The palace of the famous Duke of Marlborough, presented to him by the
nation, in honor of his services, is not far from Oxford, in England.
This magnificent structure has often been described, and recently by
Silliman in his “Visit to Europe.” “We entered,” he says, “by the
splendid portal erected to the memory of her husband by the surviving
Duchess of Marlborough. The palace is situated on a plain in the midst
of an extensive domain, eleven miles in circuit, laid out in the finest
style of an English park. There are twenty-five hundred acres covered
with the richest verdure, including a beautiful lake, from which large
pike are obtained. The palace is an immense structure, and has been
greatly improved by the present duke, who, it is said, has recently
expended eighty thousand pounds upon the establishment. It is in vain to
attempt a detailed description. The north front measures three hundred
and eighty-four feet from one wing to the other. We were courteously
conducted through the palace by a man of good appearance, and of civil
but formal manners. He was dressed in black: you would take him for a
gentleman, and feel that it would be improper to offer him money, but he
took it from our party. We were taken through one splendid room after
another, until it would seem as if there would be no end of them. They
were generally lofty, apparently twenty to twenty-five feet high, and
ornamented with rich ceilings, gilding, and fresco paintings. The
principal apartments are the hall, the bow-window room, the state
bedroom, the billiard-room, the breakfast-room, the grand cabinet, the
small drawing-room, the great drawing-room, the dining-room, the saloon,
the green drawing-room, the state drawing-room, the crimson
drawing-room, the library, the chapel, and the Titian room. This palace
had no appearance of being the comfortable home of the family, who, it
is said, keep it up out of regard to the glory of their great ancestor;
but that they are too poor to live in it in a style of appropriate
magnificence. The gardens or pleasure grounds, and the private grounds,
were not visible.
“The pictures in this palace are numerous, and many of them are
admirable. Vandyke, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Rubens, Holbein, Paul Veronese,
Leonardi da Vinci, Reynolds, Poussin, Carlo Dolci, Corregio, Rembrandt,
Teniers, Titian, and other eminent artists, by mental creations,
contributed the living glowing images of their own minds, or transferred
living features to the canvas. Many very beautiful and lovely women and
princely men look down upon the observer from these animated and
eloquent walls; for the palace is, in fact, an immense gallery of
pictures, divided among many rooms. The victories of the Duke of
Marlborough are displayed in Antwerp tapestry upon the walls of several
of the apartments. The tapestry pictures are of great size: a single
picture covers a side, sometimes two sides of a large room; so that
there is space to exhibit also the scenery of the country; there is room
also for portraits of the principal officers, as large as life—of the
duke himself, and even of the horses; and near or remote, the hostile
armies are lingering on the fearful edge of battle, or they are actually
engaged in deadly combat. How touching the reflection, how sad the
remembrance, that, excepting the present duke and his family, only one
individual of all the vast number of human beings represented by these
pictures survives. One that appears as a little child in a large family
group, is now the aged grandmother of a distinguished peer. All the rest
have passed away, and the great Marlborough himself, and his proud,
aspiring duchess, lie under the marble pavement of the chapel in the
palace, as Louis XIV., the Grand, reposes in his own tomb, and Queen
Anne in hers; and all the sanguinary conflicts of that eventful period
are now to be found in history alone. War, by a spirit of chivalry, was
then a kind of duel on a great scale; it is said that military courtesy
sometimes offered the first fire to the enemy; and a similar offer being
made in return, they thus bandied compliments as if in sport, when they
knew that the first fire would lay many a gallant soldier low.
“One room is one hundred and eighty-three feet in length, and contains
the ducal library, consisting of seventeen thousand volumes. They are
protected by a wire netting in front. At the upper end of the library is
a fine marble statue of Queen Anne, which cost five thousand guineas.
This palace, like most of the ancient public structures in England
constructed of oölite, is externally much corroded by time. These
immense establishments are, of course, very expensive in repairs, in
embellishments, in service, and in many other ways; but they bring no
income; nor, in general, does the vast domain which surrounds the
palace. If kept in high order, as they generally are, they require a
great number of laborers, especially in the horticultural department;
and for all this there is little or no return, unless it may be
something toward supplies of food for the household. There is at
Blenheim a column or obelisk to the memory of the Duke of Marlborough,
which is one hundred and thirty-four feet high, crowned with a statue in
Roman dress. The gallery of Titian is secluded in a separate building,
and for reasons obvious to those who have seen it, is exhibited in a
more reserved manner to artists and amateurs.”