Another Rinaldo and Armida by Van Dyck is in the Louvre.

Armida was a beautiful sorceress; and it was difficult to resist her enchantment. Two messengers were sent from the Christian Army with a talisman to effect Rinaldo’s escape. Armida followed Rinaldo and, not being able to regain her power over him, rushed into the combat and was killed. Rinaldo came of the noble Este family and ran away at the age of fifteen to join the Crusaders. He was enrolled in the “Adventurers Squadron” and is often called the “Achilles of the Christian Army.”

Anthony, or Antoon, van Dyck, was born at Antwerp in 1599, son of a silk-merchant. At the age of ten he became the pupil of Henrik van Balen and entered Rubens’s studio as assistant in 1618, when only seventeen. He soon achieved a reputation for his portraits and visited England. In 1621, by Rubens’s advice, he went to Italy, having already acquired a reputation. After a five years’ stay, much of which time was spent in Genoa, Van Dyck returned home and painted his celebrated picture of the Crucifixion for the Church of St. Michael in Ghent, which established his reputation. In 1630 he again visited England; but, not meeting with the reception he had anticipated, he returned to Antwerp. However, in 1632, Charles I, who had seen a portrait of his Chapelmaster by Van Dyck, sent for him to come to England. On this occasion the painter was warmly welcomed, lodged by the King at Blackfriars, and, in the following year was knighted and given a pension for life. Van Dyck was the second painter to have an English Knighthood. Thenceforward Van Dyck lived very grandly, having a town house and also a country house at Eltham. He was always magnificently dressed, had numerous coaches and horses, and kept so good a table that few princes were better served. Van Dyck died in London in 1641, at the age of forty-two, having left a prodigious amount of work and a fortune of £20,000 sterling, notwithstanding his expensive manner of living. He was buried in Old St. Paul’s, near the tomb of John of Gaunt; but his remains, of course, perished in the Great Fire of 1666.

In the short span of his life—forty-two years—he painted nearly a thousand pictures. Van Dyck has three styles. The first is his Italian period; the second, his Flemish period, dating from his return from Italy in 1626 to his departure for England in 1631; and the third, his English period, from 1631 to 1641. The latter period is the greatest and the most distinguished for grace, elegance, and aristocratic quality.

“More noble than Rubens in his choice of form,” writes Charles Blanc, “Van Dyck had fewer faults than his master, but perhaps also less grandeur. His color was as charming without being so splendid. His design was learned, but without pedantry; and his contours were always governed by the sentiment of grace, or fire of genius. Very nearly the equal of Titian in portraiture, Van Dyck has sometimes risen to a great height in his historical compositions, in which the beauty of the expression is often as admirable as the excellence of the touch.”

DÆDALUS AND ICARUS.

A treasure of art, long in England in the famous Collection of the late Earl Spencer, K. G., at Althorp, Northumberland, is Van Dyck’s poetic version of the ancient Greek myth regarding man’s attempt at flight. Van Dyck was so fond of this subject that he painted it more than once.

This work is an oil painting on canvas (46 × 35 inches).

The figures are nearly life-size and very finely modelled. Icarus is nude save for a red drapery caught around the waist by a narrow band of bluish green,—a rather strange aviator’s suit to our way of thinking to-day! The position of his right hand would seem to tell us that Icarus is about to speak to his father, who, standing behind him, has apparently just fastened on his son’s wings and who appears to be giving him that sage advice about flying too near the sun. The flashing eyes and knitted brow of young Icarus indicate that this advice is not relished.

Max Rooses has noted that Icarus is not unlike the Angels that Van Dyck was fond of painting; calls attention to his beautiful, waving, golden hair; and finds a strong likeness between Icarus and the artist himself in his youth. One of the wings shows a white interior and the other, in the shadow, a bluish green exterior.

Dædalus was a mythical personage under whom the Greek writers personified the earliest development of human flight and also the arts of sculpture and architecture. Some traditions represent Dædalus as of the royal race of the Erechthidæ and others make him a Cretan. Dædalus devoted himself to sculpture and taught his sister’s son, Talus, who soon surpassed him. Consequently, in envy Dædalus killed this young rival. Condemned to death in Athens for this murder, Dædalus fled to Crete, where his fame won him the friendship of King Minos. When Queen Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur, Dædalus constructed the Labyrinth at Cnossus in which the Minotaur was kept; and for doing this King Minos imprisoned him. However, Pasiphae released him. This was of not much advantage, however, because King Minos had seized all the ships on the coast of Crete. “Necessity is the mother of invention:” Dædalus had to get away. The question was “how?”. The result was that Dædalus made wings for himself and for his son, Icarus, and fastened them on the shoulders with wax, cautioning the youth not to fly too close to the sun. Icarus would not pay attention to this advice and, flying too high, the wax melted and he dropped down and was drowned in that part of the Ægean Sea, which is now called after him the Icarian Sea.

Dædalus, however, flew safely over the Ægean and reached Sicily, where he was protected by Cocalus, King of that Island. When King Minos heard where Dædalus had taken refuge he sailed with a great fleet to Sicily; but was murdered there by Cocalus. According to some accounts, Dædalus alighted on his flight from Crete at Cumæ in Italy, where he erected a temple to Apollo in which he offered the wings with which he had flown. Like Lindberg, his descendant, he placed his “We” in a museum!

Many works of art were attributed to Dædalus in Greece, Italy, Egypt, and the islands of the Mediterranean. Also the Greeks gave the name of Dædala to the ancient wooden statues of the gods ornamented with gilding, bright colors, and real drapery.

It is appropriate to add here a sonnet by an old French poet, Philippe Desportes (1545–1606) entitled “Icare”:

ICARE

ROBERT RICH, EARL OF WARWICK.

In silver doublet with slashed sleeves embroidered with flowers, crimson knee-breeches edged with gold braid, pink silk stockings and white shoes with lace rosettes (or “shoe roses,” as they were called in those days), a crimson cloak thrown over his left shoulder and held by his gloved hand, white lawn collar and cuffs edged with handsome lace, Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, stands before us, a picture of elegance, manly beauty, and aristocratic hauteur. He is standing full front with his head turned three-quarters to the left, in which direction he is also looking, and he is holding his black felt hat in his right hand. His armor and bâton of command are lying on the ground by his side. The embroidered curtain in the background does not prevent us from seeing a naval engagement on his right.

Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, came of very distinguished ancestry on the maternal line, for his mother was Penelope Devereux, the sister of Essex, whose mother, Lettice Knollys, had been Maid of Honor to Queen Elizabeth (and who captivated the Earl of Leicester), and whose father, Walter Devereux, was first Earl of Essex (died 1576). Penelope’s father had wished her to marry Sir Philip Sidney; but the Earl of Huntingdon, Penelope’s guardian, ruled otherwise and forced her to marry Lord Rich, “a man of independent fortune and a known estate but otherwise of an uncourtly disposition, unsociable, austere, and of no agreeable conversation to her.”

Lady Rich, the most beautiful woman in all London, particularly famous for her sparkling black eyes, plunged wildly into society and was the most admired and courted woman of the Court. She played, too, a leading part in the rebellion of her distinguished brother, Essex. Lady Rich lives in literature as Sidney’s Stella. The romance between these lovers, “Astrophel and Stella,” never cooled. When Sidney learned of Penelope’s marriage to “the rich Lord Rich,” he played with her new name as follows:

Lord Rich was created Earl of Warwick in 1618; but he had been divorced from Lady Rich in 1605, thirteen years before he succeeded to this title. On obtaining her divorce Lady Rich then married Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire and eighth Baron Mountjoy, who, in defense of his marriage, wrote the following:

“A lady of great birth and virtue being in the power of her friends, was by them married against her will unto one against whom she did protest at the very solemnity and ever after; between whom, from the first day, there ensued continued discord, although the same fears that forced her to marry constrained her to live with him. Instead of a comforter, he did study in all things to torment her; and by fear and fraud, did practice to deceive her of her dowry.”

Sidney was always writing of Stella’s marvellous black eyes and their shining rays:

There is every reason, therefore, why the subject of this picture should be so handsome, so distinguished, and so fascinating.

Robert Rich was born in 1587 and was admitted to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1603 and in that year was created a Knight of the Bath. He was quite old enough to have remembered the exciting days of the Essex conspiracy, the part his mother took in this, her imprisonment and release, and his uncle’s execution in 1601. At the age of twenty-three he was elected to Parliament and was again elected in 1614. In 1619 he succeeded to the title.

Robert Rich was one of the original members of the Company for the Plantation of the Bermudas in 1614 and was granted a seat on the Council of the New England Company in 1620, which two great enterprises connect this handsome lord with our own country. Also in 1624 Robert Rich was made a member of the Council of the Virginia Government. Yet this was not all. Warwick’s Colonial interests brought him into close relation with the leading men of the Puritan Party and link his name with the early history of the New England Colonies. He was closely associated with the origin of Connecticut, for in 1632 he granted to Lord Say, Lord Brooke, John Hampden, and others what is known as “the old patent of Connecticut,” under which the town of Saybrook (named for Lord Say and Lord Brooke) was founded.

In English politics Warwick opposed the policy of Charles I and, consequently, after the dissolution of the Short Parliament, he was arrested by the King’s order.

As temporal head of the Puritans and opposed to the party in the Established Church led by Archbishop Laud, Warwick concurred in the prosecution of Archbishop Laud and the Earl of Strafford. In 1643 Warwick was appointed Lord High Admiral of the Fleet, serving Parliament in opposition to Charles I, and he bore the title of Governor-in-Chief of all the islands and other plantations subject to the English Crown, on which authority he became associated with the founding of the Colony of Rhode Island. After the monarchy and the House of Lords had both been swept away, the Earl of Warwick gave his support and encouragement to Oliver Cromwell. The marriage of Cromwell’s daughter to Warwick’s grandson proves the strength of the friendship. The Earl of Warwick died on April 19, 1658, and was buried at Felsted, Essex. He had been three times married.

This picture, in oils on canvas (83 × 49 inches), belonged in the Collection of the Marquess of Breadalbane, Taymouth Castle, Scotland, and to the Collection of the Hon. Mrs. Robert Baillie-Hamilton, Langton, Duns, Scotland.

QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA WITH JEFFREY HUDSON AND A MONKEY.

This full-length portrait in oils on canvas (85¼ × 52 inches) was painted in 1633, the year that Van Dyck was knighted and when he had been about a year in the service of Charles I. Its pedigree is interesting. The painting was in the possession of the Newports, Earls Bradford of the first creation, and was left in 1762, on the death of the fifth Earl, to his sister, Diana, Countess of Mountrath. From the Countess of Mountrath it descended to her son, the last Earl of Mountrath, and from him to the first Earl of Dorchester, of Milton Abbey, where it remained until removed by the Earl of Portarlington to Emo Park, Queen’s County, Ireland. In 1881 Thomas George, first Earl of Northbrook, acquired it by exchange from the Earl of Portarlington; and from the latter it was inherited by Francis George, the second Earl of Northbrook, whence it came to the present owner.

The Queen of Charles I, proud and handsome, is very French and Italian in general style; for be it remembered that Henrietta Maria was the daughter of the gallant King Henry of Navarre and his second wife, Marie de’ Medici, and that she was, consequently, the sister of Louis XIII (see page 176).

The Queen has brown hair curled in “ringlets” and one “ringlet” falls on her shoulder. Her face is oval and delicate and her eyes are brown. She is standing at full length on a step with her head slightly turned to the left, dressed in a blue silk gown (of the shade we now call “Alice blue”), trimmed with narrow gold braid, and a large black felt hat with a white plume, lace collar and a kerchief over her shoulders with two pink bows in front. Beautifully painted frills of lace adorn the elbow sleeves. With her left hand she touches a stiff fold in her dress and with her right hand she caresses a little brown monkey perched on the shoulder of Jeffrey Hudson, the famous dwarf. The little dwarf is about thirteen years of age and is much under size. He has light hair and the slightly wizened face that usually goes with this kind of freak. Indeed our little Jeffrey looks not unlike the pictures of the famous “Gen. Tom Thumb” of Barnum days in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Jeffrey Hudson wears a suit of brick-dust red velvet, a lace collar, and long, brown boots.

In the background, to the left, there is a stone wall and upon it a flower-pot holding an orange tree, and farther away we note some trees and, still farther beyond, the sky. To the right of the fluted pillar on the right, there is a sort of ledge or shelf covered with a brilliant orange silk curtain on which rests a crown of gold studded with pearls, which informs us of the presence of Royalty.

Queen Henrietta Maria was born in 1609, the year before her father, Henri IV, King of France, was assassinated. In 1624, when she was about fifteen, the Prince of Wales offered marriage; and this was consented to by her brother, Louis XIII, on condition that the English Roman Catholics should be relieved from the enforcement of the penal laws. In June, 1625, Henrietta Maria was married by proxy and went to England, thus encumbered with political and religious pledges that were certain to bring unpopularity upon everybody concerned. The Prince of Wales had now become King of England and he soon found an excuse for breaking his promise to relieve the English Roman Catholics. This course of action offended the Queen deeply. The early years of Charles’s married life were very unhappy and the favorite, the dashing Buckingham, fanned the flames of the King’s discontent. After the assassination of Buckingham in 1628, the King and Queen became deeply attached to each other; and from that moment the bond of affection that united them was never loosened.

For a number of years Henrietta Maria’s chief interests lay with her young family. Her children were: Charles II (born 1630); Mary, Princess of Orange (born 1631); James, Duke of York, afterwards James II, (born 1633); Elizabeth (born 1636); Henry, Duke of Gloucester (born 1640); and Henrietta, Duchesse d’Orléans (born 1644). The Queen also delighted in the amusements of the gay and brilliant Court. With political matters she had nothing to do until 1637, when she opened a diplomatic communication with the See of Rome, to help her co-religionists. She appointed an agent to reside in Rome and Rome sent to her a Papal agent (a Scotchman named George Conn), who soon made many converts among the English nobility and gentry.

Protestant England took alarm and, therefore, the Queen became very unpopular. When the Scottish troubles broke out Queen Henrietta Maria raised money from her fellow Catholics to support the King’s army on the Borders in 1639; and in 1640, during the sitting of the Short Parliament, the Queen urged her husband to oppose himself to the House of Commons in defence of the Catholics. When the Long Parliament met, the Catholics were believed to be the authors and agents of every arbitrary scheme supposed to have entered into the plans of Strafford or Laud. During the Long Parliament Henrietta Maria urged the Pope to lend money to enable her to restore her husband’s authority and she threw herself heart and soul into the schemes for rescuing Strafford and coercing Parliament. The Army Plot, the schemes for using Scotland against England, and the attempt upon the five members—Pym, Hampden, Haselrig, Hoiles, and Strode—were the fruits of her political activity.

Next the Queen effected her passage to the Continent and in February, 1643, she returned and, landing at Burlington Quay, placed herself at the head of a band of Loyalists and marched through England to join the King near Oxford. After little more than a residence there of a year, on the 3d of April, 1644, she parted from her husband to see his face no more; but as long as Charles I was alive she never ceased to encourage him to resistance. Henrietta Maria found refuge in France, for Richelieu was then dead and Anne of Austria proved compassionate, yet she had much to suffer in her exile. The execution of her husband was a terrible distress. There is a story with some truth that she married her equerry, Lord Jermyn, which may account for the estrangement of her children.

When Henrietta Maria returned to England after the Restoration, she found that she had no place in the new Court. Parliament gave her a grant of £30,000 a year in compensation for the loss of her dower-lands and her son, Charles II, added a similar sum as a pension from himself. In January, 1661, Henrietta returned to France to be present at the marriage of her daughter, Henrietta, to the Duc d’Orléans, but in July, 1662, she was back in England, taking up her residence at Somerset House. Three years later she returned to France and died at Colombes, near Paris, in 1666.

The other personage in this double portrait, Jeffrey Hudson, was born at Oakham, Rutland, in 1619. His father was a butcher, who kept and baited bulls for George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham. Neither of his parents was undersized. When he was nine years old his father carried Jeffrey to Burleigh-on-the-Hill and offered him to the Duchess of Buckingham, who took him into her service. At that time he was scarcely eighteen inches in height and, if we may believe Fuller, “without any deformity, wholly proportioned.”

Shortly afterwards Charles I and Henrietta Maria passed through Rutland and the Duke of Buckingham gave a dinner in their honor. During one of the courses an enormous pie[22] was served; and when it was cut, out jumped Jeffrey Hudson! The Queen was so delighted with the sprightly little dwarf that she appropriated him at once and he became a Court favorite.

Jeffrey had a number of adventures. On one occasion, when he was sent to France to procure a nurse for the Queen, the ship was captured on the return voyage by a Flemish pirate and Jeffrey, the nurse, and the Queen’s dancing-master were all taken to Dunkirk. Then Jeffrey also saw some military service. When the Prince of Orange besieged Breda in 1637, “Strenuous Jeffrey” was in the Prince’s camp in company with the Earl of Warwick (see page 187) and the Earl of Northampton, who were volunteers in the Dutch Service.

During the Civil Wars Jeffrey Hudson is said to have been a Captain of the Horse. It is certain that he followed the Queen, for he was with her in the flight to Pendennis Castle, in June, 1644, and he went with her to Paris. “He was,” says Fuller, “though a dwarf, no dastard”; and, accordingly, when insulted by Crofts at Paris in 1649, he shot him dead with a pistol in a duel. Crofts had rashly armed himself only with a squirt. In consequence of this, Jeffrey had to leave Paris, although Henrietta Maria saved him from imprisonment, which, however, he had frequently experienced. At sea Jeffrey was captured by a Turkish rover, carried to Barbary, and sold as a slave. His miseries, according to his own account, made him grow taller. Jeffrey managed to get back to England about 1658, at which time Heath addressed some lines to him in his Clarastella.

After the Restoration, Jeffrey Hudson lived quietly in the country for some time on a pension subscribed by the Duke of Buckingham and others; but, on coming up to London to push his fortunes at Court, he, being a Roman Catholic, was suspected of complicity in the Popish Plot (1679) and was confined in the Gatehouse at Westminster.

In June, 1680, and April, 1681, “Captain Jeffrey Hudson” received respectively £50 and £20 from Charles II’s secret service fund. Jeffrey Hudson died in 1682.

Accounts of his height vary, but, according to his own statement (as made to Wright, the historian of Rutland), after reaching the age of seven, when he was eighteen inches high, he did not grow at all until he was thirty, when he shot up three feet, six or nine. Hudson’s waistcoat, breeches, and stockings are preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.