The Argosy — page 299: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

274 A Visit to Mary Cowden-Clarke. lovely is ever awake. She is both a lesson and a picture ; a picture as pleasure to the eye, a lesson showing how, if we keep our hearts young, we not only retain our pleasure in life, but remain a pleasure, in lieu of a burden, to those around us. Out of the music-room opens a small drawing-room, that contains many treasures of memory, among them a portrait of Mrs. Cowden- Clarke in the character of Dame Quickly, one of the various rdéles she played when on that theatrical trip with Dickens of which mention is so frequently made in his letters, and whose memory she cherishes as among her brightest. Among many letters from the great novelist, she has one in which he has signed himself in hand- writings the most diverse, with the name of the various characters they played together. Indeed, Mrs. Cowden-Clarke’s active love for artistic and theatrical joys is far from extinct. As recently as 1881, on a visit to England she played, in private theatricals, the part of Mrs. Malaprop, in Sheridan’s “ Rivals,” with grace and vigour ; whilst the following year, at another performance, she recited, in the same character, a most entertaining prologue written by herself that is full of the choicest and happiest Malaprops. Want of space forbids me from quoting the same, either in part or at length. Into the sanctuary of Mrs. Cowden-Clarke’s bed-chamber it is, of course, permitted to few to penetrate. It is a sanctuary truly. Here, she decks with fresh flowers the portraits of-her dear and dead departed—the adored husband, the loved parents. By her bedside hang the portraits of Keats, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Leigh Hunt, J. T. Fields, and others, loved and _ lost, nearer and dearer. Beside the chimney hangs a photograph of the American sculptor Gould’s impressive bas-relief of Hamlet’s father, a special favourite of Mrs. Cowden-Clarke’s ; while, richest’ treasure perchance of all in a room full of treasures and mementoes of the past, is a small crayon portrait of Mrs. Siddons by Sir Thomas Lawrence, which, as far as I could learn, has never been reproduced, and which furnishes a graceful and spirited idea of that. wonderful actress. From Mrs. Cowden-Clarke’s room we pass into the snug library, with its two comfortable writing-tables, covered with all the needed appliances of the scribe, its walls lined with the works of the best authors, with rare and choice editions, with presentation copies rendered richer by the autographs of the donors. Needless to re- mark that editions of Shakespeare abound ; while on the scant wall spaces unclothed with books hang portraits of the bard, views of ‘Stratford, pictures of his house, a copy of John Bell’s Tercentenary medal and other Shakespeariana the more. Here, too, hangs an interesting group of the Novello family, painted by the dead brother Edward. As is fitting, they are all grouped about the piano, on which the father is playing while sons and daughters join, as was their wont, in singing the refined compositions that were the father’s Gomicbooks (E(0)