Ar the outset, let us boldly confess that, for the present, at any rate, we don't intend to display anything else than a little subtlety in avoiding the main issues of the great Marriage Question. We shall not say one word now of the objects, rewards, forfeitures, of marriage; of hasty marriages, or of marriage as the result "of a long engagement;" of marriages for love, money, or any other consideration. No; we are inflexible-we won't look at matrimony other than from one point of view at present. We refuse to speak our thoughts, on this occasion, with as much firmness as we should refuse, being no way skilled in dental surgery, to extract one of our reader's teeth. But when we have to tell how Master Richard Gibson, dwarf, painter in oils and water-colour, Page of the Back Stairs to Charles I.—and, we might have been tempted to add, tiny plaything generally with the full-blown beauties who graced the King's court, and sat for their portraits to Sir Peter Lely, like his contemporary, puny, irascible, ugly, homicidal little Jeffery Hudson-only truth compels us to say that he was not at all this manner of little man, but, on the contrary, a miniature version of a graceful, accomplished, well-bred English painter;-when we have to narrate how this compendious artist was wedded to his no less compendious bride, we cannot help admitting just so much of the philosophy of matrimony as relates to choice in marriage into this sketch. Fate, destiny, chance, it would appear, then, direct our choice in marriage; but sometimes, as in the case of the maiden who "was married one morning as she went into the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit," the bride must be selected because of some peculiar fitness which induces the husband to make his "choice in marriage" after the most expeditious fashion. When we make known our discovery as to the reason why Master Richard Gibson decided to wed Mistress Anne Shepherd, our insight into the harmony and fitness of things matrimonial will be admitted instantly. Master Richard Gibson was three feet ten inches high; Mistress Anne Shepherd was just two inches short of four feet! We expect our readers to accord us the full measure of applause due to such penetration of intellect ! History-apparently considering she has done enough, for so small a subject, in informing us that, on the day when Master Richard Gibson led Mistress Anne Shepherd to the altar, the King of England and his Queen Henrietta honoured the wedding with their presence, and that Charles I. himself gave away the bride -refuses to gratify our curiosity as to the antecedents of the bridegroom, except to a very limited extent. She has very little to say about him indeed. As for the bride, she only takes notice of the little lady while under the shadow of royalty, at the altar; and, so far as we have been able to learn, never directly speaks of her afterwards. A poet was, however, ready to immortalize the pair. Waller sang on their marriage-day "Design, or chance, makes others wive; To him, for whom Heaven seemed to frame, Thrice happy is that humble pair, Over whose heads those arrows fly, Secured in as high extreme, As if the world held none but them. To him the fairest nymphs do show, None may presume her faith to prove; Ah! Chloris! that kind Nature thus In his youth, Gibson was page to "a lady living at Mortlake." A clever, discriminating, worthy lady she was, however; for she discovered traits in the tiny youth's character which made him worth a better fate than that which awaited him as a toy and butt for fashionable ladies' and gallants' wit. This nameless, excellent woman placed Gibson under Francis de Cleyn to learn drawing. He rapidly displayed great talent, and in a few years he copied many of Sir P. Lely's portraits with so much success as to gain him a place near the Sovereign. Charles I. fostered painting and the arts if he erred in other respects; and when he gave the post of Page of the Back Stairs to Gibson, we may be sure that the little man's talent attached a dignity to him which effectually protected him from the courtiers' ridicule. The King himself so highly appreciated his excellence as a painter, that he desired Vanderdoort, the keeper of the pictures, to lay up carefully a small water-colour subject, "The Parable of the Lost Sheep," by him. So completely did Vanderdoort carry out his Sovereign's commands, that when the King asked for the picture, the keeper could not find it, and hanged himself in despair. After his death, however, his executors found and restored it. Sir P. Lely, Vandyke, and Dobson painted Gibson and his wife. Of Gibson's own artistic efforts, it may be said that he worked best in water-colour, and through his long life painted people of a very different stamp. He copied Queen Henrietta's portrait by Vandyke; Cromwell he painted several times. The Gibsons had a large family-nine in all, five of whom lived to maturity, every one of them being, unlike their parents, of the ordinary height of mankind. Gibson died in his seventy-fifth year, but his wife reached the age of eighty-nine. せ 1 MAY, BEAUTIFUL MAY! not the most charming, months in the year. On this account, we have chosen to usher in with its buds and blossoms, its haw- SERIES of the ENGLISHWOMAN'S DOMESTIC MAGAZINE. In "One boundless blush, one white empurpled shower adorns our meadows, hedges, orchards, and gardens, and gives promise of the rich harvest of various fruits and flowers which we may hope to enjoy in the coming seasons of Nature's luxuriance. Indeed, we take May, on the present occasion, to be figuratively prophetic of the "shower of mingled blossoms" with which we trust the literature of our own pages will "blush" every month in the year, even although "gloomy December" may touch, with withering hand, all things else beside. May, lovely May! we hail thee, with all thy blessed bounteousness, and regard thee as a frontier province standing between spring and summer, and participating in the beauties, the sweets, the riches of both. Thou art the fifth month of the year, and, some say, receivedst thy name from the Roman Romulus, out of respect to his nobles and senators, who were called majores. Others, however, affirm that thou wert designated after Maia, the mother of Mercury, and the brightest of the Pleiades. It mattereth little, however, after whom thou wert called, as, without dispute, thou art the Goddess of Spring, and must, according to Peacham, be drawn with a "sweet and amiable countenance, clad in a robe of white and green, and embroidered with daffodils, hawthorns, and blue-bottles." But we must reluctantly bid thee adieu, to speak of the customs which "merry England" has, from time immemorial, celebrated on thy opening day. In England, the First of May has, in rural districts especially, been always held as a day or festivity. May-poles of great height, and profusely adorned with garlands, were wont to be generally-we had almost said universally-erected in honour of that day; and round them the peasantry would dance and make merry for hours together. Even in London this was the case. "Amidst the area wide they took their stand, Where the tall May-pole once o'erlooked the Strand." This was a little way to the east of Somerset House. These were the light-hearted, hilarious, and sociable times, when even the priests joined with the people, and went in procession, on the May morning, to some adjoining wood, where the much-prized pole was cut down and borne triumphantly into the city. Not only the priests and the people, however, but the Kings and Queens of England, threw aside their cares on May-day, and entered into the innocent enjoyments of rustic life. Did not Henry VIII. ride a-maying from Greenwich to Shooter's Hill, with his Queen Catharine, accompanied by many lords and ladies? But every man, according to old John Stowe, would "walk into the sweet meadows and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds praising God in their kind." As the birds in their way, so the poets in theirs. They, too, have poured forth their songs in prayerful gratitude for the month of May, and have, at the same time, rejoiced in the goodness of that All-Creative Being who, on the wide field of Nature, has spread around them the countless delights of Listen to their songs. Spring. "Beauteous May, that dost inspire FAIR pledges of a fruitful tree, But you may stay yet here awhile, But you are lovely leaves, where we Song to May. MAY! Queen of Blossoms, And fulfilling flowers, Shall we charin the hours? And many thousands more Thou hast thy mighty herds, Coy fountains are tressed, LORD THURLOW, 1732-1826. To the Cuckoo. HAIL! beauteous stranger of the grove, Soon as the daisy decks the green The schoolboy, wandering thro' the wood Starts, thy most curious voice to hear, What time the pea puts on the bloom Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee! JOHN LOGAN, 1748-1788. To the Cuckoo. O BLITHE new-comer, I have heard, O Cuckoo shall I call thee bird, While I am lying on the grass, Thy twofold shout I hear; Thrice welcome, darling of the spring! The same that in my schoolboy days Which made me look a thousand ways, Through woods and on the green; And I can listen to thee yet- And listen, till I do beget O blessed bird! the earth we pace An unsubstantial faery place WORDSWORTH, 1770–1830. May. I FEEL a newer life in every gale; The winds, that fan the flowers, And with their welcome breathings fill the sail, Of hours that glide unfelt away The spirit of the gentle South-wind calls, And where his whispering voice in music falls, The bright ones of the valley break The waving verdure rolls along the plain, To welcome back its playful mates again- And from its darkening shadow floats Fairer and brighter spreads the reign of May: With the light dallying of the West wind play; As gladly to their goal they run, J. G. PERCIVAL, 1795-1856. AH! my heart is weary waiting- Waiting for the pleasant rambles Ah! my heart is weary waiting- Ah! my heart is sick with longing- Ah! my heart is sick with longing- Ah! my heart is sore with sighing- Ah! my heart is sore with sighing- Ah! my heart is pained with throbbing- Ah! my heart, my heart is throbbing- Spring goes by with wasted warnings, Man is ever weary, weary- DENNIS MCCARTHY, BORN 1810. |