Beethoven was fond of telling the following story about himself. It will
give a very fair idea of what he considered to be the size of his own
cranium. Meeting the entire Imperial Family of Austria, on one occasion,
at Töplitz, in the summer of 1812, “I pressed my hat down on my head,”
he said, “buttoned up my great-coat, and walked with folded arms through
the thickest of the throng; princes and pages formed a line—the Archduke
Rudolph took off his hat, and the Emperor made the first salutation.
Those gentry know me!”
It is hardly to be wondered at that Goethe, who was his companion,
should have been made very uncomfortable by the display of what looks
like a piece of impertinence, even to republican eyes, and even at the
end of three-quarters of a century of enlightenment. It is pleasant to
read that royalty itself was highly amused by the whole performance.
Perhaps the best pen-picture of Mendelssohn in existence is that taken
by Bayard Taylor, who wrote that “his eyes were dark, lustrous, and
unfathomable. They were black, but without the usual opaqueness of black
eyes; shining, not with a surface light, but with a pure serene
planetary flame. His brow, white and unwrinkled, was high and nobly
arched, with great breadth at the temples, and strongly resembling that
of Poe. His nose had the Jewish prominence, without its usual
coarseness; I remember particularly that the nostrils were as finely cut
and as flexible as an Arab’s. The lips were thin and rather long, but
with an expression of undescribable sweetness in their delicate curves.
His face was a long oval in form, and the complexion pale, but not
pallid. As I looked upon him I said to myself—‘The Prophet David!’”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: FELIX MENDELSSOHN]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lampadius, in his _Life of Mendelssohn_, said of the composer’s death:
“His features soon assumed an almost glorified expression. So much he
looked like one in sleep that some of his friends thought that it could
not be death, an illusion which is often given to the eye of love. His
friends Bendemann and Hübner took a cast of his features as he lay.”
A clever Frenchman said not long since, in the Paris _Gaulois_, that the
Pantheon is nothing but a Grand Hotel, in which the distinguished guests
find a temporary lodging-place, and then, like other transients, give up
their rooms to somebody else. Mirabeau, Marat, Rousseau, and Voltaire
boarded there for a time, and then surrendered their apartments, which
are now occupied by Victor Hugo and a few men of no literary, artistic,
or political importance; all of whom will, no doubt, in their turn, and
before many years, be forced to find some second-class _pension_, where
the rates are lower and the service is bad.
It was discovered lately that Mirabeau had again changed his quarters,
and that his present address cannot be ascertained. He was carried in
great pomp, and with many porters and in many ’busses, to the Pantheon,
in 1791; but with Marat he was “de-Pantheonized by order of the National
Convention” a year or two later. Marat’s body was thrown into a common
sewer in the Rue Montmartre; that of Mirabeau was placed, with no pomp
whatever, in the cemetery of Saint-Marcel, the criminals’
burying-ground, where, now that it is wanted once more—this time for
honorable disposal—it cannot be found. Mirabeau’s is the face of a man
perfectly satisfied with his own achievements and with his own personal
appearance. He believed, and he was courageous enough to say, that pure
physical beauty in man could only exist in a face which was pitted with
small-pox, his own being so marked! And he looks here as if his last
thought in life had been one of profound admiration for himself. An
eye-witness of his funeral said to one of his biographers that, “except
a single trace of physical suffering, one perceived with emotion the
most noble calm and the sweetest smile upon that face, which seemed
enwrapped in a living sleep, and occupied with an agreeable dream.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: G. R. MIRABEAU]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marat and Robespierre are among the most enigmatical productions of a
very enigmatical movement. During their lives they were not very
beautiful in conduct nor very amiable in character; but the casts taken
of their faces after their uncomfortable deaths are quiet and peaceful,
and the effect they produce is one of loving rather than loathing. In
the mask of each the cerebral development is small, especially in the
region of the frontal bone; and phrenological experts who have examined
them say that their development, or lack of development, taken with
their facial traits, indicates ill-balanced minds.
Marat’s face, as David painted him, is that of a North-American Indian
with a white skin. The contemporary portraits of Robespierre, on the
other hand, represent a mild-mannered man of severe and pensive
expression. According to Lamartine, “his forehead was good, but small,
and projecting over the temples, as if enlarged by the mass and
embarrassed movements of his thoughts. His eyes, much veiled by their
lids, and very sharp at the extremities, were deeply buried in the
cavities of their orbits; they were of a soft blue color. His nose,
straight and small, was very wide at the nostrils, which were high and
too expanded. His mouth was large, his lips thin and disagreeably
contracted at each corner, his chin small and pointed. His complexion
was yellow and livid. The habitual expression of his face was the
superficial serenity of a grave mind, and a smile wavering betwixt
sarcasm and sweetness. There was _softness_, but of a sinister
character. The dominant characteristic of his countenance was the
prodigious and continued tension of brow, eyes, mouth, and all the
facial muscles.”
The masks of Mirabeau, Marat, and Robespierre are known to have been
taken, in each case, after death, “by order of the National Assembly.”
Those of Marat and Robespierre in my collection are identical with the
wax effigies in the “Chamber of Horrors” in Madame Tussaud’s gallery in
London, her catalogue asserting that they are “authentic;” and very fine
casts of Mirabeau and Marat are in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, the
latter hanging under David’s portrait of Marat, painted from nature
immediately after the assassination.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: JEAN PAUL MARAT]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: MAXIMILIAN ROBESPIERRE]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The contemporaries of Sir Isaac Newton, like those of Kean, were all so
much impressed by what he knew and by what he did, that they seldom
thought of posterity as caring to know how he looked, either in life or
in death. From many different sources, however, we learn, in a
fragmentary way, that he was “short but well-set, and inclined to be
corpulent;” that “he had a very lively and piercing eye;” that “his hair
was abundant and white as silver, without any baldness, and when his
peruke was off was a venerable sight;” that “he was a man of no very
prominent aspect;” that “his face was almost square, and that his chin
had unusual width;” that “although he reached the great age of
eighty-four, he retained until the last almost all of his teeth;” and
that “his countenance was mild, pleasant, and comely.” Bishop Atterbury
said, “in the whole air of his face and make there was nothing of that
penetrating sagacity which appears in his compositions. He had something
rather languid in his look and manner, which did not raise any very
great expectation in those who did not know him;” and Dr. Humphrey
Newton, who was his assistant and amanuensis, said that during the many
years of their intimate association he never knew him to laugh but once!
His death was not without pain, and his mask will not be recognized
readily by those who are familiar with his face as pictured and
sculptured with his peruke on.
If Sir David Brewster’s account of Newton’s life be the true one, he was
as good as he was great, and nothing can be added to that. His portraits
by Lely, Kneller, and other famous painters still exist in different
parts of Great Britain.
The terra-cotta bust of Newton, from the hand of Roubilliac, is in the
British Museum. His bust and full-length statue in marble, by the same
artist, belong to Trinity College, Cambridge. They were both, as is well
known, based upon this mask of his face, taken after death, the original
of which, made by Roubilliac, is now in the rooms of the Royal Society,
at Burlington House in London. It was presented to that institution in
1829 by Samuel Hunter Christie, and the officers of the society have no
doubt of its authenticity. Mr. Christie found it by accident in the shop
of a dealer in statuary, whose father had purchased it at the sale of
Roubilliac’s effects more than half a century before. The dealer parted
with it for a few shillings, although he was satisfied that it was the
mask of Newton, and by Roubilliac. Charles Richard Weld, in his _History
of the Royal Society_, gave a steel engraving of it, and declared that
“it presents all the characteristic features of the Society’s former
illustrious president.” Only a few copies of it are known to exist, and
it is one of the most valuable and important masks in my collection.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: SIR ISAAC NEWTON]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roubilliac’s mask of Alexander Pope was one of the cherished possessions
of Samuel Rogers, but its present whereabouts I have not been able to
discover.
The contrasts between the profoundest of England’s philosophers and the
bravest of her bruisers are as marked in an intellectual as in a
physical way. Ben Caunt, the pugilist, died in London in 1861,
universally respected. He was, during the later years of his life,
proprietor of the Coach and Horses, a public-house in St. Martin’s Lane,
much frequented by his old pupils, and by all the prominent patrons of
the prize-ring. He came to America in the early Forties, giving a series
of exhibitions throughout the country, but never engaging in any serious
encounter here. He was a leader in his own profession, and at one time,
perhaps, the best-known man in all England. His portrait, which once
adorned the walls of cottage and palace, is still to be found in Miles’s
_Pugilistica_, taken at the period of his famous fight with “Bendigo” in
1842. His head is certainly a strong one, and, in a phrenological way,
he was better than many of the men among his contemporaries who did
better things.
Thackeray, like most Anglo-Indian infants, was sent, when he was about
five years of age, to the mother-country for mental and physical
nourishment. An aunt, with whom he lived, discovered the child one
morning parading about in his uncle’s hat, which exactly fitted him.
Fearing some abnormal and dangerous development of the brain, she
carried him at once to a famous physician of the day, who is reported to
have said, “Don’t be afraid, madam; he has a large head, but there’s a
good deal in it!” How much was in it subsequent events have certainly
proved. His brain, when he died, fifty-three years later, weighed
fifty-eight and a half ounces. In 1849 or 1850, Charlotte Brontë wrote
of Thackeray: “To me the broad brow seems to express intellect. Certain
lines about the nose and cheek betray the satirist and cynic; the mouth
indicates a childlike simplicity—perhaps even a degree of irresoluteness
in consistency—weakness in short, but a weakness not unamiable.” And
Motley, writing to his wife in 1858, said: “I believe you have never
seen Thackeray; he has the appearance of a colossal infant, smooth,
white, shining ringlety hair, flaxen, alas! with advancing years; a
roundish face, with a little dab of a nose, upon which it is a perpetual
wonder how he keeps his spectacles.” This broken nose was always a
source of amusement to Thackeray himself; he caricatured it in his
drawings, he frequently alluded to it in his speech and in his letters,
and he was fond of repeating Douglas Jerrold’s remark to him when he was
to stand as godfather to a friend’s son—“Lord, Thackeray, I hope you
won’t present the child with your own mug!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: BEN. CAUNT]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is not pleasant to look upon the face of Thackeray—the face of which
we love to think so pleasantly—as distorted by death. He was found dead
in his bed on the morning of December 24, 1863:—“So young a man,” as
Dickens wrote, “that the mother who blessed him in his first sleep
blessed him in his last. The final words he corrected in print,”
continued Dickens, “were—‘And my heart throbbed with an exquisite
bliss.’ God grant that on that Christmas eve when he laid his head back
on his pillow, and threw up his arms as he had been wont to do when very
weary, some consciousness of duty done, and Christian hope throughout
life humbly cherished, may have caused his heart so to throb when he
passed away to his Redeemer’s rest!” “And, lo,” said Thackeray himself
once, of the most beautiful character in all fiction, his own Thomas
Newcome—“And, lo, he whose heart was as that of a little child had
answered to his name, and stood in the presence of The Master!”
“We think of Thackeray,” wrote Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, “as of our
Chalmers, found dead in like manner: the same childlike, unspoiled, open
face, the same gentle mouth, the same spaciousness and softness of
nature, the same look of power. What a thing to think of—his lying there
alone in the dark, in the midst of his own mighty London; his mother and
his daughters asleep, and, it may be, dreaming of his goodness. Long
years of sorrow, labor, and pain had killed him before his time. It was
found after death how little life he had to live. He looked always fresh
with that abounding silver hair, and his loving, almost infantile face;
but he was worn to a shadow, and his hands wasted as if by eighty
years.”
The cast of Thackeray’s face was made by Brucciani on that sad Christmas
morning, at the request of Dr., now Sir, Henry Thompson; and a cast of
his right hand was made at the same time—that honest, faithful,
beautiful, wasted right hand, which
“never writ a flattery,
Nor signed the page that registered a lie.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: THOMAS CHALMERS]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Chalmers was another man of great heart and of great head. He
died, as we have seen, as Thackeray died, without warning, but without
pain or conflict. He was discovered sitting half erect in his bed, his
head reclining quietly on his pillow, the expression of his countenance
that of fixed and majestic repose. He had responded cheerfully when his
name was called. Thackeray heard the summons evidently in a moment of
physical distress; but his “_Adsum_” was just as ready, and no doubt it
was quite as willingly uttered.
“In height and breadth and in general configuration,” wrote Julian
Charles Young, “Dr. Chalmers was not unlike Coleridge. I have, since I
knew Coleridge, sometimes thought that if Chalmers’s head had been
buried from sight, I could easily have mistaken him for that remarkable
man. His face was pallid and pasty, and, I rather think, showed slight
traces of small-pox. His features were ordinary; his hair was scanty,
and generally roughed, as if his fingers had often passed through it;
his brow was not high, but very broad, and well developed. His skull,
phrenologically speaking, argued great mathematical power, but showed
deficiency in the very qualities for which he was conspicuous, namely,
benevolence and veneration.”
Concerning Coleridge, Young wrote: “His general appearance would have
led me to suppose him a dissenting minister. His hair was long, white,
and neglected; his complexion was florid; his features were square; his
eyes watery and hazy; his brow broad and massive; his build uncouth; his
deportment grave and abstracted.”
Charles Cowden Clarke, in his _Recollections_, spoke of Coleridge as
“large-presenced, ample-countenanced, grand-foreheaded,” and said that
“the upper part of his face was excessively fine. His eyes were large,
light gray, prominent, and of a liquid brilliancy. The lower part of his
face was somewhat dragged, indicating the presence of habitual pain; but
his forehead was prodigious, and like a smooth slab of alabaster.” Leigh
Hunt likened his brow to “a great piece of placid marble,” and added
that even in his old age “there was something invincibly young in the
look of his face.” “This boylike expression” he considered “very
becoming in one who dreamed and speculated as Coleridge did when he was
really a boy, and who passed his entire life apart from the rest of the
world with a book and his flowers.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carlyle’s portrait of Coleridge is peculiarly in the Carlylian vein.
“Figure a fat, flabby, incurvated personage, at once short, rotund, and
relaxed; with a watery mouth; a snuffy nose; a pair of strange brown,
timid, and yet earnest-looking eyes; a high tapering brow; and a great
brush of gray hair—and you have some faint idea of Coleridge.”
Coleridge himself was not more flattering to Coleridge. In 1796 he wrote
to John Thelwall: “My face, unless when animated by immediate eloquence,
expresses great sloth, and great, indeed almost idiotic, good-nature.
’Tis a mere carcass of a face, fat, flabby, and expressive chiefly of
inexpression. Yet I am told that my eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are
physiognomically good.”
Mrs. Sara Coleridge, in her _Memoir_, gave a long account of Coleridge’s
death and burial, in which she said that “his body was opened, according
to his own urgent request;” but, as usual in such cases, she did not
allude to the making of any cast of his face or head.
Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, however, the son of Derwent Coleridge, who
is preparing a _Life_ of his illustrious grandfather, writes, in a
private note: “My mother used to tell me that the bust in her possession
was by Spurzheim, and was taken from a death-mask; but with regard to
Spurzheim, she must have been in error, as he died before Coleridge.
Lord Coleridge says that the bust in _his_ possession is by Spurzheim,
and was taken from a cast of the poet’s features; but whether he falls
into the same error as my mother did, I cannot say. It is, of course,
possible that Spurzheim took a life-cast from Coleridge’s face.”
Mr. Ernest Coleridge is inclined to accept the authenticity of the mask
in my collection. It certainly bears a strong resemblance to the two
busts of which he writes, as well as to the portrait by Allston, now in
the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Carlyle said that “Wordsworth’s face bore marks of much, not always
peaceful, meditation; the look of it not bland or benevolent so much as
close, impregnable, and hard.” S. C. Hall wrote that “his eyes were mild
and up-looking; his mouth coarse rather than refined; his forehead high
rather than broad;” while Greville put it more tersely when he described
him as “hard-featured, brown, wrinkled, with prominent teeth, and a few
scattered gray hairs.” Leigh Hunt said, in his _Autobiography_:
“Certainly I never beheld eyes that looked so inspired or supernatural
[as Wordsworth’s]. They were like fires half burning, half smouldering,
with a sort of acrid fixture of regard, and seated at the further end of
two caverns. One might imagine Ezekiel or Isaiah to have had such eyes.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wordsworth reminded Hazlitt “of some of Holbein’s heads—grave,
saturnine, with a slight indication of sly humor, a peculiar sweetness
in his smile.” Elsewhere Hazlitt spoke of his “intense high, narrow
forehead, Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose, and a
convulsive inclination to laughter about his mouth, which was a good
deal at variance with the solemn and stately expression of the rest of
his face.” And Sir Humphry and Lady Davy, who were at Wordsworth’s
funeral, were both struck by the likeness of his face, in the deep
repose of death, to that of Dante. The expression, they thought, was
much more feminine than it had been in life, and it suggested strongly
the face of his devoted sister, with whom so many of his years had been
spent.
Haydon, in his _Journal_, April 13, 1815, wrote: “I had a cast made
yesterday of Wordsworth’s face. He bore it like a philosopher. He sat in
my dressing-gown with his hands folded; sedate, solemn, and still.” And
then Haydon described how, through the open door, he exhibited the
unconscious poet, undergoing this unbecoming operation, to curious but
disrespectful friends of them both.
Another account of this performance shows us Wordsworth flat on his back
on the studio floor, with Charles Lamb dancing about him, and making
absurd remarks in order to force the poet to smile, and so spoil the
mask. All of which was very characteristic of that “dear delightful,”
“poor creature” who was despised by Carlyle, and who was naturally loved
by everybody else. What would we not give now for a mask of Lamb
himself, dead or alive?
All this happened when Wordsworth was forty-two years of age, and
thirty-five years before he died. Sir Henry Taylor in his
_Autobiography_, spoke, shortly after the poet’s death, of “a cast taken
of a mask of Wordsworth.” He considered it admirable as a likeness, and
added that it was so regarded by Mrs. Wordsworth. He saw “a rough
grandeur in it, with which, if it was to be converted into marble,
posterity might be contented.” But he does not say whether it was a
life-mask or a death-mask, and he does not refer to the Haydon mask as
such. In no other work, in no biography of Wordsworth, and in no account
of his last hours, is any allusion to the mask to be found. The face
here reproduced is, without question, that of Wordsworth. It suggests
the Wordsworth of middle age; it strongly resembles the portraits
painted by Haydon; it is much too young in form and expression for the
senile Wordsworth of the well-known Fraser Gallery; and there is little
doubt of its being the work of Haydon alluded to above. Haydon is known
to have painted several portraits of Wordsworth, one of which exhibits
him in a Byron collar and another shows him with eyes rolling in fine
frenzy over the composition of a sonnet on one of Haydon’s own pictures.
Haydon also introduced Wordsworth as a devout disciple in his large work
called “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem,” painted in 1818.
Mr. John Gilmer Speed, in his _Memoirs of Keats_, presents an engraving
of “John Keats from the Life-Mask of Haydon in 1818,” and pronounces it
the most satisfactory of the likenesses of Keats that he has seen. In no
other of the _Lives_ of Keats is any allusion made to this mask; it is
not mentioned in any of the published letters to or from Keats, or in
_The Correspondence and Table-Talk of Haydon_. Joseph Severn, shortly
before he died, told Mr. Richard Watson Gilder that he _believed_ the
cast to have been the work of Haydon, and that he prized it as the most
interesting, as it is the most real and accurate, portrait of his friend
in existence; and through him were procured the few copies of it in this
country, one of which is here reproduced. Mr. Gilder considers it much
more agreeable than the death-mask must have been, for it not only
escapes the haggardness of death, but there is even, so it seems to him,
a suggestion of humorous patience in the expression of the mouth. “In
this mask,” he adds, “one has the authentic form and shape—the very
stamp of the poet’s visage.” And he calls attention to the fact of its
remarkable resemblance to more than one of the members of the Keats
family whom he has met.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: JOHN KEATS]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Cowden Clarke, who does not seem to have been aware of the
existence of the mask, said that the best portrait of Keats is the first
done by Severn himself, that which is engraved in Hunt’s _Lord Byron and
his Contemporaries_. Lord Houghton, in his _Life of Keats_, quoted the
description given him by a lady (probably Mrs. B. W. Procter), who
watched Keats in the Surrey Institute in London, listening to Hazlitt’s
course of Lectures on the British Poets, in the winter of 1817-18. “His
countenance,” she said, “lives in my mind as one of singular beauty and
brightness; it had an expression as if it had been looking at some
glorious sight. His mouth was full and less intellectual than his other
features.” Leigh Hunt drew his portrait more carefully. “Every feature
was at once strongly cut and delicately alive. If there was any faulty
expression, it was in the mouth, which was not without something of a
character of pugnacity. The face was rather long than otherwise; the
upper lip projected a little over the under; the chin was bold, the
cheeks sunken; the eyes mellow and glowing, large, dark, and sensitive;
his hair, of a brown color, was fine, and hung in natural ringlets. His
head was a puzzle for the phrenologists, being remarkably small in the
skull, a singularity which he had in common with Byron and Shelley,
whose hats I could not get on.”
Mr. William Sharp quotes a letter of Joseph Severn, written a day or two
after the death of Keats, in which he said to Charles Armitage Brown,
“Yesterday a gentleman came to cast the face, hand, and foot” of Keats.
And on the 3d of April, 1821, John Taylor wrote to Severn from London
for “the mask, hand, and foot.” The later history of these interesting
casts I have never been able to learn.
The original cast of the life-mask of Keats, made in Haydon’s studio,
and very much finer than any of the replicas of it, is in the possession
of the National Portrait Gallery in London. It was given by Keats
himself to his intimate friend John Hamilton Reynolds, just before Keats
went abroad to die. Reynolds bequeathed it to his sister, Miss Charlotte
Reynolds, by whom it was presented, with a clear pedigree, to the
trustees of the National Portrait Gallery. This cast, with the mask of
Cromwell, and a copy of the mask of Dr. Johnson, are, curiously enough,
the only life-masks or death-masks in the institution in question.
The printed portraits of Johnson are very many. He himself said, once,
of the painting by Trotter, “Well, thou art an ugly fellow; but still, I
believe thou art like the original.” George Kearsley wrote that “his
face was capable of great expression, both in respect to intelligence
and mildness, as all those can witness who have seen him in the flow of
conversation, or under the influence of grateful feelings;” and Bishop
Percy wrote, “Johnson’s countenance, when in good humor, was not
disagreeable. His face clear, his complexion good, and his features not
ill-formed; many ladies have thought he might not have been unattractive
when young.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: SAMUEL JOHNSON]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The original of the mask of Johnson belongs to the Royal Literary Fund,
the secretary of which, Mr. A. Llewellyn Roberts, in giving his consent
to the reproduction of it here, writes as follows concerning it: “It was
taken from a cast after death, under the direction of Dr. Johnson’s
medical attendant, Mr. Cruikshanks, who informed his daughter, into
whose possession it came, that it was a remarkably correct likeness.
Unfortunately there is no record of the artist’s name, but it is alleged
that each member of Dr. Johnson’s family had a copy.” This particular
copy was given to the Royal Literary Fund by William Hutchins, who lived
in Hanover Square. There is no reference to the taking of the mask of
Johnson to be found in any of the editions of Boswell’s _Life_ of the
great lexicographer.
Keats and Haydon first met in the house of Leigh Hunt in November, 1816,
and to their mutual delight. They became very intimate upon very short
acquaintance, and the poet was constantly to be found in the studio of
the painter; they vowed that they were dearer to each other than
brothers, and they prayed that their hearts might be buried together.
Naturally a friendship so enthusiastic in its beginning did not last
very long, and Haydon seems to have been most unjust in his reflections
upon Keats, written some time after Keats’s heart had been buried in
Rome—and alone! Haydon wrote in the first flush of his intimacy with
Keats: “Never have I had such irresistible and perpetual urgings of
future greatness. I have been like a man with air-balloons under his
arm-pits and ether in his soul; while I was painting, walking, or
thinking, beaming flashes of energy followed and impressed me—they came
over me, and shot across me, and shook me, till I lifted up my heart and
thanked God.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is Haydon upon himself. Macaulay looked at him in a different
light. “Haydon,”—he wrote in his _Diary_ in 1853—“Haydon was exactly
the vulgar idea of a man of genius. He had all of the morbid
peculiarities which are supposed by fools to belong to intellectual
superiority—eccentricity, jealousy, caprice, indefinite disdain for
other men; and yet he was as poor, commonplace a creature as any in
the world. He painted signs, and gave himself more airs than if he had
painted the Cartoons. Whether you struck him or stroked him, starved
him or fed him, he snapped at your hand in just the same way!”
In the _Memoir_ of Haydon by his son is a fine engraving of the
death-mask of Haydon, a replica of which is in my collection. This mask,
with that of Jeremy Bentham, was broken, as you here see them, by
careless Custom-house officers on their arrival in New York a few years
ago.
James Parton quoted Burr as saying of Jeremy Bentham, “It is impossible
to conceive a physiognomy more strongly marked with ingenuousness and
philanthropy.” John Stuart Mill said of him that “he was a boy till the
last.” And at the age of eighty-two he himself wrote to an old friend:
“I am alive, though turned of eighty; still in good health and spirits;
codifying like a dragon.” “Candor in the countenance, mildness in the
looks, serenity upon the brow, calmness in the language, coolness in the
movements, imperturbability united with the keenest feeling:” such,
according to Brissot de Warville, were the characteristics of Bentham.
Since St. Denis of France used to walk about with his head under his
arm, or used to sit about with his head in his lap, in the third century
of our Christian era, no _post-mortem_ performance is more grotesque
than that of Jeremy Bentham, who left his body by will to Dr. Southwood
Smith. The legatee was instructed to dissect it, and to deliver lectures
upon it to his medical students and to the public generally. After these
anatomical demonstrations a skeleton was to be made, and was made, of
the bones. Dr. Smith “endeavored to preserve the head untouched”—the
words are his own—“merely drawing away the fluids by placing it under an
air-pump over sulphuric acid. By this means the head was rendered as
hard as the skulls of the New-Zealanders, but all expression, of course,
was gone. Seeing this would not do for exhibition, I had a mould made in
wax by a distinguished French artist, taken from David’s bust,
Pickersgill’s picture, and my own ring. The artist succeeded in
producing one of the most admirable likenesses ever seen. I then had the
skeleton stuffed out to fit Bentham’s own clothes, and this was likewise
fitted to the trunk. The figure was placed seated on the chair in which
he usually sat, one hand holding the walking-stick which was his
constant companion when he went out, called by him ‘Dapple.’ The whole
was enclosed in a mahogany case with glass doors.” Bentham was wont to
amuse himself in his boyish old age with the vision of his presiding, as
it were, in proper person at meetings of his disciples, and he even used
to anticipate his being wheeled to the top of the table on festive
occasions!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: JEREMY BENTHAM]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
His figure as here described is still to be seen in the rooms of
University College, Gower Street, London. It is curious that Dr. Smith
did not go to the mask for a representation of Bentham’s actual face.
That such a mask was made, George Combe testified in the columns of the
London _Phrenological Journal_ a few years after Bentham’s death. He
said that it was in his own possession, and showed that “the knowing
organ was large and the reflective organs only full.” The mask, he said,
was very like the portrait of Bentham reproduced in Tait’s edition of
Bentham’s works. But he does not say whether it was a death-mask or the
life-mask known to have been made by Turnerelli, an Italian sculptor
living in London, in the early part of this century, and when Bentham
was not more than fifty years of age. He was eighty-five when he died.
This plaster mask of Bentham has been compared carefully with the wax
effigy in University College. The mouth, the cranial arch, the entire
upper part of the face, and the general shape of the head are very like,
although in the wax mask the chin is shorter and rounder, and the eyes,
of course, are open.
The mask of Rossetti was made by Brucciani, after death. Only three or
four copies were cast, and the mould is in the possession of Mr. William
M. Rossetti, through whose courtesy I am able to reproduce it here, and
who writes: “I should say that my family and myself do not at all like
the version of my brother’s face presented by the mould and cast. In
especial, singular though it may sound, the dimensions of the forehead
seem wofully narrowed and belied. But of course, from a certain point of
view, the cast tells truth of its own kind.”
Mr. Hall Caine, writing of his own copy of the mask, says: “I ought
perhaps to add that it does not give a good impression of Dante
Rossetti. The upper part of the head is very noble, but the lower part
is somewhat repellant.”
A fourth copy belongs to Mr. George F. Watts, the painter, whose
portrait of Rossetti is so well known.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
An anonymous writer in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ for January, 1893, who
seems to have known Rossetti intimately, thus describes the head and
front of the poet: “He was short, squat, bull-doggish; he belonged to
the Cavour type, but the sallow face was massive and powerful. The
impression of solidity is somewhat toned down in Watts’s portrait, and
the face is thinner and more worn than when I knew him. Sleepless nights
and protracted pain may have changed him in later years and made the
ideal Rossetti more manifest. Except for the meditative, tranquil eye
(one thought of the ox-eyed Janus), there was nothing ideal about him.
He was intensely Italian, indeed, but it was the sleek and well-fed
citizen of Milan or Genoa that he recalled, not the slim and romantic
hero of Verdi or Donizetti.”
Cavour, according to George Eliot, who once got a glimpse of him in an
Italian railway station, was a man pleasant to look upon, with a smile
half kind and half caustic. He gave her the impression that “he thought
of many matters, but thanked Heaven and made no boast of them.”
Elsewhere she said: “The pleasantest sight was Count Cavour in plainest
dress, with a head full of power, mingled with _bonhomie_.”
Mr. O. M. Spencer, in _Harper’s Magazine_ for August, 1871, devotes much
space to the personal appearance of Cavour, who was, according to this
authority, “of medium stature, with a tendency to corpulency; quick and
energetic in his movements, with a forehead broad, high, and spacious;
his eyes were partially closed by weakness and still further concealed
by spectacles; his mouth not well formed and somewhat voluptuous, over
which played an ironical smile, the joint offspring of mirth and
disdain. Nevertheless, the _tout ensemble_ of his countenance was
expressive of benignity. Simple in his manners, though dignified in his
bearing, he would have been recognized anywhere as a sub-alpine country
gentleman, familiar with the usages of the court. Though of an
irascible, phosphoric temperament, he rarely or never lost his
self-control. Generous in his enmities and liberal in his friendships,
he was chary of his confidence and exclusive in his intimacies. It may
be that he was devoid of faith and affection, but he certainly loved
Italy, and believed in his own mission.”
The death-mask of Cavour, and that of Pius IX., I found lying peacefully
side by side in a little plaster-shop in Rome in the autumn of 1893. The
Pope was assuredly not devoid of faith and affection; and if he loved
Italy less, it was only because he loved the Church of Rome more.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: COUNT CAVOUR]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: PIUS IX.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pius IX., we were told, at the time of his death in 1878, was a hale and
vigorous septuagenarian, with a fine presence, a rich and melodious
voice, a facile utterance, which rose at times to eloquence, and a
benign countenance. For three days the body of the Pope lay in state in
the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament in St. Peter’s, and an eye-witness of
the ceremonies wrote: “The face, perfectly visible, seemed unchanged
from what it had been in life, and the expression was one of absolute
peace; the calmness, indeed, was almost like that of sleep. A slight
flush, even, was on the cheek, and a smile seemed to hover about the
lips. The white hair peeped from under the mitre, and in the crossed
hands, covered with red gloves, lay a crucifix suspended from a chain
about his neck.”
Signor A. Gallenza, in a volume entitled _The Pope and the King_, spoke
of the pontiff’s face in death as “handsome and dignified, with
something like sternness in the lofty brow, strangely contrasting with
that set smile so winning in the living man himself, but which was
merely the result of a muscular contraction, a dimple which even death
could not smooth.”
Henry Crabb Robinson wrote from Italy in 1831: “I occasionally saw
Leopardi, the poet, a man of acknowledged genius and of unimpeachable
character. He was a man of good family and a scholar, but he had a
feeble frame, was sickly and deformed.”
Leopardi’s life was very unhappy. His bodily infirmities humiliated him,
and domestic trials greatly affected his spirit. He seems to have
inspired very little tenderness even in the heart of his own mother, and
he died as miserably as he lived, longing for the eternal rest from pain
and neglect. His contemporaries have left almost nothing on record
concerning his personal appearance, but the few existing portraits of
him, and particularly this cast of his dead face, certainly show
sweetness mingled with strength. Mr. Howells, in his _Modern Italian
Poets_, quotes Niebuhr as saying of the young Leopardi: “Conceive of my
astonishment, when I saw standing before me, in the poor little chamber,
a mere youth, pale and shy, frail in person and obviously in ill-health,
who was by far the first, in fact the only, Greek philologist in Italy.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: GIACOMO LEOPARDI]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The best and most sympathetic portrait of John Boyle O’Reilly is the
following, to be found in the life of that gentleman written by his
friend, Mr. James Jeffrey Roche: “Recalling him as he then was [1870],
the abiding memory of him is that of his marvellously sweet smile, and
his strikingly clear and frank gaze; the beauty of his face lay chiefly
in his eyes. The official advertisement of his escape says that those
eyes were brown, and prison descriptions are generally more accurate
than flattering. Almost anybody looking at him less closely, would have
said that his eyes were black. As a matter of fact, they were hazel, but
his dark skin and jet-black eyebrows and hair gave an impression of
blackness to the large, well-formed eyes beneath. They were very
expressive, whether flashing with some sudden fancy or glowing with a
deeper burning thought, or sparkling with pure boyish fun. There was
another expression, which they sometimes wore at this period of his
life, and which may be described for lack of a better word, as a hunted
look—not frightened or furtive, but an alert, watchful expression, which
made it easy to understand how he could have deliberately armed himself
with the firm intention of surrendering his liberty only with his
life.... No portrait ever made of him does justice to that which was the
great charm of his countenance—its wonderful light and life. His eyes
had the depth and fire and mobile color of glowing carbuncle. For the
rest he had the rich brown complexion, so familiar in after-years; a
small black mustache, only half concealing his finely-cut mouth, and
revealing a set of perfectly white, regular teeth. His form was slight,
but erect and soldier-like. He carried his head well raised, and a
little thrown back. He was a man whom no one would pass without a second
glance.”
It is rather a curious fact that the men most interested, naturally, in
the study of the human face, and in its portrayal with chisel or pencil,
are the men most poorly represented in this collection; Sir Thomas
Lawrence being the only painter of portraits, and Hiram Powers, Haydon,
and Canova the only makers of masks, whose masks are here presented.
Three views of the life-mask of Sir Thomas Lawrence were engraved by R.
J. Lane, in 1830. They are contained on one plate, and represent the
full face, as well as profiles looking to the right and to the left. The
print is very rare, and bears the following inscription: “From a plaster
cast taken at the age of thirty-four, in the possession of an attached
friend.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edward H. Baily, the sculptor, is known to have made a cast of
Lawrence’s features after death. “The head was finely shaped and bald,
and it bore a striking resemblance to that of Canning, although the face
lacked something of Canning’s elevated expression.” This death-mask is
here presented.
Lawrence is said to have been a beautiful creature in his boyhood, with
bright eyes, and long chestnut hair. In later life we are told that
“although not tall—he was under five feet nine inches—his beautiful
face, active figure, agreeable manners, and fine voice were not thrown
away upon either lords or ladies, emperors or kings.” Opie said of him
once, “Lawrence made coxcombs of his sitters, and his sitters made a
coxcomb of him.” And George IV., the Sir Hubert Stanley of fine manners,
pronounced him “a high-bred gentleman.” This is praise indeed! Another,
and perhaps not so exalted an authority, said, “Lawrence’s appearance
was exceedingly graceful and gentlemanly. His countenance was open and
noble, his eyes were large and lustrous and very expressive.” Dr. R. R.
Madden, in his _Memoirs of the Countess of Blessington_, quotes a
brother artist, and a friend of Lawrence, as saying of him, “As a man
Sir Thomas Lawrence was amiable, kind, generous, and forgiving. His
manner was elegant but not high-bred. He had too much the air of always
submitting. He had smiled so often, and so long, that at last his smile
had the appearance of being set in enamel.”
The mask of J. M. W. Turner formerly belonged to the late Dr. Pocock of
Brighton, England, and is now in the possession of Mr. William Ward, of
London. It was made, after death, by the late Thomas Woolner. There are
but few portraits of Turner in existence, the most life-like being an
engraving by M. M. Halloway, of a half-length profile sketch bearing
this inscription: “Drawn by me in the print-room of the British Museum.
J. T. Smith.” Unfortunately no date is attached.
Much has been put on record about Turner’s personal peculiarities and
eccentricities; but little has been said by his contemporaries
concerning his personal appearance. The best picture, although a slight
one, is from the pen of Mr. W. P. Frith: “Turner was a very short man,
with a large head, and a face usually much muffled to protect it from
the draughts for which the rooms [of the Royal Academy] were
celebrated.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: J. M. W. TURNER]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cyrus Redding, in his _Past Celebrities_, speaks of Turner’s
“unprepossessing exterior, his reserve, and his austerity of language.”
Wilkie Collins once described him as seated on the top of a flight of
steps, astride of a box, on Varnishing Day at the Royal Academy, “a
shabby Bacchus, nodding like a mandarin at his picture, which he with a
pendulum-motion now touched with his brush, now receded from.” And Peter
Cunningham, in an almost brutal way, set down Turner as “short, stout,
and bandy-legged, with a red, pimply face, imperious and covetous eyes,
and a tongue which expressed his sentiments with murmuring reluctance.”
Sir William Allen, according to Cunningham, was accustomed to describe
the great painter as a “Dutch Skipper.”
In view of all this, it is not remarkable that Turner had strong
objections to sitting for his portrait. He felt that any familiarity
with his face and figure would affect the poetry of his works in the
popular mind. “No one,” he said, “would believe, after seeing my
likeness, that I painted these pictures.” A contemporary portrait of
Turner, fishing in all his uncouth enthusiasm, with shabby garments, and
a cotton umbrella over his head, is unfortunately too long to be quoted
here.
Hiram Powers died in Florence in 1873, and lies in the Protestant
Cemetery of that city. His mask, after death, was made by Thomas Ball
and Joel T. Hart. Dr. Samuel Osgood said of Powers in 1870: “In his
looks, his ideas, as well as in all his works, he is a man of the golden
mean. There is nothing too much in his make or his manner. He is a good
specimen of a well-formed man, and his own statue would make a good sign
for the front of his studio.” In October, 1847, Mrs. Browning wrote:
“Mr. Powers, the sculptor, is our chief friend and favorite. A most
charming, simple, straightforward, genial American—as simple as the man
of genius he has proved himself to be.... The sculptor has eyes like a
wild Indian’s, so black and full of light—you would scarcely marvel if
they clove the marble without the help of his hand.” “Mr. Powers called
in the evening,” wrote Hawthorne in his _Italian Note-book_ in 1858—“a
plain personage, characterized by strong simplicity and warm kindliness,
with an impending brow, and large eyes which kindle as he speaks. He is
gray and slightly bald, but does not seem elderly nor past his prime. I
accept him at once as an honest and trustworthy man, and shall not vary
from this judgment.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: HIRAM POWERS]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Preston Powers, who possesses the mask of his father, has also in
his possession a life-mask and a death-mask of Agassiz, and a death-mask
of Sumner; the last two having been made by himself. Through his
courtesy I am enabled to reproduce them all here.
The life-mask of Agassiz was made when the subject was about forty years
of age, and by an artist now unknown. It was given to Mr. Powers by Mr.
Alexander Agassiz at the time of the elder Agassiz’s death.
E. P. Whipple, in his _Recollections of Eminent Men_, said of Agassiz:
“You could not look at him without feeling that you were in the presence
of a magnificent specimen of physical, mental, and moral manhood; that
in him was realized Sainte-Beuve’s ideal of a scientist—the soul of a
sage in the body of an athlete. At that time [1845] he was one of the
comeliest of men. His full and ruddy face, glowing with health and
animation, was crowned by a brow which seemed to be the fit home for
such a comprehensive intelligence.” And Longfellow, in his _Journal_
(January 9, 1847), wrote: “In the evening a reunion at Felton’s to meet
Mr. Agassiz, the Swiss geologist and naturalist. A pleasant, voluble
man, with a bright beaming face.”
Mr. Curtis, in an oration upon Charles Sumner, delivered shortly after
the statesman’s death, said that “his look, his walk, his dress, his
manner, were not those of the busy advocate, even in his younger years,
but of the cultivated and brilliant man of society, the Admirable
Crichton of the saloons.”
Mrs. Jefferson Davis, in her _Life_ of her husband, spoke of Sumner as
“a handsome, unpleasing man, and an athlete whose physique proclaimed
his physical strength.” And Mr. Seward wrote to his wife in 1856:
“Sumner is much changed for the worse. His elasticity and vigor are
gone. He walks, and in every way moves, like a man who has not
altogether recovered from a paralysis, or like a man whose sight is
dimmed, and his limbs stiffened with age.”
At the autopsy it was discovered that the brain of Sumner showed no
trace of the assault from the effects of which he suffered so terribly.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: LOUIS AGASSIZ—From Life]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: LOUIS AGASSIZ—From Death]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: CHARLES SUMNER]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Canova must have been a beautiful character. It is not often that so
much good is spoken, even of the dead, as has been spoken of him since
he died; and if the chroniclers are right, he deserved it all. In
personal appearance, however, we read that he was not particularly
attractive. His hair was black and luxuriant, and his forehead of noble
dimensions, but the outline of his features was neither grand nor
extraordinary. The phrenologists gave him a massive brain upward and
forward of the ears, wonderful constructive talent, with large ideality
and strong intellect. He was very abstemious in his habits, very
thoughtful, and a hard worker. Count Cicognara, in a biographical sketch
of Canova, thus described his face during his very last hours: “His
visage became, and remained for some time, highly radiant and
expressive, as if his mind was absorbed in some sublime conception,
creating powerful and unusual emotion in all around him. Thus he must
have looked when imagining that venerable figure of the pontiff who is
represented in the attitude of prayer in the Vatican. His death was
wholly unattended by the agonies which make a death-bed so distressing,
nor did even a sigh or convulsion announce his dying moment.”
This is the visage which his friends cast in plaster, and it was, no
doubt, the basis of the medallion bust of Canova, in profile, which
forms part of the pyramidal tomb erected by certain of his pupils in
1827, in the church of Sante Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, the pantheon of
Venice. The monument, according to Mr. Ruskin, is “consummate in
science, intolerable in affectation, ridiculous in conception; null and
void to the uttermost in invention and feeling;” and the medallion
represents the great sculptor in all his glorious prime of strength and
beauty.
The death-mask of Canova, as here reproduced, in its peaceful and quiet
repose, is in strong contrast with that of Richard Brinsley Sheridan,
shown upon a subsequent page.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: ANTONIO CANOVA]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the whole history of English letters, there can be found no sadder
chapter than that which contains the story of Sheridan’s death. The body
out of which the breath was fast going, and from which intelligent
action had entirely gone, was seized by sheriff’s officers for debt, and
only by the threats of attending physicians did it escape being carried
to a low sponging-house, wrapped in nothing but the blankets that
covered the bed on which it lay. The “life and succor” his friends had
begged were denied him, and “Westminster Abbey and a funeral” were all
he received. As a French journal said at the time, it only proved that
“France is the place for a man of letters to live in, and England the
place for him to die in.” Sheridan’s appearance during his last hours
was thus depicted by one who saw for himself the havoc made: “His
countenance was distorted under the writhings of unutterable anguish.
Pain and the effects of pain were visible on that sunken cheek; and on
that brow which had never knitted under oppression, or frowned upon the
importunities of the unfortunate, pain in its most acute form had
contracted there its harsh and forbidding lines.... Still, amid those
rigid lines which continuous suffering had indented there, you might
perceive the softer and more harmonious tracings of uncomplaining
patience, fortitude in its endurance, and resignation in its calmness.”
This is the face exhibited here—one of the most unpleasant to look upon
which the collection contains, notwithstanding Sheridan’s own boast, not
very long before his death, that “his eyes would look up as brightly at
his coffin-lid as ever.” His spirits did not fail him so long as
consciousness remained, and when asked by the attending surgeons if he
had ever before undergone an operation, he replied, “Only when sitting
for my portrait, or having my hair cut.” It is to be regretted that this
last portrait for which he sat, should be so worn and weary in its
expression. Moore, in his _Life of Sheridan_, did not mention the taking
of the mask, although he spoke of the plaster cast of Sheridan’s hand,
under which some keen observer had written:
“Good at a fight, better at a play,
God-like in giving—but the devil to pay.”
Concerning Moore’s own appearance, Leigh Hunt wrote: “Moore’s forehead
was bony and full of character, with ‘bumps’ of wit large and radiant
enough to transport a phrenologist. His eyes were as dark and fine as
you would wish to see under a set of vine leaves; his mouth generous,
and good-humored with dimples.” Scott said in his _Journal_, in 1825:
“Moore’s countenance is plain, but the expression is very animated,
especially in speaking or singing, so that it is far more interesting
than the finest features could have rendered it.” In 1833 Gerald Griffin
made a visit to Moore at Sloperton, and thus described Moore himself: “A
little man, but full of spirits, with eyes, hands, feet, and frame
forever in motion.... I am no great observer of proportions, but he
seemed to me to be a neat-made little fellow, tidily buttoned up, young
as fifteen at heart, though with hair that reminded me of ‘Alps in the
sunset’; not handsome, perhaps, but something in the whole cut of him
that pleased me.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: THOMAS MOORE]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A year later, N. P. Willis, who _was_ a great observer of proportions,
met Moore at Lady Blessington’s, and thus recorded his observations:
“His forehead is wrinkled, with the exception of a most prominent
development of the organ of gayety, which, singularly enough, shines
with the lustre and smooth polish of a pearl, and is surrounded by a
semicircle of lines drawn close about it like intrenchments against
Time. His eyes still sparkle like a champagne bubble, though the invader
has drawn his pencillings about the corners.... His mouth is the most
characteristic feature of all. The lips are delicately cut, slight, and
changeable as an aspen, but there is a set look about the lower lip—a
determination of the muscle to a particular expression, and you fancy
that you can almost see wit astride upon it.... The slightly tossed nose
confirms the fun of the expression, and altogether it is a face that
sparkles, beams, radiates.”
This was Moore as others saw him when he was in his prime. His later
years were clouded by a loss of memory, and a helplessness almost
childish. The light of his intellect grew dim by degrees, although Lord
John Russell said that there was never a total extinction of the bright
flame. He died calmly and without pain; and the cast of his face
certainly reflects much that Willis had drawn in his _Pencillings by the
Way_.
Sheridan said once of a fellow-Irishman that Burke’s “abilities, happily
for the glory of our age, are not intrusted to the perishable eloquence
of the day, but will live to be the admiration of that hour when all of
us shall be mute, and most of us forgotten.” Burke, in all his
relations, was a better man than Sheridan, and he met, as he deserved, a
better fate. He fell asleep for the last time with Addison’s chapter on
“The Immortality of the Soul” under his pillow, and with the respect and
gratitude of all England at his feet. The mask of Burke was offered for
sale—and was sold—in London a few months ago, with a certificate from
Mr. Edward B. Wood, stating that it was made by the especial desire of
Queen Charlotte on the day of Burke’s death. The name of the artist is
unknown, but he is said to have received two hundred guineas for the
work. After the death of her Majesty the mask was given by George IV. to
C. Nugent, his gentleman-in-waiting, from whom it came into the
possession of his nephew, Mr. Wood. This original mask, from the Queen’s
cabinet, is now the property of The Players. It is very like the
familiar portrait of Burke by Opie.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: EDMUND BURKE]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
George Combe had a mask of Curran in this country, of which mine, no
doubt, is a replica, as it bears a strong resemblance to the established
portraits of Curran. Its existence does not appear to have been known to
the sculptor of the medallion head of Curran on the monument in St.
Patrick’s, Dublin, for that was avowedly taken from the portrait by Sir
Thomas Lawrence. A short time before his death Curran wrote to a friend
that his “entire life had been passed in a wretched futurity,” but that
happily he had found the remedy, and that was to “give over the folly of
breathing at all.” He ceased to breathe at all in Brompton, London, in
the autumn of 1817; and his bones, now buried in Dublin, were laid for
some years in a vault of Paddington church.
We learn from various sources that Curran was under the middle height,
“very ugly,” with intensely bright, black eyes, perfectly straight
jet-black hair, a “thick” complexion, and “a protruding underlip on a
retreating face.” Croker, speaking of his oratory, said: “You began by
being prejudiced against him by his bad character and ill-looking
appearance, like the devil with his tail cut off, and you were at last
carried away by his splendid language and by the power of his metaphor.”
The mask of Lord Palmerston was taken immediately after death at
Brockton Hall, by Mr. Jackson. Only one cast was ever made—that which is
in my collection—and upon this was based the head upon the statue of
Palmerston by Mr. Jackson, now in Westminster Abbey. The Marquis of
Lorne, in his _Life of Palmerston_, says: “Some of us may have seen him
rise quickly and lightly, when nearly fourscore, from his seat in the
House of Commons, and speak with clearness and directness but no attempt
at eloquence, and often with some hesitation, at the table; his black
frock-coat buttoned across the well-knit and erect figure of middle
stature, his sentences spoken towards the bar of the House; his gray
short hair brushed forward and the gray whiskers framing the head erect
on the shoulders. Some may remember, under the shaven chin, the loose
bow-knot, neatly tied at the throat, the bit of open shirt-front, with
standing collar.” His appearance in 1837 is thus described: “Lord
Palmerston is tall and handsome. His face is round and of the darkest
hue. His hair is black, and always exhibits proofs of the skill and
attention of the _friseur_. His clothes are in the extreme of fashion.
He is very fond of his personal appearance.” And Sir William Fraser
sketched him as he appeared to a later generation: “Lord Palmerston on
horseback looked a big man, and standing at the table of the House he
did not appear ill-proportioned. Each foot, to describe it
mathematically, was ‘a four-sided, irregular figure.’ His portraits in
_Punch_ are very like him. Those with a flower or straw in the mouth are
the best. He had a very horsy look.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: LORD PALMERSTON]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The death-mask of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, as here
shown, was found by me a year or two ago in the out-of-the-way little
shop of a mould-maker in Chelsea. It was taken by Sir Edgar Boehm, and
the nose in the cast was broken, evidently intentionally and wantonly,
by some malicious person who wished, perhaps, in this iconoclastic way
to express with emphasis his political opinions. Despite its mutilated
condition it is of great interest to all lovers and admirers of the
original.
The best pen-portrait of Disraeli as well as the most familiar, is that
of N. P. Willis, who saw him, in his youth, at Lady Blessington’s. It
says: “He was sitting in a window looking on Hyde Park, the last rays of
sunlight reflected from the gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly
embroidered waistcoat. Patent-leather pumps, a white stick with a black
cord and tassel, and a quantity of chain about his neck and pockets,
served to make him a conspicuous object. He has one of the most
remarkable faces I ever saw. He is lividly pale, and but for the energy
of his action and the strength of his lungs, would seem to be a victim
of consumption. His eye is as black as Erebus and has the most mocking,
lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a
kind of working and impatient nervousness; and when he has burst forth,
as he does constantly, with a particularly successful cataract of
expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy
of Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraordinary as his taste in
waistcoats. A thick, heavy mass of jet-black ringlets falls on his left
cheek almost to his collarless stock, which on the left temple is parted
and put away with the smooth carefulness of a girl. The conversation
turned upon Beckford. I might as well attempt to gather up the foam of
the sea as to convey an idea of the extraordinary language in which he
clothed his description. He talked like a race-horse approaching the
winning-post, every muscle in action.” This is the Disraeli whom D’Orsay
drew.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: BENJAMIN DISRAELI]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. T. Wemyss Reid thus sketches Disraeli in later life: “Over the high
arched forehead—surely the forehead of a poet—there hangs from the crown
of the head a single curl of dark hair, a curl which you cannot look at
without feeling a touch of pathos in your inmost heart, for it is the
only thing about the worn and silent man reminding you of the brilliant
youth of _Vivian Grey_. The face below this solitary lock is deeply
marked with the furrows left by care’s ploughshare; the fine dark eyes
look downward, the mouth is closed with a firmness that says more for
his tenacity of will than pages of eulogy would do; but what strikes you
more than anything else is the utter lack of expression upon the
countenance. No one looking at the face, though but for a moment, could
fall into the error of supposing that expression and intelligence are
not there; they are there, but in concealment.”
Mr. W. P. Frith, in his _Autobiography_, more than once alludes to the
devotion of Mrs. Disraeli to her husband, and he quotes John Phillips as
describing the painting of Disraeli’s portrait. After the subject and
his wife had seen the sketch, during the first sitting, the colors being
necessarily crude, the lady returned hastily to the studio, and said to
the painter: “Remember that his pallor is his beauty!”
Dr. Wilde, afterwards Sir William Wilde, published in Dublin, in 1849, a
volume entitled _The Closing Years of Dean Swift’s Life_, a very
interesting book now long out of print. It is an elaborate defence of
Swift’s sanity, and it contains a full account of the plaster mask taken
from the Dean’s face “after the _post-mortem_ examination.” From this,
he said, “a bust was made and placed in the museum of the University,
which, notwithstanding its possessing much of the cadaverous appearance,
is, we are strongly inclined to believe, the best likeness of
Swift—during, at least, the last few years of his life—now in
existence.” Speaking of this mask, Sir Walter Scott wrote: “The
expression of countenance is most unequivocally maniacal, and one side
of the mouth (the left) horribly contorted downwards, as if convulsed by
pain.” Dr. Wilde, on the other hand, said: “The expression is remarkably
placid; but there is an evident drag in the left side of the mouth,
exhibiting a paralysis of the facial muscles of the right side, which,
we have reason to believe, existed for some years before his death.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: JONATHAN SWIFT]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Wilde compared this cast of Swift’s face, taken immediately after
death, with the cast and drawings of his skull made in 1835, ninety
years later, when the bodies of Swift and Stella were exhumed, and their
craniums examined by the phrenologists belonging to the British
Association; and by careful analysis of both, he was able to satisfy
himself that Swift was not “a driveller and a show” when he died, nor a
madman while he lived. He gave, upon the sixty-second page of his book,
a drawing of this mask in profile, and the face is certainly identical
with the face in my collection. It resembles very strongly the accepted
portraits of Swift, particularly the two in which he was drawn without
his wig. The more familiar of these is a profile in crayon, by Barber,
taken when the Dean was about sixty years of age—and eighteen years
before his death—which has been frequently engraved for the several
editions of Lord Orrery’s _Remarks on the Life and Writings of Jonathan
Swift_, first published in 1751. The original cast was made in two
parts, according to Dr. Wilde, and the difference in surface between the
rough hinder part—not existing in my copy—and the smooth polished
anterior portion, as here seen, shows at once that the back of the head
was added at a later date. Two lines of writing, greatly defaced, found
upon the cast attest this to be “Dean Swift taken off his ... the night
of his burial, and the ... one side larger than the other in nature.” In
a foot-note to the second edition of his work, Dr. Wilde said: “The
original mask remained in the museum T.C.D. [Trinity College, Dublin]
till within a few years ago [1849], when it was accidentally destroyed.”
The history of this replica—for replica it certainly is—before it came
into my hands I have never been able to trace. It found its way into the
shop of a dealer in curiosities, who knew nothing of its pedigree, not
even whose face it was; and from him I bought it for a few shillings. It
is one of the most interesting of the collection, and perhaps the most
valuable, because the most rare. It is hardly the Swift of our
imagination, the man whom Stella worshipped and Vanessa adored; and, Dr.
Wilde to the contrary, notwithstanding, one cannot help feeling while
looking at it that Swift’s own sad prophecy to Dr. Young was
fulfilled—“I shall be like that lofty elm whose head has been blasted; I
shall die first at the top.”
At least one of the biographers of the Irish dean died as Byron often
feared to die, “like Swift, at the top first.” Sir Walter Scott’s decay
was a mental decay in the beginning of his last illness; but happily for
him, and for his family, the axe was laid at the root of the grand old
monarch of the forest of Scottish letters before the upper branches were
permitted to go to utter ruin.
There exist at Abbotsford two masks of its first laird—a life-mask and a
death-mask. Of the former very little is known except that it is said to
have been made in Paris. The latter was exhibited at the Scott Centenary
Celebration in Edinburgh, in 1871, when it attracted a great deal of
attention. They both show, as no portrait of the living man shows,
except the familiar sketch by Maclise in the Fraser Gallery, the
peculiar formation of his head, and the unusual length above the eyes.
Lockhart, in his account of Scott’s last hours, said: “It was a
beautiful day; so warm that every window was wide open, and so perfectly
still that the sound of all others most delicious to his ears—the gentle
ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles—was distinctly audible as we knelt
around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes. No
sculptor ever marbled a more majestic image of repose.”
He does not mention the taking of the death-mask, however, and nowhere
alludes to it. It was made by George Bullock—it is said, at the request
of Dr. Spurzheim—and Bullock and Chantrey both used it in modelling
posthumous busts of the bard. It was loaned to Sir (then Mr.) Edwin
Landseer while he was painting his full-length portrait of Sir Walter,
with the background of the scenery of the Rhymer’s Glen.
Bullock supposed that the original mould was destroyed not long after
Scott’s death, but Mr. Gourlay Steel writes that his brother, Sir John
Steel, while engaged upon the monument to Lockhart at Dryburgh Abbey,
some years later, came upon it accidentally at Abbotsford, and used it
in remodelling his bust of Sir Walter for Mr. Hope-Scott.
Chantrey, in comparing the measurements of Scott’s head from this mask
with the measurements he had made of the head of Shakspere on the
Stratford monument—which latter he had always considered unnatural, if
not impossible—found, to his great surprise, that they were almost
identical in height from the eyes up; and in each case he noticed the
very unusual length of the upper-lip. It was this dome-like feature of
Scott’s head which inspired one of his jocular friends in Edinburgh to
hail him once, when he dragged himself up the stairs of the Session
House with his hat in his hand, as “Peveril of the Peak.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Carlyle last saw Scott—they never met to exchange a word—it was in
one of the streets of Edinburgh, late in Scott’s life; and, “Alas!”
wrote the younger man, “his fine Scottish face, with its shaggy honesty
and goodness, was all worn with care, the joy all fled from it, and
ploughed deep with labor and sorrow.”
Eighteen months after the death of Scott, the Burns mausoleum at
Dumfries was opened to receive the remains of Burns’s widow, when,
according to the appendix to the first edition of Allan Cunningham’s
_Life of Burns_, then going through the press, a cast was taken from the
cranium of the poet. Mr. Archibald Blacklock, surgeon of Dumfries, who
made the examination, declared that “the cranial bones were perfect in
every respect, and were firmly held together by their sutures,” etc.,
etc. Unfortunately there is no cast of the head of the poet, living or
dead, except this one here shown of his fleshless skull. George Combe,
who received a replica of it from the executors of Mrs. Burns, presented
a number of wood-cuts of it, in various positions, in his _Phrenology_,
and he was very fond of using it to point his morals.
It is unusually large, even for the skull of a Scotchman; and viewed
laterally, its length, due to the magnitude of the anterior lobe, is
enormous.
Combe frequently reproduced the skull of Robert the Bruce, shown here as
well, although he failed to explain the mystery of its existence in
plaster. The skeletons of Bruce and his queen were discovered early in
the present century by a party of workmen who were making certain
repairs in the Abbey Church of Dunfermline. The bones of the hero of
Bannockburn were identified from the description of the interment in
contemporary records, and from the fact that the ribs on the left side
had been roughly sawn away when the heart was delivered to Sir James
Douglas, and sent off on its pious and romantic, but unsuccessful,
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The skull of Bruce, in an excellent state
of preservation, was examined carefully by the Phrenological Society of
Edinburgh, then in the highest tide of its enthusiasm and prosperity;
and with the consent of the Crown, this cast of it was made. A gentleman
who wrote anonymously to _Notes and Queries_, August 27, 1859, some
forty years later, said that he remembered distinctly seeing and
handling this skull, and the great sensation its discovery created. It
was reinterred in its original resting-place a day or two later.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: ROBERT BURNS]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: KING ROBERT THE BRUCE]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The London _Times_ contained, not very long ago, the following curious
advertisement: “Napoleon I. For sale, the original mask moulded at Saint
Helena by Dr. Antomarchi. Price required, £6000. Address,” etc., etc.
Dr. F. Antomarchi, a native of Corsica, and a professor of anatomy at
Florence, at the request of Cardinal Fesch and of “Madame Mère,” and
with the consent of the British government, went to Saint Helena in 1819
as physician to the exiled Emperor. He closed his master’s eyes in
death; and immediately before the official _post-mortem_ examination,
held the next day, he made the mask in question. He said in his report
that the face was relaxed, but that the mask was correct so far as the
shape of the forehead and nose was concerned. And unquestionably it is
the most truthful portrait of Bonaparte that exists.
When Napoleon thought himself closely observed, he had, according to Sir
Walter Scott, “the power of discharging from his countenance all
expression save that of an indefinite smile, and presenting to the
curious investigator the fixed and rigid eyes of a marble bust.” As he
is here observed, no matter how curiously or how closely, he is seen as
he was. It is the face of Napoleon off his guard.
Bonaparte’s distinguishing traits were selfishness, combativeness,
destructiveness, acquisitiveness, secretiveness, self-esteem, and love
of approbation. He had some vague notion of benevolence and of
veneration, but he was blind to the dictates of truth and of justice,
and he was so utterly deficient in conscientiousness that he does not
seem to have been conscious of its existence.
His entire character was summed up once in four broken-English words, by
an ignorant little local guide in Berlin. Fritz, showing a party of
Americans through the royal palace at Charlottenburg, worked himself up
to a pitch of patriotic frenzy in describing the conduct of the parvenu
French Emperor during his occupancy of the private apartments of the
legitimate German Queen, and he concluded his harangue by saying,
quietly and decidedly, “But then, you know, Napoleon was no gentleman!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: NAPOLEON I.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
That seems to tell the whole story. He was, in his way, the greatest man
who ever lived. He stepped from a humble cradle in an Italian provincial
town on to the throne of France; he made his commonplace brothers and
sisters and his ignorant henchmen kings and queens of all the European
countries within his reach; he locked a pope in a closet, as if he had
been a naughty boy; he re-drew the map of half the world; he re-wrote
history; his name will live as long as books are read; no man out of so
little ever accomplished so much—but yet he was _no_ gentleman!
The Bonaparte mask, in bronze, as here shown is very rare. Only four are
known to exist. The copy in the Paris Mint—_Hotel des Monnaies_—is
without the gilded wreath which this copy possesses. It is said to have
“been taken from the Emperor’s face at St. Helena, twenty hours after
his death.”
The mask of Napoleon III. was taken, of course, at Chiselhurst. Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte was distinguished, particularly, as being the only
Bonaparte, for four generations at least, who bore no resemblance
whatever to the Bonaparte family, not one of the strongly marked facial
traits so universal in the tribe appearing in him.
No matter what may have been his shortcomings in other respects, he was
devoted to his mother and to her memory. She used to call him “the
mildly obstinate;” and the maternal judgment, perhaps, was mildly
correct. Kinglake expressed it more epigrammatically when he said that
“his characteristic was a faltering boldness.” The historian of the
Crimea, in his account of the attempt at Strasburg in 1836, pictured
Prince Louis as “a young man with the bearing and the countenance of a
weaver—a weaver oppressed by long hours of monotonous in-door work,
which makes the body stoop and keeps the eyes downcast.” Those half-shut
eyes impressed every one who saw the Third Napoleon in life. He was
called by Madden, in his _Memoirs of the Countess of Blessington_, “the
man with the heavy eyelids, with the leaden hand of care and calculation
pressing them down—the man-mystery, the depths of whose duplicity no
Œdipus has yet sounded—the man with the pale, corpse-like, imperturbable
features.” Neither Mr. Kinglake nor the chosen biographer of the
Blessingtons, however, was an impartial witness. Henry Wikoff, on the
other hand, declared that his face recorded resolution, and that his
eyes, which he kept half closed, revealed subtlety as well as daring.
“His manner,” according to the Chevalier, “was graceful, composed, and
very _distingué_. He had the air of a man superior by nature as by
birth.” And Mrs. Browning believed in him and trusted him, and called
him “the good and the just.” He was perhaps the mildest-mannered man who
ever scuttled ship of State, or cut a political throat.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: NAPOLEON III.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The cast of the dead face of Oliver Cromwell, which was for some years
in the cabinet of the Mint at Washington, bears the following
inscription—copied _verbatim_:
_This Mask is from the
original one descended
from Richard, Protector
in poss: Mrs. Russell
Chesthunt Park._
-------
BORN DIED
1626 RICHARD 1712
left them to his dau.
1650 ELIZABETH 1731
to her cousins
1695 RICHARD—THOMAS
1759 left the mask
to his dau:
ANNE ELIZ EX^{ctrs.}
they left it to
OLIVER CROMWELL
he left it to
his daughter
MRS. RUSSELL.
In 1859 it was presented by Henry M. Field, Queen’s Assay Master at the
London Mint, and a direct descendant of Cromwell, to the late William E.
Du Bois, who was for nearly half a century an officer of the mint at
Washington. Shortly before his death the latter gentleman removed it to
his own house; and it is now in the possession of his son, Mr. Patterson
Du Bois of Philadelphia, through whose kindness the pedigree given is
here printed.
Cromwell, according to the _Commonwealth Mercury_ of November 23, 1658,
was buried that day at the east end of the chapel of Henry VII., in
Westminster Abbey. Dean Stanley accepted this as an established fact,
notwithstanding the several reports, long current, that the body was
thrown into the Thames, or laid in the field of Naseby, or carried to
the vault of the Claypoles in the parish church of Northampton, or
stolen during a heavy tempest in the night, or placed in the coffin of
Charles I. at Windsor, Mr. Samuel Pepys being responsible for the last
wild statement. After the Restoration this same Mr. Pepys saw the
disinterred head of Cromwell in the _interior_ of Westminster Hall,
although all the other authorities agree in stating that, with the heads
of Ireton and Bradshaw, it adorned the outer walls of that building.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: OLIVER CROMWELL]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It may be stated, by the way, that a trustworthy friend of Mr. Pepys,
and a fellow-diarist, one John Evelyn, witnessed “the superb funerall of
the Lord Protector.” He was carried from Somerset House in a velvet
bed-of-state to Westminster Abbey, according to this latter authority;
and “it was the joyfullest funerall I ever saw, for there were none that
cried but dogs, which the soldiers hooted away with a barbarous noise,
drinking and taking tobacco in the streets as they went.” It does not
seem to have occurred to Mr. Evelyn, or to other eye-witnesses of the
funeral, that this was a mock ceremonial, and that the actual body of
the Protector was not in the hearse.
Both Horace Smith and Cyrus Redding, early in the present century, saw
what they fully believed to be the head of Cromwell. It was then in the
possession of “a medical gentleman” in London. “The nostrils,” said
Redding, “were filled with a substance like cotton. The brain had been
extracted by dividing the scalp. The membranes within were perfect, but
dried up, and looked like parchment. The decapitation had evidently been
performed after death, as the state of the flesh over the vertebræ of
the neck plainly showed.”
A correspondent of the London _Times_, signing himself “Senex,” wrote to
that journal, under date December 31, 1874, a full history of this head,
in which he explained that at the end of five-and-twenty years it was
blown down one stormy night, and picked up by a sentry, whose family
sold it to one of the Cambridgeshire Russells, who were the nearest
living descendants of the Cromwells. By them it was sold, and it was
exhibited at several places in London. “Senex” gave the following
account of the recognition of the head by Flaxman, the sculptor: “Well,”
said Flaxman, “I know a great deal about the configuration of the head
of Oliver Cromwell. He had a low, broad forehead, large orbits to his
eyes, a high septum to the nose, and high cheekbones; but there is one
feature which will be with me a crucial test, and that is that instead
of having the lower jawbone somewhat curved, it was particularly short
and straight, but set out at an angle, which gave him a jowlish
appearance. The head,” continued “Senex,” “exactly answered to the
description, and Flaxman went away expressing himself as convinced and
delighted.” Another, and an earlier account, dated 1813, says that “the
countenance has been compared by Mr. Flaxman, the statuary, with a
plaster cast of Oliver’s face taken after his death [of which there are
several in London], and he [Flaxman] declares the features are perfectly
similar.”
Whether or not the body of the real Cromwell was dug up at the
Restoration, and whether his own head, or that of some other
unfortunate, was exposed on a spike to the fury of the elements for a
quarter of a century on Westminster Hall, are questions which, perhaps,
will never be decided. The head which Flaxman saw, as it is to be found
engraved in contemporary prints, is not the head the cast of which is
now in my possession, although it bears a certain resemblance thereto.
Mine is probably “the cast from the face taken [immediately] after his
death,” of which, as we have seen, several copies were known to exist in
Flaxman’s time. It is, at all events, very like to the Cromwell who has
been handed down to posterity by the limners and the statuaries of his
own court. Thomas Carlyle was familiar with it, and believed in it, and
he avowedly based upon it his famous picture of the Protector: “Big
massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect; wart above the right eyebrow;
nose of considerable blunt aquiline proportions; strict yet copious
lips, full of all tremulous sensibility, and also, if need were, of all
fierceness and rigor; deep, loving eyes, call them grave, call them
stern, looking from under those shaggy brows as if in lifelong sorrow,
and yet not thinking it sorrow, thinking it only labor and endeavor; on
the whole, a right noble lion-face and hero-face; and to me it was royal
enough.”
The copy of the Cromwell mask in the Library of Harvard College is thus
inscribed: “A cast from the original mask taken after death, once owned
by Thomas Woolner, Sculptor. It was given by him to Thomas Carlyle, who
gave it, in 1873, to Charles Eliot Norton, from whom Harvard College
received it in 1881.”
A copy of this mask in plaster is in the office of the National Portrait
Gallery, in Great George Street, Westminster; and a wax mask, resembling
it strongly, although not identical with it, is to be seen in the
British Museum. This latter, which is broken in several places, lacks
the familiar wart above the right eyebrow. There is no record of either
of these casts in either institution, and the authorities and experts of
both have no knowledge as to how and when they found their way to their
present resting-places. Rev. Mark Noble, in his _House of Cromwell_,
however, said that the representative in London of Ferdinand II., of
Tuscany, bribed an attendant of Cromwell to permit him to take in secret
“a mask of the Protector in plaster of Paris, which was done only a few
moments after his Highness’s dissolution.” “A cast from this mould,” he
added, “is now in the Florentine Gallery. It is either of bronze, with a
brassy hue, or stained to give it that appearance.” Elsewhere Mr. Noble
said, writing in 1737, that “the baronial family of Russell are in
possession of a wax mask of Oliver, which is supposed to have been taken
off while he was living.”
After a careful study of all the Florentine galleries in the winter of
1892-93, I failed to find this copy of the Cromwell mask or any record
of its ever having existed there, although the Pitti Palace contains an
original portrait of Cromwell from life by Sir Peter Lely, which was
presented by the Protector to this same Grand Duke Ferdinand II.
The mask of Henry IV., that darling king whose praises still the
Frenchmen sing, has also a curious history. During the French
Revolution, as is well known, the tombs of the Bourbons and the Valois
at St. Denis were desecrated by the citizens of the republic. And when
they began to “empty the rat-hole under the high altar,” to use the
words of one of their own leaders, the first coffin they came upon was
that of Henry of Navarre. The body was discovered to have been carefully
embalmed, and it was enveloped in a series of narrow bands of linen,
steeped in some chemical preparation. The face was so well preserved
that even the fan-shaped beard seemed as if it had been but recently
dressed. The upper part of the brain had been removed, and was replaced
by a sponge filled with aromatic essences. Enormous crowds came from
Paris to look upon what was left of the monarch who once wished that all
his subjects might have capon for their Sunday dinners; and undoubtedly
some one of them made this cast of his face. It is still a common object
in the plaster shops of Paris; and, painted a dark green to match the
lintel of his door, it serves to-day as a sign and a symbol for a dealer
in plaster images who does business in one of the side streets near
upper Broadway, New York.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: HENRY IV. OF FRANCE]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
M. Germain Bapst, writing in the _Gazette des Beaux Arts_, October,
1891, described a bust of Henry in wax which is preserved at Chantilly;
and he proved it to be the work of G. Dupré, who, according to Malherbe,
a contemporary historian, went to the Louvre the day after the king’s
death to make the wax effigy for his funeral, and took with him the
modeller, who made a cast from the king’s features. Concerning this cast
itself the writer was silent; but he stated, although without giving his
authority, that the plaster cast here reproduced dates back only to the
time of the exhumation.
A scarce contemporary French engraving, entitled “Henri IV. Exhumé,”
represents the king as standing upright in an open coffin, against one
of the great stone pillars in the vaults of St. Denis. The body is
wrapped in strips of cloth, like an Egyptian mummy, but the head and
shoulders are entirely exposed. A long inscription, at the bottom of the
print, explains that “on this occasion a plaster cast was taken of the
face—_on a moulé sur la nature même le plâtre_—from which to-day artists
make their portraits of the great sovereign. The drawing upon which this
engraving is based was executed by an eyewitness, and it shows the exact
and marvellous state of preservation in which the body of the founder of
the Bourbons was discovered. There was an effort made by the National
Assembly to preserve this precious relic; but, alas, it was too late.”
The original mask of Henry is now in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, in
Paris.
Charles XII. of Sweden was a soldier and little else. He knew no such
word as fear. He was haughty and inflexible. He never thought of
consulting the happiness of his people. He ascended the throne of a
nation rich, powerful, and happy; he died king of a country which was
ruined, wretched, and defenceless. Whether or not he was killed by one
of his own soldiers, history has never been able to determine. He was
shot in the head at the siege of Frederickshald, in Norway, in 1718; and
when his body was exhumed and examined, a hundred and fifty years later,
“the centre of his forehead was found to be disfigured by a depression
corresponding with a fracture of that part of the skull.” The fatal
missile had passed entirely through the King’s head from left to right
in a downward direction; and in the cast in my collection the
indentures, particularly the larger one on the right temple, are clearly
perceptible. An engraving of this death-mask, dated 1823, contains the
legend that it was “made four hours after he was shot, and was taken
from the original cast preserved in the University Library at Cambridge,
by Angelica Clarke.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The copy of this cast in the British Museum is from the Christy
collection. Henry Christy is known to have been in Stockholm at the time
of the sale of the effects of Baestrom, the Swedish sculptor, and he is
believed to have purchased it then and there. It contains more of the
top and back of the head than the cast here reproduced, and it bears,
very unmistakably, evidences of the bullet wounds in the temples. This
cast, the wax mask of Cromwell mentioned above, and a cast of the face
of James II. of England, are the only things of the kind the British
Museum possesses.
Lavater wrote with unbounded enthusiasm of the impression made upon him
by the face of Frederick the Great, whom he once saw in life. “Of all
the physiognomies I have ever examined,” he said, “there is not a single
one which bears so strongly as this does the impress of its high
destiny. The forehead, which forms almost a straight and continued line
with the nose, announces impatience against the human race, and
communicates the expression of it to the cheeks and lips,” etc. And Mr.
Fowler, who knew Frederick only by his portraits, ascribed to him fine
temperament, intense mentality, great clearness and sharpness of
thought, with a tendency to scholarship, and especially to languages,
and with immense acquisitiveness.
Carlyle wrote: “All next day the body [of Frederick] lay in state in the
Palace; thousands crowding, from Berlin and the other environs, to see
the face for the last time. Wasted, worn, but beautiful in death, with
the thin gray hair parted into locks and slightly powdered. And at eight
in the evening, Friday, 18th [of August, 1786], he was borne to the
Garrison-kirche of Potsdam, and laid beside his father in the vault
behind the pulpit there.”
The original of this cast of Frederick the Great is in the Hohenzollern
Museum in Berlin, and of course is authentic. My own copy I brought from
Berlin some ten years ago, with the consent of the authorities of the
Museum.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: FREDERICK THE GREAT]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Concerning the personal appearance of General Grant, Mr. William A.
Purrington, of New York, thus writes in a private letter, which he has
kindly permitted me to make public:
“When I first knew the General I was a school-boy, and of course felt
the school-boy’s awe of a great man. Privileged to know him for years in
the intimacy of his own home, I never entirely overcame that feeling.
What was heroic in him grew, and did not diminish. The more I saw of him
the more I felt that he was good as well as great. His face used to be
called sphinx-like. That was scarcely true, for although its expression
was always calm, strong, imperturbable, it was also one of great
gentleness. He surely was a gentleman. Perhaps his hands aided to keep
his face serene, for we must all have some safety-valve. Almost the only
external indication of annoyance I ever noticed in him was a nervous
opening and shutting of his fingers, an index of emotion often observed
by other of his more intimate friends. A notable illustration of this
trait was told me by a gentleman who once accompanied him to a large
public dinner given in his honor. At its close one of the guests
ventured upon the telling of stories which are not told _pueris
virginibusque_. The General’s fingers began to work; he quietly excused
himself; and his companion, who knew the significance of the gesture,
followed him. As they smoked their cigars on the streets of the foreign
city in which this occurred, the General said: ‘I hope I have not taken
you from the table, but I have never permitted such conversation in my
presence, and I never intend to.’ This was not an affectation. His mind,
clear and wholesome, left its imprint in his face. Grossness or scandal
gave him genuine discomfort. He loved to think well of his kind. This
trait showed in his face, gave it benignity, and was, I fancy, the
secret of his hold on the affections of men. We chanced to be alone in
his room one night after the last cruel betrayal of his confidence, he
walking to and fro by the aid of his crutch. Suddenly he stopped, and,
as if following aloud the train of his silent thought, he said: ‘I have
made it a rule of my life to believe in a man long after others have
given him up. I do not see how I can do so again.’ There was no
bitterness in his voice, not even an elevation of tone. It was simply an
exclamation of an honest heart sorely wounded in its belief.
“As I recall his face, that which I remember is not so much line and
contour as the expression of strength, of great patience, of calmness,
and of gentleness; and the incidents which illustrate pure qualities
also come back freshly to my memory.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: U. S. GRANT]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“He had, too, a merry face; at times a merry eye. He was full of sly
humor. The twinkling of his eye and his quiet laugh promptly rewarded an
amusing story. In his own home his face was always kind and responsive.
There he was not the silent man the world thought it knew, but a fluent
and well-informed talker on all that was of interest to him.
Undoubtedly, however, he had the gift of silence, and when he saw fit to
exercise it his face became a mask, conversation ceased to be among the
possibilities, and a chat with a graven image would have been a relief
at such a time. He became then, and designedly, a silence-compeller.
When there was nothing to be said, he said nothing.”
General Grant, on the occasion of the surrender of General Lee at
Appomattox Court House, was thus described by General Horace Porter, his
aide-de-camp: “He was then nearly forty-three years of age, five feet
eight inches in height, with shoulders slightly stooped. His hair and
full beard were a nut-brown, without a trace of gray. He had on a
single-breasted blouse, made of dark-blue flannel, unbuttoned in front,
and showing a waistcoat underneath. He wore an ordinary pair of
top-boots, with his trousers inside and without spurs. The boots and
portions of his clothes were spattered with mud. He had had on a pair of
thread gloves of a dark yellow color, which he had taken off on entering
the room. His felt ‘sugar-loaf,’ stiff-brimmed hat was thrown on the
table beside him. He had no sword, and a pair of shoulder straps was all
there was about him to designate his rank. In fact, aside from these,
his uniform was that of a private soldier.”
This was thoroughly characteristic of the simplicity and modesty of the
man. He came, in the face of the whole admiring world, to make his
lasting mark upon one of the most important pages of his country’s
history, the General of his country’s armies, perhaps the greatest
soldier of his time, without a spur and without a sword, in the
well-worn uniform of a private of Volunteers.
He died as bravely and as quietly as he had lived, like one who had even
studied in his death to throw away the dearest thing he owned, as ’twere
a careless trifle. He sleeps now on the banks of the Hudson, in that
enduring, honorable peace for which he had fought so long, and which he
had won so gloriously. His body was greatly wasted by lingering disease,
but those who saw him immediately after death say that his face looked
ten years younger than it had looked during the previous trying months.
The cast of Grant here presented is still in the possession of his
family in New York; and it is the only copy ever made with their
consent, and to their knowledge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: WILLIAM T. SHERMAN]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of General Sherman, General Porter said: “He was a many-sided man, who
had run the entire gamut of human experience. He had been merchant,
banker, lawyer, professor, traveller, author, doctor, president of a
street railway, and soldier. Wherever he was placed, his individuality
was conspicuous and pronounced. His methods were always original, and
even when unsuccessful they were entertaining. He could not have been
commonplace if he had tried.” There was certainly nothing commonplace in
his personal appearance. His frame was tall and wiry; his hazel eyes
were sharp and penetrating; his nose was aquiline; his beard was short
and crisp; his mouth was firm and tender; his bearing was courtly,
unpretentious, and dignified. He was the typical soldier in appearance
and action; like Grant, he was entirely devoid of any outward expression
of vanity, self-esteem, or self-consciousness. As he was one of the
bravest, so was he one of the gentlest, kindest, most sympathetic of
men. The mask of General Sherman was made immediately after his death,
under the direction of Mr. St. Gaudens.
Washington was as blessed in his death as in his life. He rests still
upon the banks of the Potomac, among the people whom he so dearly loved
and among whom he died; and no later administration has ever cared to
cut off his head for exhibition on the roof of the Patent Office or the
Smithsonian Institution.
At least two plaster casts were taken from the living face of
Washington. The first, by Joseph Wright, in 1783, was broken by the
nervous artist before it was dry; and the subject absolutely, and, it is
whispered, profanely, refused to submit to the unpleasant operation
again. The second was made by Houdon, the celebrated French sculptor, in
1785, and from it was modelled the familiar bust which bears Houdon’s
name.
The original Houdon mask of Washington is now in the possession of Mr.
W. W. Story, in his studio in Rome. He traces it directly from Houdon’s
hands, and naturally he prizes it very highly. It has been preserved
with great care, and of it he says “there is no question that it was
made from the living face of Washington, and that therefore it is the
most absolutely authentic representation of the actual forms and
features of his face that exists. In all respects, any portrait which
materially differs from it must be wrong.” Mr. Story cannot account for
the fact that the sculptor opened the eyes of Washington in the mask,
except upon the supposition that he did not remain long enough at Mount
Vernon to have studied and modelled the eyes for his bust from the face
of Washington himself.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: GEORGE WASHINGTON]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is but just to add here that Mr. Story says that never, to his
knowledge or belief, has a cast been made from the original which he
owns. He examined the so-called cast in the Corcoran Gallery at
Washington, and he was fully satisfied that, like all the other
specimens in existence, it is of no value in itself, and was made from a
worn-out copy of the bust. The Washington mask here presented is from a
photograph taken by Mr. Story in Rome, and from his own copy.
The attempt of the sculptor Browere to take a life-mask of Thomas
Jefferson was not more successful, and was much more disastrous, than
Wright’s attempt upon the face of Washington. Mr. Ben Perley Poore
quotes Clark Mills as telling the following story: “The family of the
ex-President were opposed to it, but he finally consented, saying that
he could not find it in his heart to refuse a man so trifling a favor
who had come so far. He was placed on his back on a sofa, one of his
hands grasping a chair which stood in front. Not dreaming of any danger,
his family could not bear to see him with the plaster over his face, and
therefore were not present; and his faithful Burwell was the only person
besides the artist in the room. There was some defect in the
arrangements made to permit his breathing, and Mr. Jefferson came near
suffocating. He was too weak to rise or to relieve himself, and his
feeble struggles were unnoticed or unheeded by his Parrhasius.
“The sufferer finally bethought himself of the chair on which his hand
rested. He raised it as far as he was able, and struck it on the floor.
Burwell became conscious of his situation, and sprang furiously forward.
The artist shattered his cast in an instant. The family now reached the
room, and Browere looked as if he thought their arrival most opportune,
for though Burwell was supporting his master in his arms, the fierce
glare of the African eye boded danger. Browere was permitted to pick up
his fragments of plaster and carry them off, but whether he ever put
them together to represent features emaciated with age and debility, and
writhing in suffocation, Mills did not know.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The mask of Jefferson in the fragmentary condition described above would
be of little value even if it had been preserved.
When Houdon came to America in 1785 to make the bust of Washington, he
was the companion of Benjamin Franklin, and he was, in all probability,
the author of this cast of Franklin’s face, taken in Paris that year as
a model for the well-known Houdon bust of Franklin, which it somewhat
resembles. The original mask was sold in Paris for ten francs after the
death of the artist in 1828.
The familiars of Franklin have shown that his face in his old age
changed in a very marked degree. He was in his seventy-eighth or his
seventy-ninth year when he sat for Houdon in 1784-85. Many of the
features of the Franklin cast as here reproduced—the long square chin,
the sinking just beneath the under lip, the shape of the nose, and the
formation of the cheekbones—are strongly preserved in the face of one of
his great-granddaughters now living in Philadelphia.
Leigh Hunt in his _Autobiography_ said that Franklin and Thomas Paine
were frequently guests at the house of his maternal grandfather in
Philadelphia when his mother was a girl. She remembered them both
distinctly; and in her old age she told her son that while she had great
affection and admiration for Franklin, Paine “had a countenance that
inspired her with terror.” Hunt was inclined to attribute this in a
great measure to Paine’s political and religious views, both of them
naturally obnoxious and shocking to the daughter of a Pennsylvania Tory
and rigid churchman. Concerning the physical as well as the moral traits
of the author of the _Age of Reason_, there seems to have been great
diversity of opinion. To paraphrase the speech of Griffith in _Henry
VIII._ concerning Wolsey, He was uncleanly and sour to them that loved
him not, but to those men that sought him, sweet and fragrant as summer.
His friend and biographer, Clio Rickman, who considered him “a very
superior character to Washington,” gave strong testimony to his personal
attractions and tidiness of dress; while James Cheetham, his biographer
and not his friend, told a very different and not a very pleasant story,
in which soap and water—or their absence—play an important part. The
former, according to Cheetham, was never employed externally by Paine,
and the latter was very rarely, if ever, internally applied.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: THOMAS PAINE]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
None of his earlier biographers give any hint as to the taking of this
death-mask, nor is it to be found in any contemporary printed account of
the death-bed scene, although Mr. Moncure D. Conway, in his _Life of
Paine_, published in 1892, accepts it as genuine, and ascribes it to
Jarvis. All the experts agree that it is the face of Paine, and see in
it a strong resemblance to the face in the Romney portrait, painted in
1792, seventeen years before Paine died. It was undoubtedly made after
death, by John Wesley Jarvis, the painter, who was at one time an
intimate of Paine. He studied modelling in clay, and made the bust of
Paine which is now in the possession of the Historical Society of New
York. Concerning this bust Dr. Francis, in his _Old New York_, wrote:
“The plaster cast of the head and features of Paine, now preserved in
the Gallery of Arts of the Historical Society, is remarkable for its
fidelity to the original at the close of his life. Jarvis, the painter,
then felt it his most successful work in that line of occupation, and I
can confirm the opinion from my many opportunities of seeing Paine.” He
added that Jarvis said, “I shall secure him to a nicety if I am so
fortunate as to get plaster enough for his carbuncled nose,” which was
not a very pretty speech to have made under any circumstances,
particularly if the bust was executed after the subject’s death.
The death-mask of Aaron Burr was made by an agent of Messrs. Fowler &
Wells, who still possess the original cast. The features are shortened
in a marked degree by the absence of the teeth. Mr. Fowler said that “in
Burr destructiveness, combativeness, firmness, and self-esteem were
large, and amativeness excessive.” It is a curious fact, now generally
forgotten, that Burr and Hamilton resembled each other in face and
figure in a very marked degree, although Burr was a trifle the taller.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: AARON BURR]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A bust of Burr by Turnerelli, an Italian sculptor residing in London
during the first decade of the century, was exhibited at the Royal
Academy in 1809; and Burr, in his _Diary and Letters_, spoke more than
once of the cast of his face made by the sculptor at that time. He
explained to Theodosia that he “submitted to the very unpleasant
ceremony because Turnerelli said it was necessary,” and because Bentham
and others had undergone a similar penance; and in his _Diary_ he wrote:
“Casting my eyes in the mirror, I observed a great purple mark on my
nose; went up and washed and rubbed it, all to no purpose. It was
indelible. That cursed mask business has occasioned it. I believe the
fellow used quicklime instead of plaster of Paris, for I felt a very
unpleasant degree of heat during the operation.... I have been applying
a dozen different applications to the nose, which have only inflamed it.
How many curses have I heaped upon that Italian!... At eleven went to
Turnerelli to sit. Relieved myself by abusing him for that nose
disaster.... He will make a most hideous frightful thing [of the bust];
but much like the original.”
This mask, if it is still in existence—which is not probable—would be an
invaluable addition to the portraiture of Burr.
Of Lincoln, as of Washington, two life-masks were made—one in Chicago in
the spring of 1860, by Mr. Leonard W. Volk, and here reproduced; one in
Washington, by Clark Mills, three or four years later. Mr. Volk, in the
_Century Magazine_ for December, 1881, gave a pleasant account of the
taking of the former. Lincoln sat naturally in the chair during the
operation, watching in a mirror every move made by the sculptor, as the
plaster was put on without interference with the eyesight or with the
breathing of the subject. When, at the end of an hour, the mould was
ready for removal—it was in one piece, and contained both ears—Lincoln
himself bent his head forward and worked it off gradually and gently,
without injury of any kind, notwithstanding the fact that it clung to
the high cheek-bones, and that a few hairs on his eyebrows and temples
were pulled out by the roots with the plaster.
This is, without question, the most perfect representation of Lincoln’s
face in existence. I have watched many an eye fill while looking at it
for the first time; to many minds it has been a revelation; and I turn
to it myself more quickly and more often than to any of the others, when
I want comfort and help. What Whittier wrote to James T. Fields of the
Marshall engraving of Lincoln may be said of this life-cast. “It
contains the informing spirit of the man within.... The old harsh lines
and unmistakable mouth are there without flattery or compromise; but
over all, and through all, the pathetic sadness, the wise simplicity,
and tender humanity of the man are visible. It is the face of the
speaker at Gettysburg, and the writer of the second Inaugural.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Clark Mills mask, said Mr. John Hay, in a later number of the
_Century Magazine_, is “so sad and peaceful in its infinite repose that
the famous sculptor, Mr. St. Gaudens, insisted when he first saw it that
it was a death-mask. The lines are set, as if the living face, like the
copy, had been in bronze; the nose is thin, and lengthened by the
emaciation of the cheeks; the mouth is fixed like that of an archaic
statue; a look as of one on whom sorrow and care had done their worst,
without hope of victory, is on all the features; the whole expression is
of unspeakable sadness and all-sufficing strength. Yet the peace is not
the dreadful peace of death; it is the peace that passeth
understanding.”
Speaking of Webster, Mr. O. F. Fowler, in his _Practical Phrenology_,
said: “A larger mass of brain, perhaps, never was found, and never will
be found, in the upper and lateral portions of any man’s forehead. Both
in height and in breadth his forehead is prodigiously great.” The head
of Clay, according to the same authority, was also “unusually large. It
measured seven and three-eighths inches in diameter, and it was very
high in proportion to its breadth; the reasoning organs were large, and
the perceptive and semi-perceptive organs still larger.” Mr. G. P. A.
Healy, the painter, said that Mr. Clay’s mouth was very peculiar; that
it was thin-lipped, and extended from ear to ear. This last is not
particularly noticeable in the familiar portraits of Clay, not even in
that painted by Mr. Healy himself. Both Mr. St. Gaudens and Mr. Hartley
incline to the opinion that the mask of Clay in my collection is a cast
from the actual face, and, notwithstanding the fact that the eyelids are
open, that it is from life. Lewis Gaylord Clark, writing in 1852 in
HARPER’S MAGAZINE of Clay’s funeral, said: “His countenance immediately
after death looked like an antique cast. His features seemed to be
perfectly classical, and the repose of all his muscles gave the lifeless
body a quiet majesty seldom reached by living human beings.”
Comparing Calhoun with Webster, Mr. Fowler attributed to Calhoun the
greater power of analysis and illustration; to Webster, the greater
depth and profundity. In Calhoun he found, united to a very large head,
an active temperament and sharp organs, the greatest peculiarity of his
phrenology consisting in the fact that _all_ the intellectual faculties
were very large. The casts of Webster and Calhoun were made in
Washington by Clark Mills from the living faces—Calhoun’s in 1844,
Webster’s in 1849; and they are, consequently, of no little interest and
value.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: DANIEL WEBSTER]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: HENRY CLAY]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: JOHN C. CALHOUN]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sydney Smith, who once called Daniel Webster “a steam-engine in
trousers,” thus disposed of a contemporary British statesman: “Lord
Brougham’s great passions,” he said, “are vanity and ambition. He
considers himself as one of the most wonderful works of Providence, is
incessantly striving to display that superiority to his
fellow-creatures, and to grasp a supreme dominion over all men and all
things. His vanity is so preposterous that it has exposed him to
ludicrous failures, and little that he has written will survive him. His
ambition, and the falsehood and intrigue with which it works, have
estranged all parties from him, and left him, in the midst of bodily and
intellectual strength, an isolated individual, whom nobody will trust,
and with whom nobody will act.”
The head of Brougham was of full size, but not unusual. A student of
physiognomy, but not a student of the back numbers of the London
_Punch_, who did not recognize the man in this cast, said of it that it
was the head of a man more remarkable for vivacity and quickness of mind
than for original and powerful thinking. George Combe, in the winter of
1838-39, exhibited in the United States a mask of Brougham, of course
from life, for Brougham did not die until thirty years after that—and he
was born in 1778—which is perhaps the mask here reproduced, as it is the
face of a man in his prime, and his was a marvellous prime—not that of a
nonogenarian. Brougham’s powers of activity and endurance were
phenomenal. It is recorded of him that he went from the Law Courts to
the House of Commons, from the House to his own chambers, where he wrote
an article for the _Edinburgh Review_, then, without rest, to the Courts
and the House again, sitting until the morning of the third day before
he thought of his bed or his sleep; and that during all this time he
showed no signs of mental or physical fatigue. Such continuous activity
certainly did not shorten his days, even if it lengthened his nights.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: LORD BROUGHAM]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Probably no single facial organ in the world has been the subject of so
much attention from the caricaturists as the nose of Lord Brougham. It
is doubtful if any two consecutive numbers of any so-called comic or
satirical journal appeared in England during Brougham’s time without
some representation of Brougham’s nose. The author of _Notes on Noses_
thus spoke of it: “It is a most eccentric nose; it comes within no
possible category; it is like no other man’s; it has good points and bad
points and no point at all. When you think it is going right on for a
Roman, it suddenly becomes a Greek; when you have written it down
cogitative, it becomes as sharp as a knife.... It is a regular Proteus;
when you have caught it in one shape it instantly becomes another. Turn
it and twist it and view it how, when, and where you will, it is never
to be seen twice in the same shape; and all you can say of it is that
it’s a queer one. And such exactly,” he added, “is my Lord Brougham....
Verily my Lord Brougham and my Lord Brougham’s nose have not their
likeness in heaven or earth.... And the button at the end is the cause
of it all.”
An interesting tribute to this remarkable organ is to be found in the
printed _Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley_. Concerning
Commemoration Day at Oxford he wrote, in 1860, “Nothing could be more
absurd than Lord Brougham’s figure, long and gaunt, with snow-white hair
under the great black porringer, and his wonderful nose wagging lithely
from side to side as he hitched up his red petticoats [Commemoration
robes] and stalked through the mud.”
There is no button on the end of the nose of the specimen of humanity
whose mask forms a tail-piece to this volume. Cowper, Combe, and others
believed that the brain of the native African is inferior in its
intellectual powers to the brain of the man of European birth and
descent, while a certain body of naturalists contend that the negro owes
his present inferiority entirely to bad treatment and to unfavorable
circumstances. The black boy, the cast of whose face was made for this
collection at St. Augustine, Florida, by Mr. Thomas Hastings, the
architect, a year or two ago, has undoubtedly been for generations the
victim of unfavorable circumstances, and perhaps of bad treatment as
well. He is, at all events, one of the lowest examples of his race, and
his life-mask is only interesting here as an object of comparison.
Whatever the head of a Bonaparte, a Washington, a Webster, or a Brougham
is, his head is not. But whether his Creator or the Caucasian is
responsible for this, the naturalists and experts must decide.
[Illustration: FLORIDA NEGRO BOY]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDEX
AGASSIZ, LOUIS, 149.
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, quoted, 37.
Atterbury, Bishop Francis, quoted, 81.
BARRETT, LAWRENCE, 28, 33, 34-37.
Barrett, Lawrence, quoted, 41.
“Barry Cornwall,” quoted, 27.
BEACONSFIELD, EARL OF, 177-182.
BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VON, 61-68.
BENTHAM, JEREMY, 117-122.
Blacklock, Archibald, quoted, 191.
BONAPARTE, NAPOLEON, x., 4, 197-201.
BOOTH, EDWIN, x., 28, 38, 41, 42.
BOUCICAULT, DION, 28, 31-33.
Brontë, Charlotte, quoted, 86.
BROUGHAM, LORD, 261-265.
Brown, John, M.D., quoted, 92.
Browning, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett, quoted, 146, 205.
BRUCE, KING ROBERT, 193.
BURKE, EDMUND, 168-171.
BURNS, ROBERT, 191-192.
BURR, AARON, xi., 246-249.
Burr, Aaron, quoted, 117.
Caine, Hall, quoted, 122.
CALHOUN, JOHN C., 254.
CANOVA, ANTONIO, 138, 150, 157, 158.
Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 58, 99, 100, 211, 212, 222.
CAUNT, BEN, x., 85, 86.
CAVOUR, COUNT, 125, 126.
Chadwick, John A., quoted, 34.
CHALMERS, THOMAS, x., 92-96.
Chantrey, Sir Francis, quoted, 13.
CHARLES XII., xiii., 218-221.
Cheetham, James, quoted, 242.
Cicognara, Count, quoted, 157.
Clark, Lewis Gaylord, quoted, 254.
Clarke, Asia Booth, quoted, 38-41.
Clarke, Charles Cowden, quoted, 96, 106, 109.
CLAY, HENRY, x., 253, 254.
Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, quoted, 100.
COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, xii., 96-100.
Coleridge, Sara, quoted, 99.
Collins, Wilkie, quoted, 145.
Combe, George, quoted, 121.
Cottinet, Edmund, quoted, 53-54.
Croker, John Wilson, quoted, 171-172.
CROMWELL, OLIVER, x., 4, 205-213.
Cumberland, Richard, quoted, 19.
Cunningham, Peter, quoted, 145.
CURRAN, JOHN PHILPOT, 171.
Curtis, George William, quoted, 41, 150.
DANTE, x., 5-9.
d’Arblay, Madame, quoted, 46.
Davies, Thomas, quoted, 46.
Davis, Mrs. Jefferson, quoted, 150.
Dickens, Charles, quoted, 91.
Diodorus Siculus, quoted, 3.
DISRAELI, BENJAMIN, 177-182.
EDWARDS, HENRY, 28, 33, 37, 38.
Evans, Mary Ann, quoted, 125.
Evelyn, John, quoted, 209.
Faucit, Helen, quoted, 27-28.
Fitzgerald, Percy, quoted, 46.
Fowler, O. F., quoted, 221, 222, 246, 253, 254.
Francis, John W., M.D., quoted, 245.
FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN, 241.
Fraser, Sir William, quoted, 177.
FREDERICK THE GREAT, xi., 4, 50, 221, 222.
Frith, W. P., quoted, 142, 181, 182.
Gallenza, A., quoted, 131.
GARRICK, DAVID, 19-23.
“George Eliot,” quoted, 125.
George IV., quoted, 141.
Gilder, R. W., quoted, 106.
GRANT, U. S., x., 4, 222, 225-230.
Greville, Charles C. F., quoted, 100, 103.
Griffin, Gerald, quoted, 164.
Hale, Philip, quoted, 62, 67.
Hall, S. C., quoted, 100.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, quoted, 146.
Hay, John, quoted, 250, 253.
HAYDON, BENJAMIN ROBERT, 113-117, 138.
Haydon, Benjamin Robert, quoted, 103, 104.
Hazlitt, William, quoted, 103.
Healey, G. P. A., quoted, 253.
HENRY IV., 213-218.
Howells, William D., quoted, 132.
Hunt, Leigh, quoted, 46, 49, 103, 109, 164, 241, 242.
Irving, Henry, quoted, 41.
Irving, Peter, quoted, 49.
Jefferson, Thomas, 237, 238.
Jerrold, Douglas, quoted, 91.
JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 110-113.
KEAN, EDMUND, 23-28.
Kearsley, George, quoted, 110, 113.
KEATS, JOHN, x., xv., 105-110.
Kemble, Fanny, quoted, 27.
Kinglake, Alexander W., quoted, 202.
Kirkup, Seymour, quoted, 5.
Lampadius, W. A., quoted, 71.
Lavater, Johann Kasper, quoted, xiv., 221.
LAWRENCE, SIR THOMAS, 138-142.
LEOPARDI, GIACOMO, x., 132.
Leslie, Charles Robert, quoted, 24.
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, 249-253.
Lockhart, John Gibson, quoted, 187.
Longfellow, Henry W., quoted, 149.
Lorne, Marquis of, quoted, 172.
LOUISE OF PRUSSIA, xi., 50-53.
Macaulay, Thomas B., quoted, 114, 117.
Madden, R. R., quoted, 141, 142, 202.
MALIBRAN, MARIA F., 53, 54.
Manso, Giovanni Battista, quoted, 10.
MARAT, JEAN PAUL, 71, 72, 75, 76.
Martin, Lady, quoted, 27, 28.
MCCULLOUGH, JOHN, 28, 33.
MENDELSSOHN, FELIX, 68-71.
Mill, John Stuart, quoted, 117.
Mills, Clark, quoted, 237-238.
MIRABEAU, G. R., 71, 72, 76.
MOORE, THOMAS, 164-168.
Motley, John Lothrop, quoted, 86, 91, 265.
NAPOLEON I., x., 4, 197-201.
NAPOLEON III., xv., 201-205.
NEWTON, SIR ISAAC, x., 76, 81-82.
Newton, Sir Isaac, quoted, 5-6.
Niebuhr, Berthold George, quoted, 132.
Noble, Mark, quoted, 213.
Opie, John, quoted, 141.
O’REILLY, JOHN BOYLE, 132, 137, 138.
Osgood, Samuel, D.D., quoted, 146.
PAINE, THOMAS, x., 241, 246.
Palleske, E., quoted, 58.
PALMERSTON, LORD, 172, 177.
Parton, James, quoted, 117.
Payne, John Howard, quoted, 49.
Percy, Thomas, D.D., quoted, 113.
Pettigrew, Thomas J., quoted, 3.
Phillips, John, quoted, 181, 182.
PIUS IX., x., 131.
Poore, Ben Perley, quoted, 237, 238.
Porter, Horace, quoted, 229, 230, 233.
POWERS, HIRAM, 138, 146.
Procter, B. W., quoted, 27.
Procter, Mrs. B. W., quoted, 109.
Purrington, William A., quoted, 222, 225, 226, 229.
Redding, Cyrus, quoted, 209, 210.
Reid, T. Wemyss, quoted, 181.
Rickman, Clio, quoted, 242.
ROBESPIERRE, MAXIMILIAN, 76, 81.
Robinson, Henry Crabb, quoted, 27, 132.
Roche, James Jeffrey, quoted, 137.
ROSSETTI, DANTE G., 122-125.
Rossetti, William M., quoted, 122.
Ruskin, John, quoted, 157, 158.
Russell, Lord John, quoted, 167, 168.
SCHILLER, FREDERICK, xi., 54, 57, 58.
Schliemann, Heinrich, quoted, 2.
SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 187-191.
Scott, Sir Walter, quoted, 182, 197, 198.
Seward, William H., quoted, 150.
SHAKSPERE, 10-19.
Sharp, William, quoted, 109, 110.
SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY, xii., 158, 163, 164.
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, quoted, 19, 168.
SHERMAN, WILLIAM T., 4, 233.
Sherwood, Mrs. M. E. W., quoted, 42.
SIDDONS, SARAH, 42, 45-50.
Smith, Southwood, quoted, 118, 121.
Smith, Sydney, quoted, 261.
Speed, John Gilmer, quoted, 105.
Spencer, O. M., quoted, 125, 126.
Story, W. W., quoted, xiv., 234, 237.
SUMNER, CHARLES, 150.
SWIFT, JONATHAN, xiii., 182-186.
TASSO, TORQUATO, x., 9-10.
Taylor, Bayard, quoted, 68, 71.
Taylor, Sir Henry, quoted, 104.
THACKERAY, WILLIAM M., 86, 91, 92, 95.
Ticknor, George, quoted, 49.
TURNER, J. M. W., 142-145.
Volk, Leonard W., quoted, 237, 238.
Warville, Brissot de, quoted, 117.
WASHINGTON, xiv., 4, 233-237, 241, 249.
WEBSTER, DANIEL, 253, 254.
Weld, Charles Richard, quoted, 82, 85.
Whipple, E. P., quoted, 149.
Whittier, John G., quoted, 250.
Wikoff, Henry, quoted, 202, 205.
Wilde, Sir William, quoted, 182, 186.
Willis, Nathaniel P., quoted, 167, 177, 178, 181.
Winter, William, quoted, 34, 37, 38.
WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM, 100-105.
Young, Julian Charles, quoted, 95, 96.
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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