The secret history of this national edifice derives importance from its
nature, and the remarkable characters involved in the unparalleled
transaction. The great architect, when obstructed in the progress of his
work by the irregular payments of the workmen, appears to have
practised one of his own comic plots to put the debts on the hero
himself; while the duke, who had it much at heart to inhabit the palace
of his fame, but tutored into wariness under the vigilant and fierce eye
of Atossa,[62] would neither approve nor disapprove, silently looked on
in hope and in grief, from year to year, as the work proceeded, or as it
was left at a stand. At length we find this _comedie larmoyante_ wound
up by the duchess herself, in an attempt utterly to ruin the enraged and
insulted architect![63]
Perhaps this was the first time that it had ever been resolved in
parliament to raise a public monument of glory and gratitude--to an
individual! The novelty of the attempt may serve as the only excuse for
the loose arrangements which followed after parliament had approved of
the design, without voting any specific supply for the purpose! The
queen always issued the orders at her own expense, and commanded
expedition; and while Anne lived, the expenses of the building were
included in her majesty's debts, as belonging to the civil list
sanctioned by parliament.[64]
When George the First came to the throne, the parliament declared the
debt to be the debt of the queen, and the king granted a privy seal as
for other debts. The crown and the parliament had hitherto proceeded in
perfect union respecting this national edifice. However, I find that the
workmen were greatly in arrears; for when George the First ascended the
throne, they gladly accepted a _third_ part of their several debts!
The great architect found himself amidst inextricable difficulties. With
the fertile invention which amuses in his comedies, he contrived an
extraordinary scheme, by which he proposed to make the duke himself
responsible for the building of Blenheim!
However much the duke longed to see the magnificent edifice concluded,
he showed the same calm intrepidity in the building of Blenheim as he
had in its field of action. Aware that if he himself gave any order, or
suggested any alteration, he might be involved in the expense of the
building, he was never to be circumvented--never to be surprised into a
spontaneous emotion of pleasure or disapprobation; on no occasion, he
declares, had he even entered into conversation with the architect
(though his friend) or with any one acting under his orders, about
Blenheim House! Such impenetrable prudence on all sides had often
blunted the subdolous ingenuity of the architect and plotter of
comedies!
In the absence of the duke, when abroad in 1705, Sir John contrived to
obtain from Lord Godolphin, the friend and relative of the Duke of
Marlborough, and probably his agent in some of his concerns, a warrant,
constituting Vanbrugh _surveyor, with power of contracting on the behalf
of the Duke of Marlborough_. How he prevailed on Lord Godolphin to get
this appointment does not appear--his lordship probably conceived it was
useful, and might assist in expediting the great work, the favourite
object of the hero. This warrant, however, Vanbrugh kept entirely to
himself; he never mentioned to the duke that he was in possession of any
such power; nor, on his return, did he claim to have it renewed.
The building proceeded with the same delays, and the payments with the
same irregularity; the veteran now foresaw what happened, that he should
never be the inhabitant of his own house! The public money issued from
the Treasury was never to be depended on; and after 1712, the duke took
the building upon himself, for the purpose of accommodating the workmen.
They had hitherto received what was called "crown pay," which was high
wages and uncertain payment--and they now gladly abated a third of their
prices. But though the duke had undertaken to pay the workmen, this
could make no alteration in the claims on the Treasury. Blenheim was to
be built _for_ Marlborough, not _by_ him; it was a monument raised by
the nation to their hero, not a palace to be built by their mutual
contributions.
Whether Marlborough found that his own million might be slowly injured
while the Treasury remained still obdurate, or that the architect was
still more and more involved, I cannot tell; but in 1715, the workmen
appear to have struck, and the old delays and stand-still again renewed.
It was then Sir John, for the first time, produced the warrant he had
extracted from Lord Godolphin, to lay before the Treasury; adding,
however, a memorandum, to prevent any misconception, that the duke was
to be considered as the paymaster, the debts incurred devolving on the
crown. This part of our secret history requires more development than I
am enabled to afford: as my information is drawn from "the Case" of the
Duke of Marlborough in reply to Sir John's depositions, it is possible
Vanbrugh may suffer more than he ought in this narration; which,
however, incidentally notices his own statements.
A new scene opens! Vanbrugh not obtaining his claims from the Treasury,
and the workmen becoming more clamorous, the architect suddenly turns
round on the duke, at once to charge him with the whole debt.
The pitiable history of this magnificent monument of public gratitude,
from its beginnings, is given by Vanbrugh in his deposition. The great
architect represents himself as being comptroller of her majesty's
works; and as such was appointed to prepare a model, which model of
Blenheim House her majesty kept in her palace, and gave her commands to
issue money according to the direction of Mr. Travers, the queen's
surveyor-general; that the lord treasurer appointed her majesty's own
officers to supervise these works; that it was upon defect of money from
the Treasury that the workmen grew uneasy; that the work was stopped,
till further orders of money from the Treasury; that the queen then
ordered enough to secure it from winter weather; that afterwards she
ordered more for payment of the workmen; that they were paid in part;
and upon Sir John's telling them the queen's resolution to grant them a
further supply (_after a stop put to it by the duchess's order_), they
went on and incurred the present debt; that this was afterwards brought
into the House of Commons as the debt of the crown, not owing from the
queen to the Duke of Marlborough, but to the workmen, and this by the
queen's officers.
During the uncertain progress of the building, and while the workmen
were often in deep arrears, it would seem that the architect often
designed to involve the Marlboroughs in its fate and his own; he
probably thought that some of their round million might bear to be
chipped, to finish his great work, with which, too, their glory was so
intimately connected. The famous duchess had evidently put the duke on
the defensive; but once, perhaps, was the duke on the point of indulging
some generous architectural fancy, when lo! Atossa stepped forwards and
"put a stop to the building."
When Vanbrugh at length produced the warrant of Lord Godolphin,
empowering him to contract for the duke, this instrument was utterly
disclaimed by Marlborough; the duke declares it existed without his
knowledge; and that if such an instrument for a moment was to be held
valid, no man would be safe, but might be ruined by the act of another!
Vanbrugh seems to have involved the intricacy of his plot, till it fell
into some contradictions. The queen he had not found difficult to
manage; but after her death, when the Treasury failed in its golden
source, he seems to have sat down to contrive how to make the duke the
great debtor. Vanbrugh swears that "He himself looked upon the crown, as
engaged to the Duke of Marlborough for the expense; but that he believes
the workmen always looked upon the duke as their paymaster." He advances
so far, as to swear that he made a contract with particular workmen,
which contract was not unknown to the duke. This was not denied; but the
duke in his reply observes, that "he knew not that the workmen were
employed for _his_ account, or by _his_ own agent:"--never having heard
till Sir John produced the warrant from Lord Godolphin, that Sir John
was "his surveyor!" which he disclaims.
Our architect, however opposite his depositions appear, contrived to
become a witness to such facts as tended to conclude the duke to be the
debtor for the building; and "in his depositions has taken as much care
to have the guilt of perjury without the punishment of it, as any man
could do." He so managed, though he has not sworn to contradictions,
that the natural tendency of one part of his evidence presses one way,
and the natural tendency of another part presses the direct contrary
way. In his former memorial, the main design was to disengage the duke
from the debt; in his depositions, the main design was to charge the
duke with the debt. Vanbrugh, it must be confessed, exerted not less of
his dramatic than his architectural genius in the building of Blenheim!
"The Case" concludes with an eloquent reflection, where Vanbrugh is
distinguished as the man of genius, though not, in this predicament, the
man of honour. "If at last the charge run into by order of the crown
must be upon the duke, yet the infamy of it must go upon another, who
was perhaps the only architect in the world capable of building such a
house; and the only friend in the world capable of contriving to lay the
debt upon one to whom he was so highly obliged."
There is a curious fact in the depositions of Vanbrugh, by which we
might infer that the idea of Blenheim House might have originated with
the duke himself; he swears that "in 1704, the duke met him, and told
him _he_ designed to build a house, and must consult him about a model,
&c.; but it was the queen who ordered the present house to be built with
all expedition."
The whole conduct of this national edifice was unworthy of the nation,
if in truth the nation ever entered heartily into it. No specific sum
had been voted in parliament for so great an undertaking; which
afterwards was the occasion of involving all the parties concerned in
trouble and litigation; threatened the ruin of the architect; and I
think we shall see, by Vanbrugh's letters, was finished at the sole
charge, and even under the superintendence, of the duchess herself! It
may be a question, whether this magnificent monument of glory did not
rather originate in the spirit of party, in the urgent desire of the
queen to allay the pride and jealousies of the Marlboroughs. From the
circumstance to which Vanbrugh has sworn, that the duke had designed to
have a house built by Vanbrugh, before Blenheim had been resolved on, we
may suppose that this intention of the duke's afforded the queen a
suggestion of a national edifice.
Archdeacon Coxe, in his Life of Marlborough, has obscurely alluded to
the circumstances attending the building of Blenheim. "The illness of
the duke, and the tedious litigation which ensued, caused such delays,
that little progress was made in the work at the time of his decease. In
the interim a serious misunderstanding arose between the duchess and the
architect, which forms the subject of a voluminous correspondence.
Vanbrugh was in consequence removed, and the direction of the building
confided to other hands, under her own immediate superintendence."
This "voluminous correspondence" would probably afford "words that burn"
of the lofty insolence of Atossa, and "thoughts that breathe" of the
comic wit; it might too relate, in many curious points, to the
stupendous fabric itself. If her grace condescended to criticise its
parts with the frank roughness she is known to have done to the
architect himself, his own defence and explanations might serve to let
us into the bewildering fancies of his magical architecture. Of that
self-creation for which he was so much abused in his own day as to have
lost his real avocation as an architect, and stands condemned for
posterity in the volatile bitterness of Lord Orford, nothing is left for
us but our own convictions--to behold, and to be for ever
astonished!--But "this voluminous correspondence?" Alas! the historian
of war and politics overlooks with contempt the little secret histories
of art and of human nature!--and "a voluminous correspondence" which
indicates so much, and on which not a solitary idea is bestowed, has
only served to petrify our curiosity!
Of this quarrel between the famous duchess and Vanbrugh I have only
recovered several vivacious extracts from confidential letters of
Vanbrugh's to Jacob Tonson. There was an equality of the genius of
_invention_, as well as rancour, in her grace and the wit: whether
Atossa, like Vanbrugh, could have had the patience to have composed a
comedy of five acts I will not determine; but unquestionably she could
have dictated many scenes with equal spirit. We have seen Vanbrugh
attempting to turn the debts incurred by the building of Blenheim on the
duke; we now learn, for the first time, that the duchess, with equal
aptitude, contrived a counterplot to turn the debts on Vanbrugh!
"I have the misfortune of losing, for I now see little hopes of ever
getting it, near 2000_l._ due to me for many years' service, plague, and
trouble, at Blenheim, which that wicked woman of 'Marlborough' is so far
from paying me, that the duke being sued by some of the workmen for work
done there, she has tried to turn the debt due to them upon me, for
which I think she ought to be hanged."
In 1722, on occasion of the duke's death, Vanbrugh gives an account to
Tonson of the great wealth of the Marlboroughs, with a caustic touch at
his illustrious victims.
"The Duke of Marlborough's treasure exceeds the most extravagant guess.
The grand settlement, which it was suspected her grace had broken to
pieces, stands good, and hands an immense wealth to Lord Godolphin and
his successors. A round million has been moving about in loans on the
land-tax, &c. This the Treasury knew before he died, and this was
exclusive of his 'land;' his 5000_l._ a year upon the post-office; his
mortgages upon a distressed estate; his South-Sea stock; his annuities,
and which were not subscribed in, and besides what is in foreign banks;
and yet this man could neither pay his workmen their bills, nor his
architect his salary.
"He has given his widow (may a Scottish ensign get her!) 10,000_l._ a
year _to spoil Blenheim her own way_; 12,000_l._ a year to keep herself
clean and go to law; 2000_l._ a year to Lord Rialton for present
maintenance; and Lord Godolphin only 5000_l._ a year jointure, if he
outlives my lady: this last is a wretched article. The rest of the heap,
for these are but snippings, goes to Lord Godolphin, and so on. She will
have 40,000_l._ a year in present."
Atossa, as the quarrel heated and the plot thickened, with the
maliciousness of Puck, and the haughtiness of an empress of Blenheim,
invented the most cruel insult that ever architect endured!--one
perfectly characteristic of that extraordinary woman. Vanbrugh went to
Blenheim with his lady, in a company from Castle Howard, another
magnificent monument of his singular genius.
"We staid two nights in Woodstock; but there was an order to the
servants, _under her grace's own hand, not to let me enter Blenheim_!
and lest that should not mortify me enough, she having somehow learned
that my _wife_ was of the company, _sent an express the night before we
came there_, with orders that if _she_ came with the Castle Howard
ladies, the servants should not suffer her to see either house, gardens,
or even to enter the park: so she was forced to sit all day long and
keep me company at the inn!"
This was a _coup-de-theatre_ in this joint comedy of Atossa and
Vanbrugh! The architect of Blenheim, lifting his eyes towards his own
massive grandeur, exiled to a dull inn, and imprisoned with one who
required rather to be consoled, than capable of consoling the enraged
architect!
In 1725, Atossa still pursuing her hunted prey, had driven it to a spot
which she flattered herself would enclose it with the security of a
preserve. This produced the following explosion!
"I have been forced into chancery by that B. B. B. the Duchess of
Marlborough, where she has got an injunction upon me by her friend the
late good chancellor (Earl of Macclesfield), who declared that I was
never employed by the duke, and therefore had no demand upon his estate
for my services at Blenheim. Since my hands were thus tied up from
trying by law to recover my arrear, I have prevailed with Sir Robert
Walpole _to help me in a scheme which I proposed to him, by which I got
my money in spite of the hussy's teeth. My carrying this point enrages
her much_, and the more because it is of considerable weight in my small
fortune, which she has heartily endeavoured so to destroy as to throw me
into an English Bastile, there to finish my days, as _I began them, in a
French one_."
Plot for plot! and the superior claims of one of practised invention are
vindicated! The writer, long accustomed to comedy-writing, has excelled
the self-taught genius of Atossa. The "scheme" by which Vanbrugh's
fertile invention, aided by Sir Robert Walpole, finally circumvented the
avaricious, the haughty, and the capricious Atossa, remains untold,
unless it is alluded to by the passage in Lord Orford's "Anecdotes of
Painting," where he informs us that the "duchess quarrelled with Sir
John, and went to law with him; but though he _proved to be in the
right_, or rather _because_ he proved to be in the right, she employed
Sir Christopher Wren to build the house in St. James's Park."
I have to add a curious discovery respecting Vanbrugh himself, which
explains a circumstance in his life not hitherto understood.
In all the biographies of Vanbrugh, from the time of Cibber's Lives of
the Poets, the early part of the life of this man of genius remains
unknown. It is said he descended from an ancient family in _Cheshire_,
which came originally from _France_, though by the name, which properly
written would be _Van Brugh_, he would appear to be of _Dutch_
extraction. A tale is universally repeated that Sir John once visiting
France in the prosecution of his architectural studies, while taking a
survey of some fortifications, excited alarm, and was carried to the
Bastile: where, to deepen the interest of the story, he sketched a
variety of comedies, which he must have communicated to the governor,
who, whispering it doubtless as an affair of state to several of the
noblesse, these admirers of "sketches of comedies"--English ones no
doubt--procured the release of this English Moliere. This tale is
further confirmed by a very odd circumstance. Sir John built at
Greenwich, on a spot still called "Van Brugh's Fields," two whimsical
houses; one on the side of Greenwich Park is still called "the
Bastile-House," built on its model, to commemorate this imprisonment.
Not a word of this detailed story is probably true! that the _Bastile_
was an object which sometimes occupied the imagination of our architect,
is probable; for by the letter we have just quoted, we discover from
himself the singular incident of Vanbrugh's having been _born in the
Bastile_.[65]
Desirous, probably, of concealing his alien origin, this circumstance
cast his early days into obscurity. He felt that he was a Briton in all
respects but that of his singular birth. The father of Vanbrugh married
Sir Dudley Carleton's daughter. We are told he had "political
connexions;" and one of his "political" tours had probably occasioned
his confinement in that state-dungeon, where his lady was delivered of
her burden of love. This odd fancy of building a "Bastile-House" at
Greenwich, a fortified prison! suggested to his first life-writer the
fine romance; which must now be thrown aside among those literary
fictions the French distinguish by the softening and yet impudent term
of "_Anecdotes hasardees!_" with which formerly Varillas and his
imitators furnished their pages; lies which looked like facts!