satisfy this extraordinary woman--for extraordinary she certainly was,
not more in the wit, subtlety, and unflinching steadiness of purpose
with which she amassed wealth and achieved power, but in the manner in
which she used both. She ruled her husband, her family, her vassals,
despotically, needing little aid, suffering no interference, asking
no counsel. She managed her immense estates, and the local power and
political weight which her enormous possessions naturally threw into her
hands, with singular capacity and decision. She farmed the lands; she
collected her rents; she built; she planted; she bought and sold; she
lent out money on usury; she traded in timber, coals, lead: in short,
the object she had apparently proposed to herself, the aggrandisement
of her children by all and any means, she pursued with a wonderful
perseverance and good sense. Power so consistently wielded, purposes so
indefatigably followed up, and means so successfully adapted to an end,
are, in a female, very striking. A slight sprinkling of the softer
qualities of her sex, a little more elevation of principle, would have
rendered her as respectable and admirable as she was extraordinary; but
there was in this woman's mind the same "fond de vulgarite" which we
see in the character of Queen Elizabeth, and which no height of rank,
or power, or estate, could do away with. In this respect the lady of
Hardwicke was much inferior to that splendid creature, Anne Clifford,
Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Cumberland, another masculine spirit
in the female form, who had the same propensity for building castles and
mansions, the same passion for power and independence, but with more
true generosity and magnanimity, and a touch of poetry and genuine
nobility about her which the other wanted: in short, it was all the
difference between the amazon and the heroine. It is curious enough that
the Duke of Devonshire should be the present representative of both
these remarkable women.
But to return: Bess of Hardwicke was now approaching her fortieth year;
she had achieved all but nobility--the one thing yet wanting to crown
her swelling fortunes. About the year 1565 (I cannot find the exact
date) she was sought in marriage by George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.
There is no reason to doubt what is asserted, that she had captivated
the earl by her wit and her matronly beauty.[44] He could hardly have
married her from motives of interest: he was himself the richest and
greatest subject in England; a fine chivalrous character, with a
reputation as unstained as his rank was splendid, and his descent
illustrious. He had a family by a former wife, (Gertrude Manners,) to
inherit his titles, and _her_ estates were settled on her children by
Cavendish. It should seem, therefore, that mutual inclination alone
could have made the match advantageous to either party; but Bess of
Hardwicke was still Bess of Hardwicke. She took advantage of her power
over her husband in the first days of their union. "She induced
Shrewsbury by entreaties or threats to sacrifice, in a measure,
the fortune, interest, and happiness of himself and family to the
aggrandisement of her and her family."[45] She contrived in the first
place to have a large jointure settled on herself; and she arranged
a double union, by which the wealth and interests of the two great
families should be amalgamated. She stipulated that her eldest daughter,
Mary Cavendish, should marry the earl's son, Lord Talbot; and that his
youngest daughter, Grace Talbot, should marry her eldest son, Henry
Cavendish.
The French have a proverb worthy of their gallantry--"_Ce que femme
veut, Dieu veut_:" but even in the feminine gender we are sometimes
reminded of another proverb equally significant--"_L'homme propose et
Dieu dispose_." Now was Bess of Hardwicke queen of the Peak; she had
built her erie so high, it seemed to dally with the winds of heaven; her
young eaglets were worthy of their dam, ready plumed to fly at fortune;
she had placed the coronet of the oldest peerage in England on her
own brow, she had secured the reversion of it to her daughter, and she
had married a man whose character was indeed opposed to her own, but
who, from his chivalrous and confiding nature was calculated to make her
happy, by leaving her mistress of herself.
In 1568 Mary Stuart, flying into England, was placed in the custody of
the Earl of Shrewsbury, and remained under his care for sixteen years, a
long period of restless misery to the unhappy earl not less than to his
wretched captive. In this dangerous and odious charge was involved the
sacrifice of his domestic happiness, his peace of mind, his health, and
great part of his fortune, His castle was converted into a prison, his
servants into guards, his porter into a turnkey, his wife into a spy,
and himself into a jailor, to gratify the ever-waking jealousy of Queen
Elizabeth.[46] But the earl's greatest misfortune was the estrangement,
and at length enmity, of his violent, high-spirited wife. She beheld the
unhappy Mary with a hatred for which there was little excuse, but many
intelligible reasons: she saw her, not as a captive committed to her
womanly mercy, but as an intruder on her rights. Her haughty spirit
was continually irritated by the presence of one in whom she was forced
to acknowledge a superior, even in that very house and domain where
she herself had been used to reign as absolute queen and mistress. The
enormous expenses which this charge entailed on her household were
distracting to her avarice; and, worse than all, jealousy of the youthful
charms and winning manners of the Queen of Scots, and of the constant
intercourse between her and her husband, seem at length to have driven
her half frantic, and degraded her, with all her wit, and sense, and
spirit, into the despicable treacherous tool of the more artful and
despotic Elizabeth, who knew how to turn the angry and jealous passions
of the countess to her own purposes.
It was not, however, all at once that matters rose to such a height:
the fire smouldered for some time ere it burst forth. There is a letter
preserved among the Shrewsbury Correspondence[47] which the countess
addressed to her husband from Chatsworth, at a time when the earl was
keeping guard over Mary at Sheffield castle. It is a most curious
specimen of character. It treats chiefly of household matters, of the
price and goodness of malt and hops, iron and timber, and reproaches him
for not sending her money which was due to her, adding, "I see out of
sight out of mind with you;" she sarcastically inquires "how his charge
and _love_ doth;" she sends him "some _letyss_ (lettuces) for that he
loves them," (this common sallad herb was then a rare delicacy;) and
she concludes affectionately, "God send my juill helthe." The incipient
jealousy betrayed in this letter soon after broke forth openly with
a degree of violence towards her husband, and malignity towards his
prisoner, which can hardly be believed. There is distinct evidence that
Shrewsbury was not only a trustworthy, but a rigorous jailor; that he
detested the office forced upon him; that he often begged in the most
abject terms to be released from it; and that harassed on every side by
the tormenting jealousy of his wife, the unrelenting severity and
mistrust of Elizabeth, and the complaints of Mary, he was seized with
several fits of illness, and once by a mental attack, or "phrenesie," as
Cecil terms it, brought on by the agitation of his mind; yet the idea of
resigning his office, except at the pleasure of Queen Elizabeth, never
seems to have entered his imagination.
On one occasion Lady Shrewsbury went so far as to accuse her husband
openly of intriguing with his prisoner, in every sense of the word; and
she at the same time abused Mary in terms which John Knox himself could
not have exceeded. Mary, deeply incensed, complained of this outrage:
the earl also appealed to Queen Elizabeth, and the countess and her
daughter, Lady Talbot, were obliged to declare upon oath, that this
accusation was false, scandalous, and malicious, and that they were not
the authors of it. This curious affidavit of the mother and daughter is
preserved in the Record Office.
In a letter to Lord Leicester, Shrewsbury calls his wife "his wicked
and malicious wife," and accuses her and "her imps," as he irreverently
styles the whole brood of Cavendishes, of conspiring to sow dissensions
between him and his eldest son. These disputes being carried to
Elizabeth, she set herself with heartless policy to foment them in every
possible way. She deemed that her safety consisted in employing one part
of the earl's family as spies on the other. In some signal quarrel about
the property round Chatsworth, she commanded the earl to submit to his
wife's pleasure: and though no "tame snake" towards his imperious lady,
as St. Loo and Cavendish had been before him, he bowed at once to the
mandate of his unfeeling sovereign--such was the despotism and such the
loyalty of those days. His reply, however, speaks the bitterness of his
heart. "Sith that her majesty hath set down this hard sentence against
me to my perpetual infamy and dishonour, that I should be ruled and
overrunne by my wife, so bad and wicked a woman; yet her majesty shall
see that I will obey her majesty's commandment, though no curse or
plague on the earth could be more grievous to me." * * "It is too much,"
he adds, "to be made my wife's pensioner." Poor Lord Shrewsbury! Can one
help pitying him?
Not the least curious part of this family history is the double dealing
of the imperious countess. While employed as a spy on Mary, whom she
detested, she, from the natural fearlessness and frankness of her
temper, not unfrequently betrayed Elizabeth, whom she also detested.
While in attendance on Mary, she often gratified her own satirical
humour, and amused her prisoner by giving her a coarse and bitter
portraiture of Elizabeth, her court, her favourites, her miserable
temper, her vanity, and her personal defects. Some report of these
conversations soon reached the queen, (who is very significantly drawn
in one of her portraits in a dress embroidered over with eyes and ears,)
and she required from Mary an account of whatever Lady Shrewsbury had
said to her prejudice. Mary, hating equally the rival who oppressed her
and the domestic harpy who daily persecuted her, was nothing loath to
indulge her feminine spite against the two, and sent Elizabeth such a
circumstantial list of the most gross and hateful imputations, (all
the time politely assuring her good sister that she did not believe a
word of them,) that the rage and mortification of the queen must have
exceeded all bounds.[48] She kept the letter secret; but Lady Shrewsbury
never was suffered to appear at court after the death of Mary had
rendered her services superfluous.
Through all these scenes, the Lady of Hardwicke still pursued her
settled purpose. Her husband complained that he was "never quiet to
satisfy her greedie appetite for money for purchases to set up her
children." Her ambition was equally insatiate, and generally successful:
but in one memorable instance she overshot her mark. She contrived
(unknown to her lord) to marry her favourite daughter, Elizabeth
Cavendish, to Lord Lennox, the younger brother of the murdered Darnley,
and consequently standing in the same degree of relationship to the
crown. Queen Elizabeth, in the extremity of her rage and consternation,
ordered both the dowager Lady Lennox and Lady Shrewsbury to the Tower,
where the latter remained for some months; we may suppose, to the great
relief of her husband. He used, however, all his interest to excuse her
delinquency, and at length procured her liberation. But this was not
all. Elizabeth Cavendish, the young Lady Lennox, while yet in all her
bridal bloom, died in the arms of her mother, who appears to have
suffered that searing, lasting grief which stern hearts sometimes feel.
The only issue of this marriage was an infant daughter, that unhappy
Arabella Stuart, who was one of the most memorable victims of jealous
tyranny which our history has recorded. Her very existence, from her
near relationship to the throne, was a crime in the eyes of Elizabeth
and James I. There is no evidence that Lady Shrewsbury indulged in any
ambitious schemes for this favourite granddaughter, "her dear jewel,
Arbell," as she terms her;[49] but she did not hesitate to enforce her
claims to royal blood by requiring 600_l._ a year from the treasury
for her board and education as became the queen's kinswoman. Elizabeth
allowed her 200_l._ a year, and this pittance Lady Shrewsbury accepted.
Her rent-roll was at this time 60,000_l._ a year, equal to at least
200,000_l._ at the present day.
The Earl of Shrewsbury died in 1590, at enmity to the last moment
with his wife and son; and the Lady of Hardwicke having survived four
husbands, and seeing all her children settled and prosperous, still
absolute mistress over her family, resided during the last seventeen
years of her life in great state and plenty at Hardwicke, her birth
place. Here she superintended the education of Arabella Stuart, who,
as she grew up to womanhood, was kept by her grandmother in a state
of seclusion, amounting almost to imprisonment, lest the jealousy of
Elizabeth should rob her of her treasure.[50]
Next to the love of money and power, the chief passion of this magnificent
old beldam, was building. It is a family tradition, that some prophet
had foretold that she should never die as long as she was building, and
she died at last, in 1607, during a hard frost, when her labourers were
obliged to suspend their work. She built Chatsworth, Oldcotes, and
Hardwicke; and Fuller adds in his quaint style that she left "two sacred
(besides civil) monuments of her memory; one that I hope will not be
taken away, (her splendid tomb, erected by herself,[51]) and one that
I am sure cannot be taken away, being registered in the court of heaven,
viz. her stately almshouses for twelve poor people at Derby."
Of Chatsworth, the hereditary palace of the Dukes of Devonshire, all its
luxurious grandeur, all its treasures of art, it is not here "my hint
to speak." It has been entirely rebuilt since the days of its founder.
Oldcotes was once a magnificent place. There is a tradition at Hardwicke
that old Bess, being provoked by a splendid mansion which the Suttons
had lately erected within view of her windows, declared she would build
a finer dwelling for the owlets, (hence Owlcots or Oldcotes.) She kept
her word, more truly perhaps than she intended, for Oldcotes has since
become literally a dwelling for the owls; the chief part of it is in
ruins, and the rest converted into a farmhouse. Her younger daughter,
Frances Cavendish, married Sir Henry Pierrepoint, of Holme-Pierpoint,
and one of the granddaughters married another Pierrepoint--through one
of these marriages, but I know not which, Oldcotes has descended to the
present Earl Manvers.
The mansion of Hardwicke was commenced about the year 1592, and finished
in 1597. It stands about a stone's throw from the old house in which
the old countess was born, and which she left standing, as if, says her
biographer, she intended to construct her bed of state close by her
cradle. This fine old ruin remains, grey, shattered, and open to all the
winds of heaven, almost overgrown with ivy, and threatening to tumble
about the ears of the bats and owls which are its sole inhabitants.
One majestic room remains entire. It is called the "Giant's Chamber"
from two colossal figures in Roman armour which stand over the huge
chimney-piece. This room has long been considered by architects as a
perfect specimen of grand and beautiful proportion, and has been copied
at Chatsworth and at Blenheim.[52]
It must have been in this old hall, and not in the present edifice, that
Mary Stuart resided during her short stay at Hardwicke. I am sorry to
disturb the fanciful or sentimental tourists and sight-seers; but so it
is, or rather, so it must have been. Yet it is not surprising that the
memory of Mary Stuart should now form the principal charm and interest
of Hardwicke, and that she should be in a manner the tutelary genius of
the place. Chatsworth has been burned and rebuilt. Tutbury, Sheffield
castle, Wingfield, Fotheringay, and the old house of Hardwicke, in short,
every place which Mary inhabited during her captivity, all lie in ruins,
as if struck with a doleful curse. But Hardwicke Hall exists just as
it stood in the reign of Elizabeth. The present Duke of Devonshire,
with excellent taste and feeling, keeps up the old costume within and
without. The bed and furniture which had been used by Mary, the cushions
of her oratory, the tapestry wrought by her own hands, have been removed
hither, and are carefully preserved. There can be no doubt of the
authenticity of these relics, and there is enough surely to consecrate
the whole to our imagination. Moreover, we have but to go to the window
and see the very spot, the very walls which once enclosed her, the very
casements from which she probably gazed with a sigh over the far hills;
and indulge, without one intrusive doubt, in all the romantic and
fascinating, and mysterious, and sorrowful associations, which hang
round the memory of Mary Stuart.
With what different eyes may people view the same things! "We receive
but what we give," says the poet; and all the light, and glory, and
beauty, with which certain objects are in a manner _suffused_ to the eye
of fancy, must issue from our own souls, and be reflected back to us,
else 'tis all in vain.
"We may not hope from outward forms to win,
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within!"
When Gray, the poet, visited Hardwicke, he fell at once into a very
poet-like rapture, and did not stop to criticise pictures, and question
authorities. He says in one of his letters to Dr. Wharton, "of all the
places I have seen in my return from you, Hardwicke pleased me most. One
would think that Mary queen of Scotts was but just walked down into the
park with her guard for half an hour: her gallery, her room of audience,
her ante-chamber, with the very canopies, chair of state, footstool,
_lit de repos_, oratory, carpets, hangings, just as she left them, a
little tattered indeed, but the more venerable," &c. &c.
Now let us hear Horace Walpole, antiquarian, virtuoso, dilettante,
filosofastro--but, in truth, no poet. He is, however, in general so
good-natured, so amusing, and so tasteful, that I cannot conceive what
put him into such a Smelfungus humour when he visited Hardwicke, with
a Cavendish too at his elbow as his cicerone!
He says, "the duke sent Lord John 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, and told that the
Devonshires ought to have established themselves there! Never was I less
charmed in my life. The house is not gothic, but of that _betweenity_
that intervened when Gothic declined, and Palladian 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.[53] 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 a stag-hunt in miserable plastered relief.[54]
"The next is her dressing-room, hung with patchwork on black velvet;
then her state bed-chamber. 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 to her, or that she was found to have--as
patience, temperance,[55] &c. The fire-screens are particular;--pieces
of yellow velvet, fringed with gold, hung on a cross-bar of wood, which
is fixed on the top of a single stick that rises from the foot.[56] The
only furniture which has any appearance of taste are the table and
cabinets, which are of oak, richly carved."
(I must observe _en passant_, that I wonder Horace did not go mad about
the chairs, which are exactly in the Strawberry Hill taste, only infinitely
finer, crimson velvet, with backs six feet high, and sumptuously 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 in length, 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."[57]
"There is a fine bank of old oaks in the park over a lake: nothing else
pleased me there."
Nothing else! Monsieur Traveller?--certes, this is one way of seeing
things! Yet, perhaps, if I had only visited Hardwicke as a casual object
of curiosity--had merely walked over the place--I had left it, like
Gray, with some vague impression of pleasure, or like Walpole, with some
flippant criticisms, according to the mood of the moment; or, at the
most, I had quitted it as we generally leave show-places, with some
confused recollections of state-rooms, and blue-rooms, and yellow-rooms,
and storied tapestries, and nameless, or mis-named pictures, floating
through the muddled brain; but it was far otherwise: I was ten days at
Hardwicke--ten delightful days--time enough to get it by heart; aye,
and what is more, ten _nights_; and I am convinced that to feel all the
interest of such a place one should sleep in it. There is much, too,
in first impressions, and the circumstances under which we approached
Hardwicke were sufficiently striking. It was on a gusty, dark autumnal
evening; and as our carriage wound slowly up the hill, we could but
just discern an isolated building, standing above us on the edge of the
eminence, a black mass against the darkening sky. No light was to be
seen, and when we drove clattering under the old gateway, and up the
paved court, the hollow echoes broke a silence which was almost awful.
Then we were ushered into a hall so spacious and lofty that I could
not at the moment discern its bounds; but I had glimpses of huge
escutcheons, and antlers of deer, and great carved human arms projecting
from the walls, intended to sustain lamps or torches, but looking as
if they were stretched out to clutch one. Thence up a stone staircase,
vast, and grand, and gloomy--leading we knew not where, and hung with
pictures of we knew not what--and conducted into a chamber fitted up
as a dining-room, in which the remnants of antique grandeur, the rich
carved oak wainscoting, the tapestry above it, the embroidered chairs,
the collossal armorial bearings above the chimney and the huge recessed
windows, formed a curious contrast with the comfortable modern sofas and
easy chairs, the blazing fire, and table hospitably spread in expectation
of our arrival. Then I was sent to repose in a room hung with rich faded
tapestry. On one side of my bed I had king David dancing before the ark,
and on the other, the judgment of Solomon. The executioner in the latter
piece, a grisly giant, seven or eight feet high, seemed to me, as the
arras stirred with the wind, to wave his sword, and looked as if he were
going to eat up the poor child, which he flourished by one leg; and for
some time I lay awake, unable to take my eyes from the figure. At length
fatigue overcame this unpleasant fascination, and I fell asleep.