THE ROUSE OF VAN DAMME.
riERTAINLY the exterior is unpromising enough. Even an VI architect would scarcely seek entrance had he not already heard of ite inner delights. By no manner of means is it a show place, Indeed, in the writer's case it was only discovered by accident and entered by guile, The street front is almost arrest- ingly dull, rising a sheer white cliff of wall and shuttered window from a grass-grown pavement in Cassel-sur-Mont. Opposite, across the street, there is—nothing. Just a low quick-set hedge, then steeply falling fields giving a great window flanked by jostling houses, through which one views and overlooks a lovely plain spread out below. A full-sized map ; rod ploughland, green meadows, and an azure distance ; and that day over all a filmy veil of mist turning the whole to the likeness of some great iridescent shell—lying there below, shot and illumined by a dimmed and yellow sun. That is the west prospect. The eastern one is as yet bid from us by the house and its high flank walls—gaunt weather- beaten white, like the building itself. Pulling at a rusty chain that hangs beside a long unpainted postern, a swinging bell clatters and jangles within an echoing court. Sabots clack on cobbles, and the door creaks open on complaining hinges. Knowing the lie of the land, you are prepared and braced for the gasp of pleasure that the first view of the eastern prospect will give you. It is thug that one steps through the archway into a common or kitchen yard—dustbins, clothes-lines, and the like. . . . Bathos ? Yes, ten yards of it—but then ! Twelve paces left incline and you stand out on the terrace—the dropping lawn below you and the wide cha,mpaige beyond, as on the other side, but more treed and chequered and lit in different fashion by reason of the aspect. Some good two leagues. away are the towers and spires of Haze- brouck—town of the plain—their topmost pinnacles below the cellars of Cassel-on-the-HilL Facing this view is, the east facade--a stumpy portico with pediment above, Napoleon's wild-eyed eagle done in plaster, filling the latter with its widespread wiugs, ite cruel claws clutching the Imperial wreath, a tearing beak raised insolently above. Again the gaunt white walls, the tier on tier of lifeless shuttered windows. The drooping concierge, galvanized into momentary life and action by metallic contact, stands within the invitingly open door.
And now, on the threshold, a warning. This is a house of the First Empire sure enough—but of the First Water, most emphati- cally no. It is no Malmaison or Grand Trianon—it is their country cousin and very poor relation. Figure to yourself the frieze of the Parthenon done into gingerbread by a country-town con- fectioner with ideas of his own and an uncertain though lively touch. That is the "Van Daramerie "—therein lies its fascination. It is a far-away, uncertain echo of the fanciful eloganees of the Court and capital—but by no means a faint echo. Indeed, just as the British warrior in the street without seeks to din his moaning into foreign skulls by making certain sounds (stoutly affirmed to be French) loudly instead of correctly, so did old Van Damme's architect strive to make convincing show with the then fashionable frills and flounces by doing whatever he did with such a show of boldness, vigour, and initiative that he probably persuaded him- self as well as his patron that his coarseness was vitality and his lawless heterodoxy transcending imagination. Provincial French with a Prussian accent would sum up the style not ineptly. Yet he clearly believed in himself and his ability, did this jolly pastry- cook, and enjoyed himself prodigiously. There is an unmistakable zest and gusto about the thing that is in itself attractive. The door (a side one) leads into a tiny rotunda with all the proper appurtenances up to the little dome with its triglyphed and =toped frieze and lamp of bronze, hung by a triple chain.
It would be tempting to describe the place room by room and feature by feature—to gloat over this and crow over the even of this piquant architectural gingerbread enough is as good as a feast. A door on your right takes you into a wonderful little corner room with so much architecture to the square foot—walls and ceiling alike—that you feel as though a moment ago you had been standing, say, under the dome of St. Peter's and that suddenly the place had shrunk to a tiny fraction of its proper size leaving you still as you were—a great hulking, preposterous being utterly out of scale, a retriever puppy in a canary-cage. And that, of course, is a defect in the room. A dolls' house in the grand manner is only really satisfactory to the dolls. The pilasters and panels, cornices, friezes, bas-reliefs, and the rest, may be in perfect
relatiss scale, but they are out of scale with man, The 'room ir too much like an Italian cabinet turned inside out to be good arehis tecture, but it is none the less a delightful joke.- 'Unhappily it is
picked out in pink and white, which lays rather unkind stress on the general wedding-cakeism of the various embellishments.
Crossing the adjoining room, which is comparatively unexciting, you a% admitted to the staircase hall through a noble little portico of real veined marble. The distinct shock that you experience on tapping one of the columns, to find that it actually is what it appears to be—genuine undeniable marble—throws a lurid light upon the sublime depths to which 1800 so engagingly descended. The staircase is itself another surprise. Instead of a fantastic coiling thing precariously supported on nothing, with (probably) brazen serpents writhing intricately by way of balusters, you have a solid workaday wooden stair—positively stodgy in its plain common-sense. A most humdrum, conscientious staircase. So ordinary and unassuming is it indeed that it is probable that it was only put in pending the production of something more festive and amusing and more in keeping with the gala atmosphere of the rest of this frolicsome house. Unfortunately, however, the " star " staircase for some reason or other never appeared, and its plain though painstaking understudy still carries ploddingly on.
But before ascending by it the traveller should get a glimpse of the long saloon with its bowed far end—a room of flat pilasters and long mirrors with an odd ceiling coffered in large point-ended lozenges. The general tone of the room is ash-grey, the tympanum has-reliefs over the doors and such-like being picked out in white; and very charming they are, these bas-reliefs and features which are scattered through the house with a liberal though usually discerning hand. There are spandrils and panels and friezes and pilaster and plaques and so forth wherever a reasonable pretext for existing seems to offer, and a generous overplus of the same that simply scorn excuses. A whole mythology of goddesses, leopards, griffins, sphinxes, amorini, lion-heads, eagles, and whatnot just compla- cently smiles down on you a propos of nothing at all. But they do it very engagingly, and their frank and fearless attitude is quite disarming. They seem to say " Yes, we know we needn't be here, but we like to do our bit—we volunteered without being asked. Not at all ; we find being lovely very enjoyable, and we are glad you admire us."
Upstairs things are exactly as they should be, particularly the great attic—the nursery—where beautiful little miniature beds of glossy scrolling mahogany stand in the bays between the meagre wooden pillars that bear the vaulted ceiling. The bulk of the furniture clearly survives from the first furnishing of the Louse by the gallant General's lady, and very charming much of it is. A good array of prints and pictures portrays for us the several battles that have given Cassel its place and fame in history, whilst the General's refined and pleasant face looking frankly and genially down from a twilit corner makes one wonder whether the tales of his coarse brutality can be true. Either the historian or the artist roust have lied, one feels ; probably the historian.
But the concierge has become devitalized ; the galvanic effect has worn off ; he yawns audibly and jingles his keys of office, bored with our foolish enthusiasm. So let us depart, and let him 'shutter op the house once more and leave it basking with closod eyes in the evening sun. And as we go we may picture Mr. Ruskin being conducted round this most heretical house by a really appreciative showman—a latter-day post-decadent architect for preference. One fancies him eventually being carried out to the open air with foam at his lips, there, with loosened collar and watered brow, to be slowly restored to consciousness and denunciation. Every mortal one of his " seven lamps " are here exultingly snuffed out with the utmost cheerfulness and good humour—architectural practical joking that it is hard to discountenance when practised with such wit and ingenuity. But then, he would very properly observe : " One does not romp with a Muse." Perhaps one shouldn't—but
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