FoodNet

Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

1898

Page 93

Presented as published in 1898. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
cow went into the mud to drink, and came out with a splendid Spanish old gold coin of the time of the Armada stuck in her hoof. Nothing more was discovered, but as the river was tidal it was a curious confirmation of the old tradition. On our way South we could not help noticing how far more beautiful Scotland is than Norway. The Heather was unusually fine this year. We stayed a night in Edinburgh, which gave me an opportunity of seeing the pictures in the National Gallery. I wonder if many tourists visit it? The morning I was there I did not see two people in the gallery. Besides the Eaeburns, which are of world-wide fame, several pictures stand out with peculiar interest, especially the life-sized Gainsborough of the young Mrs. Grahame. She sat for this picture as a bride, but before it came home she was dead and her husband had gone to the wars. When he came back, he never had the courage to open the case which contained his young wife's portrait. On his deathr many long years after it was painted, it was opened by his heirs, and inside the case was the little white slipper she had left with the painter to help him to finish his picture. The portrait was given to the Edinburgh Gallery, and the slipper was kept by the family. It is worth noting that an oil picture should have remained so long shut up and apparently not deteriorated in any way. There is a lovely Greuze, one of the prettiest I have ever seen, a child of about fourteen crying over a dead canary; an exquisite little Boucher of Mme. de Pompadour; a large picture by the eighteenth-century Venetian painter Tiepolo, whose works are rarely seen out of Venice. The picture gives one more impression of his power and cleverness than it delights one with its beauty. The expression, character, and sex are described by the power of the brush as completely as by the word- painting of a Paul Bourget novel. What added to my AUGUST 157 interest in Tiepolo was the revival of admiration his works have lately had among young French painters. I was immensely pleased at seeing a portrait of the painter Martin, by himself — a red-haired youth, with the cold dreamy eyes of the artistic temperament, a mouth rather sensual than passionate, a fine brow, and a slightly receding chin, which gave a touch of weakness to the face. All my life I have so admired his wildly imaginative illustrations of the Bible, Milton, &c. The impression given by the portrait is of a touching, interesting face, with that look of sorrow which so appeals to one, especially in the young. The gods do not always remember that those whom they love should die young. Poor Martin did not die till middle life, and went mad, I believe.