Old Friends and New.--Walpole's Nieces.--Mrs. Damer.--Progress
of Strawberry Hill.--Festivities and Later Improvements.--_A
Description_, etc., 1774.--The House and Approaches.--Great Parlour,
Waiting Room, China Room, and Yellow Bedchamber.--Breakfast
Room.--Green Closet and Blue Bedchamber.--Armoury and Library.--Red
Bedchamber, Holbein Chamber, and Star Chamber.--Gallery.--Round
Drawing Room and Tribune.--Great North Bedchamber.--Great Cloister
and Chapel.--Walpole on Strawberry.--Its Dampness.--A Drive from
Twickenham to Piccadilly.
In 1774, when, according to its title-page, the _Description of
Strawberry Hill_ was printed, Walpole was a man of fifty-seven. During
the period covered by the last chapter, many changes had taken place
in his circle of friends. Mann and George Montagu (until, in October,
1770, his correspondence with the latter mysteriously ceased) were
still the most frequent recipients of his letters, and next to these,
Conway, and Cole the antiquary. But three of his former correspondents,
his deaf neighbour at Marble Hill, Lady Suffolk,[127] Lady Hervey
(Pope's and Chesterfield's Molly Lepel, to whom he had written much
from Paris), and Gray, were dead. On the other hand, he had opened
what promised to be a lengthy series of letters with Gray's friend and
biographer, the Rev. William Mason, Rector of Aston, in Yorkshire;
with Madame du Deffand; and with the divorced Duchess of Grafton, who
in 1769 had married his Paris friend, John Fitzpatrick, second Earl
of Upper Ossory. There were changes, too, among his own relatives. By
this time his eldest brother's widow, Lady Orford, had lost her second
husband, Sewallis Shirley, and was again living, not very reputably,
on the Continent. Her son George, who since 1751 had been third Earl
of Orford, and was still unmarried, was eminently unsatisfactory.
He was shamelessly selfish, and by way of complicating the family
embarrassments, had taken to the turf. Ultimately he had periodical
attacks of insanity, during which time it fell to Walpole's fate to
look after his affairs. With Sir Edward Walpole, his second brother, he
seems never to have been on terms of real cordiality; but he made no
secret of his pride in his beautiful nieces, Edward Walpole's natural
daughters, whose charms and amiability had victoriously triumphed
over every prejudice which could have been entertained against their
birth. Laura, who was the eldest, had married a brother of the Earl of
Albemarle, subsequently created Bishop of Exeter; Charlotte, the third,
became Lady Huntingtower, and afterwards Countess of Dysart; while
Maria, the _belle_ of the trio, was more fortunate still. After burying
her first husband, Lord Waldegrave, she had succeeded in fascinating H.
R. H. William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the King's own brother, and
so contributing to bring about the Royal Marriage Act of 1772. They
were married in 1766; but the fact was not formally announced to His
Majesty until September, 1772.[128] Another marriage which must have
given Walpole almost as much pleasure was that of General Conway's
daughter to Mr. Damer, Lord Milton's eldest son, which took place in
1767. After the unhappy death of her husband, who shot himself in a
tavern ten years later, Mrs. Damer developed considerable talents as a
sculptor, and during the last years of Walpole's life was a frequent
exhibitor at the Royal Academy. _Non me Praxiteles finxit, at Anna
Damer_, wrote her admiring relative under one of her works, a wounded
eagle in terra-cotta;[129] and in the fourth volume of the _Anecdotes
of Painting_, he likens 'her shock dog, large as life,' to such
masterpieces of antique art as the Tuscan boar and the Barberini goat.
[127] Henrietta Hobart, Countess Dowager of Suffolk, died in July,
1767. Her portrait by Charles Jervas, with Marble Hill in the
background, hung in the Green Bed-chamber in the Round Tower at
Strawberry. It once belonged to Pope, who left it to Martha Blount; and
it is engraved as the frontispiece of vol. ii. of Cunningham's edition
of the _Letters_.
[128] 'The Duke of Gloucester'--wrote Gilly Williams to Selwyn, as
far back as December, 1764--'has professed a passion for the Dowager
Waldegrave. He is never from her elbow. This flatters Horry Walpole not
a little, though he pretends to dislike it.'
[129] The idea was borrowed from an inscription upon a statue at Milan:
'Non me Praxiteles, sed Marcus finxit Agrati!'
It is time, however, to return to the story of Strawberry itself,
as interrupted in Chapter V. In the introduction to Walpole's
_Description_ of 1774, a considerable interval occurs between the
building of the Refectory and Library in 1753-4, and the subsequent
erection of the Gallery, Round Tower, Great Cloister, and Cabinet, or
Tribune, which, already in contemplation in 1759, were, according to
the same authority, erected in 1760 and 1761. But here, as before,
the date must rather be that of the commencement than the completion
of these additions. In May, 1763, he tells Cole that the Gallery is
fast advancing, and in July it is almost 'in the critical minute of
consummation.' In August, 'all the earth is begging to come to see
it.' A month afterwards, he is 'keeping an inn; the sign, "The Gothic
Castle."' His whole time is passed in giving tickets of admission to
the Gallery, and hiding himself when it is on view. 'Take my advice,'
he tells Montagu, 'never build a charming house for yourself between
London and Hampton-court; everybody will live in it but you.' A year
later he is giving a great fête to the French and Spanish Ambassadors,
March, Selwyn, Lady Waldegrave, and other distinguished guests, which
finishes in the new room. 'During dinner there were French horns and
clarionets in the cloister,' and after coffee the guests were treated
'with a syllabub milked under the cows that were brought to the brow
of the terrace. Thence they went to the Printing-house, and saw a new
fashionable French song printed. They drank tea in the Gallery, and at
eight went away to Vauxhall.'
This last entertainment, the munificence of which, he says, the
treasury of the Abbey will feel, took place in June, 1764; and it
is not until four years later that we get tidings of any fresh
improvements. In September, 1768, he tells Cole that he is going on
with the Round Tower, or Chamber, at the end of the Gallery, which, in
another letter, he says 'has stood still these five years,' and he is,
besides, '_playing_ with the little garden on the other side of the
road' which had come into his hands by Francklin's death. In May of the
following year he gives another magnificent _festino_ at Strawberry,
which will almost mortgage it, but the Round Tower still progresses.
In October, 1770, he is building again, in the intervals of gout; this
time it is the Great Bedchamber,--a 'sort of room which he seems likely
to inhabit much time together.' Next year the whole piecemeal structure
is rapidly verging to completion. 'The Round Tower is finished, and
magnificent; and the State Bedchamber proceeds fast.' In June he is
writing to Mann from the delicious bow window of the former, with
Vasari's Bianca Capello (Mann's present) over against him, and the
setting sun behind, 'throwing its golden rays all round.' Further
on, he is building a tiny brick chapel in the garden, mainly for the
purpose of receiving 'two valuable pieces of antiquity,'--one being a
painted window from Bexhill of Henry III. and his Queen, given him by
Lord Ashburnham; the other Cavalini's Tomb of Capoccio from the Church
of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, which had been sent to him by Sir
William (then Mr.) Hamilton, the English Minister at Naples. In August,
1772, the Great Bedchamber is finished, the house is complete, and he
has 'at last exhausted all his hoards and collections.' Nothing remains
but to compile the _Description and Catalogue_, concerning which he had
written to Cole as far back as 1768, and which, as already stated, he
ultimately printed in 1774.
As time went on, his fresh acquisitions obliged him to add several
_Appendices_ to this issue; and the copy before us, although dated
1774, has supplements which bring the record down to 1786. A fresh
edition, in royal quarto, with twenty-seven plates, was printed in
1784;[130] and this, or an expansion of it, reappears in vol. ii. of
his _Works_. With these later issues we have little to do; but with the
aid of that of 1774, may essay to give some brief account of the long,
straggling, many-pinnacled building, with its round tower at the end,
the east and south fronts of which are figured in the black-looking
vignette upon the title-page. The entrance was on the north side, from
the Teddington and Twickenham road, here shaded by lofty trees; and
once within the embattled boundary wall, covered by this time with ivy,
the first thing that struck the spectator was a small oratory inclosed
by iron rails, with saint, altar, niches, and holy-water basins
designed _en suite_ by Mr. Chute. On the right hand--its gaily-coloured
patches of flower-bed glimmering through a screen of iron work copied
from the tomb of Roger Niger, Bishop of London, in old St. Paul's--was
the diminutive Abbot's, or Prior's, Garden, which extended in front of
the offices to the right of the principal entrance.[131] This was along
a little cloister to the left, beyond the oratory. The chief decoration
of this cloister was a marble _bas-relief_, inscribed 'Dia Helionora,'
being, in fact, a portrait of that Leonora D'Esté who turned the head
of Tasso. At the end was the door, which opened into 'a small gloomy
hall' united with the staircase, the balustrades of which, designed
by Bentley, were decorated with antelopes, the Walpole supporters.
In the well of the staircase was a Gothic lantern of japanned tin,
also due to Bentley's fertile invention. If, instead of climbing the
stairs, you turned out of the hall into a little passage on your left,
you found yourself in the Refectory, or Great Parlour, where were
accumulated the family portraits. Here, over the chimney-piece, was the
'conversation,' by Sir Joshua Reynolds, representing the triumvirate
of Selwyn, Williams, and Lord Edgcumbe, already referred to at p. 138;
here also were Sir Robert Walpole and his two wives, Catherine Shorter
and Maria Skerret; Robert Walpole the second, and his wife in a white
riding-habit; Horace himself by Richardson; Dorothy Walpole, his aunt,
who became Lady Townshend;[132] his sister, Lady Maria Churchill; and
a number of others. In the Waiting Room, into which the Refectory
opened, was a stone head of John Dryden, whom Catherine Shorter claimed
as great-uncle; next to this again was the China Closet, neatly lined
with blue and white Dutch tiles, and having its ceiling painted by
Müntz, after a villa at Frascati, with convolvuluses on poles. In the
China Room, among great stores of Sèvres and Chelsea, and oriental
china, perhaps the greatest curiosity was a couple of Saxon tankards,
exactly alike in form and size, which had been presented to Sir Robert
Walpole at different times by the mistresses of the first two Georges,
the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Yarmouth. To the left of the
China Closet, with a bow window looking to the south, was the Little
Parlour, which was hung with stone-coloured 'gothic paper' in imitation
of mosaic, and decorated with the 'wooden prints' already referred to,
the chiaroscuros of Jackson;[133] and at the side of this came the
Yellow Bedchamber, known later, from its numerous feminine portraits,
as the Beauty Room. The other spaces on the ground floor were occupied,
towards the Prior's Garden, by the kitchen, cellars, and servants'
hall, and, at the back, by the Great Cloister, which went under the
Gallery.
[130] From a passage in a letter of 15 Sept., 1787, to Lady Ossory,
it appears that this, though printed, was withheld, on account of
certain difficulties caused by the over-weening curiosity of Walpole's
'customers' (as he called them), the visitors to Strawberry. According
to the sheet of regulations for visiting the house, it was to be seen
between the 1st of May and the 1st of October. Children were not
admitted; and only one company of four on one day.
[131] 'It is not much larger than an old lady's flower-knot in
Bloomsbury,' said Lady Morgan in 1826.
[132] See p. 6.
[133] See p. 117 n.
[Illustration:
A Great Parlour or Refectory.
B Waiting Room.
C China Room.
D Little Parlour.
E Yellow Bedchamber.
F Hall.
G Pantry.
H Servants' Hall.
I Passage.
K Great Cloister.
L Wine Cellar.
M Beer Cellar.
N Kitchen.
O Oratory.
STRAWBERRY HILL: GROUND PLAN--1781.]
Returning to the staircase, where, in later years, hung Bunbury's
original drawing[134] for his well-known caricature of 'Richmond
Hill,' you entered the Breakfast Room on the first floor, the window
of which looked towards the Thames. It was pleasantly furnished with
blue paper, and blue and white linen, and contained many miniatures
and portraits, notable among which were Carmontel's picture of Madame
du Deffand and the Duchess de Choiseul;[135] a print of Madame du
Deffand's room and cats, given by the President Hénault; and a view
painted by Raguenet for Walpole in 1766 of the Hôtel de Carnavalet, the
former residence of Madame de Sévigné.[136]
[134] It was exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1781, and was
Bunbury's acknowledgment of the praise given him by Walpole in the
'Advertisement' to the fourth volume of the _Anecdotes of Painting_,
1 Oct., 1780. A copy of it was shown at the Exhibition of English
Humourists in Art, June, 1889.
[135] In a note to Madame du Deffand's _Letters_, 1810, i. 201, the
editor, Miss Berry, thus describes this picture: It was 'a washed
drawing of Mad. la Duchesse de Choiseul and Mad. du Deffand, under
their assumed characters of grandmother and granddaughter; Mad. de
Choiseul giving Mad. du Deffand a doll. The scene the interior of
Mad. du Deffand's sitting-room. It was done by M. de Carmontel, an
amateur in the art of painting. He was reader to the Prince of Condé,
and author of several little Theatrical pieces.' It is engraved as
the frontispiece of vol. vii. of Walpole's _Letters_, by Cunningham,
1857-59. Mad. du Deffand's portrait was said to be extremely like; that
of the Duchess was not good.
[136] 'It is now the Musée Carnavalet, and contains numberless
souvenirs of the Revolution, notably a collection of china plates,
bearing various dates, designs, and inscriptions applicable to the
Reign of Terror' (_Century_ _Magazine_, Feb., 1890, p. 600). A washed
drawing of Madame de Sévigné's country house at Les Rochers, 'done on
the spot by Mr. Hinchcliffe, son of the Bishop of Peterborough, in
1786,' was afterwards added to this room.
The Breakfast Room opened into the Green Closet, over the door of which
was a picture by Samuel Scott of Pope's house at Twickenham, showing
the wings added after the poet's death by Sir William Stanhope. On
the same side of the room hung Hogarth's portrait of Sarah Malcolm
the murderess, painted at Newgate a day or two before her execution
in Fleet Street.[137] Here also was 'Mr. Thomas Gray; etched from his
shade [silhouette]; by Mr. W. Mason.' There were many other portraits
in this room, besides some water colours on ivory by Horace himself.
In a line with the Green Closet, and looking east, was the Library;
and at the back of it, the Blue Bedchamber, the toilette of which was
worked by Mrs. Clive, who, since her retirement from the stage in 1769,
had lived wholly at Twickenham. The chief pictures in this room were
Eckardt's portraits of Gray in a Vandyke dress and of Walpole himself
in similar attire.[138] There were also by the same artist pictures of
Walpole's father and mother, and of General Conway and his wife, Lady
Ailesbury.
[137] Both these pictures are in existence. The Scott belongs to Lady
Freake, and was exhibited in the Pope Loan Museum of 1888.
[138] Both these are engraved in Cunningham's edition of the _Letters_,
the former in vol. iv., p. 465, the latter in vol. ix., p. 529.
Facing the Blue Bedchamber was the Armoury, a vestibule of three Gothic
arches, in the left-hand corner of which was the door opening into the
Library, a room twenty-eight feet by nineteen feet six, lighted by a
large window looking to the east, and by two smaller rose-windows at
the sides. The books, arranged in Gothic arches of pierced work, went
all round it. The chimney-piece was imitated from the tomb of John of
Eltham in Westminster Abbey, and the stone work from another tomb at
Canterbury. Over the chimney-piece was a picture (which is engraved in
the _Anecdotes of Painting_) representing the marriage of Henry VI.
Walpole and Bentley had designed the ceiling,--a gorgeous heraldic
medley surrounding a central Walpole shield. Above the bookcases
were pictures. One of the greatest treasures of the room was a clock
given by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn. Of the books it is impossible to
speak in detail. Noticeable among them, however, was a Thuanus in
fourteen volumes, a very extensive set of Hogarth's prints, and all
the original drawings for the _Ædes Walpolianæ_. Vertue, Hollar, and
Faithorne were also largely represented. Among special copies, were the
identical _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ from which Pope made his translations
of Homer,[139] a volume containing Bentley's original designs for
Gray's _Poems_, and a black morocco pocket-book of sketches by Jacques
Callot. In a rosewood case in this room was also a fine collection of
coins, which included the rare silver medal struck by Gregory XIII. on
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
[139] This was the Amsterdam edition of 1707, in 2 vols. 12mo.,
inscribed 'E libris, A. Pope, 1714;' and lower down, 'Finished ye
translation in Feb. 1719-20, A. Pope.' It also contained a pencil
sketch by the poet of Twickenham Church.
[Illustration:
A Round Drawing Room.
B Cabinet or Tribune.
C Great North Bedchamber.
D Gallery.
E Holbein Chamber.
F Library.
G Beauclerk Closet or Cabinet.
H Armoury.
I China Closets.
K Back Stairs.
L Passage.
M Star Chamber.
N Red Bedchamber.
O Blue Bedchamber.
P Breakfast Room.
Q Green Closet.
STRAWBERRY HILL: PRINCIPAL FLOOR--1781.]
Concerning the Red Bedchamber, the Star Chamber, and the Holbein
Chamber, which intervened between the rest of the first floor and the
latest additions, there is little to say. In the Red Bedchamber, the
most memorable things (after the chintz bed on which Lord Orford died)
were some pencil sketches of Pope and his parents by Cooper and the
elder Richardson. In the Holbein Chamber, so called from a number of
copies on oil-paper by Vertue from the drawings of Holbein in Queen
Catherine's Closet at Kensington, were two of those 'curiosities' which
represent the Don Saltero, or Madame Tussaud, side of Strawberry, viz.,
a tortoise-shell comb studded with silver hearts and roses which was
said to have belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, and (later) the red
hat of Cardinal Wolsey. The pedigree of the hat, it must, however, be
admitted, was unimpeachable. It had been found in the great wardrobe by
Bishop Burnet when Clerk of the Closet. From him it passed to his son
the Judge (author of that curious squib on Harley known as the _History
of Robert Powel the Puppet-Show-Man_), and thence to the Countess
Dowager of Albemarle, who gave it to Walpole. A carpet in this room
was worked by Mrs. Clive, who seems to have been a most industrious
decorator of her friend's mansion museum.[140] The Star Chamber was but
an ante-room powdered with gold stars in mosaic, the chief glory of
which was a stone bust of Henry VII. by Torregiano.
[140] Walpole wrote an epilogue--not a very good one--for Mrs. Clive
when she quitted the stage; and in the same year, 1769, the _Town and
Country Magazine_ linked their names in its '_Tête-à-Têtes_' as 'Mrs.
Heidelberg' (Clive's part in the _Clandestine Marriage_) and 'Baron
Otranto' (a name under which Chatterton subsequently satirized Walpole
in this identical periodical). See _Memoirs of a Sad Dog_, Pt. 2, July,
1770.
With these three rooms, the first floor of Strawberry, as it existed
previous to the erection of the additions mentioned in the beginning
of this chapter,--namely, the Gallery, the Round Tower, the Tribune,
and the Great North Bedchamber,--came to an end. But it was in these
newer parts of the house that some of its rarest objects of art were
assembled. The Gallery, which was entered from a gloomy little passage
in front of the Holbein Chamber, was a really spacious room, fifty-six
feet by thirteen, and lighted from the south by five high windows.
Between these were tables laden with busts, bronzes, and urns; on the
opposite side, fronting the windows, were recesses, finished with gold
network over looking-glass, between which stood couch-seats, covered,
like the rest of the room, with crimson Norwich damask. The ceiling was
copied from one of the side aisles of Henry VII.'s Chapel; the great
door at the western end, which led into the Round Tower, was taken
from the north door of St. Albans. A long carpet, made at Moorfields,
traversed the room from end to end. In one of the recesses--that to the
left of the chimney-piece, which was designed by Mr. Chute and Mr.
Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc,--stood one of the finest surviving pieces of
Greek sculpture, the Boccapadugli eagle, found in the precinct of the
Baths of Caracalla,--a _chef-d'œuvre_ from which Gray is said to have
borrowed the 'ruffled plumes, and flagging wing' of the _Progress of
Poesy_; to the right was a noble bust in basalt of Vespasian, which
had been purchased from the Ottoboni collection. Of the pictures it
is impossible to speak at large; but two of the most notable were Sir
George Villiers, the father of the Duke of Buckingham, and Mabuse's
_Marriage of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York_. Of Walpole's own
relatives, there were portraits by Ramsay of his nieces, Mrs. Keppel
(the Bishop's wife) and Lady Dysart, and of the Duchess of Gloucester
(then Lady Waldegrave) by Reynolds. There were also portraits of Henry
Fox, Lord Holland, of George Montagu, of Lord Waldegrave, and of
Horace's uncle, Lord Walpole of Wolterton.[141]
[141] Horatio, brother of Sir Robert Walpole, created Baron Walpole of
Wolterton in 1756. He died in 1757. His _Memoirs_ were published by
Coxe in 1802.
Issuing through the great door of the Gallery, and passing on the
left a glazed closet containing a quantity of china which had once
belonged to Walpole's mother, a couple of steps brought you into the
pleasant Drawing Room in the Round Tower, the bow window of which,
already mentioned, looked to the south-west. Like the Gallery, this
room was hung with Norwich damask. Its chief glory was the picture of
Bianca Capello, of which Walpole had written to Mann. To the left of
this room, at the back of the Gallery, and consequently in the front
of the house, was the Cabinet, or Tribune, a curious square chamber
with semicircular recesses, in two of which, to the north and west,
were stained windows. In the roof, which was modelled on the chapter
house at York, was a star of yellow glass throwing a soft golden glow
over all the room. Here Walpole had amassed his choicest treasures,
miniatures by Oliver and Cooper, enamels by Petitot and Zincke,[142]
bronzes from Italy, ivory bas-reliefs, seal-rings and reliquaries,
caskets and cameos and filigree work. Here, with Madame du Deffand's
letter inside it,[143] was the 'round white snuff-box' with Madame de
Sévigné's portrait; here, carven with masks and flies and grasshoppers,
was Cellini's silver bell from the Leonati Collection, at Parma, a
masterpiece against which he had exchanged all his collection of Roman
coins with the Marquis of Rockingham. A bronze bust of Caligula with
silver eyes; a missal with reputed miniatures by Raphael; a dagger of
Henry VIII.,[144] and a mourning ring given at the burial of Charles
I.,--were among the other show objects of the Tribune, the riches of
which occupy more space in their owner's Catalogue than any other part
of his collections.
[142] 'The chief boast of my collection,' he told Pinkerton, 'is
the portraits of eminent and remarkable persons, particularly the
miniatures and enamels; which, so far as I can discover, are superior
to any other collection whatever. The works I possess of Isaac and
Peter Oliver are the best extant; and those I bought in Wales for 300
guineas [_i.e._, the Digby Family, in the Breakfast Room] are as well
preserved as when they came from the pencil (_Walpoliana_, ii. 157).
[143] It is printed in both the Catalogues.
[144] At the sale in 1842, King Henry's dagger was purchased for
£54 12_s._ by Charles Kean the actor, who also became the fortunate
possessor, for £21, of Cardinal Wolsey's hat.
With the Great North Bedchamber, which adjoined the Tribune, and
filled the remaining space at the back of the Gallery, the account of
Strawberry Hill, as it existed in 1774, comes to an end; for the Green
Chamber in the Round Tower over the Drawing Room, and 'Mr. Walpole's
Bedchamber, two pair of stairs' (which contained the Warrant for
beheading King Charles I., inscribed 'Major Charta,' so often referred
to by Walpole's biographers),[145] may be dismissed without further
notice. The Beauclerk Closet, a later addition, will be described in
its proper place. Over the chimney-piece in the Great North Bedchamber
was a large picture of Henry VIII. and his children, a recent purchase,
afterwards remanded to the staircase to make room for a portrait of
Catherine of Braganza, sent from Portugal previous to her marriage
with Charles II. Fronting the bed was a head of Niobe, by Guido,
which in its turn subsequently made way for _la belle Jennings_.[146]
Among the pictures on the north or window side of the room was the
original sketch by Hogarth of the _Beggar's Opera_, which Walpole had
purchased at the sale of Rich, the fortunate manager who produced Gay's
masterpiece at Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was exhibited at Manchester
in 1857, being then the property of Mr. Willett, who had bought it
at the Strawberry Hill sale of 1842. Another curious oil painting in
this room was the _Rehearsal of an Opera_ by the Riccis, which included
caricature portraits of Nicolini (of _Spectator_ celebrity), of the
famous Mrs. Catherine Tofts, and of Margherita de l'Epine. In a nook
by the window there was a glazed china closet, with a number of minor
curiosities, among which were conspicuous the speculum of cannel coal
with which Dr. Dee was in the habit of gulling his votaries,[147] and
an agate puncheon with Gray's arms which his executors had presented to
Walpole.
[145] Here is his own reference to this, in a letter to Montagu of 14
Oct., 1756: 'The only thing I have done that can compose a paragraph,
and which I think you are Whig enough to forgive me, is, that on
each side of my bed I have hung MAGNA CHARTA, and the Warrant for
King Charles's execution, on which I have written Major Charta; as I
believe, without the latter, the former by this time would be of very
little importance.'
[146] See p. 7 n.
[147] 'Dr Dee's black stone was named in the catalogue of the
collection of the Earls of Peterborough, whence it went to Lady Betty
Germaine. She gave it to the last Duke of Argyle, and his son, Lord
Frederic, to me' (_Walpole to Lady Ossory_, 12 Jan., 1782)
A few external objects claim a word. In the Great Cloister under the
Gallery was the blue and white china tub in which had taken place
that tragedy of the 'pensive Selima' referred to at p. 135 as having
prompted the muse of Gray.[148] The Chapel in the Garden has already
been sufficiently described.[149] In the Flower Garden across the road
was a cottage which Walpole had erected upon the site of the building
once occupied by Francklin the printer, and which he used as a place of
refuge when the tide of sight-seers became overpowering. It included a
Tea Room, containing a fair collection of china, and hung with green
paper and engravings, and a little white and green Library, of which
the principal ornament was a half-length portrait of Milton.[150] A
portrait of Lady Hervey, by Allan Ramsay, was afterwards added to its
decorations.[151]
[148] This was afterwards moved to the Little Cloister at the entrance,
where it appears in the later Catalogue. At the sale of 1842 the bowl,
with its Gothic pedestal, was purchased by the Earl of Derby for £42.
[149] Not far from the Chapel was 'a large seat in the form of a shell,
carved in oak from a design by Mr. Bentley.' It must have been roomy,
for in 1759 the Duchesses of Hamilton and Richmond, and Lady Ailesbury
(the last two, daughter and mother), occupied it together. 'There never
was so pretty a sight as to see them all three sitting in the shell,'
says the delighted Abbot of Strawberry. (_Walpole to Montagu_, 2 June.)
[150] In a note to the obituary notice of Walpole in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ for March, 1797, p. 260, it is stated that this library was
'formed of all the publications during the reigns of the three Georges,
or Mr. W.'s own time.'
[151] This was exhibited at South Kensington in 1867 by Viscount
Lifford, and is now (1892) at Austin House, Broadway, Worcester.
Many objects of interest, as must be obvious, have remained undescribed
in the foregoing account, and those who seek for further information
concerning what its owner called his 'paper fabric and assemblage of
curious trifles' must consult either the Catalogue of 1774 itself,
or that later and definitive version of it which is reprinted in
Volume II. of the _Works_ (pp. 393-516). The intention in the main has
here been to lay stress upon those articles which bear most directly
upon Walpole's biography. It will also be observed that, during the
prolonged progress of the house towards completion, his experience and
his views considerably enlarged, and the pettiness and artificiality
of his first improvements disappeared. The house never lost, and
never could lose, its invertebrate character; but the Gallery, the
Round Tower, and the North Bedchamber were certainly conceived in
a more serious and even spacious spirit of Gothicism than any of
the early additions. That it must, still, have been confined and
needlessly gloomy, may be allowed; but as a set-off to some of those
accounts which insist so pertinaciously upon its 'paltriness,' its
'architectural solecisms,' and its lack of beauty and sublimity, it is
only fair to recall a few sentences from the preface which its owner
prefixed to the _Description_ of 1784. It was designed, he says of the
Catalogue, to exhibit 'specimens of Gothic architecture, as collected
from standards in cathedrals and chapel-tombs,' and to show 'how
they may be applied to chimney-pieces, ceilings, windows, balustrades,
loggias, etc.' Elsewhere he characterizes the building itself as
candidly as any of its critics. He admits its diminutive scale and
its unsubstantial character (he calls it himself, as we have seen, a
'paper fabric'), and he confesses to the incongruities arising from
an antique design and modern decorations. 'In truth,' he concludes,
'I did not mean to make my house so Gothic as to exclude convenience,
and modern refinements in luxury.... It was built to please my own
taste, and in some degree to realize my own visions. I have specified
what it contains; could I describe the gay but tranquil scene where it
stands, and add the beauty of the landscape to the romantic cast of the
mansion, it would raise more pleasing sensations than a dry list of
curiosities can excite,--at least the prospect would recall the good
humour of those who might be disposed to condemn the fantastic fabric,
and to think it a very proper habitation of, as it was the scene that
inspired, the author of the _Castle of Otranto_.'[152] As one of his
censors has remarked, this tone disarms criticism; and it is needless
to accumulate proofs of peculiarities which are not denied by the
person most concerned.
[152] _Works_, 1798, ii. 395-98.
In spite of its charming situation, Strawberry Hill was emphatically
a summer residence; and there is more than one account in Walpole's
letters of the sudden floods which, when Thames flowed with a
fuller tide than now, occasionally surprised the inhabitants of the
pleasant-looking villas along its banks. It was decidedly damp, and
its gouty owner had sometimes to quit it precipitately for Arlington
Street, where, he says, 'after an hour,' he revives, 'like a member
of parliament's wife.' His best editor, Mr. Peter Cunningham, whose
knowledge as an antiquary was unrivalled,--for was he not the author
of the _Handbook of London_?--has amused himself, in an odd corner of
one of his prefaces, by retracing the route taken in these townward
flights. The extract is so packed with suggestive memories that no
excuse is needed for reproducing it (with a few now necessary notes) as
the tail-piece of the present chapter.
'At twelve his [Walpole's] light bodied chariot was at the door, with
his English coachman and his Swiss valet [Philip Colomb].... In a few
minutes he left Lord Radnor's villa to the right, rolled over the
grotto of Pope, saw on his left Whitton, rich with recollections of
Kneller and Argyll, passed Gumley House, one of the country seats of
his father's opponent and his own friend, Pulteney, Earl of Bath, and
Kendal House,[153] the retreat of the mistress of George I., Ermengard
de Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal. At Sion, the princely seat of the
Percys, the Seymours, and the Smithsons, he turned into the Hounslow
Road, left Sion on his right, and Osterly, not unlike Houghton, on his
left, and rolled through Brentford,--
"Brentford, the Bishopric of Parson Horne,"[154]
then, as now, infamous for its dirty streets, and famous for its
white-legged chickens.[155] Quitting Brentford, he approached the woods
that concealed the stately mansion of Gunnersbury, built by Inigo Jones
and Webb, and then inhabited by the Princess Amelia, the last surviving
child of King George II.[156] Here he was often a visitor, and seldom
returned without being a winner at silver loo. At the Pack Horse[157]
on Turnham Green he would, when the roads were heavy, draw up for a
brief bait. Starting anew, he would pass a few red brick houses on
both sides, then the suburban villas of men well to do in the Strand
and Charing Cross. At Hammersmith, he would leave the church[158] on
his right, call on Mr. Fox at Holland House, look at Campden House,
with recollections of Sir Baptist Hickes,[159] and not without an
ill-suppressed wish to transfer some little part of it to his beloved
Strawberry. He was now at Kensington Church, then, as it still is, an
ungraceful structure,[160] but rife with associations which he would
at times relate to the friend he had with him. On his left he would
leave the gates of Kensington Palace, rich with reminiscences connected
with his father and the first Hanoverian kings of this country. On
his right he would quit the red brick house in which the Duchess of
Portsmouth lived,[161] and after a drive of half a mile (skirting a
heavy brick wall), reach Kingston House,[162] replete with stories of
Elizabeth Chudleigh, the bigamist maid of honour, and Duchess-Countess
of Kingston and Bristol. At Knightsbridge (even then the haunt of
highwaymen less gallant than Maclean) he passed on his left the little
chapel[163] in which his father was married. At Hyde Park Corner he
saw the Hercules Pillars ale-house of Fielding and Tom Jones,[164] and
at one door from Park Lane would occasionally call on old "Q" for the
sake of Selwyn, who was often there.[165] The trees which now grace
Piccadilly were in the Green Park in Walpole's day; they can recollect
Walpole, and that is something. On his left, the sight of Coventry
House[166] would remind him of the Gunnings, and he would tell his
friend the story of the "beauties;" with which (short story-teller as
he was) he had not completed when the chariot turned into Arlington
Street on the right, or down Berkeley Street into Berkeley Square, on
the left.'[167] In these last lines Mr. Cunningham anticipates our
story, for in 1774, Walpole had not yet taken up his residence in
Berkeley Square.
[153] Kendal House now no longer exists.
[154] _An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers_, _Knight_, 1773.
[155]
'---- _Brandford's_ tedious town,
For dirty streets, and white-leg'd chickens known.'
Gay's _Journey to Exeter_.
[156] Gunnersbury House (or Park), a new structure, now belongs to Lord
Rothschild.
[157] The Old Pack Horse, somewhat modernized by red-brick additions,
still (1892) stands at the corner of Turnham Green. It is mentioned in
the _London Gazette_ as far back as 1697. The sign, a common one for
posting inns in former days, is on the opposite side of the road.
[158] Hammersmith church was rebuilt in 1882-3.
[159] Sir Baptist Hickes, once a mercer in Cheapside, and afterwards
Viscount Campden, erected it _circa_ 1612. At the time to which
Mr. Cunningham is supposed to refer, it was a famous ladies'
boarding-school, kept by a Mrs. Terry, and patronized by Selwyn and
Lady Di. Beauclerk.
[160] The (with all due deference to the writer) quaint and picturesque
old church of St. Mary the Virgin, in Kensington High Street, at which
Macaulay, in his later days, was a regular attendant, gave way, in
1869, to a larger and more modern edifice by Sir Gilbert Scott, R.A.
[161] Old Kensington House, as it was called, has also been pulled
down. One of its inmates, long after the days of 'Madam Carwell,' was
Elizabeth Inchbald, the author of _A Simple Story_, who died there in
1821.
[162] Now Lord Listowel's. It stands near the Prince's Gate into Hyde
Park.
[163] Restored and remodelled in 1861, and now the Church of the Holy
Trinity.
[164] The Hercules Pillars, where Squire Western put up his horses when
he came to town, stood just east of Apsley House, 'on the site of what
is now the pavement opposite Lord Willoughby's.'
[165] The Duke of Queensberry's house afterwards became 138 and 139
Piccadilly.
[166] This is No. 106,--the present St. James's Club. It was built in
1764 by George, sixth Earl of Coventry, some years after the death of
his first wife, the elder Miss Gunning.
[167] _Letters_, by Cunningham, 1857-9, ix. xx.-xxi.