ARLINGTON STREET, _Sept._ 1, 1760.
I was disappointed at your not being at home as I returned from my
expedition.
My tour has been extremely agreeable. I set out with winning a good deal
at Loo at Ragley; the Duke of Grafton was not so successful, and had
some high words with Pam. I went from thence to Offley's at
Whichnovre[1], the individual manor of the flitch of bacon, which has
been growing rusty for these thirty years in his hall. I don't wonder; I
have no notion that one could keep in good humour with one's wife for a
year and a day, unless one was to live on the very spot, which is one of
the sweetest scenes I ever saw. It is the brink of a high hill; the
Trent wriggles through at the foot; Lichfield and twenty other churches
and mansions decorate the view. Mr. Anson has bought an estate
[Shugborough] close by, whence my Lord used to cast many a wishful eye,
though without the least pretensions even to a bit of lard.
[Footnote 1: The manor of Whichnovre, near Lichfield, is held (like the
better-known Dunmow, in Essex) on the singular custom of the Lord of the
Manor "keeping ready, all times of the year but Lent, one bacon-flyke
hanging in his hall, to be given to every man or woman who demanded it a
year and a day after marriage, upon their swearing that they would not
have changed for none other, fairer nor fouler, richer nor poorer, nor
for no other descended of great lineage sleeping nor waking at no
time."]
I saw Lichfield Cathedral, which has been rich, but my friend Lord
Brooke and his soldiery treated poor St. Chad[1] with so little
ceremony, that it is in a most naked condition. In a niche at the very
summit they have crowded a statue of Charles the Second, with a special
pair of shoe-strings, big enough for a weathercock. As I went to Lord
Strafford's I passed through Sheffield, which is one of the foulest
towns in England in the most charming situation; there are
two-and-twenty thousand inhabitants making knives and scissors: they
remit eleven thousand pounds a week to London. One man there has
discovered the art of plating copper with silver; I bought a pair of
candlesticks for two guineas that are quite pretty. Lord Strafford has
erected the little Gothic building, which I got Mr. Bentley to draw; I
took the idea from Chichester Cross. It stands on a high bank in the
menagerie, between a pond and a vale, totally bowered over with oaks. I
went with the Straffords to Chatsworth and stayed there four days; there
were Lady Mary Coke, Lord Besborough and his daughters, Lord Thomond,
Mr. Boufoy, the Duke, the old Duchess, and two of his brothers. Would
you believe that nothing was ever better humoured than the ancient
Grace? She stayed every evening till it was dark in the skittle-ground,
keeping the score; and one night, that the servants had a ball for Lady
Dorothy's birthday, we fetched the fiddler into the drawing-room, and
the dowager herself danced with us! I never was more disappointed than
at Chatsworth,[2] which, ever since I was born, I have condemned. It is
a glorious situation; the vale rich in corn and verdure, vast woods hang
down the hills, which are green to the top, and the immense rocks only
serve to dignify the prospect. The river runs before the door, and
serpentises more than you can conceive in the vale. The Duke is widening
it, and will make it the middle of his park; but I don't approve an idea
they are going to execute, of a fine bridge with statues under a noble
cliff. If they will have a bridge (which by the way will crowd the
scene), it should be composed of rude fragments, such as the giant of
the Peak would step upon, that he might not be wetshod. The expense of
the works now carrying on will amount to forty thousand pounds. A heavy
quadrangle of stables is part of the plan, is very cumbrous, and
standing higher than the house, is ready to overwhelm it. The principal
front of the house is beautiful, and executed with the neatness of
wrought plate; the inside is most sumptuous, but did not please me; the
heathen gods, goddesses, Christian virtues, and allegoric gentlefolks,
are crowded into every room, as if Mrs. Holman had been in heaven and
invited everybody she saw. The great apartment is first; painted
ceilings, inlaid floors, and unpainted wainscots make every room
_sombre_. The tapestries are fine, but not fine enough, and there are
few portraits. The chapel is charming. The great _jet d'eau_ I like, nor
would I remove it; whatever is magnificent of the kind in the time it
was done, I would retain, else all gardens and houses wear a tiresome
resemblance. I except that absurdity of a cascade tumbling down marble
steps, which reduces the steps to be of no use at all. I saw Haddon, an
abandoned old castle of the Rutlands, in a romantic situation, but which
never could have composed a tolerable dwelling. The Duke sent Lord John
[Cavendish] with me to Hardwicke, where I was again disappointed; but I
will not take relations from others; they either don't see for
themselves, or can't see for me. How I had been promised that I should
be charmed with Hardwicke,[3] and told that the Devonshires ought to
have established there! never was I less charmed in my life. The house
is not Gothic, but of that betweenity, that intervened when Gothic
declined and Paladian was creeping in--rather, this is totally naked of
either. It has vast chambers--aye, vast, such as the nobility of that
time delighted in, and did not know how to furnish. The great apartment
is exactly what it was when the Queen of Scots was kept there. Her
council-chamber, the council-chamber of a poor woman, who had only two
secretaries, a gentleman-usher, an apothecary, a confessor, and three
maids, is so outrageously spacious, that you would take it for King
David's, who thought, contrary to all modern experience, that in the
multitude of counsellors there is wisdom. At the upper end is the state,
with a long table, covered with a sumptuous cloth, embroidered and
embossed with gold,--at least what was gold; so are all the tables.
Round the top of the chamber runs a monstrous frieze, ten or twelve feet
deep, representing stag-hunting in miserable plastered relief. The next
is her dressing-room, hung with patch-work on black velvet; then her
state bedchamber. The bed has been rich beyond description, and now
hangs in costly golden tatters. The hangings, part of which they say her
Majesty worked, are composed of figures as large as life, sewed and
embroidered on black velvet, white satin, &c., and represent the virtues
that were necessary for her, or that she was forced to have, as Patience
and Temperance, &c. The fire-screens are particular; pieces of yellow
velvet, fringed with gold, hang on a cross-bar of wood, which is fixed
on the top of a single stick, that rises from the foot. The only
furniture which has any appearance of taste are the table and cabinets,
which are all of oak, richly carved. There is a private chamber within,
where she lay, her arms and style over the door; the arras hangs over
all the doors; the gallery is sixty yards long, covered with bad
tapestry, and wretched pictures of Mary herself, Elizabeth in a gown of
sea-monsters, Lord Darnley, James the Fifth and his Queen, curious, and
a whole history of Kings of England, not worth sixpence a-piece. There
is an original of old Bess of Hardwicke herself, who built the house.
Her estates were then reckoned at sixty thousand pounds a-year, and now
let for two hundred thousand pounds. Lord John Cavendish told me, that
the tradition in the family is, that it had been prophesied to her that
she should never die as long as she was building; and that at last she
died in a hard frost, when the labourers could not work. There is a fine
bank of old oaks in the park over a lake; nothing else pleased me there.
However, I was so diverted with this old beldam and her magnificence,
that I made this epitaph for her:--
Four times the nuptial bed she warm'd,
And every time so well perform'd,
That when death spoil'd each husband's billing,
He left the widow every shilling.
Fond was the dame, but not dejected;
Five stately mansions she erected
With more than royal pomp, to vary
The prison of her captive Mary.
When Hardwicke's towers shall bow their head,
Nor mass be more in Worksop said;
When Bolsover's fair fame shall tend
Like Olcotes, to its mouldering end;
When Chatsworth tastes no Ca'ndish bounties,
Let fame forget this costly countess.
[Footnote 1: Scott alludes to Lord Brooke's violation of St. Chad's
Cathedral in "Marmion," whose tomb
Was levelled when fanatic Brooke
The fair cathedral stormed and took,
But thanks to Heaven and good St. Chad
A guerdon meet the spoiler had (c. vi. 36).
And the poet adds in a note that Lord Brooke himself, "who commanded the
assailants, was shot with a musket-ball through the visor of his helmet;
and the royalists remarked that he was killed by a shot fired from St.
Chad's Cathedral on St. Chad's Day, and received his wound in the very
eye with which, he had said, he hoped to see the ruin of all the
cathedrals in England."]
[Footnote 2: "_Disappointed with Chatsworth._" In a letter, however, to
Lord Strafford three days afterwards he says: "Chatsworth surpassed his
expectations; there is such richness and variety of prospect."]
[Footnote 3: Hardwicke was one of what Home calls "the gentleman's
houses," to which the unfortunate Queen was removed between the times of
her detention at Tutbury and Fotheringay. It is not mentioned by
Burton.]
As I returned, I saw Newstead[1] and Althorpe: I like both. The former
is the very abbey. The great east window of the church remains, and
connects with the house; the hall entire, the refectory entire, the
cloister untouched, with the ancient cistern of the convent, and their
arms on it; a private chapel quite perfect. The park, which is still
charming, has not been so much unprofaned; the present Lord has lost
large sums, and paid part in old oaks, five thousand pounds of which
have been cut near the house. In recompense he has built two baby forts,
to pay his country in castles for the damage done to the navy, and
planted a handful of Scotch firs, that look like ploughboys dressed in
old family liveries for a public day. In the hall is a very good
collection of pictures, all animals; the refectory, now the great
drawing-room, is full of Byrons; the vaulted roof remaining, but the
windows have new dresses making for them by a Venetian tailor. Althorpe
has several very fine pictures by the best Italian hands, and a gallery
of all one's acquaintance by Vandyke and Lely. I wonder you never saw
it; it is but six miles from Northampton. Well, good night; I have writ
you such a volume, that you see I am forced to page it. The Duke [of
Cumberland] has had a stroke of the palsy, but is quite recovered,
except in some letters, which he cannot pronounce; and it is still
visible in the contraction of one side of his mouth. My compliments to
your family.
[Footnote 1: Newstead, since Walpole's time immortalised as the seat of
the illustrious Byron. Evelyn had compared it, for its situation, to
Fontainebleau, and particularly extolled "the front of a glorious Abbey
Church" and its "brave woods and streams;" and Byron himself has given
an elaborate description of it under the name of "Norman Abbey," not
overlooking its woods:
It stood embosomed in a happy valley
Crowned by high woodlands, where the Druid-oak
Stood like Caractacus in act to rally
His host, with broad arms, 'gainst the thunderstroke--
nor the streams:
Before the mansion lay a lucid lake
Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed
By a river, which its softened way did take
In currents through the calmer waters spread
Around--
nor the abbey front:
A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile
While yet the church was Rome's, stood half apart
In a grand arch, which once screened many an angle.
("Don Juan," xiii. 56-59.)]
_GENTLEMAN'S DRESS--INFLUENCE OF LORD BUTE--ODE BY LORD MIDDLESEX--G.
SELWYN'S QUOTATION._